FBI's New Racial Profiling Plan
We'll be getting into this discussion in the last hour of the show today (5 p.m. EST). Look for more extremism in this last six months of the Bush regime. They're planning to push through something they have wanted to do since 9/11 but were pushed back by civil liberties groups: Racial profiling that amounts to putting anyone under surveillance with no evidence of possible wrong-doing, just based on their name, ethnicity or skin color:
Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons — like evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious...
...Critics say the presumption of innocence is lost in the proposal. The FBI will be allowed to begin investigations simply "by assuming that everyone's a suspect, and then you weed out the innocent," said Caroline Fredrickson of the American Civil Liberties Union.
I know a lot of listeners will want to jump in, and I'd like to know your thoughts. Continue the discussion here if you can't get through on the show.
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