Police Watching Muslims - NYTimes.com Bravo to Richard C. Levin, the president of Yale University, and others, for speaking in opposition to "police surveillance based on religion, nationality or peacefully expressed political opinion," in the words of Mr. Levin ("Mayor Defends Monitoring of Muslim Students on Web," news article, Feb. 22). Monitoring a public Web site may be a prudent police practice, but then placing individual names appearing on the Web site in a database without a reasonable suspicion of suspected or actual criminal activity is, as Mr. Levin argues, not only "antithetical to the values of the ... United States" but should also be prohibited. Law enforcement agencies should be prohibited from compiling a permanent database of individuals who are not engaged in suspected or actual criminal activity, especially protected First Amendment activity. For example, our writing this letter should not result in having our names placed in a New York Police Department database. The writers are lawyers.