Last month I wrote about the U.S. Department of Justice's proposed revisions in guidelines that set the rules for how the FBI conducts investigations. These guidelines -- and any revisions to them -- are important because of the FBI's history of pushing the limits of its power into abusive territory. Sad to say, the feds have been caught time and again spying on people because of their political views, and putting journalists under surveillance simply because they threaten to uncover awkward truths. So the rules really matter. And the revisions that Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey was considering seemed poised to unleash the FBI in potentially dangerous ways.
Well, those revisions were formally unveiled yesterday (although they're not yet available online), in preparation for an October 1 implementation date. Despite complaints from members of the Senate and from civil liberties organizations, those revisions appear to have the same flaws that were discussed and protested weeks ago.
The Washington Post reports:
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.
As the ACLU puts it:
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.
The proposed revision seems to live up to warnings by Senators Feingold, Kennedy, Durbin and Whitehouse that "such authority might, for example, permit the FBI to conduct long-term physical surveillance of an innocent American citizen; interview such an individual’s neighbors and professional colleagues, including based on a 'pretext' or misrepresentation; recruit human sources to provide information on that individual; or conduct commercial database searches on that individual – all without any basis for suspicion."
With the rules set to go into effect in just a few weeks, we'll soon find out if their fears are justified.
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