CLEVELAND - Surveillance policies now used by the FBI and other domestic intelligence agencies are "totally un-American and against the values Americans hold dear," Michael German, a former undercover agent, told a forum sponsored by the Cleveland Council on American Islamic Relations here Saturday.
Speaking to 150 at the Islamic Center of Cleveland, German said current guidelines allow federal agencies to spy, obtain private records and recruit informants against virtually all Americans even when "there is no factual basis to suspect they are engaged in illegal activity."
German, who resigned in protest at these abuses after 16 years with the FBI, joined the American Civil Liberties Union in 2006 and serves as its national security policy counsel.
The Patriot Act, enacted after the 9/11 terror attacks, wiped out strict guidelines governing the FBI, he said, "and established a regime of suspicionless surveillance." According to policies laid down by Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2002, "you only needed to show a group might possibly commit a crime" to place it under surveillance, German said.
