Our founding fathers knew the dangers of letting government officials and the groups that enforce our laws go unchecked. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has recently granted itself an expansion of power. Don’t get me wrong, I fully support our law enforcement officers and hold them in high regards. However, the problem I have is that they can just expand their powers at any given time of their choosing.

According to the new rules and guidelines in which the FBI operates, many of the expanded liberties they have given themselves do not require creating a paper trail or even opening an investigation. Agents can search law enforcement and commercial databases without any evidence of criminal or other wrongdoing. New relaxed guidelines for administering lie-detector tests do not require the opening of a “preliminary investigation” either. The new guidelines heavily relax multiple forms of surveillance.

One of the things that jumped out at me was the fact that investigations involving public officials require “oversight”. It appears to me that they made sure to make rules to use kid gloves on the politicians. For once I would like to see the same rules that apply to the common citizen apply to the politicians.

“For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery”.
-Jonathan Swift

The other group that requires “oversight” has been labeled scholars and press. Bloggers are not considered members of the press under these guidelines unless they are “prominent” bloggers, therefore giving them the same status as the regular media.  Bloggers that are less “prominent” will not receive the same treatments that are given to people considered media.

With the implementation of the new guidelines it is easy to see that the FBI wants to make sure they stay in the good graces of the politicians and mainstream media. The FBI presents the new guidelines as ways to better fight terrorism but the fact that they want to save the politicians and media seems strange. If these changes were about better protecting the citizens of the United States, why do the politicians and media get special treatment? Something just doesn’t quite add up right to me!

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”
-Thomas Paine

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For those of you that own firearms, train hard and well and teach those that do not know how. Be good stewards of the right to bear arms, for we are the last line of defense against tyranny.

-Benjamin Wallace

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Sources:

Washington Post Article
Yahoo News

The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.  

 The “more latitude” they refer to there, is generally what are termed illegal fishing expeditions into citizens personal lives without such things as warrants or any reasonable proof of criminal activity. This is what happens when uninformed citizens let the government pass seemingly harmless laws or regulations upon the citizenry and the accompanying “mission creep” that comes with it. Remember the Patriot Act, and its subsequent numerous extensions that have originally passed through congress on a steady basis since 2001 ?  The Patriot Act was started as a tool to fight terrorism. On May 26th 2011 Barack Obama signed a four year extension of key Patriot Act provisions.  Also in the Patriot Act is the clause that allows National Security Letters which allow the F.B.I. to search telephone, e-mail and financial records without a search warrant. Now the F.B.I. wants to  will expand that privacy invasion power to basically let them spy on anyone in America without a valid reason, search through their trash and search any database on the Internet that holds citizen’s personal records and communications without a warrant or reason!  And they are doing it all under the guise of “fine-tuning the F.B.I. manual. Further on in the Times article we see that they have sent us a General Council, Valerie Caproni to spin this into making it appear to be harmless changes:

“Every one of these has been carefully looked at and considered against the backdrop of why do the employees need to be able to do it, what are the possible risks and what are the controls,” she said, portraying the modifications to the rules as “more like fine-tuning than major changes.”

  Maybe Ms. Caproni will answer as to why former F.B.I. agent and current ACLU attorney, one Mr. Michael German replied that ” It was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.” That doesn’t sound like any “fine-tuning”  of the F.B.I. manual, but instead sounds like a huge privacy invading power grab! The F.B.I. is now using cloudy terms to try to hide this unconstitutional action also. Terms like assessment are being used as some sort of justification to spy on American citizens without any justification here.

Some of the most notable changes apply to the lowest category of investigations, called an “assessment.” The category, created in December 2008, allows agents to look into people and organizations “proactively” and without firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity.
Under current rules, agents must open such an inquiry before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search such databases without making a record about their decision. (emphasis mine) 

 Another added tidbit concerning this privacy invasion of American citizens concerns possible “informants” also known as paid government snitches. One could deduce that if the F.B.I. wants to make someone an informant, having some dirt on them would aid them in persuading said person to become an informant, so lets just change the F.B.I. manual to allow that privacy invasion without a shred of proof of wrong doing by the subject.   And Ms Caproni said not only could that information be used to pressure people to assist the government, but it could also be used to determine whether the subject, ( notice it is not suspect, as there is no crime involved that gives them the authority to do this in the first place) poses a threat to the agents.
Last but certainly not least, the F.B.I. will protect the privacy rights of certain people in this new manual. Just who would that be? How about sensitive investigative matter subjects ?  These are the F.B.I. types of privacy invasions that are being done to public officials. (IE: Corrupt Government officials and politicians) members of the news media, and of course  academic scholars! They need extra protection, which is also at the  discretion of the F.B.I. as to just who gets said protection. With the recent killing of the FCC’s fairness doctrine, we now see the F.B.I. is going to do it anyway, Congress be damned:

The manual clarifies the definition of who qualifies for extra protection as a legitimate member of the news media in the Internet era: prominent bloggers would count, but not people who have low-profile blogs. And it will limit academic protections only to scholars who work for institutions based in the United States.  

So now the F.B.I. will be in fact, censoring and monitoring the internet, and labeling anyone who speaks out against this type of unconstitutional tyranny as some sort of domestic terrorist or person of interest. With the writing of this article, you can bet yours truly qualifies under the new F.B.I. manual, as they now need no proof of wrong doing of any sorts to invade the privacy of  U.S. citizens. This new F.B.I. manual also just happens to come just in time to try to use it to harass anyone who expresses their political views. That’s right, and I am expressing my views right here and right now, and I do not like the F.B.I. granting themselves carte blanche to read American citizen’s email, snoop in their trash, listen to their phone conversations and basically invade their private lives just because they decided to change their damn manual! Note to F.B.I.; You are not elected members of our congress.You have no right to enact what amounts to unconstitutional laws against the very taxpaying citizens that pay your salaries! People had better wake up here and speak up! We are losing our freedoms and rights granted to us as American citizens at a very rapid rate today, all due to an out of control, too powerful government. This is also a great example of why it is wrong to allow our President the power to make appointments without Senate approval. See here. The very same “minor appointments” mentioned in that article are the type of government employees who in fact, wrote this new F.B.I. manual that in fact declares that the F.B.I. has a right to spy on American citizens without so much as a valid reason or proof of wrong-doing!
 
 

So far, the leaked documents are only a small portion of what Assange holds.  The leaks have also been redacted to remove identifying information.  Assange holds access to the remainder of those stolen State secrets and his versions do not hide the identifying information.  What happens if Iran, China, North Korea or other enemies of the United States manage to actually get their hands on Julian Assange?  There won’t be any trial, they won’t ask politely, they won’t worry about international implications for torturing him – they will get access to all of the information he holds.

Those documents are now in the control of one person with no checks on that person whatsoever.  If he succeeds in defending himself against the sex crimes charges with which he is faced, he goes free.  Free for less-benevolent nations to pursue.

The only solution is for Assange to prove the destruction of all of the documents he holds to the satisfaction of the owner, the United States of America.  By his own admission, he is in possession of stolen U.S. government property.  That, in itself, is a crime.  Then giving that property to the New York Times so that they may profit from it is another, for which the Times should be tried.  They sold more newspapers because of the leaks and therefor profited from the sale of stolen property.  Why has the U.S. Department of Justice not put the Times on notice?

Now a band of hackers under WikiLeaks umbrella have attacked Mastercard in retaliation for the cut-off of funding to Assange.  This is directly related to Julian’s blackmail threat that anyone that got in his way would pay a price.  Certainly, there are a few crimes in those words and actions as well.

WikiLeaks must be stopped.  This is a matter of National security.  The Obama administration must make it too risky for major media outlets to release WikiLeaks documents.  Make a case against the Guardian, New York Times and others that chose to profit from the sale of stolen U.S. property and hunt down the Mastercard hackers.