The Nation: FBI Seeks Sweeping New Powers

[marmar]

FBI Seeks Sweeping New Powers
By Aziz Huq

August 22, 2008




Lame-duck administrations with abysmal poll ratings and no legislative agenda attract little attention. But to ignore the Bush Administration at this point is perilous: in its waning days, the Administration is turning the Federal Bureau of Investigation into a domestic intelligence agency with sweeping powers to profile and spy on law-abiding Americans.

In July, the Associated Press reported that Attorney General Michael Mukasey was overhauling rules that govern when the FBI can begin an investigation. In a speech last week in Portland, Mukasey acknowledged this and explained that the new guidelines would yield a "more flexible, more proactive, and more efficient" bureau.

FBI guidelines matter because Congress has never enacted a comprehensive statute governing the bureau, even though the FBI last month marked its hundredth anniversary.

The FBI's birth in 1908 was an accident unanticipated by Congress: it was born because Attorney General Charles Bonaparte, frustrated by a Congressional appropriations rider precluding him from borrowing agents from Treasury to conduct investigations, hired ten former US Secret Service agents as investigators.

For the next hundred years, the bureau staved off efforts by Congress to create a constraining legislative framework. After the Church Committee investigations of the 1970s revealed massive FBI surveillance of civil rights leaders and activists, Congress seriously debated such a statute. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080901/huq

[Strelnikov_]

1. Maybe the following snips will get peoples attention

http://www.juancole.com/

Bush is trying to permanently widen FBI prerogatives in opening investigations of US citizens before leaving office. His new guidelines would allow an investigation to begin on the basis of data-mining and profiling, with no evidence of suspected wrong-doing.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/washington/21fbi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The senators said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.” The plan “might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities,” the letter said.

[screembloodymurder]

6. Yes, and don't forget, suicide is an admission of guilt.

At least, that's what my R-W friends tell me about Dr. Ivins. So, now the FBI can harass anybody, anywhere, anytime, for anything and if they happen to be found dead, they must be guilty of something.
:hurts:

[mmonk]

2. These are key dangerous parts:

Moreover, the new rules would allow the FBI to open investigations based on its own "threat assessment and profiles constructed from public databases and informants' tips. This invites the targeting of dissident groups--a trend already visible at the state and local level.

In past year, the Administration has injected upward of $2 million to develop a network of 15,000-plus informants in the United States. It has ramped up its internal data-mining efforts, and taken a forward-leaning position on its authority to conduct secret searches, or black-bag operations, in the United States.

[Gregorian]

3. Homeland Insecurity.

These are the things that will eclipse Bush. And won't go away unless we make radical changes in the level of education of the public, and or extreme will and strength on the part of the next administration. The republic is flawed, and the republicans played it like an evil musical instrument.

God help us if we don't have a Supreme Court that is on the side of reality.

[fascisthunter]

4. The 4th Reich

[MrScorpio]

5. CoIntelpro

Proof positive that an out of control FBI is a very dangerous thing

[Stern21]

7. Maybe because so many American voters can't count past two

when it comes to the Amendments. The Fourth just doesn't get on the radar of MSM because there are no huge knee-jerk groups on either side of the arguments.

If it doesn't have something to do with leaving a woman's reproductive decisions in the hands of the state or the size of personal arsenals, too many Americans just think it doesn't matter and will never affect them. We have become a nation of single issue voters and too intellectually lazy to actually think about things in anything other than solid blacks or whites with all hues between non-existent.

These new "powers" that are being given to the FBI are giving the corpse of Hoover a chubby.

[mmonk]

8. Indeed

and welcome.

[hootinholler]

9. Kickin for more recs! n/t