FYI: FBI

With most attention focused on the lurching stock market and presidential campaign, today U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued new guidelines for domestic FBI operations to permit "enhanced intelligence collection and analysis."

What this basically means is more, easier spying on ordinary citizens. The guidelines lower the threshold for beginning an investigation, and they allow a person's race or ethnic background to be used as a consideration.

No, really.

The ACLU and others condemn the guidelines as a major step backward toward FBI abuses of the past, such as surveillance of civil rights and anti-war activists such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In August, we urged people to contact Attorney General Mukasey to register opposition to the new guidelines. We also thanked Sen. Kennedy for co-signing a letter that asked Mukasey to delay issuing the new guidelines until they have been made public and until there has been time for Congressional, national security, and civil liberties experts to weigh in on them.

Well, no such luck. The guidelines reportedly go into effect until Dec. 1.

This is an excellent occasion to mark calendars for the ACLU of Massachusetts 2009 statewide conference, "Beyond the Politics of Fear," to be held at UMass Boston on Feb. 7, 2009. We're holding it just days after the inauguration of the next president. Make sure you get details as they become available: join our email list or our Facebook group.