Fox News reports the FBI plans on issuing new rules designed to allow it to expand its surveillance and catch “lone wolfs”.
The good part is that it will allow its agents to administer lie-detector tests to and search the trash of potential informants. Assuming the potential informant knows beforehand and accepts it, it is the functional equivalent of the FBI hiring the person.
The troubling part is that agents won’t need to so much as open up a low-level assessment to look up people on various databases. J. Edgar Hoover never had it so oppressive.
Revisions/extensions (1:32 pm 6/13/2011) – Over at Ace of Spades HQ, rdbrewer has a far better explanation of why the troubling part is troubling (hint; the Founding Fathers launched the American Revolution in part because of shit just like this), along with a wife-of-a-friend story of what a less-than-honest bureaucrat does with this kind of power.
