The FBI has announced it will publish a new Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG), relaxing regulations and making it easier for agents to investigate people. The new guidelines will allow agents to investigate subjects without documenting the search, effectively creating a tier lower than the lowest-level investigation, called an "assessment". Assessments allow agents to look into people without probable cause or suspicion to believe they are involved in criminal activity. 

The deregulation also allows agents engaged in assessments to search through the trash of any subject they are considering pressuring into becoming an informer. The Times reports:

Agents have asked for that power in part because they want the ability to use information found in a subject’s trash to put pressure on that person to assist the government in the investigation of others.