Slashdot notes that as of October, the FBI will be adopting new guidelines that allow the agency to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records (online and off) and take other investigative steps "without any basis for suspicion." While the FBI is telling Congress they'll let them debate the new measures, they say they won't back down from implementing them this fall. "This seems to be based on the idea that the government can take a bunch of data and create a profile that can be used to identify future bad guys," says Michael German, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union and a former F.B.I. agent. "But that has not been demonstrated to be true anywhere else."