NYPD Cites Mosaic Theory, Favored By FBI And NSA, To Deny Access To Budget Records

The New York City Police Department is invoking a concept frequently employed by intelligence agencies like the FBI and CIA to deny a request for financial records on the unit that surveils Muslim communities.

Even to release a budget for the secretive Zone Assessment Unit, the NYPD claimed in a letter to HuffPost, would allow someone to "form a mosaic that depicts covert public safety activities that would be jeopardized."

The NYPD's denial of appeal was issued Dec. 6, which comes 10 months after the initial request was made under the state Freedom of Information Law, in the waning days of Commissioner Raymond Kelly's tenure. National security lawyers and a New York state public records expert told HuffPost they have never seen a local law enforcement agency invoke the so-called mosaic theory, which was frequently cited by the administration of President George W. Bush to deny federal information requests.

"There may be more behind the theory here than what appears in this three-page document, but it looks on its face to be an unsubstantiated invocation of the mosaic theory," said Columbia University law professor David Pozen, a widely cited expert on the concept. "This on its face is a pretty bare assertion of potential harm that's hard to argue against -- because it's hard to know what their theory is."

First brought to prominence during Ronald Reagan's presidency, the mosaic theory holds that enemies of the state can assemble disparate, even seemingly innocuous pieces of information to uncover national security secrets. Under Reagan, the FBI even sought to track library users' borrowing habits, a practice that was revived under the Patriot Act.

Courts have cited mosaic theory to withhold information sought from the FBI, the CIA and the NSA under the federal Freedom of Information Act, concluding that documents that might otherwise be released to the public can be withheld by agencies because such information could help foreign adversaries assemble that "mosaic." In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration frequently stood on the mosaic theory to persuade courts to reject FOIA lawsuits. Pozen and others have criticized judges for not testing the government's assertions of mosaic theory strongly enough.

For the NYPD to cite mosaic theory struck experts whom HuffPost contacted as unusual, given that local law enforcement is generally charged with solving crimes, not pursuing national security investigations. But under the command of Kelly and the Intelligence Division's Deputy Commissioner David Cohen, a CIA veteran, the department has increasingly behaved like a federal intelligence agency. Read more...