Constitutional Law

ACS Panel Delves Into DOJ's Proposed Guidelines On Intelligence Gathering

Earlier this week, ACS conducted a panel discussion on new measures proposed by the Department of Justice aimed at altering the way the FBI gathers information. The proposed guidelines have raised concerns that they will allow government surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, nation origin and religion. The Washington Post reported last month that the proposed guidelines are “part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months” and that “critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush’s successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era.”

During the panel discussion, “The New FBI Guidelines and the Risk of Racial Profiling,” Joseph Zogby, chief counsel for Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), noted that the Senate Judiciary Committee would conduct a hearing next week on the proposed guidelines. Zobgy said he was concerned about the timeliness of the proposed guides. The hearing, “Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” will also provide senators a chance to determine whether the proposed guides do provide the federal authorities the ability to engage in racial profiling. The panel also included comments from Mike German, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and a former FBI special agent, Margaret Huang, executive director of The Rights Working Group, and Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow in Constitutional Studies at The Cato Institute. The video is available here.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on September 11, 2008 (boomark / email).