Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
The Federal Bureau of Investigations has rewritten its own operations manual , giving its agents more autonomy than ever to conduct low-level searches without a paper trail. As The New York Times reported today, there's no court decision or change in privacy laws governing the bureau's search techniques. Rather, the 2011 update to the 2008 Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide changes the bureau's own guidelines. But some of the new powers trouble privacy activists even though they're perfectly legal.