Great Galloping Hoover!
No, not Herbert, J. Edgar.
While we have one eye on the November elections and the other on the nation's financial meltdown, it's pretty easy to overlook some of the other news developing out there. And that's dangerous, especially given the current administration. Sure, BushCo will soon be over, but its friends and backers will still be around, and history has shown that such characters will surface just as soon as the time is right.
An editorial in today's Los Angeles Times warns us about one plan in the works. The FBI has decided it needs to loosen the already loose restrictions on its domestic spying.
Citing a post-9/11 change in its mission, the FBI is planning to relax guidelines for the surveillance of groups and individuals who might -- and the key word is "might" -- harbor terrorists or spies. Because the actual wording hasn't been released, it's difficult to make a definitive judgment about whether the new guidelines for initial investigative "assessments" would revive the bad old days when the FBI engaged in massive and unjustified spying on Americans. But explanations from Bush administration officials are unsettling.
... the FBI wants more leeway to send agents or informants to public places and conduct "pretext interviews" -- FBI jargon for conversations in which an investigator asks questions without identifying himself as an agent. This first-stage surveillance doesn't require reasonable suspicion that those under surveillance are terrorists; it could take place on the basis of speculation or rumor. [Emphasis added]
Security letters and warrantless wire taps aren't enough. Now we get have to have agents drop by the local pub to sniff out any unAmerican chatter. Well, probably not just any local pub, or even just a pub. One assumes that the gathering is one of those suspicious kinds, filled with long-haired hippie types, Quakers, or (gasp!) Middle Easterners.
The LA Times editorial points out one of the intended effects of this new and improved "investigation tool":
... under the rules proposed by the FBI, agents and informants could insinuate themselves into mosques and political organizations whose only "suspicious" behavior is to criticize U.S. policy toward Iraq or support the Palestinian cause. That treads dangerously close to violating free speech and religion rights guaranteed under the 1st Amendment.
Well, yeah, along with free assembly and privacy rights. The new rules hit out at a whole bunch of civil liberties, but, after all, the Bill of Rights is so 9/10.
We really have become a Third World Nation.
While we have one eye on the November elections and the other on the nation's financial meltdown, it's pretty easy to overlook some of the other news developing out there. And that's dangerous, especially given the current administration. Sure, BushCo will soon be over, but its friends and backers will still be around, and history has shown that such characters will surface just as soon as the time is right.
An editorial in today's Los Angeles Times warns us about one plan in the works. The FBI has decided it needs to loosen the already loose restrictions on its domestic spying.
Citing a post-9/11 change in its mission, the FBI is planning to relax guidelines for the surveillance of groups and individuals who might -- and the key word is "might" -- harbor terrorists or spies. Because the actual wording hasn't been released, it's difficult to make a definitive judgment about whether the new guidelines for initial investigative "assessments" would revive the bad old days when the FBI engaged in massive and unjustified spying on Americans. But explanations from Bush administration officials are unsettling.
... the FBI wants more leeway to send agents or informants to public places and conduct "pretext interviews" -- FBI jargon for conversations in which an investigator asks questions without identifying himself as an agent. This first-stage surveillance doesn't require reasonable suspicion that those under surveillance are terrorists; it could take place on the basis of speculation or rumor. [Emphasis added]
Security letters and warrantless wire taps aren't enough. Now we get have to have agents drop by the local pub to sniff out any unAmerican chatter. Well, probably not just any local pub, or even just a pub. One assumes that the gathering is one of those suspicious kinds, filled with long-haired hippie types, Quakers, or (gasp!) Middle Easterners.
The LA Times editorial points out one of the intended effects of this new and improved "investigation tool":
... under the rules proposed by the FBI, agents and informants could insinuate themselves into mosques and political organizations whose only "suspicious" behavior is to criticize U.S. policy toward Iraq or support the Palestinian cause. That treads dangerously close to violating free speech and religion rights guaranteed under the 1st Amendment.
Well, yeah, along with free assembly and privacy rights. The new rules hit out at a whole bunch of civil liberties, but, after all, the Bill of Rights is so 9/10.
We really have become a Third World Nation.
Labels: Domestic Spying
posted by Diane at 4:20 AM
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