Mapping Muslims
By: Dale A. RoseA fishy effort is underway by the LAPD’s counter-terrorism unit to map Muslim communities in the city. Drawing from census data, which does not capture religious affiliation of individuals or household, and other demographic information, the men and women in blue hope to be able to extrapolate the relevant information. It’s a curious VSS issue not least of which because of the interesting tactic police officials have begun taking in understanding and characterizing potential threats at the local level. Quoting from today’s LA Times article on the subject:
In outlining the program last week before a congressional committee, Deputy Police Chief Michael P. Downing, who heads the counter-terrorism operation, said the department’s plan was designed to minimize the radicalization of Muslims in Los Angeles. Instead of relying on experts, he said, the mapping would produce a “richer picture” of the community and guide future strategies.
“While this project will lay out geographic locations of many different Muslim populations around Los Angeles, we also intend to take a deeper look at their history, demographics, language, culture, ethnic breakdown, socioeconomic status and social interactions,” he said. “It is also our hope to identify communities, within the larger Muslim community which may be susceptible to violent ideologically based extremism and then use a full spectrum approach guided by intelligence-led strategy.”
So, in other words, poverty and isolation, coupled with more conservatively oriented mosques and a population under increasing scrutiny, should be able to produce a picture of the prototypical threatening Muslim - no doubt viewed as a kind of “vulnerability” within the larger societal fabric. The chief of police of the LAPD, William J. Bratton, had this to say in response to critics: “This is not . . . targeting or profiling… It is an effort to understand communities.” Hmm. I have absolutely no objection to law enforcement incorporating demographic and census data at the population level into their purview and techniques — I think it’s rather a long time in coming and quite necessary. However, I do object to couching the obvious targeting of one religious community in these terms, utilizing these techniques. Seems to me that a better way to gain a kind of seamless integration with - and entree to - the Muslim community would be to actually reach out to members of those communities, consistently, actively and visibly, along with every other (non-Muslim) community! Talk about a good dual use strategy!!
* * UPDATE - - NOVEMBER 15, 2007 * *
The LAPD just decided to cancel the surveillance program. My analysis was whacky, but the program — now DOA — was odious. Have a look at: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-muslim15nov15,1,7941397.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true
November 11th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I would not call this vital systems security, since its goal is to interdict enemies of the state. Rather, in our terms, it takes up population security knowledge (the census, economic status) in the service of sovereign state security.
November 12th, 2007 at 9:36 am
I agree with Andy. In some sense the interesting question is whether population security is used only as a mode of knowledge or as the basis for practical intervention (ie actually trying to identify these pathologies of the social and then normalizing them).
November 14th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Totally right. Poorly worded on my part. Not vital systems as you’ve conceptualized it, but I am intrigued nonetheless about the kinds of conceptual linkages one might make between threats to the state, on the one hand, and what one might call “societal vulnerabilities” (weaknesses in the societal fabric) which are mapped onto specific social groups by law enforcement and juridical apparatuses. Hmm. I don’t know, I thought it was interesting at the time… and in any event the development in LA is disturbing.
November 26th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I think it is quite interesting. What I was trying to say above is that it may be a redeployment of knowledge about the social. There isn’t an attempt to ‘normalize’ in the sense of intervening in the conditions of collective life to correct these ‘pathologies.’ Rather, it is simply an attempt — I think — to use “social conditions” as a kind of early warning system.