Recalling all the scandals involving the NYPD's Intel Unit and the LAPD's Public Disorder Intelligence Division, this seems like a really bad idea.


U.S. may ease police spy rules

By Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson
updated 11:23 p.m. CT, Fri., Aug. 15, 2008

The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.

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Taken together, critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush's successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era.

Supporters say the measures simply codify existing counterterrorism practices and policies that are endorsed by lawmakers and independent experts such as the 9/11 Commission. They say the measures preserve civil liberties and are subject to internal oversight.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26231181