The FBI Rummages Even in the Trash

14,000 agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were recently granted new powers, each one diminishing American civil rights which are already subject to paranoid scrutiny by the governing powers. Among the latest legal amendments is the power to examine the daily trash of civilians in search for clues potentially useful for blackmailing and thus coercing the individual to become an informant. They don’t even have to report or register any of these acts of espionage. This seems trashier than even the trash they rummage in. These ordinances were included in their operation manuals dating from 2008, when it was revised by George W. Bush’s administration, but now the New York Times claims that it will soon be revised again.

This guide is for domestic investigations and operations (Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide), but the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is already condemning it. Even Michael German, an ex-FBI agent now working as a lawyer for that institution, knows well what it’s about and highlights the potential use of these spying techniques that are more and more intrusive, especially against civil right groups, pacifists, political dissidence syndicates and mosques.

Some of the comments made by readers of this story state that this destroys some of the American civil liberties in the name of national security, and that Americans passively watch as they lose the rights given to them in the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments, therefore transforming the United States into a politically vigilant state…and into a militarist empire, someone else added.

Opinions allow for very interesting ideas to arise, and anyone could add that the snooping around and prying has triggered, at least in some citizens, a response that borders on paranoia. Someone gave advice on how to evade intrusions as well as investigations, nauseous searches and privacy violations: pay everything with cash, delete all phone calls, use gloves when you touch anything in public, assume that any group, club or social circle in which you are involved has a police informant and remember that all text messages, photos, blogs and commentaries on the Internet can be recorded and used in any legal procedure they may want to involve you in. He also recommends that you should never forget that you are under surveillance ALL the time.

But his best advice is when he assures that “anyone who follows this advice can immediately be suspected of having something to hide and will immediately be put under police surveillance. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” This is no laughing matter of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” as George Orwell warned us about this in his book 1984, and even though he spoke against a totalitarian communist state, it turns out that the American capitalist democracy is putting political and military ordinances into practice. At this exact moment in time, how many wars are going on? Ah, I forget, says the work published in the New York Times, that the FBI carries out thousands of these low profile investigations every month, though the vast majority does not generate information that justifies the undertaking of these intensive searches.

Hmmm, someone forgot to mention that until recently, the FBI collected the DNA of everyone incarcerated in the U.S., as well as some others, thus having the genetic profiles of 6.7 million people. But now, along with 15 other states, it collects DNA samples of anyone awaiting trial, guilty or not, of detained immigrants, and who knows how many more samples will be permitted under this new guide, though its goal for 2012 is to have 1.2 million new entries every year…

Amazing, that rummaging around in trash barely seems trashy.