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In the counterterrorism context, too, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have frequently, and erroneously, focused on minority populations. The NYPD, for instance, often in close collaboration with the CIA, surveilled and documented barbershops, restaurants, travel agencies, and more, solely because their owners hailed from the Middle East. The FBI spied on Muslims under cover of a community outreach program. The NSA allegedly monitored Muslim activists and scholars. And TSA employees at a major American airport accused their colleagues of pulling aside Middle Easterners, Hispanics, blacks, and other minorities instead of focusing on real threats.

These surveillance efforts often focus on illusory risks, diverting policing, enforcement, and intelligence resources from the real threats. Welfare recipients, for instance, are generally less likely than the overall population to use drugs, and the actual incidence of fraud by beneficiaries of aid is relatively low. Muslims, an enduring target of counterterrorism efforts, are responsible for just a small fraction of all terrorist attacks in the West. Indeed, the NYPD was forced to acknowledge that its spying program origin produced no leads. And the TSA’s behavior detection program, which led to its agents’ racial and religious profiling, was discredited by the government’s own accountability watchdog.