BDO Common at Mall of America
 

BDOs have been interviewing shoppers at the MOA and submitting their information to law enforcement agencies.

http://www.kare11.com/news/article/9...rorism-reports

"BLOOMINGTON, Minn. - On May 1, 2008, at 4:59 p.m., Brad Kleinerman entered the spooky world of homeland security.

As he shopped for a children's watch inside the sprawling Mall of America, two security guards approached and began questioning him. Although he was not accused of wrongdoing, the guards filed a confidential report about Kleinerman that was forwarded to local police.

The reason: Guards thought he might pose a threat because they believed he had been looking at them in a suspicious way.

Najam Qureshi, owner of a kiosk that sold items from his native Pakistan, also had his own experience with authorities after his father left a cell phone on a table in the food court.

The consequence: An FBI agent showed up at the family's home, asking if they knew anyone who might want to hurt the United States...

Reporters at the Center for Investigative Reporting and NPR obtained 125 suspicious activity reports totaling over 1,000 pages dating back to Christmas Eve, 2005. The documents, provided by law enforcement officials in Minnesota, give a glimpse inside the national campaign by authorities to collect and share intelligence about possible threats.

The initiative exemplifies one of the cultural legacies of the terrorist attacks 10 years ago: Organizations and individuals are now encouraged by U.S. leaders to watch one another and report any signs of threats to homeland security authorities..."



Kind of makes me wonder if the people at the airport who have their information written down are being put into a data base.

NPR news story on The Mall of America's Risk Assessment and Mitigation Unit
 

Sorry for the duplicate post, didn't see it when I posted my story

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/check...l-america.html

I heard this segment on the radio driving home. Very chilling! :eek:

I have no doubt about the records keeping either. I'm taking the advice of another recent thread and demanding a privacy act sheet if they ever try to photocopy my ID.

Then again, I've stopped flying, but if it happens at a subway or something, I'll keep it in mind.

The Mall of America is getting a call and possibly a letter from me. It's one of those destinations that are on my list to visit someday, but no more!

I believe you have all the evidence needed to remove Mall of America from your list of places to visit.

More here on Slate.com

Are there actually TSA employees working at the mall? My understanding is that this is all being conducted by the private security employed there, which is fine by me. If that's how they want to treat their customers, they can suffer the lost revenue when people like me take the Mall of America off my list of places to go when I have some free time in MSP.

Any company that does this sort of questioning, in this case Mall of America, deserves to loose customers.

Likewise I will not be going there. I seldom use Twitter but I posted over there to stay away.

Geez, these guys are full of themselves . . .

"The Security Department is staffed with over 100 highly-trained personnel. These officers patrol the interior and exterior of the Mall on foot and on bicycle, while the plain clothes special operations unit focuses on threat mitigation."

Unfortunately, it sounds like most of the people they stop for "suspicious activity" (like taking pictures or video at a huge tourist attraction) are foreign travelers who don't know they can tell these wannabe warriors to go pound sand.

I'm really torn by this one.

MOA is a business, and not public space (by some definitions). They aren't a highway, or a park, or a beach (or at least public versions of those examples). And they can conduct their business any way they wish... just as any of my local malls, or gas stations, or grocery stores are businesses. If "security" for a business asked such follow-up questions (at a Best Buy, or a Home Depot, or wherever), at that point, I have the choice of conducting my business there... or not.

On the other hand, these businesses also have to follow the law. If a private non-LEO security guard shared private information, and this sharing violated a law, I look forward to that business being litigated into debt or even bankruptcy. And it might also be the discovery process, to identify if private entities are permitted to treat their customers this way.

I heard this yesterday on the radio, and I found it chilling.

I have already written a snail-mail to send to MOA. It wasn't high on my list of places to visit, but I absolutely will not visit there now under any circumstances. Why snail-mail? Because I am not going to use my name. Otherwise, I'm quite confident I will end up on an MOA report, cc'd to the FBI and the local police department.

Records that will probably be added to Nappy's 'domestic extremist' list eventually.

There are already too many secret 'lists' that can have serious negative impacts on one's life - lists that one has no access to, no right of appeal. Lists that can negatively affect one's life for decades, with absolutely no recourse.

So some of the innocent folks at MOA now have police files and FBI files. It is clear that the files are trumped up to satisfy some number-cruncher's idea of success. Hard to make a quota if there don't seem to be any genuinely suspicious folks around today, so hey, make something up.

There have been reports of IDs and BPs being copied at checkpoints - why? where are the records?

When the government takes a citizen's name and generates a report, it is never just an 'information only' or 'false alarm'. There is always a negative connotation. Further, if any of these folks that MOA's goons wrote up ever has the misfortune to encounter LE again, they will already be slightly 'guilty' in the eyes of LE just because they were deemed 'suspicious' once before.

I have nothing to hide, but I do have a good, law-abiding name to preserve and I'm not going to risk losing it because of a bunch of quota-driven thugs at a suburban mall.

I am not sure if this thread belongs in TS/S. I already saw the report mentioned in Omni.
I am not particularly surprised there is a show on TLC called "Mall Cops". If follows the mall cops at MOA. From what I saw of it the few times I flipped through it seamed that they were pretty full of themselves.

I have some WN free flight vouchers and La Cochinita was going to go holiday shopping later this year at the MOA with our son. They were both looking forward to a fun mother/son weekend there.

No more. That trip is now off the table.

The MOA can conduct business any way it chooses. And the consumer can choose whether or not to patronize it. We choose not to.

May it find a new home at www.deadmalls.com :p

This is extremely dangerous in more ways than one. First off, this whole thing sounds like an end-around for the 4th amendment. DHS knows they can't simply walk around and harass people(unless they're at an airport or train station), so they enlist private contractors to do their bidding for them. Fascism at its finest. The other danger is that even though this is private property that doesn't give private citizens the right to accost individuals on that property. Merchant privilege gives owners some leeway to protect their property, but that generally only applies to theft. Any private security guard that lays their hands on a person without valid cause is guilty of assault, if they detain someone without cause that is unlawful restrain. Based on the cozy relationship between the Bloomington police and the mall security I doubt charges would ever be filed, even if someone was attacked by these rent-a-cops. I'm sure the any surveillance video would simply disappear if such an incident were to occur, just like the TSA at airports.