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Bush Administration Widens Domestic Spy Agency Powers
By Naomi Spencer
25/08/08 "WSW"
-- - In recent weeks, Bush administration officials have
introduced a number of provisions that substantially widen the
powers of intelligence and law enforcement agencies to conduct
spying and other operations within the US against American
citizens.
Last week, several news outlets reported that the Justice
Department had drafted new rules on intelligence gathering
operations which it plans to ratify on October 1, the first day
of the new fiscal year and one month before the November
elections.
Although details of the draft have not been made publicly
available, officials told the Associated Press (AP) that the
changes give explicit permission to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) to spy on Americans even if there is no
basis for suspicion of criminal activity or allegations of
wrongdoing. According to an August 20 report by the AP,
officials speaking on condition of anonymity said “the new
policy would let agents open preliminary terrorism
investigations after mining public records and intelligence to
build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed
suspicious.”
Among factors the officials said could be used as the basis for
spying, according to the AP, were “travel to regions of the
world known for terrorist activity and access to weapons or
military training, along with the person’s race or ethnicity.”
The FBI would be authorized to conduct activities such as
“long-term surveillance, interviewing neighbors and work-mates,
recruiting informants and searching commercial databases for
information on people.”
Four members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who were briefed
on the new rules—Democrats Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Dick
Durbin of Illinois, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon
Whitehouse of Rhode Island—wrote in an August 18 letter to
Attorney General Michael Mukasey that the new rules opened the
way for “intrusive surveillance” against innocent Americans
based on “race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on
protected First Amendment activities.”
An August 22 editorial by the New York Times, citing comments of
Senate staffers familiar with the new rules, reported that the
FBI would be authorized to carry out “pretext interviews, in
which agents do not honestly represent themselves while
questioning a subject’s neighbors and work colleagues.”
There can be little doubt that among those targeted will be the
sizable and growing segment of the population actively opposed
to the government’s policies. “Pretext interviews” and the use
of “recruited informants”—who infiltrate targeted
organizations—are deeply anti-democratic and unconstitutional
tactics that the FBI, in the anti-communist Cold War era, widely
employed against socialists and civil rights groups.
In their letter, the senators merely urged Mukasey not to ratify
the guidelines until they have been publicly announced—an
indication that they have no any serious intention of blocking
the action. Only last month, the Democratic-controlled House of
Representatives and Senate passed, by an overwhelming margin,
legislation legitimizing the Bush administration’s ongoing
domestic wiretapping and surveillance operations and granting
immunity to telecommunications companies participating in the
illegal programs. (See: “Obama joins Senate vote to legitimize
Bush’s domestic spying operation”).
In an August 20 reply to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the
Attorney General’s office gave an assurance that Mukasey would
not sign the guidelines in advance of a September 17 appearance
before the committee by FBI Director Robert Mueller.
However, the letter made clear that the Justice Department
considered the delay little more than a grace period. It stated,
“Although we have not traditionally worked with Congress in
developing Attorney General guidelines, and as you note in your
letter, we are not obligated to do so, we appreciate the
laudable and thoughtful suggestions we have already received...”
In the meantime, the Attorney General’s office said the
department would “continue to train FBI employees in preparation
for the October 1, 2008 implementation date.”
In tandem with more aggressive FBI spying, the Justice
Department last week introduced a proposal to further integrate
state and local law enforcement agencies into the intelligence
apparatus by allowing police forces to collect intelligence
about American citizens. The proposal would allow police to
share data with federal agencies and retain information for at
least ten years.
As an August 16 Washington Post article reported, in the past
few years numerous instances of police infiltration of peace and
other protest groups have come to light. The article noted that
“undercover New York police officers infiltrated protest groups
before the 2004 Republican National Convention... California
state agents eavesdropped on peace, animal rights and labor
activists,” and “Denver police spied on Amnesty International
and others before being discovered.”
Michael German, a former FBI agent turned whistleblower who is
now a policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), told the Post, “If police officers no longer see
themselves as engaged in protecting their communities from
criminals and instead as domestic intelligence agents working on
behalf of the CIA, they will be encouraged to collect more
information... It turns police officers into spies on behalf of
the federal government.”
On August 20, the Post reported that the federal government has
been compiling information on land, sea, and air
border-crossings by Americans via a previously undisclosed
Border Crossing Information system run by the Department of
Homeland Security. The data—including name, birth date, gender
and photographic documentation—will be held for 15 years and can
be used by intelligence agencies in investigations. The
newspaper commented, “The same information is gathered about
foreign travelers, but it is held for 75 years.”
This month, the Bush administration also announced the creation
of a new unit within the Defense Department’s Defense
Intelligence Agency, called the Defense Counterintelligence and
Human Intelligence Center. Without giving details, Mike Pick,
appointed to direct the program, told reporters at a Pentagon
press conference that the office would carry out “strategic
offensive counterintelligence operations” within the United
States. Pentagon officials have insisted that the agency would
target only “foreign intelligence officers” on US soil.
The announcement closely followed a July 30 executive order by
President Bush ordering a restructuring of intelligence agencies
to more tightly centralize spying and other so-called
“counterintelligence operations” under the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence. The purpose of the change is
to consolidate and solidify the huge intelligence apparatus that
has grown massively in the period since the September 11, 2001
attacks.
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