J. Edgar Hoover is back

The vaunted reorganization of the FBI is actually, in dangerous essence, a return to J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO counterintelligence operation from 1956 to 1971. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller are again unleashing the FBI to infiltrate, monitor and target lawful organizations and their members, or visitors — with no current or planned evidence of illegal activity.
COINTELPRO was closed down because of unbridled FBI abuses of the First and Fourth amendments, along with other parts of the Constitution. "The American people need to be reassured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considered threats," pledged then-Sen. Frank Church of Idaho — chairman of the Senate Select Committee to investigate the FBI's violations of fundamental American liberties — in 1975.
Because of the abuses of COINTELPRO, guidelines were set — which have now been dismissed by the attorney general — requiring that FBI agents could not investigate gatherings in church or other meetings without some evidence that someone there may have done, or planned to do, something illegal.