Little of had to do with such snatch and grab. That already existed. What W. Bush did was authorized “front end” things like communications monitoring without warrant, compiling huge databases of personal information, GPS in cell phones, secret courts issuing warrants, etc. It is noteworthy that though the FISA court almost never turned down a warrant request, the intelligence community complained that even having to ask a judge was too bothersome.
(2008) “FBI headquarters officials sought to cover their informal and possibly illegal acquisition of phone records on thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005 by issuing 11 improper, retroactive “blanket” administrative subpoenas in 2006 to three phone companies that are under contract to the FBI, according to an audit released Thursday.”
Then there was the infamous monitoring of books checked out and computers used in public libraries.
“Sneak and peek” search warrants, which let authorities search a home or business without immediately notifying the target of a probe.
“Under Bush, the attorney general’s guidelines governing FBI operations were overhauled, allowing investigative tactics from the infamous COINTELPRO era, such as infiltrating constitutionally protected ideological groups — on the basis of a secret legal standard that has never been disclosed. And even though the CIA is prohibited from operating within the United States, it has smeared critics and trained local law enforcement in counterproductive profiling techniques.”
Your source sounds awfully Lefty .... knocking COINTELPRO ... "constitutionally protected ideological groups" = ones being run by KGB Active Measures .... "on the basis of a secret legal standard that has never been disclosed": How about NSA decrypts of KGB intercepts, naming names and groups and outlining plans to grow an Obama in the ranks of the New Mobe and the SDS?
And profiling sounds pretty damned good to me, when applied to fanatical-to-the-death raggies bent on mass murder. How about you? In the Philippines in 1903, we shot people like that out of hand. It worked. You want to get all mooshy on them, and link up with Kunstler's crowd to strap on Shrub and Big Dick?