On October 1st, the FBI grants broad new investigative powers to its 12,000 agents. Changes in authority that threaten our civil liberties and the lifeblood of democracy. The rules changes, supposedly implemented to simplify, clarify, and make uniform investigative procedures, allow the FBI to surveil, investigate, and interview even U.S. citizens, with the merest hint of the slightest "threat," and without approval from supervisors or even an official investigation being in place:
The changes would give the FBI's more than 12,000 agents the ability at a much earlier stage to conduct physical surveillance, solicit informants and interview friends of people they are investigating without the approval of a bureau supervisor. Such techniques are currently available only after FBI agents have opened an investigation and developed a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or that a threat to national security is developing.
Washington Post
The new rules unveiled by the Department of Justice grant disturbing, sweeping powers to an agency that has proven to use its powers improperly. As the ACLU explains, the efforts to make "uniform procedures" actually means dismantling the different procedures governing different kinds of investigations: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations.
Most alarmingly, the rules allow infiltration into domestic groups and do not explicitly prohibit racial profiling:
The overhaul touches on several sensitive areas. It would allow, for example, agents to interview people in the United States about foreign intelligence cases without warrants or prior approval of their supervisors. It also would rewrite 1976 guidelines established after Nixon-era abuses that restrict the FBI's authority to intervene in times of civil disorder and to infiltrate opposition groups.
(snip)
The new approach would relax some of those requirements and would expand the investigative techniques that agents could use to include deploying informants. FBI agents monitoring large-scale demonstrations that they believe could turn dangerous also would have new power to use those techniques.
Whenever guidelines put into place in the wake of "Nixon-era abuses" are undone, a red flag goes up. The requirements that are being relaxed include the participation of the FBI in relation to "civil disorder." Currently, FBI involvement is limited to 30 days and requires the approval of the Attorney General. With these rules, no longer.
And what does "believe could turn dangerous" mean? I believe that the vagueness of that very phrase could turn dangerous and threaten our First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights.
Oh, and don't worry about racial profiling, says the AG and FBI, it's illegal, so we won't do it. Yeah, just like torture. It's illegal--we don't torture:
The groups [civil liberties, privacy groups and Arab-American groups] say they fear that agents will use ethnicity or religion as the basis for a threat assessment. But top Justice Department leaders, including the attorney general, noted the illegality of racial profiling and said investigations will not be opened based "solely" or "simply" on a person's race or religion.
Not "solely" or "simply," but if you are a Pakistani-American, and a member of MoveOn, will that be enough to merit surveillance?
Something else to keep our eye on is how all of these powers, supposedly necessary in a "post 9/11 world" are being used to fortify and extend the drug war, not to mention give further pretext to racial profiling:
Authorities say the changes would eliminate confusion for agents who investigate drug, gang or national security cases.
Although in that quotation, it looks to be just a syntactic intertwining, the war on terror, drugs, and minorities are actually intertwined, part of the architecture of authoritarianism, built up on the rhetoric of "protection."
These new rules solidify the grip of the police state, and authorize the FBI to infiltrate citizen groups without just cause, effectively positioning the state power to clamp down on dissent. We already saw the results of this kind of thinking and policy during the recent RNC. It's only going to get worse.
ACLU is strongly pushing back on this broadening of state power that encroaches upon the very essence of our democracy and our civil liberties:
Washington, DC - Following a briefing today at the Department of Justice (DOJ), the American Civil Liberties Union reiterated its deep concern over new guidelines that would govern FBI investigations. The new guidelines would lower standards for beginning "assessments" (precursors to investigations), conducting surveillance and gathering evidence, and would replace existing guidelines for five types of existing guidelines: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations.
The rewritten guidelines have been drafted in a way to give the FBI the ability to begin surveillance without factual evidence, stating that a generalized "threat" is enough to use certain techniques. Also under the new guidelines, a person's race or ethnic background could be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes will institute racial profiling as a matter of policy. The guidelines would also give the FBI the ability to use intrusive investigative techniques in advance of public demonstrations. These techniques would allow agents to conduct pre-textual (undercover) interviews, use informants and conduct physical surveillance in connection with First Amendment protected activities.
"Issuing guidelines that permit racial profiling the day after the 9/11 anniversary and in the midst of an historic presidential campaign is typical Bush administration stagecraft designed to exploit legitimate security concerns for partisan political purposes. Racial profiling by any other name is still unconstitutional," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "The new guidelines offer no specifics on how the FBI will ensure that race and religion are not used improperly as proxies for suspicion, nor do they sufficiently limit the extent to which government agents can infiltrate groups exercising their First Amendment rights. The Bush administration's message once again is 'trust us.' After eight years of historic civil liberties abuses, the American people know better. From the U.S. attorney purges to the abuse of national security letters, the Department of Justice and the FBI have repeatedly shown that they are incapable of policing themselves."
From the ACLU Press Release
Surveillance without evidence or cause--isn't that the life-blood of the police state?
What can we do?
- Support the ACLU.
- Contact your congresscritters and register your concern and outrage about these new rules.
- Help elect Barack Obama president. It's our only chance at this crossroads in history to undo the Republican crafting of a police state.
h/t to Edger's essay at DocuDharma highlighting the WaPo article: True Participatory Democracy.