Dear Haytham,
But, according to The New York Times, the FBI — despite a stunning record of abuses — will soon be giving its roughly 14,000 agents significant new surveillance powers.1 If you believe that the last thing the FBI needs is more power to invade your life, we need you to deliver that message to Attorney General Eric Holder right now. The loosened surveillance standards reportedly include giving agents more leeway to search commercial and police databases, to go through household trash, and to use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people the FBI doesn't even suspect of wrongdoing. In the waning days of the Bush administration, Attorney General Michael Mukasey updated the guidelines governing FBI powers and essentially gave the FBI a blank check to open investigations of innocent Americans based on no meaningful suspicion of wrongdoing. Unbelievably, the FBI is now demanding even more power to investigate you, while refusing to provide information about how it is using its new powers. Tell Attorney General Holder that the FBI's privacy-stealing guidelines need to be tightened, not loosened. As it is, the current guidelines set a dangerously low threshold for beginning an investigation or conducting surveillance about individuals or groups who are not suspected of any criminal activity. The guidelines in place now also allow the FBI to collect, analyze and map racial and ethnic data about local communities, opening up the possibility that the FBI is engaging in unconstitutional racial profiling. Please help us put the Obama administration on notice that we don't want the FBI to have even more authority to engage in abuses. We need stronger safeguards against the FBI using race and religion as grounds for suspicion, not an expansion of unchecked surveillance powers. Tell Attorney General Holder that the FBI can't be given a blank check to invade the lives of innocent Americans. The FBI could issue these dangerous new guidelines at any moment. Please act now to protect privacy and rein in abuses of the government's far-reaching surveillance powers.
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