Oppose FBI Spying on Free Speech Activities

Email your congressional representatives!!! NO to expanded domestic spying by the FBI.

Do you want FBI agents following you or your neighbors into your churches, synagogues or mosques and documenting what goes on there? Recently released documents indicate that FBI agents have been spying on innocent people under guidelines relaxed by Attorney General John Ashcroft. Ashcroft restructured these guidelines -- without consultation with Congress -- to allow FBI agents to spy on religious and political activity even if there was no suspicion of criminal activity.

Ashcroft's new guidelines revoked long-standing protections from government abuse and there is evidence that the FBI and local police are using this opportunity to spy on environmental, political and faith-based groups. This spying is not only unnecessary but also invasive of personal privacy. The police should not spy on individuals because they attended a rally supporting better funding for their child’s school or they expressed discontent with the government’s policy toward Sudan.

The original Attorney General guidelines were implemented in response to FBI excesses in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. In fact, between 1960 and 1974, the FBI kept files on one million Americans, and investigated 500,000 so-called “subversives” such as Martin Luther King, Jr. -- all without a single court conviction. By rolling back the protections in the original guidelines, we are re-creating a situation we know from experience resulted in abuse.