U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft on Thursday granted the FBI broad authority to monitor political rallies, religious services and Internet chat rooms and to search commercially available consumer databases for indications of terrorist activity.
Ashcroft tied the new powers to the FBI’s efforts to transform itself from a law-enforcement organization into a domestic security agency dedicated to preventing future terrorist attacks.
“Our philosophy today is not to wait and sift through the rubble following a terrorist attack. Rather, the FBI must intervene early and investigate aggressively where information exists,” Ashcroft said.
The new guidelines for domestic spying amount to a fundamental reconsideration of the limits placed on government agents as their efforts to protect public safety enter the sensitive arena of political, religious and personal expression. A senior Justice Department official involved in drafting the new rules described the changes as “dramatic, not only in terms of specific substance, but in tone.”
The announcement drew quick criticism from civil liberties advocates and Muslim organizations concerned because of the bureau’s history under former Director J. Edgar Hoover of spying on dissident groups. Restrictions on domestic spying by the FBI were imposed during the 1970s after disclosure of the bureau’s Cointelpro program, which included surveillance of Vietnam War protesters, civil rights groups and prominent political figures such as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Some warned that Ashcroft is returning to that era. “Any government effort to institutionalize the same powers that allowed the FBI to wrongfully spy on the activities of civil rights organizations and disclose information on the private affairs of Martin Luther King Jr. would constitute an embarrassing step backwards for civil liberties in this country,” said Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).
Among the most crucial elements is that agents will have far more freedom to monitor public political and religious events, and to engage in other surveillance, without receiving any tip that a person or group might be engaged in terrorist activity.
Previously, FBI agents were authorized to take such steps only if they were checking on a lead they had developed elsewhere or were opening an investigation into an organization or person suspected of participating in terrorist activity, Justice Department officials said.
The previous guidelines also required FBI headquarters in Washington to approve counterterrorism investigations. But under the new rules, agents in charge of individual FBI field offices will be given authority to approve counterterrorism investigations on their own.
Moreover, even without field office approval for an investigation, FBI agents will be allowed to monitor any event “open to the public,” including political gatherings or services at places of worship, to check for signs of terrorist activity. Likewise, they will be empowered to search commercial databases that maintain detailed information on consumers such as their magazine subscriptions, book purchases, charitable contributions, past travel itineraries and even grocery purchases.
The only limit the new guidelines place on such monitoring is that it be “for the purpose of detecting or preventing terrorist activities.”
Former Deputy Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, who served in the Clinton administration, said the test of the new guidelines would come in how judiciously the FBI applies them at a time of high public concern about terrorist attacks.
Seeking a balance
“There’s certainly a need to increase our ability to detect terrorists in our midst. But you have to balance that against what makes this nation great, which are restraints on government action,” Holder said.
“The danger is that you have to make sure, with this new authority that’s granted, that it’s used in a way that people are not inappropriately singled out for surveillance based on their political views or activities,” he added.
Ashcroft said the guidelines would make clear that FBI agents can surf the Web and monitor Internet chat rooms to search for signs of terrorist or criminal activity, including child pornography, credit card fraud or illegal computer hacking. He said the FBI generally has interpreted the existing guidelines, which were written before the Internet was widely used, to restrict agents’ use of the Internet.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said the new guidelines “will be exceptionally helpful to us” and will “free up our extremely talented law-enforcement agents to aggressively investigate possible terrorist plots without unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles or hurdles.”
In a nod to fears left over from the days when Hoover kept files on prominent figures filled with salacious gossip gathered by his agents, Ashcroft noted that the guidelines include some safeguards against maintaining irrelevant dossiers. Specifically, the guidelines prohibit agents from retaining records of information they gather at public events unless their observations “relate to potential criminal or terrorist activity.”
Coleen Rowley, an attorney at the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, recently charged in a letter that officials at FBI headquarters are too quick to squelch innovative field investigations. The new guidelines appeared to be in part an attempt to give field agents more freedom.
Some activists said Ashcroft was going too far. Jason Erb, government affairs director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, warned of the effect on houses of worship.
Mosque concerns
“Mosques, along with other religious institutions, are open to all Americans and have nothing to hide, but that openness should not be abused by using tactics of deception to spy on a religious minority engaged in lawful activities,” Erb said.
Electronic privacy advocates expressed alarm at the prospect of the FBI mining commercial databases.
“Individuals who are completely free of wrongdoing or suspicious behavior will be monitored by corporations for the government,” said Chris Hoofnagle, legislative counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “There are enormous consumer profiling services out there.”
But Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he was not concerned by such a prospect. “In a short period of time, with $150 you can learn a whole lot of information about you and me through services on the Internet,” Durbin said. “That’s available to anyone. It might as well be available to law enforcement.”
