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With the passage of The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, Congress mandated a fundamental reordering of America’s intelligence gathering institutions. It called for the creation of an “Information Sharing Environment” (commonly known as the “ISE”) to facilitate the exchange of terrorism information among all appropriate federal, state, and local agencies and the private sector through the use of common guidelines and technologies. It further mandated the development of Suspicious Activity Reporting system or SARs. In March 2008 then LAPD Chief William Bratton issued LAPD Special Order 11, which spearheaded the national Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) initiative. The LAPD’s Special Order 11 trains and authorizes LAPD officers to gather street-level intelligence and information, based entirely upon “observed behavior.” These behaviors include such everyday benign activities as drawing diagrams, or taking notes, pictures or video footage of buildings with no apparent aesthetic value. So whatever happened to reasonable suspicion? Well now we have reasonable indication.

GUEST: Peter Bibring, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California in Los Angeles, specializing in police practices, homelessness, and privacy. He is lead counsel on Fazaga v. FBI, a class action challenge to the FBI’s use of surveillance of mosques in Orange County.