New FBI Guidelines Will Worsen Privacy Abuses

Cointelpro Is Back With A New Name

They've Brought Back The Same Standards With Which They Killed Martin Luther King Jr.

 October 9. 2008

FBI Director and Nazi, Robert Mueller

The new FBI investigative guidelines handed down by attorney general, Michael Mukasey, is another power grab by the Bush administration to violate the rights of Americans and U.S. residents.

The FBI was flagrantly abusing the Patriot Act before, in a story I broke first in my Sound Off Column, so it will be business as usual with these new invasive guidelines that have now expanded to include racial profiling. How charming, not! They can spy on you now with next to no oversight.

The FBI is already abusing their office to facilitate the political advancement of high profile politicians that are friends of Robert Mueller and George Bush, via passing on federal files, wiretap transcripts and the contents of individuals' computers, improperly obtained without cause, using the FBI's spyware CIPAV.

It's all quite despicable. Through this hypocrisy, you have debased yourselves to degrees most people would look upon with utter contempt. Spying on innocent people for political gain is not national security, but national fraud, for which you have no probable cause.

I don't know why you guys in Washington slam the KGB, when you let Bush and the FBI do the exact same thing. However, the KGB doesn't pretend, as it is what it is and they're not trying to be something they are not. However, the FBI and Bush administration love to wave the Constitution around when beating their chests about how patriotic they are, then behind closed doors, openly dishonor, defy and destroy it. 

Here We COINTELPRO Again: FBI Changes the Rules

With everybody’s eyeballs and earlobes focused on the economy and the election, the Justice Department pushed through rule changes that allow the FBI to go back to the bad old days of spying more aggressively on Americans. Civil libertarians and even some lawmakers are in an uproar. The Center for Investigative Reporting has a must-read report that explains why. Center for Investigative Reporting:

Among the powers agents now have for an assessment:

• Conduct surveillance without an otherwise required court order.

• Obtain grand jury subpoenas for personal telephone and e-mail accounts.

• Recruit informants for feeding information about a group or person to the bureau.

• Examine records maintained by federal, state and local government agencies, which are typically not accessible to the public, like police databases profiling past criminal suspects.

In particular, the powers allow agents to “collect information relating to demonstration activities,” according to the guidelines, for the purpose of protecting “public health and safety” before a major event, like the party conventions that occurred in St. Paul and Denver. The bureau can gather intelligence to determine where political demonstrators are lodging during the event, how they’re traveling there, where demonstration activities are planned and how many people will attend, all without advanced proof that a national-security threat exists.

http://www.truthdig.com

FBI gets open license to snoop

...Consider this irony, however. In the current effort to keep terrorism at bay, the Justice Department has just completed new guidelines for the FBI that will permit its agents to do exactly what Hoover and others claimed would be the case with the CIA -- spy on Americans without the need to show probable cause, reaching into the private lives of citizens without any indication of suspicious activities. FBI agents now will be able with near impunity to use physical surveillance, hire informants and even disguise their identities in their effort to discover potential threats to national security...

This action seems designed to counter the bureau's reluctance to relinquish it traditional law enforcement function of investigating a crime after it has been committed, a culture that has slowed its anti-terrorism efforts. Fine. But in the process the department has provided an agency with a well-documented record of overreaching and other abuses with carte blanche authority to increase these questionable activities. It is a civil libertarian's worst dream, ripe with the possibility of political misuse and intimidation. Anyone who thinks this is not a real danger should not be in public office because he lives in a bubble of historic ignorance. That goes for Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who approved the guidelines...

One can only wonder what those who opposed Donovan and the creation of the CIA would say now. Some vulnerability to evil intentions probably is the price we pay for our liberty. It is one thing to be vigilant and quite another to use that as an excuse for trampling on our individual freedoms.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com

ACLU Condemns New FBI Guidelines

Washington, DC – New FBI guidelines governing investigations were released today after being signed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The American Civil Liberties Union quickly blasted the Department of Justice and FBI for ignoring calls for more stringent protections of Americans’ rights. The guidelines replace existing bureau guidelines for five types of investigations: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations. The ACLU has been vocal in its disapproval of the overly broad guidelines, citing both the FBI’s and DOJ’s documented records of internal abuse.

The new guidelines reduce standards for beginning “assessments” (precursors to investigations), conducting surveillance and gathering evidence, meaning the threshold to beginning investigations across the board will be lowered. More troubling still, the guidelines allow a person’s race or ethnic background to be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes may institute racial profiling as a matter of policy.

“The attorney general today gave the FBI a blank check to open investigations of innocent Americans based on no meaningful suspicion of wrongdoing,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “The new guidelines provide no safeguards against the FBI’s improperly using race and religion as grounds for suspicion. They also fail to sufficiently prevent the government from infiltrating groups whose viewpoints it doesn’t like. The FBI has shown time and time again that is incapable of policing itself and there is good reason to believe that these guidelines will lead to more abuse.”

http://www.webwire.com