FBI Applies New Rules to Surveillance

[Judi Lynn]

FBI Applies New Rules to Surveillance
Many Searches Not Subject To Regular Courts' Oversight
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A01

The FBI has implemented new ground rules that fundamentally alter the way investigators handle counterterrorism cases, allowing criminal and intelligence agents to work side by side and giving both broad access to the tools of intelligence gathering for the first time in decades.

The result is that the FBI, unhindered by the restrictions of the past, will conduct many more searches and wiretaps that are subject to oversight by a secret intelligence court rather than regular criminal courts, officials said. Civil liberties groups and defense lawyers predict that more innocent people will be the targets of clandestine surveillance.

The new strategy -- launched in early summer and finalized in a classified directive issued to FBI field offices in October -- goes further than has been publicly discussed by FBI officials in the past and marks the final step in tearing down the legal wall that had separated criminal and intelligence investigations since the spying scandals of the 1970s, authorities said.

Senior FBI officials said the changes have already helped the bureau disrupt plans for at least four terrorist attacks overseas and uncover a terrorist sleeper cell in the United States, though they declined to provide details on those cases. The approach also has resulted in a notable surge in the number of counterterrorism investigations, a statistic that is classified but currently stands at more than 1,000 cases, officials said. (snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60964-2003Dec12.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. Ah - Ze secret "Intelligence Court" !

Why does the advent of this new invisible, unaccountable branch of government not thrill my patriotic soul?

But this travesty of democracy, too, shall pass - and far sooner than anyone affiliated with (or afflicted by) BushCo could ever imagine.


"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre."
~ Frank Zappa, 1977

[tlcandie]

2. Now they have become what the US KGB...

fully not just a version or a shadow of them, but full bore! Activists and demonstrators...hang on to you hats!