Ease on down the road

The road toward tyranny, that is.

The Bush administration has issued new rules for the FBI, supposedly to enable the agency to pursue potential national security threats "with the same vigor and techniques used against common criminals" but which more accurately would be described as expanding the feds' authority to monitor and spy on political dissenters.

The ACLU

quickly blasted the Department of Justice and FBI for ignoring calls for more stringent protections of Americans’ rights. ...

The new guidelines reduce standards for beginning “assessments” (precursors to investigations), conducting surveillance and gathering evidence, meaning the threshold to beginning investigations across the board will be lowered. ...

“The attorney general today gave the FBI a blank check to open investigations of innocent Americans based on no meaningful suspicion of wrongdoing,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “The new guidelines provide no safeguards against the FBI’s improperly using race and religion as grounds for suspicion. They also fail to sufficiently prevent the government from infiltrating groups whose viewpoints it doesn’t like. The FBI has shown time and time again that is incapable of policing itself and there is good reason to believe that these guidelines will lead to more abuse”

including the possibility of instituting racial profiling as policy, even if "unofficial."

The ACLU was hardly the only voice in opposition; even some in Congress got in on the act.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was not reassured [by DOJ claims that the guidelines "protect privacy and civil liberties"].

"I am concerned that the guidelines continue the pattern of this administration of expanding authority to gather and use Americans' private information without protections for privacy or checks to prevent abuse and misuse," Leahy said.

Three Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee also wondered in writing about the "rush to change these procedures in the last days of this administration."

That question, however, answers itself: The rush is precisely because it is the last days.

The truth is, though, I hardly think a Congress that passed the grossly misnamed "Protect America Act" is in any position to question anyone else's devotion to civil liberties and privacy. Still, better some voices than silence and better some opposition than none. Now, if this was followed by some sort of Congressional action, that might mean something real.

Which is why it won't happen.