Government agents interviewing your co-workers and friends, examining your phone data, rummaging through your trash, email history and transaction records — if the Federal Bureau of Investigation deems you a threat to national security, its agents don't need a judge or a warrant to launch an intrusive investigation. Now these powers, abused by the FBI in the past, are in the hands of new bureau chief who has promised to "go after" the perceived enemies of President Donald Trump.

Indeed, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino's loyalty to Trump — and the technology at the modern FBI's disposal — could make the bureau's surveillance regime even more of a threat to political dissidents and others deemed threats by this administration, experts and former agents told Salon.

Nominally, the FBI is subject to oversight by the so-called Attorney General Guidelines upheld by the Department of Justice. But because those guidelines are indeed guidelines, not legally binding mandates, their effectiveness is almost wholly dependent on the FBI director to adhere to the rules and the good faith of the attorney general to follow her oversight responsibilities. Absent these conditions, Yale senior lecturer and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa said in an interview, the Trump administration could act on its "expansive view" of Article II of the Constitution, which vests the president with authority to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed" and which some on the right have interpreted as license to govern more or less like a king.

"Under the idea of unitary executive, the president could assert personal influence or control over the Justice Department and any federal investigations," Rangappa said. That's the same legal theory relied on by the President George W. Bush and his administration to circumvent normal administrative procedures to enact unpopular and perhaps unlawful policies, like detaining terrorist suspects without charge and subjecting them to torture.

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In a statement to Salon, an FBI spokesperson insisted that the administration........

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