An expansion of the FBI's domestic investigation authority instituted in 2008 carries the risk of overwhelming the bureau with too much information, warns a report from the New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice.

The report, released on Jan. 18, notes that guidelines for domestic FBI released by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey in the final months of the Bush administration are still in place and are "considerably more permissive than earlier version implemented by previous Attorneys General."

The guidelines allow the FBI to gather and indefinitely store information on individuals not suspected of criminal activity or of being a threat to national security, adds report author Emily Berman, a counsel in the Liberty and National Security Project at the Brennan Center.

However, intelligence failures when it comes to terrorist attacks don't stem so much from a lack of information, but from the inability to effectively process that information, a state of affairs not aided by an expansion of FBI databases, Berman states.

"Even useful information can only further our security interests if we devote the time and resources to effective analysis--a task that increases in difficulty as the volume of information rises," she says.

The FBI guidelines are a threat to privacy as well, Berman adds, since while most Americans would agree that the FBI should not be permitted to compile a dossier on every American, the accumulation of databases populated with data on non-suspects allows such a dossier to be easily assembled.

The bureau's operations have a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, too, Berman says, since the FBI has sent investigators to question people about their political activities, dispatched agents to attend religious gatherings and monitored the calling records of members of the media.

Moreover, the guidelines have had the effect in some places within the United States of eroding the trust in law enforcement among Muslim communities, Berman says. FBI infiltration of mosques has caused several national Muslim groups to threaten to suspend FBI contact and have sown "a corrosive fear...that FBI informers are everywhere, listening," Brenan says, quoting a Dec. 17, 2009 New York Times article.     

Berman recommends a course of Congressional oversight and a curtailing of FBI authority to use "highly intrusive investigative techniques unless there is some basis in fact to suspect wrongdoing."

For more:
- download the report, "Domestic Intelligence: New Powers, New Risks" (.pdf)

Related Articles:
More DHS components to receive Watchlist Service data from FBI
CBP conducted 2,272 electronic device searches at borders in six months, says DHS