Ah, yes. FBI to build an American Stasi.

Not familiar with the word "Stasi?" That was the East German secret police; it kept files on 5 million East Germans -- a third of the population -- and infiltrated the West German military and government. If you were an East German you never knew which of your friends, neighbors, or even relatives was getting paid by the Stasi to report on you.

Of course, those people were supplementing their meager incomes, and didn't get paid if they didn't provide reports. Interesting reports. Sometimes they just had to make stuff up to get paid. If you think the misinformation that resides in your credit file is bad, it is nothing compared to what was in the Stasi files. Or, for that matter, what may already be in your FBI file.

Well, guess what? The FBI is asking Congress for funding for its own version of the Stasi networks and files. Justin Rood, over at The Blotter of ABC News, reports the story.

The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort to boost its intelligence capabilities.

According to a recent unclassified report to Congress, the FBI expects its informants to provide secrets about possible terrorists and foreign spies, although some may also be expected to aid with criminal investigations, in the tradition of law enforcement confidential informants. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

The FBI said the push was driven by a 2004 directive from President Bush ordering the bureau to improve its counterterrorism efforts by boosting its human intelligence capabilities.

The aggressive push for more secret informants appears to be part of a new effort to grow its intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. Other recent proposals include expanding its collection and analysis of data on U.S. persons, retaining years' worth of Americans' phone records and even increasing so-called "black bag" secret entry operations.

To handle the increase in so-called human sources, the FBI also plans to overhaul its database system, so it can manage records and verify the accuracy of information from "more than 15,000" informants, according to the document. [Bolding in original - Editor, WTF-o]

The best hope for Americans is that the FBI continues true to form. They have never successfully managed an Intelligence program, and their last three efforts to improve their computer systems have had to be abandoned as failures. America may well be lucky that those efforts only cost billions of dollars. Things could have been a lot worse if they had worked.

Whatever - this is one more effort to turn America into an authoritarian nation. Someone recently asked if I thought that the Republicans would put this much effort into creating an authoritarian nation controlled by the President with no checks and balances, then quietly turn the results over to someone like Hillary Clinton in January 2009.

That is a very scary question. The smirk on Alberto Gonzales' face as he lied (again) to the Senate leaves me suspecting the worst.