The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least ten years — this according to a report in the Washington Post. The proposed changes would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive federal grants. Mike German of the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the plan. The former FBI agent said, “If police officers no longer see themselves as engaged in protecting their communities from criminals and instead as domestic intelligence agents working on behalf of the CIA, they will be encouraged to collect more information. It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government.”