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More Leeway for FBI Threaten Civil Liberties: ACLU
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ACLU
criticized Ashcroft’s "seemingly insatiable appetite for
new powers that will do little to make us safer, but will
inevitably make us less free."
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WASHINGTON,
May 31 (IslamOnline & News agencies) - The American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups warned Thursday, May 30, 2002,
that Attorney General John Ashcroft's decision to grant FBI agents
more leeway in their investigations could mean less freedom for U.S.
citizens.
The
ACLU said that the revised guidelines Ashcroft announced for the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, giving agents freer rein in
monitoring websites and public places, reward "analytical failure
with new powers" and threaten core civil liberties ensured by the
Constitution, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
In
a statement released by the ACLU, they criticized the attorney
general's "seemingly insatiable appetite for new powers that will
do little to make us safer, but will inevitably make us less
free."
Recently,
the FBI has been facing accusations of ignoring or missing warnings
that may have helped prevent the September 11 attacks which killed
more than 3,000 people in the United States.
The
bureau's director, Robert Mueller, said earlier that he had made
mistakes in the handling of information he had, AFP reported.
"Under
the new Ashcroft guidelines, the FBI can freely infiltrate mosques,
churches and synagogues and other houses of worship, listen in on
online chat rooms and read message boards, even if it has no evidence
that a crime might be committed," ACLU said.
Jason
Erb, governmental affairs director at the Council on American-Islamic
Relations, said "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.
"We
cannot win the war on terrorism by turning the clock back to the days
when the FBI infiltrated groups and harassed individuals engaged in
constitutionally protected political dissent," he said in a
statement, alluding to the bureau's 1960s-era surveillance of civil
rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.
The
new guidelines allow FBI agents to enter public places freely and
observe what is happening, in the event terrorist activities are
suspected, as well as to surf the Internet and track potential
terrorist activities online.
Agents
had been restricted from both types of actions under rules established
for the bureau in 1976.
"The
reason these things were prohibited in first place has to do with
abuses by the FBI during the 1960s, when perfectly legitimate
political movements -- the civil rights movement, particularly -- were
infiltrated by FBI agents pretending to be sympathetic but in fact
seeking to undermine their work," said Peter Rubin, a professor
at Georgetown University Law Center.
Tim
Lynch, the director of the Cato Institute's criminal justice project,
said that although there's no constitutional problem with expanding
the FBI's investigative techniques into public areas, the bureau
should be watched closely to ensure that it is not using the
information it gathers under these new guidelines to harass people.
"They
should be investigating crimes or potential crimes; they should not be
using personal information on people to discredit them, to ruin their
reputation or to manipulate political events. That's not the role of a
police agency in a free society," Lynch said, quoted by AFP.
He
also warned that the bureau "has lied about what it does in the
past, and we should not accept their statements at face value."
"I
agree that their investigative powers should be enlarged during
wartime, but I think the press and our Congress should pay close
attention to citizen complaints about their rights or privacy having
being invaded or [having been] unjustifiably harassed, and the FBI
should have to answer for its conduct."
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