CRM 6020G - Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the Era of Homeland Security

Credits: 4

This course will explore the means by which law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels has used (and continue to use) technology and other intrusive means to monitor, surveil, record, and disseminate information about individuals and groups that may be violative of civil rights and civil liberties protections. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, much of the efforts of the law enforcement apparatus in the United States have been directed toward the maintenance of “social control” of populations that government agents deem suspicious or untrustworthy. This “panoptic” and ubiquitous monitoring of public and private spaces often goes on without public and community awareness, consent, or input. Government efforts to control, to infiltrate, and to “watch” underclass and suspect individuals and groups is often at odds with rights guaranteed under the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution and students will investigate, interrogate and critically analyze the processes that government actors employ in the quest to maintain the security of the “homeland.”