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Spy SurgePrepare for more domestic spying.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, July 18, 2007, at 6:40 PM ET

In the National Intelligence Estimate titled "The Terrorist Threat to the Homeland," which was released Tuesday, there's an intriguing section that suggests an impending push for more domestic surveillance.

Most of the report (which I analyzed here) concerns an alleged resurgence of al-Qaida. But toward the end, the authors mention a small but expanding number of "violent Islamic extremists inside the United States" who are "becoming more connected ideologically, virtually, and/or in a physical sense to the global extremist movement."

The report also notes dangers posed by "non-Muslim terrorist groups," "single-issue groups," and "even small numbers of alienated people" who might "find and connect with one another, justify and intensify their anger, and mobilize resources to attack—all without requiring a centralized terrorist organization, training camp, or leader."

Then comes the point:

The ability to detect broader and more diverse terrorist plotting in this environment will challenge current U.S. defensive efforts and the tools we use to detect and disrupt plots. It will also require greater understanding of how suspect activities at the local level relate to strategic threat information and how best to identify indicators of terrorist activity in the midst of legitimate interactions.

One aspect of this is uncontroversial—the need to integrate city and state law enforcement ("suspect activities at the local level") to national watch lists and other databases ("strategic threat information"). This effort falls under the Department of Homeland Security, and it's a disgrace that, with such a large budget, nobody has yet devised a systematic method of doing this.

However, the other part of this passage ("how best to identify indicators of terrorist activity in the midst of legitimate interactions") pushes a very hot button.

A year and a half ago, passionate arguments broke out over reports about the National Security Agency's "data-mining" technologies. A couple of years earlier, the Pentagon attempted to fund a still-more intrusive program called the "Total Information Awareness" network. (The latter effort failed, but the concept was almost certainly re-routed to the NSA or elsewhere.) Concerns were raised about privacy rights, the abuse of power, and the worth of such networks to begin with.

Judging from the NIE (not just from these key passages but from its general assessment of a "persistent and evolving terrorist threat"), the debate over these vast surveillance systems will soon be renewed. So, it's worth making some distinctions that tended not to be made the last time around, at least in much of the public discussion.

The key distinction is the one between data-mining and wiretapping.

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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power. He can be reached at .
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Remarks from the Fray:

Kaplan's article [explains] the sort of surveillance I've suspected and inferred was going on for the last couple of years. Nicely done.

But he also proposes a view of civil liberties I find really disturbing -- the idea that a massive net of traffic analysis can be thrown over all our communications in order to single out targets for enhanced governmental scrutiny. And in breezily suggesting that the vast majority of us would approve of this, he makes it sound like a settled point of consensus.

I am no lawyer and am perhaps ill-positioned to take the pulse of the median American, but this strikes me as constitutionally suspect and sort of viscerally anti-American.

This is generalized suspicion on a grand scale -- a huge net thrown out to sift the population in hopes of turning up a few suspect individuals.

The 4th amendment requires probable cause "supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That standard is not met merely because of the assertion by some federal official (who's likely to be outed any minute by the Washington Post as yet another un-qualified RNC shill who got the job by fundraising for Bush-Cheney '04) that somewhere out there there's a bunch of evil doers plotting to hurt us -- and we've got to put the 21st century equivalent of a PIN-register on every phone and internet connection in America to stop them.

God, would even the Roberts court buy that assertion? I pray not. I fear they would. But I know Kaplan should not suggest the question is virtually without controversy.

--guevera

(To reply, click here.)

(7/18)

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