Implementation Will be Key to Judging Obama Administration's New Intelligence Practices
The latest controversy over the Obama Administration's use of intelligence is the news that (as Fox News puts it), "The U.S. intelligence community will be able to store information about Americans with no ties to terrorism for up to five years," an initiative driven partly by our failure to connect the dots leading up to the attempted Christmas airline bombing in 2009.
I think the basic idea is sensible, but it all depends on how the data is used, stored and protected. The problem is created by two factors: a) terrorist attacks threaten harms against the United States far beyond any simple crime, and b) terrorists succeed by disguising themselves as civilians and hiding their activities within apparently innocent conduct.
One thing that we learned in the wake of 9-11 is that if the government's main object is to stop terrorist attacks before they occur, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies must have the ability to search data for patterns of movement, money laundering, and suspicious activity. Pulling together the information after the government has already identified a target may be insufficient, because an attack itself may be the first criminal act of the terrorist.
In order to find the target in the first place, our agencies may need to search through billions of transactions and movements. The key for protecting civil liberties is that safeguards be built in to the process, such as limiting the use of the information to preventing attacks (not for unrelated civilian law enforcement), and requiring that much of the searching be done by computers, with human involvement only when a certain level of suspicious activity has been reached.
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Re: Implementation Will be Key to Judging Obama Administration's New Intelligence Practices
One ancillary political effect of the administration having to face the threat of radical Islamic terrorism is that they simply have to act, and the action they must take alienates the President's far left base.
When I mentioned the President's so-called "dump" of information about security measures last Friday afternoon to the committed leftist board operator of my radio show he couldn't spit on the ground fast enough. Keep in mind my show is one the station in L.A. that is essentially "Air America," or what's left of it. They are fuming over these minor upticks in security.
Jul '11
Re: Implementation Will be Key to Judging Obama Administration's New Intelligence Practices
You mean they weren't already keeping a rolling 5-year dataset of every American's digital activities stored in an underground bunker somewhere?
Two things:
1. I am flatly amazed, again, that because it's a Democrat in office, and more specifically Barry, that there is nary a peep of outrage from the Left on this. None. I didn't even hear about until I saw it on Ricochet. It's the kind of thing that would have spun up the media in a huge way under Bush, and there would be pictures of Bushitler flying around the internet, etc. Never mind that this sort of thing is more of a ObamaStalin kind of deal, but you get the idea.
2. No matter how many assurances we get about how the data will be safe-guarded, the government is storing and analyzing information on hundreds of millions of people who have committed no crime, and are looking for criminal activity. Just because it's done with data instead of a cop peeking in my windows, doesn't make it any less of an intrusion into my privacy.
Jul '11
Re: Implementation Will be Key to Judging Obama Administration's New Intelligence Practices
This is bad. Even if the orginal intention is good and the goal is noble, eventually some part of the government will expand this program to target non terrorist for "crimes" other than terrorism.
Sep '10
Re: Implementation Will be Key to Judging Obama Administration's New Intelligence Practices
See if I understand the logic correctly. The big bad terrorists can cause more harm than ordinary thugs therefore it is sensible. Who may I ask will protect the American people from the government? One thing I learned from 9/11 is that two incompetent Presidents, Bush and Clinton failed to listen to the intelligence community when they were warned that terrorism was a bigger threat than thought. But no one in the government would say such things. No we needed a commission to tell us the problem was the bureaucracy was not large enough and the American people's privacy was not sufficiently invaded. The big bad terrorist line was used to justify Iraq also and everyone knows that was a wise decision.
Jan '11
Re: Implementation Will be Key to Judging Obama Administration's New Intelligence Practices
No matter what safeguards are proposed, an Obama will find some way to override them and use the data to build his enemies list.
Sep '11
Re: Implementation Will be Key to Judging Obama Administration's New Intelligence Practices
Just one slight quibble with the phrase "failed to connect the dots" in regard to the Christmas bomber. A dot is a piece of information whose meaning is not apparent until after the event occurs that, in retrospect, makes the meaning of the even obvious. Guys making a lot of calls to Pakistan and buying one-way tickets are examples. They were meaningless in themselves until after the attack when their meaning became all too clear. The dots became a picture. In the case of the Christmas bomber the Father came in and said, "I think my son is training to be a terrorist. Don't let him on an airplane." That is not a dot. That is a picture. It is a picture of a man telling you that his son might be a terrorist and that you shouldn't let him on an airplane. The meaning is clear: Don't let him on an airplane. I am not saying whether the law is good or bad or whether Professor Yoo is right or not, I am just saying it was not a dot.