FBI Concentrating Surveillance Flights Over Dearborn

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An airplane linked to FBI anti-terrorism surveillance has made at least seven flights over Metro Detroit since Friday, including two lengthy flights last weekend over the Dearborn area, where about 40 percent of residents are Arab-Americans, according to public records.

The plane, a 2010 single-engine Cessna Skylane, uses high-tech cameras and gadgets that can sweep up certain cell phone data to track alleged terrorists, The Detroit News repots. The FBI operates a fleet of at least 115 aircraft.

The newspaper’s examination of public records and flight data on FlightRadar24.com comes on the heels of an Associated Press investigation in June that revealed that the FBI had flown more than 100 flights in 11 states over a 30-day period.

The AP said the FBI was using dummy companies to secretly operate “a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cell phone surveillance technology.”

The Detroit News said the plane flew slowly over Dearborn, where many Arab Americans are devout Muslims. The plane covered a wide area in its counterclockwise orbits about a mile off the ground, matching the surveillance pattern in flights over Baltimore in May following riots over the death of Freddie Gray.

It’s unclear if the Metro Detroit surveillance is terror-related. The FBI did not alert local police agencies.

“I don’t know anything about this,” Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad told the newspaper. “I can only be concerned when I learn something about it.”

Muslim community activist Dawud Walid told The Detroit News he plans to raise the issue with the House Judiciary Committee. Among the members is longtime U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit.

“This just feeds into the thought of many of us in the Muslim community leadership that the FBI claims to want to have good relationships with Muslims and be transparent in the light of day, and then they are spying and snooping on us under the cover of night,” said Walid, who is executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“If the FBI is, in fact, tracking one particular suspect for any type of crime, be it gang-related, drug trafficking or violent extremism, that is OK,” Walid continued, “but history informs us the FBI has been involved in mass surveillance and racial and religious mapping of communities of color.”

Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s speech, privacy and technology project in New York, told The Detroit News the surveillance raises questions about privacy because surveillance technology is often used without a judge’s approval.

“There may be a concern about unjust, persistent surveillance of Muslim communities in Michigan that already have reasons to be uncomfortable with some police tactics,” Wessler said, adding the FBI owes Muslims “a full and transparent explanation” of the agency’s activities.

The newspaper said both the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit and the FBI declined comment.

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Stock photo via Flickr