MB Civic

DN had on Mike German, National Security Policy Counsel for the ACLU to discuss new guidelines that allow FBI agents to investigate people and organizations “proactively” without firm evidence for suspecting criminal activity. Here’s a bit of what he had to say ..

The new changes to the FBI’s policy allows FBI agents, even without an assessment being open, to search subscription services of data aggregators that collect a broad swath of information and really have a lot of detailed private information about people. Again, this is without any suspicion of wrongdoing. Without even opening an investigation, agents can start searching for all this private information. Another increase in their authority is with assessments that they use to determine whether they can recruit an informant. And one of the things they’re allowed to do is they’re adding trash haul, which means that when you put your garbage out for the garbageman to pick up, it’s an FBI agent picking it up instead, and they go through all this material. And when I asked why they would want to give agents that authority—again, before you have any evidence of wrongdoing—and they said, “Well, it’s often helpful to find something derogatory that could be used to pressure the person into becoming an informant.”

German served as an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism from 1988 to 2004 – mab .. watch video