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Illegal FBI Spying on Community Groups - by Stephen Lendman
Big Brother is watching us.
On December 1, an ACLU of Northern California press release headlined, "FOIA Documents Show FBI Illegally Collecting Intelligence Under Guise of Community Outreach," saying:
"The trust that community outreach efforts aim to create is undermined when the FBI exploits these programs to gather intelligence on the very members of the religious and community organizations agents are meeting with.""The FBI should be honest with community organizations about what information is being collected during meetings and purge any improperly collected information."
Instead, FBI agents illegally collected names, ID information, opinions of community event attendees, as well as sponsoring groups, including their goals, activities, names and positions of leaders, and their racial, ethnic, and national origin.
The FBI Directorate of Intelligence Domain Management program maintains the information to "assess threats, vulnerabilities, gaps and new opportunities for intelligence collection."
In fact, community outreach programs are a way to establish communications, mutual understanding and trust between government agencies and public groups. Using them for covert intelligence gathering shows authorities operate lawlessly for their own purposes.
In fact, FBI documents reveal Privacy Act violations in gathering information about individuals' First Amendment activities.
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