Subject:  The FBI needs more than an overhaul |
Author:
Kathyrn
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Date Posted: 20:12:44 06/01/02 Sat
Author Host/IP: 209.240.222.131
In reply to:
The Veeckster
's message, "OK Gany, LOOK Busy! That Lunatic Ashcroft is Monitoring us now!@!!" on 07:55:49 05/31/02 Fri
>Ashcroft is one scary dude. Amazing how Shrub & Coare
>using 9/11 to break down civil liberties, increase
>citizen surveillance, and turn the USA into a
>Police State.
>
>Plus, the problem is the FBI didn't use the
>intelliegence they HAD on 9/11 correctly!
>
>
>F.B.I. Faces No Legal Obstacles to Domestic Spying
>By ADAM LIPTAK
>
>
>n 1972, with public concern about government
>surveillance of the civil rights and antiwar movements
>near its peak, a closely divided Supreme Court refused
>to forbid the Army to monitor public political
>activities.
>
>The majority quoted a lower court's assessment of the
>basic facts: "The information gathered is nothing more
>than a good newspaper reporter would be able to gather
>by attendance at public meetings and the clipping of
>articles from publications available on any newsstand."
>
>Advertisement
>
>
>
>
>With the substitution of the Internet for the
>newsstand, that is essentially what Attorney General
>John Ashcroft now proposes to allow the Federal Bureau
>of Investigation to do.
>
>If the Supreme Court was unwilling to bar a similar
>practice in 1972, there is little reason to think a
>challenge would succeed today.
>
>Indeed, the restrictions under which the F.B.I. has
>operated for three decades were self-imposed.
>Congressional pressure, lawsuits, scandals and a
>public outcry played a role in the bureau's vow to
>limit domestic surveillance to situations in which
>criminal conduct was suspected. But the restrictions
>were not enforceable in court and were grounded in
>what might be called constitutional values, rather
>than actual law.
>
>Civil libertarians largely acknowledge that the
>Justice Department is free to revise its own
>guidelines, but they say that the knowledge that
>political activity is being monitored by the
>government will chill the kinds of unrestrained
>discussions that are central to American democracy,
>with no appreciable benefits.
>
>"There is no Fourth Amendment constitutional problem
>with the government surfing the Web or going into a
>public space or attending a public event," said David
>D. Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University,
>referring to the constitutional limits on governmental
>intrusions. "But there are significant First Amendment
>concerns. There is a real cost to the openness of a
>free political society if every discussion group needs
>to be concerned that the F.B.I. is listening in on its
>public discussions or attending its public meetings."
>
>That concern is particularly acute in mosques and
>other religious settings, said Jason Erb of the
>Council on American-Islamic Relations. "It starts to
>erode some of the trust and good will that exists in
>these institutions if you're afraid they have been
>infiltrated by an undercover agent," Mr. Erb said.
>
>Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra
>University, said the costs to society of the new
>investigative tools outweigh their benefits. "There is
>a high likelihood that the weapon will be used in
>unintended ways and create more collateral damage in
>the First Amendment area than it will result in law
>enforcement gains," Professor Freedman said.
>
>But Mary Jo White, who supervised several major
>terrorism prosecutions as United States attorney in
>Manhattan, sees things differently.
>
>Even as a reaction to abuses in the 60's and 70's, Ms.
>White said, the old Justice Department guidelines were
>misguided.
>
>"I wouldn't have favored them in the old days because
>they are a barrier to important, legitimate
>investigative measures," she said. "We're now at war.
>The public safety concern has to come first. Would
>that we wouldn't have to pay this price for our own
>safety and national security. But we do."
>
>The new guidelines allow wide-ranging monitoring of
>political and religious activities unconnected with
>the investigation of any crime and do away with the
>requirement that some kinds of investigations be
>approved in Washington.
>
>Both revisions troubled Zachary W. Carter, a former
>United States attorney in Brooklyn. "To be a Black
>Panther was not against the law," Mr. Carter said. "To
>be a Black Panther and conspire to kill policemen or
>blow up buildings was against the law."
>
>The distinction, he said, was sometimes lost in
>investigations of that group. Without the old
>guidelines, "law enforcement authorities could conduct
>investigations that had a chilling effect on entirely
>appropriate lawful expressions of political beliefs,
>the free exercise of religion and the freedom of
>assembly."
>
>The solution, Mr. Carter said, is careful supervision
>at the highest levels in Washington. "Just because the
>folks in Minneapolis turned out to be even 100 percent
>right this time doesn't mean they always will be," he
>said, referring to the F.B.I. agents who
>unsuccessfully sought warrants to examine the computer
>files of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged
>in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
>
>"Whenever the government in my experience ventures
>into these gray areas, whether or not they're going to
>do it responsibly or not depends on whether mechanisms
>are put in place to monitor the exercise of their
>discretion," Mr. Carter added.
>
>James X. Dempsey, the deputy director of the Center
>for Democracy and Technology, said that monitoring of
>political activity would not have uncovered the
>perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.
>
>"Not a single one of the 19 guys, or 20 if you count
>Moussaoui, did anything overtly political," Mr.
>Dempsey said. "Not one of them said, `I support
>Palestinian rights' or `I hate America' in a public
>way."
>
>But the new guidelines will, he said, have an
>inevitable impact on public debate. "Allowing people
>to freely and openly advocate, say, Palestinian rights
>in the hope of persuading others creates the crucial
>safety valve that keeps people from turning to
>violence to force change."
>
>Greg Nojeim, associate director of the American Civil
>Liberties Union, identified one potential legal
>vehicle for attacking the new guidelines: The Privacy
>Act. The law, enacted in the Watergate era, prohibits
>the government from keeping records "describing how
>any individual exercises rights granted by the First
>Amendment." There are exceptions: where the monitoring
>is subject to specific statutory authorization, where
>the monitored individual consents and where the
>information is "pertinent to and within the scope of
>an authorized law enforcement activity."
>
>The F.B.I. will presumably argue that the last
>exemption fits, though Mr. Nojeim was skeptical about
>whether the bureau was free to grant itself such
>authority.
>
>Not every civil liberties lawyer opposes the revised
>regulations. One, Steven Lubet, a law professor at
>Northwestern University, said context matters.
>"They're not conducting surveillance of a peace
>movement," Professor Lubet said. "J. Edgar Hoover has
>been dead for 30 years, and there is no reason the
>abuses of the 1960's should prevent the F.B.I. from
>taking prudent measures today."
--------------------------------------------
Some FBI heads in the higher ranks need to roll!
As far as giving up rights goes - there are plenty of sheep bleating: "Yes, Yes, protect me!" LOL
What is that old saying? You don't miss what you had until its gone!
Combined with the patriot act - the new FBI powers demand a lot more sacrifice of human rights than people are aware....
The power will more than likely be abused.
But I doubt we will ever get our rights to anykind of privacy back.
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