'Fishing expeditions' – or security linchpin?

It seems innocuous enough.

An FBI agent stops off at a public protest gathering, attends a church service, or visits a mosque. Maybe the agent pokes around a few Internet sites or checks a customer data list open to any business, looking for information that might yield a clue about a potential terrorist.

Yet until recently, Justice Department guidelines restricted such activities. Records of earlier years, when US agents spied on political protesters and civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. – and engaged in dirty tricks now and then – had led to congressional investigations and self-imposed restrictions.

But the attacks of Sept. 11 have changed all that. "These restrictions are a competitive advantage for terrorists who skillfully utilize sophisticated techniques and modern computer systems to compile information for targeting and attacking innocent Americans," says Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Mr. Ashcroft has issued new guidelines that cut through red tape and legal restrictions, making it easier for FBI agents to gather information on Americans (as well as on aliens), and allowing them to do so for longer periods without special permission – and sometimes without initial evidence of wrongdoing.

While stressing "scrupulous respect for civil rights and personal freedoms," Ashcroft says, "The FBI must draw proactively on all lawful sources of information, to identify terrorist threats and activities."

Meanwhile, the Justice Department this week is expected to announce plans to photograph and fingerprint many more foreigners arriving in the US. This would expand existing regulations designed to spotlight potentially dangerous individuals. It is likely to apply mainly to Muslim and Middle Eastern men.

Critics have been quick to attack the new FBI guidelines. "The government is rewarding failure," says Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's office in Washington. "When the government fails, as it increasingly appears to have done before Sept. 11, the Bush administration's response is to give itself new powers rather than seriously investigating why the failures occurred."

Groups promoting civil rights and liberties worry that the new FBI guidelines could undermine the essence of constitutional democracy. Allowing the Justice Department to monitor conversations between detainees and their lawyers based on vague suspicions of terrorist activity "is a profound violation of fundamental legal and constitutional principles at the very core of our justice system," warns the website of People for the American Way in Washington.

Yet others who might have been expected to give strong weight to civil liberties say terrorism changes the balance in favor of domestic security.

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