Comment: The 9/11 effect: What happens when the "world's only superpower" decides that it needs to demonize 1.5 billion Muslims in order to justify its imperial expansion into Muslim countries (and everywhere else) in order to keep Russia contained, and it does this for 15 straight years?
The decision came from a second court appeal in a case of Japanese Muslims who argued that the broad monitoring is unconstitutional, invades their privacy, and infringes on their freedom of religion.
"They made us terrorist suspects," Mohamed Fujita, one of the plaintiffs in the case, told Al Jazeera. "We never did anything wrong — on the contrary."
Police files leaked in 2010 revealed the mass surveillance operation, and the 17 plaintiffs were awarded $880,000 for violation of their privacy. This did not, however, end the spying program, which was deemed "necessary and inevitable."
"Germany had a similar programme, and they investigated and maintained files on 30,000 Muslims in Germany and didn't find, apparently, a single terrorist among them," Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University in Tokyo, told Al Jazeera. "So it's not clear that this indiscriminate surveillance is useful."
Appeals in the case were dismissed twice before moving to the Supreme Court.
"We were told we don't have a constitutional case, we're still trying to figure out how it is not constitutional," Junko Hayashi, the lawyer for the 17 plaintiffs told the Independent.
In June, National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden weighed in on Japan's surveillance program while speaking via video stream at a symposium on government surveillance in Tokyo.
"People of the Islamic faith are more likely to be targeted... despite not having any criminal activities or associations or anything like that in their background, simply because people are afraid," Snowden said.
"But in Japan, let's look seriously at that. The Aum Shinrikyo was the last significant terrorist event in Japan, and that was over 20 years ago," he added, referring to the 1995 sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway that killed 13 people and injured 6,000 others.
He noted that even in that case, the perpetrators were not followers of the Islamic faith.
"This wasn't a fundamental Islamic extremist group, this was a crazy doomsday cult that wanted to make their founder the new emperor of Japan."
"when the "world's only superpower" decides that it needs to demonize 1.5 billion Muslims"
What the hell are you talking about? All i hear day in and day out is how wonderful Islam is and how peaceful they are. One headline of the Orlando massacre said "thanks NRA" while world wide they spoke the reality.
you think Muslims are so wonderful and peaceful then tell me which majority Muslim nation you would want to emigrate to? And every poll I've ever read says that over 50% of Muslims would like to live under Sharia law. If you want a good idea on how a "true" Muslim feels watch some Anjem Choudary videos, I actually respect that guy as he speaks about the real Muslim ideology and never wavers from that.
True Muslims don't need "the only super power" to demonize them, they got that covered all on their own.
my .02, take it or leave it.