New FBI Rules Make End Run Around 4th Amendment

News and Opinion for Democrats Against Bush -- Part I a

New FBI Rules Make End Run Around 4th Amendment

' "By eliminating any distinction between criminal and intelligence classifications, it reduces the respect for the ordinary constitutional protections that people have," said Joshua L. Dratel, a New York lawyer who has filed legal briefs opposing government anti-terrorism policies. "It will result in a funneling of all cases into an intelligence mode. It's an end run around the Fourth Amendment," which protects citizens from unreasonable searches, he said. '

washingtonpost.com

FBI Applies New Rules to Surveillance
Many Searches Not Subject To Regular Courts' Oversight

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A01

The complete article may be purchased online from the Washington Post archives-- http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/search.html?nav=left

Excerpt--

The FBI has implemented new ground rules that fundamentally alter the way investigators handle counterterrorism cases, allowing criminal and intelligence agents to work side by side and giving both broad access to the tools of intelligence gathering for the first time in decades.

The result is that the FBI, unhindered by the restrictions of the past, will conduct many more searches and wiretaps that are subject to oversight by a secret intelligence court rather than regular criminal courts, officials said. Civil liberties groups and defense lawyers predict that more innocent people will be the targets of clandestine surveillance. ...

To civil libertarians and many defense lawyers, the changes pose a threat to the privacy and due-process rights of civilians because they essentially eliminate, rather than merely blur, the traditional boundaries separating criminal and intelligence investigations. As a result, these critics say, FBI agents and federal prosecutors will conduct many more searches and seizures in secret, as allowed under intelligence laws, rather than being constrained by the rules of traditional criminal warrants. ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60964-2003Dec12.html

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