EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third story in a series on FBI assessments, and you can read the first and second installments here.

The FBI watches law-abiding Americans with few limits and may share its dirty dossiers with whomever it chooses using a little-known investigative tool called “assessments,” records obtained by Racket News show.

The G-Men often fish for criminal behavior for years — much longer than the FBI has publicly indicated — and still get skunked, catching nothing to substantiate any criminal investigation on their limitless lines.

Here’s how assessments work: The feds collect information for to-be-determined investigations with warrantless surveillance, confidential informants, and examinations of targets — no court order needed. Agents do not need to suspect a crime occurred, much less have evidence, before opening one.

FBI memos obtained by the Cato Institute through a Freedom of Information of Act lawsuit and shared exclusively with Racket show a pattern: Agents predict with high confidence they’ll catch lawbreaking, spend years lying in wait for their caper, then quietly shelve the whole thing with little to show for their time.

And the intel collected in assessments of Americans need not stay in the file cabinets of the FBI’s tidy offices. The feds can share their gossipy contents with interested partners just so long as they explain with care their own ineffectiveness in doing any actual law enforcement, the documents show.

Your federal permanent record, with Uncle Sam in the role of hovering schoolmarm.

Gone Fishin’: How The FBI Can Spend Years Trying To Hook You