FBI has 400,000 people on terrorism “watch list”

[Hannah Bell]

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert S. Mueller has told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI’s current terrorism “watch list” contains 400,000 unique names, with an average of 1,600 new individuals added each day...five percent of the individuals on this list are US citizens, and nine percent of the list overlaps with the government’s “no fly” lists...

This information was delivered to the Senate committee in September, and first publicly reported on Secrecy News (www.fas.org/blog/secrecy) last week. An article then appeared in the Washington Post this weekend.

Mueller’s replies were supplied in response to concerns raised by Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold over little-publicized shifts in the FBI’s rules for intelligence gathering. The threshold for opening new investigations was significantly lowered following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but in recent years additional modifications have set the stage for a dramatic escalation of domestic spy operations.

The details of the rule changes have not been openly discussed. Last year, in the final months of the Bush Administration, the Justice Department approved new FBI guidelines that expanded its ability to open domestic intelligence operations. The FBI implemented them with a detailed manual, the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, in December 2008.

Only after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by critics of the new rules was a heavily redacted copy of the new Guide released in late September of this year. The Guide lowers the threshold enabling the FBI to begin an investigation of a potential security threat, according to the New York Times, one of the few media sources to report on the changes. This change was explained and defended by the general counsel of the FBI, Valerie Caproni, who was quoted in the Times. “The FBI has been told that we need to determine who poses a threat to the national security—not simply to investigate persons who have come onto our radar screen.”

According to the new rules, information gathering needs no particular factual justification...Another rule change essentially permits the FBI to use racial or religious profiling. Ethnicity or religion may now be used to trigger an investigation—as long as it is not the only factor...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/fbiw-n02.shtml