Mulder and Scully Are Now Authorized to Investigate ....whenever They Feel Like.

[rottenflesh]

The NY Times today is reporting on a slew of enhancements to the FBI’s operating guidelines that essentially lower the threshold for early stage investigation tools. The FBI will be able to expand its usage of certain techniques and procedures, including polygraph exams, database searches, and the deployment of surveillance teams. The Atlantic gives a good overview of the new operating procedures.

The FBI is claiming, as in this Fox News story, that the changes are minor alterations based on feedback from agents in the field. With the specter of lone wolf terrorism and domestic radicalization as a constant backdrop, many Americans remain likely to defer to the experts on security matters.

Already, there is strong unease among privacy advocates on the possibilities for abuse and overreach resulting from the changes. In this clip below, Catherine Herridge lays out some of the concerns:

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At some point, Americans will realize that trading privacy for marginally better security is not a good deal. While the changes to the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide are minor, they could prove problematic in a climate of continued government expansion in the name of security.

[Eaton]

I don't get it. People bitching about the FBI doing what any free citizen can do?

[TheCapn]

Why complain? Im not doing anything wrong..are you?

[rottenflesh]

It's about our rights that protect us in the Constitution that are continually eroded by corrupt politicians and an overbearing, bureaucratic government that "for safety" must intrude itself in our daily lives.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

- Benjamin Franklin




The idea that feeling up kids' crotches or being looked into by the FBI is sign of a soft tyranny that will only end in the repression of it's citizens and the selling of it's future generation into economic slavery.

A nation that asks nothing of government but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the depths of its heart; it is a slave of its well-being, ready for the man who will put it in chains.

and

Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.

-Alexis de Tocqueville