The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) amended its domestic intelligence guidelines to allow agents to conduct investigations without any suspicion of wrongdoing or accountability. The expanded surveillance standards will make it easier for FBI agents to go through people’s trash, use surveillance teams and search police databases about people who even the FBI does not suspect in any criminal activity. Criticism of the expanded powers has been widespread. FBI Director Robert Mueller is expected to adopt the new Guidelines in Summer 2010.

“The FBI is claiming the authority to investigate people without actually opening an investigation or assessment, or even having a reason to suspect someone has done anything wrong. This opens the door to all kinds of abuses,” said ACLU policy analyst and former FBI agent Mike German.
According to the New York Times, the 2011 version of the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, will allow FBI agents to “scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention” without “firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity.” Another change will permit agents to search people’s trash for evidence of criminal activity and “to use information found in a subject’s trash to put pressure on that person to assist the government in the investigation of others.” The use of government spies in California mosques and activist groups in Washington and the Midwest have been widely condemned as having a “chilling effect” on freedoms of assembly, association and religious expression.
Since the release of the Guidelines in 2008, the assessment category has been criticized by civil liberties advocates because of its low standard for beginning an investigation of a person or a group. The FBI has opened thousands of such low-level investigations since then with the vast majority not generating information that justified opening more extensive investigations.
Julian Sanchez, a fellow at the Cato Institute, said the rules could open the door to abuse since agents will be allowed to do more investigation without any oversight.
“We’re going to see sort of a death by a thousand cuts of civil liberties here,” Sanchez said.