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News Scan

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

Tracking Terrorists: New guidelines for identifying terrorists within the United States, which would give the FBI tools currently used against organized crime, were proposed today according to this AP story by Larry Hargasak. If adopted, the guidelines would allow agents to conduct physical surveillance, recruit snitches and conduct pretext interviews to uncover information about possible terrorists. The proposals were immediately criticized by the ACLU and some Democratic lawmakers for allowing a suspect's ethnic background to be among the criteria for initiating an investigation. A Justice Department spokesman noted that ethnicity is often an essential marker in criminal investigations, pointing out that the investigation of members of La Cosa Nostra required a focus on Italians and tracking Hezbollah meant looking primarily at Lebanese...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on September 12, 2008 (boomark / email).