Feds Roll On Vegas Rollers

(CBS/AP)  Federal agents who said they were hedging their bets against terrorists asked hotels and airlines in Las Vegas for lists of customers over the holidays, says a wire report.

Las Vegas has been a focus of the increased security during the "high" terrorism alert declared late last year. A no-fly zone was declared over the city's famous "strip," and extra security was on hand for celebrations there to ring in the New Year.

Gaming Wire reports that among the steps taken by federal officials was to request the names of guests from hotels and lists of passengers from airlines using McCarran International Airport, which serves lost Vegas.

An FBI spokesman confirmed the move.

An airline spokeswomen said the bureau's request covered people who arrived in or departed Las Vegas from Dec. 22 to Jan. 4.

According to Gaming Wire, the information was subpoenaed from airlines.

Under a new law, financial companies — including casinos — are required to turn such information over to federal authorities without a subpoena, if national security concerns are raised, so no subpoenas were sought for the casinos.

An FBI spokesman said the move was a "normal investigative procedure." But civil libertarians took issue with it, since the move targeted not just terrorists but average citizens as well.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, federal agents have conducted more aggressive domestic intelligence gathering, aided by new laws and changes to bureau regulations.

That has marked a significant shift from decades during which domestic spying was discouraged, after revelations that federal agents went to great lengths to infiltrate and undermine dissident groups in the 1960s.

The USA PATRIOT Act allowed agents to demand information from libraries and bookstores without establishing probable cause, and without the subject's knowledge.

The act, which became law in October 2001, also broadened a 1978 surveillance law by allowing the FBI to request special warrants in investigations that aren't mostly focused on foreign intelligence.

The FBI often uses these specialized warrants — issued under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — to record the telephone calls and e-mails of citizens and immigrants believed to be agents of a foreign power.

The government requested and won approval for a record 1,228 warrants in 2002 for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies, a reflection of aggressive efforts to prevent terror attacks in the United States.

Last year's total was significantly higher than the 934 warrants approved in 2001 and the 1,003 approved in 2000.

Operating with permission from a secretive federal court that meets regularly at Justice Department headquarters, the FBI has broken into homes, offices, hotel rooms and automobiles, installed hidden cameras, rummaged through luggage and eavesdropped on telephone conversations.

Besides break-ins, agents also have pried into safe deposit boxes, watched from afar with video cameras and binoculars and intercepted e-mails. They have planted microphones, computer bugs and other high-tech tracking devices.

Details about some FBI techniques emerge from court records spread across dozens of cases. But only a fraction of these surveillances each year result in any kind of public disclosure, so little is known outside classified circles about how they work.

More recently, the FBI has implemented new ground rules that allow even more sharing of information between agents working on intelligence and those pursuing traditional criminal cases.

Police and prosecutors have increasingly turned the force of the new anti-terrorism laws not on al Qaeda cells but on people charged with common crimes.

The Justice Department said it has used authority given to it by the Patriot Act to crack down on currency smugglers and seize money hidden overseas by alleged bookies, con artists and drug dealers.