News: FBI wants to track your Web trail
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday will examine proposed Justice Department guidelines that would give federal investigators new license to mine publicly available databases and monitor Web use. The changes, which come after a major FBI shakeup last week, have sparked intense debate over the merits of expanding government surveillance powers as the country faces ongoing threats of terrorist attacks.

Backers paint the reforms as a long overdue end to restrictions that have hobbled investigators and denied them access to research tools that are available to anyone with an Internet connection. Intelligence failures in the FBI and CIA have come under the spotlight amid new questions about who knew what in advance of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, which left more than 3,000 people dead.

But civil liberties advocates warn that last week's proposal is the latest step along a worrying path back to the 1950s and '60s--days when investigators compiled dossiers on innocent American citizens based on their religious and political practices.

"I hate to be in a position of telling people 'don't go online and speak' or 'watch what you say,' but you have to take from this that on an arbitrary basis, the FBI is going to be tagging people as terrorists based on what they say online," said Jim Dempsey, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Last week's FBI guidelines from Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller would allow field agents to gather information outside of criminal investigations, relaxing regulations set in the 1970s.

Those rules, named after then-Attorney General Edward Levi, barred the FBI from attending political meetings unless it had a reasonable suspicion that a crime was being planned.

The new rules, by contrast, would authorize field agents to attend public meetings freely and request warrants with less interference from the main office. In addition, the rules would allow the FBI to monitor public Internet sites, libraries and religious institutions.

For years, some people have worried that marketers would profile them in some potentially malevolent way by tracking their Web use. The FBI's involvement potentially raises the stakes.

Technology ranging from data mining to surveillance cameras can be tied together to form an easily searchable database of people's religious, political and personal preferences. This enables the FBI, based on a hunch, to investigate--and possibly jail--people.

Law enforcement for the most part has always been able to get information through a third party, such as a database company or an Internet service provider, via methods including subpoenas.

However, the relaxed guidelines would let the FBI conduct investigations in publicly available nooks of the Web even if they aren't looking at a specific suspect or crime.
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