Hi!
The ACLU is sending this out. It's certainly worth doing:
Dear ACLU Supporter,
Thank you for demanding an investigation into whether the FBI has been violating its own internal guidelines. We're absolutely sure that once your friends hear about this outrageous 11th-hour power-grab, they'll want to take action, too.
Can you take a moment to ask your friends to get involved?
Just cut and paste the following text into an email and send it to your friends.
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Subject: We're all suspects?!
Under new FBI guidelines proposed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey, all the FBI has to do to put anybody they want under prolonged physical surveillance is assert an "authorized purpose" such as detecting or preventing crime or protecting "national security."
These kinds of Bush/Cheney/Gonzales/Mukasey "just trust us" policies have been eroding our rights for the past eight years. After illegal spying and top-level torture policies coming from the White House, this seems like a bad joke. But it is very real. Enough is enough!
These new guidelines would allow the FBI to interview you, your friends and family under a false pretext. The FBI could recruit secret informants, and have them infiltrate peaceful protest groups. And the FBI to could initiate investigations based on little more than race, ethnicity or religion.
The FBI could also search commercial databases for personal details about your life with no real reason.
And all of this would be allowed without an ounce of evidence that you or anyone else has done anything wrong.
These guidelines represent one step closer to a police state. And the worst part is that there is good reason to believe the FBI has been violating its internal guidelines all along.
Fortunately, there is something we can do about this before the new regulations are implemented.
I just demanded that the Inspector General at the Department of Justice launch an investigation to determine if the FBI has been violating its own guidelines. The Inspector General's office at the Department of Justice has proven to be an unbiased, internal watchdog that has consistently exposed wrongdoing. We need to urge the IG to do it again.
Take action now at:
http://action.aclu.org/fbiguidelines
Thanks for taking a stand!
The ACLU Online Team
