Some leery of the FBI’s new powers

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Who’s keeping tabs on your Internet chat? Who’s in the next pew or on the next prayer rug? Who’s got their eye on you at the library?

Could be the FBI, under rules announced Thursday that give agents more power to watch people just about anywhere they congregate in public — including cyberspace.

In a move aimed at averting another Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft freed the FBI to monitor Internet sites, libraries, churches and political organizations, calling restrictions on domestic spying "a competitive advantage for terrorists."

The new guidelines give FBI agents more freedom to investigate terrorism even when they are not pursuing a particular case, and agents can attend public meetings for the purpose of preventing terrorism.

The FBI’s new leeway makes some people uneasy, but others say law-abiding citizens have no reason to fear, reflecting the ambivalence that many people have felt since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"That’s a difficult one," said Mo Bey, pondering the new FBI guidelines before heading into the Islamic Center of Washington for prayers. "I don’t think that citizens should be violated because of their religious affiliations. But Americans need to be attentive to terrorist movements."

Librarians, Internet surfers and other people expressed similar feelings of disquiet about someone monitoring them — even if their activity is right out in public.

"There could be agents in the library looking at what people are reading, looking over someone’s shoulder while they’re on the Internet," said Emily Sheketoff of the American Library Association. "What I’m afraid of as an American citizen is that they’re going to look at the kinds of magazines I subscribe to and the kinds of things I’m interested in and use that as probable cause" to investigate further.

Armed with its new authority, the FBI could have gotten an eyeful Thursday if agents had poked around the Internet checking comments that people posted on electronic bulletin boards.

"The march to a police state goes on," complained one.

"I thought there was a set of laws protecting citizens against this sort of thing, such as The Bill of Rights," said another.

"I don’t see any problem here," said a third. "So they can go to any public place you and I can go. Why is that a problem?"

Picking up fares on the streets of Washington, taxi driver Mazaffar Raja, who emigrated from Karachi, Pakistan, said he just wants to be able to worship in peace.

"It doesn’t violate my privacy as long as they don’t disturb the prayer," he said.

For some people, unease about the government going too far stemmed from memories of abuses in decades past.

"It depends on how you do it," said John Kupcinski, a college student at the University of Maryland in College Park, recalling the days of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI excesses and Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade. "We don’t want the government to now say, ‘You’re a terrorist. You’re a terrorist.’ "