• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

Yesterday the New York Times reported that the FBI is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity. But strong reservations have been expressed by privacy advocates.
A report published in early 2007 by the Justice Dept Inspector General revealed that the FBI had improperly used the USA Patriot Act to obtain information about people and businesses. The report found many instances when national security letters, which allow the bureau to obtain records from telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit companies and other businesses without a judge’s approval, were improperly, and sometimes illegally, used. Moreover, record keeping was so slipshod, the report found, that the actual number of national security letters exercised was often understated when the bureau reported on them to Congress, as required. The question is — based upon such tactics that have been deemed improper and illegal, how does the FBI build its cases around so called domestic terrorism and what credibility can the Dept. of Justice claim, if any, in the prosecution of these cases.

GUEST: Petra Bartosiewicz, a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of the forthcoming book, “The Best Terrorists We Could Find,” an investigation of terrorism trials in the U.S. since 9/11, published by Nation Books.

Read more by Petra Bartosiewicz at her website: www.petrabart.com