Rule changes will give FBI more ability to track potential terrorists
The FBI is planning to impliment new guidelines to prevent another terror attack. Wouldn't you know it, the Council of American Islamic Relations, which claims to be the voice of American main-stream Muslims, isn't pleased with new proposed guidelines.
What does please CAIR in the battle against Islamic terrorism?
Unlike CAIR, most Americans will be pleased with new resources soon to be available to the FBI to prevent terrorism :
"The Justice Department will unveil changes to FBI ground rules today that would put much more power into the hands of line agents pursuing leads on national security, foreign intelligence and even ordinary criminal cases.
The changes would give the FBI's more than 12,000 agents the ability at a much earlier stage to conduct physical surveillance, solicit informants and interview friends of people they are investigating without the approval of a bureau supervisor. Such techniques are currently available only after FBI agents have opened an investigation and developed a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or that a threat to national security is developing.
...We wanted simpler, clearer and more uniform standards and procedures for domestic operations," said a senior Justice Department official. "We view this as the next step in responding to post-9/11 requests that the FBI become better at collecting intelligence and using that intelligence to prevent attacks."
The move comes a year after the Justice Department's inspector general documented widespread lapses involving one of the bureau's most potent investigative tools, secret "national security letters" that FBI agents send to banks and phone companies to demand sensitive information in terrorism probes..."
Update 9/19/08: FBI Director Robert Mueller went before Congress this week:
The most significant changes -- include lowering the standards necessary to begin “assessments,” eliminating the need for any clear basis for suspicion or “factual predication.” -- assessments could now be started based on profiles of national security threats or on anonymous tips. Investigators conducting these initial inquiries would have access to numerous surveillance techniques...The profiles that the FBI can use to trigger these assessment investigations would include race, ethnicity, and religion. ...the Department of Justice has claimed that race or ethnicity could not be the sole factor for opening an investigation and thus still comply with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) own 2003 guidance against profiling. -- Despite written requests from the chairs of both the House and Senate Committees the Attorney General refused to provide the guidelines outside of these supervised briefings.
...Despite the heated exchanges and pressure from both members of Congress and civil rights groups, the DOJ has not indicated any change in its plan to implement the guidelines October 1st.
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