FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni says that
Those who say the F.B.I. should not collect information on a person or group unless there is a specific reason to suspect that the target is up to no good seriously miss the mark...The F.B.I. has been told that we need to determine who poses a threat to the national security - not simply to investigate persons who have come onto our radar screen.
It sounds like the FBI has interpreted their new Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide to mean they can investigate anyone they feel like. In that case we can bid goodbye our constitutional rights to privacy, free speech, free assembly, and freedom from racial discrimination.
Caproni's statement comes with the release of the FBI's "Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide," which implements the troubling Attorney General Guidelines signed by AG Mukasey in September 2008. It's worth noting that the original AG guidelines - issued by Edward Levi in response to the Church Committee's investigations - were meant to curtail FBI domestic investigations targeting civil rights and anti-war groups.
The new FBI manual instructs the FBI to begin "assessments" to "proactively" determine who is a threat to national security. These assessments require "no particular factual predication." The FBI can use religion or ethnicity as a factor to determine if someone is associated with a criminal or terrorist group, send confidential informants to infiltrate groups, conduct some surveillance in public places (following, photographing) all without any reason to suspect involvement in criminal activity.
Surveillance without a factual basis has an undeniable chilling effect on legitimate First Amendment activities. Citizens may be even more fearful of exercising their constitutionally protected rights considering that the manual allows the FBI to keep all of the information it collects. If it turns out the FBI has targeted an innocent person, that person's privacy will be compromised forever as the information gathered can be retained in FBI databases.
Just as scary as the offense to our inalienable rights is the danger the FBI's new powers pose to our nation's security. It is a colossal waste of national security resources to send the FBI digging into the personal lives of all Americans to weed out the "bad guys."
If this is what the FBI is saying publically, I shudder to think of what the intelligence community is telling the House Judiciary Committee at today's classified briefing on the PATRIOT Act. With Congress considering reauthorizing three expiring PATRIOT Act-related powers this year, the FBI's reading of its manual should make Congress think twice about handing any more domestic intelligence powers to the Executive.
We've already seen too many FBI abuses of intelligence authorities (like the misuse of the National Security Letter (NSL) power that was documented twice by the DOJ Inspector General - here and here), and Caproni's latest statement proves the FBI will continue to grab as much investigatory power as it can.