As of October, FBI To Allow Warrantless Investigations

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Attorney General Michael Mukasey has agreed to allow Congressional hearings, but not to delay, the implementation of new FBI regulations that would allow them to spy on American citizens who are not suspected of any crime. As an editorial in the New York Times points out, this is a power that has a history of abuse. In times past, it was used to wiretap Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to spy on other civil rights and anti-war protesters." As Dekortage points out, "Several senators have formally complained that citizens could be investigated 'without any basis for suspicion,' which the Justice Department denies."

Comments

Re:We should start encrypting everything

[samcan]

Oooh, do we get to have a discussion about the formation of the Constitution and how this totally violates the Bill of Rights and how scared the citizens were of a big national government and that's why we first had the Articles of Confederation which were weak like a bad cup of coffee and now we have the Constitution which is sooooooooo being violated?!

Phew. That many 'ands' in a sentence is annoying.

IMHO (which, by the way, is never humble :-) ), our government was not intended to be a large overreaching government. Control was supposed to be retained by the people. Under the original Articles of Confederation, the U.S. government was more like an informal gathering, a club, per se. This didn't work out totally, as it was seen that a few uprisings, such as the Shays' Rebellion, could destroy the confederation.

The States sent delegates to fix the Articles, which the delegates ended up scrapping and instead creating the Constitution. However, I believe that some of this animosity towards large behemoths carried over. Look at the Bill of Rights, which were added after the Constitution was ratified. They in many instances reserve power to the people, and to the States. The federal government is thus limited in what it can do.

Even though the Bill of Rights was ratified after the Constitution was ratified, from what I understand, some States made the implied passage of the Bill of Rights a condition to their ratification of the Constitution.