Evidence version 5

Table of Contents Topicality ....................................................................................................................................................... 8 Definitions: Above................................................................................................................................. 9 Ought: Stock Definitions ..................................................................................................................... 10 Ought implies Consequentialism ........................................................................................................ 11 Ought implies Contractarionism ......................................................................................................... 12 Ought Implies Kantian Ethics .............................................................................................................. 13 Ought Implies Naturalism (Meta Ethics) ............................................................................................. 14 Ought implies Rights ........................................................................................................................... 15 Definition of Pursuit ............................................................................................................................ 16 Definition of “Security Threat” ........................................................................................................... 17 “National Security” is Resisting Hostile Action ................................................................................... 18 National Security is Cybersecurity, terrorism, and nuclear weapons ................................................. 19 National Security includes Human Trafficking .................................................................................... 20 “Digital Privacy” .................................................................................................................................. 21 Citizens ................................................................................................................................................ 22 Aff ................................................................................................................................................................ 23 National Security ..................................................................................................................................... 24 National Security Does Not Outweigh Privacy ....................................... 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Privacy ..................................................................................................................................................... 26 No Right to Privacy – Reductionst Legal Theory Proves ..................................................................... 27 No Right to Privacy-Constitution......................................................................................................... 28 Limits In Place Prevent Loss of Digital Privacy .................................................................................... 29 Public/Private Distinction Allows Domestic Violence ......................................................................... 31 Terrorism................................................................................................................................................. 32 Digital Surveillance Stops Inevitable Terrorist Attack ........................................................................ 33 Digital Surveillance Key to Stopping Al Qaeda .................................................................................... 34 Digital Surveillance Solves Terrorism (1/2) ......................................................................................... 35 Digital Surveillance Solves Terrorism (2/2) ......................................................................................... 36 Preventing Terrorism Necessitates Domestic Spying ......................................................................... 38 Terrorists Use the Internet to Plan Attacks (1/2)................................................................................ 39 Terrorists Use the Internet to Plan Attacks (2/2)................................................................................ 42 The Internet is Key to Terrorist Communication ................................................................................ 43 Internet Key to Terrorist Funding ....................................................................................................... 44 Internet Key to Terrorist Education .................................................................................................... 45 Cyberterror Impacts: Economy ........................................................................................................... 46 Uniqueness: Risk of Terrorism is High................................................................................................. 47 A2: Terrorists Are Not Tech Savvy ...................................................................................................... 51 A2: Digital Surveillance of Terrorists Outside of US ............................................................................ 52 Cyberattacks ........................................................................................................................................... 55 Cyberattack Impacts: Laundry List ...................................................................................................... 57 Cyberattack Impacts: Terrorists are a Threat ..................................................................................... 58 Cyberattack Impacts: North Korea Is a Threat .................................................................................... 59 Cyberattack Impacts: Iran Is a Threat ................................................................................................. 60 Cyberattack Impact: US Retaliation .................................................................................................... 61 Cyberattack Impacts: Harms National Security .................................................................................. 62 Cyberattack Impacts: Economy........................................................................................................... 63 Cyberattack Impacts: Hurt Businesses ................................................................................................ 65 Cyberattack Impacts: Infrastructure ................................................................................................... 66 Cyberattack Impacts: Mass Death ...................................................................................................... 68 Cyberattack Impacts: Mass Death ...................................................................................................... 69 Cyberattack Impact: Prevents Retaliation .......................................................................................... 70 A2: Cannot Stop Cyberattack .............................................................................................................. 71 Solvency: Digital Surveillance Solves Cyberattacks............................................................................. 72 Cybercrime .............................................................................................................................................. 73 Cybercrime Impacts: Hurts Economy.................................................................................................. 74 Cybercrime Impacts: Worse than Physical Crime ............................................................................... 75 Hackers.................................................................................................................................................... 76 Hackers Destroy Privacy ...................................................................................................................... 77 A2: Hacktivism Good ........................................................................................................................... 78 Prism ....................................................................................................................................................... 79 Prism Solves Terrorism........................................................................................................................ 87 Prism Solves Terrorism........................................................................................................................ 88 A2: Prism Destroys All Privacy............................................................................................................. 91 A2: Congress is Reigning in Prism/NSA Spying.................................................................................... 92 A2: Data Collection Leads to Government Oppression ...................................................................... 93 Espionage ................................................................................................................................................ 94 Espionage-Russia................................................................................................................................. 95 Espionage-China.................................................................................................................................. 96 China Espionage Impact: Innovation .................................................................................................. 98 China Espionage Impact: Competitiveness ....................................................................................... 100 China Espionage Impact-Media ........................................................................................................ 101 Espionage-Iran .................................................................................................................................. 102 A2: Economic Espionage Isn’t Happening ......................................................................................... 103 Patriot Act ............................................................................................................................................. 104 Patriot Act Upholds the Social Contract ........................................................................................... 105 Patriot Act Balances National Security and Privacy .......................................................................... 106 Patriot Act Good – Computer Trespasser Exception Stops Hackers ................................................. 107 A2-“Patriot Act Violates Liberties” .................................................................................................... 108 FISA Upholds 1st Amendment Protections ....................................................................................... 110 CIPSA ..................................................................................................................................................... 111 A2: Endless Invasion of Privacy ......................................................................................................... 112 Wire Taps .............................................................................................................................................. 114 Wiretaps Solve Terrorism ................................................................................................................. 115 Wiretaps Solve Crime ........................................................................................................................ 116 Human Trafficking ................................................................................................................................. 117 Impacts – Children are Trafficked ..................................................................................................... 118 Solvency: Mobile Phone Searches Solve Human Trafficking ............................................................ 119 A2: Tracking pre-paid phones is against the fourth amendment ..................................................... 120 Crime Impacts ....................................................................................................................................... 121 Impacts: Organized Crime Hurts National Security .......................................................................... 122 Organized Crime Destroys Rule of Law ............................................................................................. 127 Drug Trade Impacts: Drugs & Crime Destroy Society – Laundry List ................................................ 128 Drug Trade Impacts: Drug Money Fuels Terrorism ........................................................................... 129 Drug Trade Impacts: Drug Trade Causes Latin American Instability ................................................ 131 Gangs Impacts: Gangs Cause Crime .................................................................................................. 132 Gangs Impacts: Gangs Key to Drug Trade ......................................................................................... 133 Solvency: Digital Surveillance Solves Organized Crime..................................................................... 134 Wikileaks Harms National Security ....................................................................................................... 135 Wikileaks Threatens National Security ............................................................................................. 136 Wikileaks Threatens National Security ............................................................................................. 138 Wikileaks Helps Terrorists ................................................................................................................. 139 Wikileaks Hurts US-Pakistani Relations ............................................................................................ 140 A2: Wikileaks Solves For Transparency ............................................................................................. 141 A2: Wikileaks Solves For Transparency ............................................................................................. 142 Digital Surveillance Solvency................................................................................................................. 143 Data Collection is Key to Cyber Security Technology........................................................................ 144 A2: Tor Prevents Digital Surveillance ................................................................................................ 145 Transparency......................................................................................................................................... 146 Uniqueness: Privacy Decreasing Now ............................................................................................... 147 Uniqueness: Privacy Violations Inevitable ........................................................................................ 149 Transparency Impacts: Key to Economy ........................................................................................... 151 Now is the Key Time for Transparency ............................................................................................. 152 Link: Pretending Privacy Exists Masks Surveillance (1/2) ................................................................. 154 Link: Pretending Privacy Exists Masks Surveillance (2/2) ................................................................. 156 Alternative Solvency: Transparency Checks Government Oppression (1/2) .................................... 157 Alternative Solvency: Transparency Checks Government Oppression (2/2) .................................... 159 Impacts: Government Secrecy Hurts Government Effectiveness ..................................................... 160 A2: Leaks Bad – They’re Impossible to Stop ..................................................................................... 161 A2: Schneier/”Transparency Destroys Privacy” ................................................................................ 162 Neg ............................................................................................................................................................ 172 Constitutionality.................................................................................................................................... 173 Digital Surveillance Violates 4th Amendment.................................................................................... 174 Privacy ................................................................................................................................................... 176 Privacy is a Human Right ................................................................................................................... 177 Privacy is a Natural Right .................................................................................................................. 178 Right to Privacy Exists – Constitution Proves (1/2) ........................................................................... 179 Right to Privacy Exists – Constitution Proves (2/2) ........................................................................... 180 Right to Privacy Exists – Private Property and Artistic Creation Prove ............................................. 181 Privacy is a Social Good ..................................................................................................................... 182 Privacy Outweighs National Security ................................................................................................ 183 Privacy Impacts: Totalitarianism ....................................................................................................... 185 Privacy Impacts: Autonomy (1/2) ..................................................................................................... 187 Privacy Impacts: Autonomy (2/2) ..................................................................................................... 188 Privacy Impacts: Human Dignity ....................................................................................................... 189 Privacy is a Prerequisite to Rights and Autonomy ............................................................................ 190 Privacy Impacts: Normalization ........................................................................................................ 191 Browser Fingerprinting ..................................................................................................................... 192 Collecting Information Violates Privacy ............................................................................................ 193 Centralized Databases Violate Privacy .............................................................................................. 194 A2: “We Consent to Surveillance” .................................................................................................... 195 Digital Surveillance Bad......................................................................................................................... 196 Electronic Surveillance Prevents Free Society .................................................................................. 197 Surveillance Violates Separation of Powers...................................................................................... 198 Digital Surveillance Hurts US Competitiveness ................................................................................. 199 Surveilance Ineffective-Terrorists .............................................................. 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Digital Surveillance Does Not Stop Terrorism ................................................................................... 208 Equal Prioritization................................................................................................................................ 219 Hackers.................................................................................................................................................. 220 No Impact to Hackers: Encryption Solves ......................................................................................... 221 Hackers Good-Anonymous ............................................................................................................... 222 Cyberattacks ......................................................................................................................................... 224 No Impact to Cyberattacks: Threat Overblown (1/2) ....................................................................... 225 No Impact to Cyberterror: Threat Overblown (2/2) ......................................................................... 226 Tech Bad................................................................................................................................................ 228 Patriot Act ............................................................................................................................................. 231 Patriot Act Violates Privacy – “Sneak & Peak Searches” .................................................................. 232 WikiLeaks .............................................................................................................................................. 233 A2: Threatens US Diplomacy ............................................................................................................. 234 Shield Laws ............................................................................................................................................ 235 Shield Laws Key to First Ammendment ............................................................................................ 236 A2: Terrorism ............................................................................................. 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Islamic Terror is Not a Threat............................................................................................................ 204 Domestic Terrorism Is Not a Threat .................................................................................................. 205 Digital Surveillance Does Not Stop Terrorism ................................................................................... 206 Terror Discourse is Bad ..................................................................................................................... 207 Economy................................................................................................................................................ 237 Internal Link: Technological Innovation is Key to the Economy ....................................................... 248 Agamben ............................................................................................................................................... 249 Link: Digital Technology .................................................................................................................... 259 Impacts: State of Exception Destroys All Rights (1/2) ...................................................................... 261 Impacts: State of Exception Destroys All Rights (2/2) ...................................................................... 262 Impacts: State of Exception Allows for Atrocities ............................................................................. 263 Framework ................................................................................................................................................ 273 Autonomy ............................................................................................................................................. 274 Autonomy Requires Freedom from Negative Restraints .................................................................. 275 Autonomy is a Prerequisite to Morality ............................................................................................ 276 Autonomy-Protects Free Speech ...................................................................................................... 278 Autonomy-Individual ........................................................................................................................ 279 Autonomy-Consent Necessary for Morality ..................................................................................... 280 A2: Prefer Justice .............................................................................................................................. 282 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs ............................................................................................................... 283 Maslow’s Hierarchy Does Not Exist .................................................................................................. 284 Morality................................................................................................................................................. 285 Morality: Deontology is Best – Rights Prove ..................................................................................... 286 Morality: Intention is Key to Morality............................................................................................... 287 Utilitarianism is best for Determining Political Morality .................................................................. 288 Consequentialism is best for Determining Morality of Policies ........................................................ 289 A2: Human Rights/Rights More Important Than Consequentialism ................................................ 290 Social Contracts..................................................................................................................................... 291 Social Contracts Must be Backed by Force ....................................................................................... 293 Social Contracts Balance Individualism and Cooperation ................................................................. 294 Social Contracts Protect Justice and Rule of Law.............................................................................. 295 Social Contract Requires Protection of Citizen’s Property................................................................ 296 Conractarianism Protects Governments and Society ....................................................................... 297 A2: Utilitarianism Upholds Social Contract ....................................................................................... 298 Justice.................................................................................................................................................... 299 Kantian Justice Requires Restrictions on Freedom by Laws ............................................................. 300 Upholding the “Common Good” is Impossible (1/2) ........................................................................ 301 Upholding the “Common Good” is Impossible (2/2) ........................................................................ 302 Justice Balances Individualism and Cooperation .............................................................................. 303 Freedom/Liberty ................................................................................................................................... 304 Value of Freedom: Freedom and Liberty are Different .................................................................... 305 Security ................................................................................................................................................. 306 Human Security More Important than State Security ...................................................................... 307 Government Must Not Violate Liberty ............................................................................................. 308 Meta-Ethics ............................................................................................................................................... 319 Naturalism............................................................................................................................................. 320 Naturalism Determines Morality ...................................................................................................... 321 Hardwired For Survival...................................................................................................................... 322 Error Theory .......................................................................................................................................... 323 Error Theory Guides Morality ........................................................................................................... 324 Quasi- Realism....................................................................................................................................... 326 Legality .................................................................................................................................................. 327 Law Determines Morality.................................................................................................................. 328 Rule of Law ........................................................................................................................................ 329 Topicality Definitions: Above Above means to have a higher rank Merriam-webster.2013, “Above-Definition and More from the Merriam Webster Free dictionary.” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/above 3¶ : in or to a higher rank or number <30 and above> Ought: Stock Definitions Ought implies Moral Obligation Merriuam Webster dictionary, 2013, (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ought) Ought- used to express obligation Ought- moral obligation Reasons to prefer 1. Most common sense definition- First Known Use: 12th century, this tells us that this form of definition has been appropriate for a long time. 2. Meriam Webster is a total access dicitionairy- everybody can access it meaning that people have the ability to get the definition. 3. For more than 150 years, in print and now online, Merriam-Webster has been America's leading and most-trusted provider of language information. 4. All Merriam-Webster products and services are backed by the largest team of professional dictionary editors and writers in America, and one of the largest in the world. Ought is defined as mandatory. Black’s Law Dictionary. http://thelawdictionary.org/ought/ This word, though generally directory only, will be taken as mandatory if the context requires it. Life Ass’n v. SL Louis County Assessors, 49 Mo. 518. Ought implies Consequentialism Ought is a propositional operative that questions if a consequence from an action is desirable Wedgwood argues. (Ralph, English prof @ carniege melon, “modern day morals.” No date, http://wwwbcf.usc.edu/~wedgwood/meaningofought.htm) “We can avoid all these problems if we treat ‘ought’ in as a propositional operator. Grammatically, ‘ought’ in English is an auxiliary verb, like the modal auxiliaries ‘can’ and ‘must.’ When an occurrence of ‘ought’ modifies the main verb of a sentence, it can be taken as a propositional operator applying to the proposition that would be expressed by the unmodified form of that sentence. Thus, the sentence drinking water ought to be clean and safe in ‘ought’ is a propositional operator applying to the proposition that would be expressed by the sentence ‘drinking water is clean and safe’” Ought implies Contractarionism The governmental obligation focuses on what the people want Terrence O. Moore, Professor of History at Hillsdale College, degree from u of Chicago, “What Ought Government to Do (and Not Do)?: Why We Need to Read John Locke” September 1, 2011, http://ricochet.com/main-feed/What-Ought-Government-to-Do-and-Not-Do-Why-We-Need-to-ReadJohn-Locke Locke’s considerable narrowing of the scope of government is famously echoed in the Declaration of Independence with these words: “That to secure these rights [Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness], Governments are instituted among Men.” Securing rights is what government is supposed to do. Whenever government exceeds the scope of its original compact or commission, people’s liberty is in danger. Now it is true that a people may consent to employ government to do any number of things which seem legitimate. But watch out! The oldest trick in the democratic playbook is for a larger group of people to get together and consent to take the smaller group’s property. ¶ The Lockean idea of limited government compels us to ask the question: what is government for—and what is it not for? Allowing for the fact that there may be any number of functions for government at the state and local levels (via the Founders’ invention of federalism), what ought thefederal government to do and what ought it not to do? Voters on the Right need to be specific about what their candidates should do (and undo) once elected lest vague promises of reduced government spending go nowhere and further electoral victories be wasted. Ought Implies Kantian Ethics Kant defines ought as requiring an imperative. Hurford, Peter. Political Science and Psychology Major at Denison University. November 4, 2011. The Meaning of Ought, Part I. http://www.greatplay.net/essays/the-meaning-of-ought-part-i Kant described “ought” as referring to an imperative, defining two types: a hypothetical imperative and a categorical imperative:¶ A hypothetical imperative is in the form “If you desire X, you ought to preform action Y”. For instance, “If you value the lives of others, you ought to not murder people” or “If you value freedom, you ought not to restrict the speech of others”. It is an ought statement characterized by a conditional.¶ A categorical imperative is in the form “You ought to preform action Y (regardless of what you believe or desire)”. For instance, “You ought not to lie” or “You ought not to steal”. It is a pure, unconditional ought statement. Ought Implies Naturalism (Meta Ethics) Ought does not imply morality, natural ethics are more clear. Beavers, Anthony F. Written for the International Digital Ethics Symposium, Center for Digital Ethics and Policy, School of Communication, Loyola University. Chicago, October 28th, 2011. Could and Should the Ought Disappear from Ethics? http://www.academia.edu/1011404/Could_and_Should_the_Ought_Disappear_from_Ethics Terra Firma¶ In 2007, Anderson and Anderson wrote, “As Daniel Dennett (2006) recently stat-ed, AI ‘makes philosophy honest.’ Ethics must be made computable in order to make it clear exactly how agents ought to behave in ethical dilemmas” (16). To rephrase their sentiment, a computable system or theory of ethics serves to make ethics honest. As I have observed elsewhere (Beavers 2010), it is common among machine ethicists to note that research in computational ethics can help us better understand ethics in the case of human beings. This is because of what we must know about ethics in general to build machines that operate within normative pa-rameters. Unclear intuitions will not do where engineering specifications and computational clarity are required. So, machine ethicists are forced head on to en-gage in moral philosophy. Their effort, of course, hangs on a careful analysis of ethical theories, the role of affect in making moral decisions, relationships be-tween agents and patients, and so forth. But this is not all. There are other meta-ethical difficulties that must be addressed as well concerning, particularly, the nature of the moral ought and the necessary and sufficient conditions for moral agency. Every moral theory makes assumptions about these issues, but, to date, without the clarity that real-world, working specifications for practical application require. Thus, computational ethics provides us with the¶ terra firma¶ needed to get some solid footing in the otherwise vague and messy domain of ethics and helps us answer the question of whether (and if so, to what extent) we may have been duped by morality.¶ My conclusion here will be that yes, we have been duped, at least in part. As such, I am departing from Beavers 2009 & 2011, where I suggested that we¶ might ¶ (another past subjunctive) have been in order to argue for something more definite. This conclusion will be an unhappy one for many, since it will involve throwing out an age-old distinction between being good and merely acting so that has been at the heart of ethics (according to the dominant Western paradigm)from its inception. My argument will unfold in three parts: the first will address the question of moral agents (MAs) in general, after which I will examine what precisely¶ ought ¶ implies when viewed from a moral perspective to isolate what I will identify as the paradox of automated moral agency (P-AMA). Next to avoid the paradox we will need to define the¶ ought ¶ technically, not morally, a distinction I am partially borrowing from Kant and will make clear later, with the result that we are left with the sufficiency argument (SA), which states that moral interiority is a sufficient but not necessary condition for moral agency. If this argument holds, then the kind of moral interiority that allows an agent to be culpable for its actions is not necessary for ethics. It is rather a product of our biology that drives humans to be ethical, but it is not the only way this can be done. My motive in taking this approach is that the problems we are facing as a world are so great that it is time to put aside the “blame game” and confront them with some sort of no-fault ethics, the details of which have largely been worked out by Floridi (1999and 2002) and Floridi and Sanders (2001 and 2004), though more work needs to be done here to draw out the implications where blame and fault are concerned. Ought implies Rights Ought is derived from our rights, if we have the right, we have an obligation to act. Gewirth Alan, a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, “THE 'IS-OUGHT PROBLEM RESOLVED.”, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 47 (1973 -¶ 1974), pp. 34-61, jstor) I have here presented, then, a complex version of what I have ¶ called the internal model of the relation between 'ought' and 'is'. ¶ I have not directly defined 'ought' in terms of'is'; rather, I have ¶ held that the application of 'ought' is entailed by the correlative ¶ concept of having a right. The agent's application of this concept, ¶ in turn, has been derived from the concept of goods which are the ¶ necessary conditions of all his actions, since he necessarily claims ¶ that he has a right to at least these goods. And the agent's applica- ¶ tion of the concept of good, finally, has been derived from his ¶ acting for purposes. Since the agent's assertion that he acts for ¶ purposes is an empirical, descriptive statement, I have in this ¶ indirect way derived 'ought' from 'is'. Whether the derivation is at ¶ each point definitional or is rather of some other non-arbitrary ¶ sort does not materially affect my argument, so long as its neces- ¶ sary relation to the context of action is recognized. Definition of Pursuit Trying to Achieve Something Oxford Dictionary (2013, Oxford University Press, http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pursuance?q=pursuance) the action of trying to achieve something: Pursuit of Security includes Cost David A. Baldwin, 1997, Columbia University Department of Political Science, “The Concept of Security”, Review of International Studies, Jstor, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20097464 The pursuit of security always involves costs, i.e., the sacrifice of other goals that could have been pursued with the resources devoted to security. Specification of this dimension of security policy is important because writers sometimes imply that costs do not matter. One writer, for example, defines national security in terms of the protection of core values, which he describes as 'interests that are pursued not withstanding the costs incurred'.55 From the standpoint of a rational policymaker, however, there are no such interests. Costs always matter. Definition of “Security Threat” Security threats include Natural Disasters. David A. Baldwin, 1997, Columbia University Department of Political Science, “The Concept of Security”, Review of International Studies, Jstor, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20097464 In ordinary language, however, one often finds references to epidemics, floods, earth quakes, or droughts as 'threats' to acquired values. Ullman and others have argued hat the concept of security should be expanded to include such phenomena. There seems to be no reason not to use this more expansive concept of threats, especially since it comports with common usage. Those who wish to refer to conditional commitments to punish by social actors as security threats may make that clear when specifying this dimension of security. “National Security” is Resisting Hostile Action “National security” includes activities that threaten society Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. No Date (“national security”. Accessed 17 July 13. http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/data/n/5673.html) A collective term encompassing both national defense and foreign relations of the United States. Specifically, the condition provided by: a. a military or defense advantage over any foreign nation or group of nations; b. a favorable foreign relations position; or c. a defense posture capable of successfully resisting hostile or destructive action from within or without, overt or covert. See also security. National Security is Cybersecurity, terrorism, and nuclear weapons The 2013 national security strategy highlights security issues as cyber space, terrorism and nuclear weapons. NSSA writes 2013 (“National Security Strategy 2013” pg 6, DoP: 2013, DoA: 7/17/13, http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/sites/default/files/file/news/National%20Security%20Strategy%202013%20( Final%20Draft).pdf) This document details the international environment the United States faces ¶ moving forward and depicts how we can navigate a peaceful and stable order in ¶ the future by leading the global economy, protecting critical global strategic ¶ interests, and maximizing the disposition and strength of our military. ¶ Furthermore, the analysis of emerging and persistent national security issues –¶ cyberspace, terrorism, and nuclear weapons – emphasizes the opportunity of ¶ American leadership. National Security includes Human Trafficking National security includes human trafficking ARTHUR RIZER, Arthur Rizer is a Trial Attorney with the United States Department of Justice. “Breach: The National Security Implications of Human Trafficking” 2011, http://widenerlawreview.org/files/2011/03/Rizer-Glaser.pdf Expanding on this concept, former government official Joseph Romm41¶ argues that national security relates to events that “(1) threaten drastically and ¶ over a relatively brief span of time to degrade the quality of life for the ¶ inhabitants of a state, or (2) threaten significantly to narrow the range of policy ¶ choices available to the government of a state.”42 “Consequently, Romm ¶ includes on the national security agenda issues of global warming [and] energy ¶ security” 43 and May even include, as this article argues, human trafficking. ¶ Anything could arguably affect the “way of life” of the American people. ¶ However, because President Clinton’s and Mr. Romm’s portrayal of national ¶ security focuses more on the people of the United States, rather than President ¶ Bush’s general “interests around the globe,” we believe that President ¶ Clinton’s and, more specifically, Mr. Romm’s definition of national security is ¶ more appropriate for the subject at hand. “Digital Privacy” Digital privacy is defined as a protection of citizens’ privacy WiseGeek Online. 2013. What Is Digital Privacy? http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-digitalprivacy.htm The concept of digital privacy can best be described as the protection of the information of private citizens who use digital mediums. However, when people speak about digital privacy, they often are referring to it in terms of its relation to Internet usage. Despite it being a popular and often incendiary issue, the obstacle of defining what digital privacy really is can prevent resolution.¶ Digital privacy centers on the fact that using digital mediums to conduct affairs, whether personal or professional, can leave digital footprints. For example, many Internet users don't realize that information about them and their Internet usage habits are constantly being logged and stored. A computer's Internet Protocol (IP) address can be traced back to a specific user and, as such, his website viewing habits can be monitored. Information such as the date and time of his searches, what browser he used to access websites and even how long he viewed websites can be retained on a search engine's servers. Servers can vary in the length of time they store this information before deleting it. Citizens A citizen is defined as someone who is either born in the U.S. or is naturalized. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 01/17/2013. Citizenship. http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=a 2ec6811264a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=a2ec6811264a3210VgnVCM100000b 92ca60aRCRD If you meet certain requirements, you may become a U.S. citizen either at birth or after birth. ¶ To become a citizen at birth, you must:¶ Have been born in the United States or certain territories or outlying possessions of the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States; OR ¶ had a parent or parents who were citizens at the time of your birth (if you were born abroad) and meet other requirements¶ To become a citizen after birth, you must:¶ Apply for “derived” or “acquired” citizenship through parents¶ Apply for naturalization¶ For more information, see USCIS Policy Manual Citizenship and Naturalization Guidance. ¶ The Naturalization Test¶ Most naturalization applicants are required to take a test on:¶ English¶ Civics (U.S. history and government) An American citizen is one who constitutionally belongs to the United States. Smith, Roger M. Alfred ¶ Cowles Professor of ¶ Government at Yale ¶ University. 1985. The Meaning of American Citizenship. http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/americancitizenship.pdf What does it mean to say, "I am an American citizen?" The law supplies ¶ dry technical answers: the statement means that one falls under a ¶ constitutional or statutory category conferring full membership in the ¶ American polity. The chief ones are, with minor exceptions, birth within ¶ the United States, which confers citizenship under the Fourteenth ¶ Amendment, plus birth to American parents overseas, and ¶ naturalization, categories regulated by federal statutes. Aff National Security Americans Support National Security Efforts American citizens support national security efforts even in light of civil liberties. Knickerbocker, Brad. He’s been the San Francisco bureau chief, Washington bureau news manager and Pentagon correspondent, National News Editor, and Chief Editorial Writer. June 9, 2013. “How do Americans feel about NSA surveillance? Ambivalent.” Date accessed: July 29, 2013. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the public has been generally supportive of national security efforts – sometimes finding those more important than any concern about privacy and other things dear to civil liberties advocates. “Voters give government leeway to snoop” reads the headline on James Hohmann’s piece on Politico.com. “Privacy is sort of like the deficit: In the abstract, voters rate it a serious concern,” Mr. Hohmann writes. “But drill down, and they don’t want to cut the entitlements that balloon federal spending – or end programs that have prevented terrorist attacks. Especially if Americans don’t believe their own computers and phones are being monitored, they are willing to give the government a long leash.” “I wouldn’t want to minimize the concern over privacy at all because it’s definitely there. But at the same time, especially in the wake of Boston and the constant threat people are feeling … protection is foremost,” Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, told Politico. “In this general tradeoff, when push comes to shove … more people consistently since 9/11 said protecting the country is a greater concern than restricting civil liberties.” John Dickerson at Slate takes a similar line, headlining his piece “Why Americans Don’t Fear the NSA.” “Polls suggest that people often support measures to catch terrorists that infringe on civil liberties,” he writes. “In a New York Times/CBS poll taken after the Boston Marathon bombing, 78 percent of people said surveillance cameras were a good idea. A CNN poll taken a month later showed the same support for cameras….” "It's important to recognize that you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," President Obama said the other day. "I think the American people understand that there are some trade-offs involved.” Americans are comfortable with trading off privacy for security Pew Research Center for the People and the Press “Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking a s Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic” 2013 A majority of Americans – 56% – say the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program tracking the telephone records of millions of Americans is an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism, though a substantial minority – 41% – say it is unacceptable. And while the public is more evenly divided over the government’s monitoring of email and other online activities to prevent possible terrorism, these views are largely unchanged since 2002, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, conducted June 6-9 among 1,004 adults, finds no indications that last week’s revelations of the government’s collection of phone records and internet data have altered fundamental public views about the tradeoff between investigating possible terrorism and protecting personal privacy. Currently 62% say it is more important for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy. Just 34% say it is more important for the government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats. These opinions have changed little since an ABC News/Washington Post survey in January 2006. Currently, there are only modest partisan differences in these opinions: 69% of Democrats say it is more important for the government to investigate terrorist threats, even at the expense of personal privacy, as do 62% of Republicans and 59% of independents. However, while six-in-ten or more in older age groups say it is more important to investigate terrorism even if it intrudes on privacy, young people are divided: 51% say investigating terrorism is more important while 45% say it is more important for the government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible threats. The survey finds that while there are apparent differences between the NSA surveillance programs under the Bush and Obama administrations, overall public reactions to both incidents are similar. Currently, 56% say it is acceptable that the NSA “has been getting secret court orders to track telephone calls of millions of Americans in an effort to investigate terrorism.” In January 2006, a few weeks after initial new reports of the Bush administration’s surveillance program, 51% said it was acceptable for the NSA to investigate “people suspected of involvement with terrorism by secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails between some people in the United States and other countries, without first getting court approval to do so.” However, Republicans and Democrats have had very different views of the two operations. Privacy No Right to Privacy – Reductionst Legal Theory Proves Reductionism disregards privacy as a right Casman, Betsey Sue. Master of Arts in Ethics and Policy Studies. 2011. "The Right to Privacy in Light of the Patriot Act and Social Contract Theory". http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2087&context=thesesdissertations. Date Accessed 7/21/13. There are two prevailing theories in the literature discussing the right to privacy: ¶ reductionism and coherentism. The reductionist view is based on the idea that privacy is ¶ essentially an inconsequential argument. Privacy, in and of itself, is not a specific right, ¶ just merely part of another right, therefore claims made citing a right to privacy should ¶ not and can not be honored. Edmund Byrne identifies reductivist privacy theorists in the ¶ legal field as those who believe that legal claims to privacy can all be resolved by other ¶ areas of law (Alfino, 2003). No Right to Privacy-Constitution There is no constitutional basis for the right to privacy. Harold R. DEMOSS JR, DeMoss practiced law in Houston for 34 years before being appointed in 1991 by former President George H.W. Bush to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he now serves., “Constitutional right to privacy a figment of imagination” DoP:January 15, 2006, DoA: 7/17/13, http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Constitutional-right-to-privacy-a-figment-of-1640537.php In this season of politicized and contentious confirmation hearings to fill vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court, some of the sharpest debate and disagreement concerns a so-called "right of privacy" in the U.S. Constitution.¶ The advocates of a constitutional right of privacy speak as though that right were expressly stated and enumerated in the Constitution. But the text of the Constitution does not contain the word "privacy" or the phrase "right of privacy."¶ Consequently, in my view, a constitutional "right of privacy" could only be unenumerated and is therefore a figment of the imagination of a majority of the justices on the modern Supreme Court. Let me explain why.¶ Webster's Dictionary defines "enumerate" as "to name or count or specify one by one." Roget's Thesaurus states that the synonyms for "enumerate" are "to itemize, list, or tick off." Adding the negative prefix "un" reverses the definitions or synonyms so that "unenumerated" means not named, not counted, not specified, not itemized, or not listed.¶ The right of privacy is unenumerated because neither the word privacy nor the phrase right of privacy appears anywhere in the Constitution or its amendments. Nor does the text contain any words related to other rights the Supreme Court has found to derive from that right, including the right to an abortion and rights related to sexual preference. Neither "abortion" nor "sexual preference" appear anywhere in the text of the Constitution. Limits In Place Prevent Loss of Digital Privacy There are restraints placed upon how much digital privacy can be conceded Palin, Philip J, 9/18/11 , Homeland Security Watch, Brennan: Counterterrorism and the Law, http://www.hlswatch.com/index.php?s=patriot+act , Date Accessed : 7/17/11 We’ve also worked to uphold our values and the rule of law in a second area—our policies and practices here at home. As I said, we will use all lawful tools at our disposal, and that includes authorities under the renewed PATRIOT Act. We firmly believe that our intelligence gathering tools must enable us to collect the information we need to protect the American people. At the same time, these tools must be subject to appropriate oversight and rigorous checks and balances that protect the privacy of innocent individuals.¶ As such, we have ensured that investigative techniques in the United States are conducted in a manner that is consistent with our laws and subject to the supervision of our courts. We have also taken administrative steps to institute additional checks and balances, above and beyond what is required by law, in order to better safeguard the privacy rights of innocent Americans.¶ Our democratic values also include—and our national security demands—open and transparent government. Some information obviously needs to be protected. And since his first days in office, President Obama has worked to strike the proper balance between the security the American people deserve and the openness our democratic society expects.¶ In one of his first acts, the President issued a new Executive Order on classified information that, among other things, reestablished the principle that all classified information will ultimately be declassified. The President also issued a Freedom of Information Act Directive mandating that agencies adopt a presumption of disclosure when processing requests for information. The President signed into law the first intelligence authorization act in over five years to ensure better oversight of intelligence activities. Among other things, the legislation revised the process for reporting sensitive intelligence activities to Congress and created an Inspector General for the Intelligence Community.¶ For the first time, President Obama released the combined budget of the intelligence community, and reconstituted the Intelligence Oversight Board, an important check on the government’s intelligence activities. The President declassified and released legal memos that authorized the use, in early times, of enhanced interrogation techniques. Understanding that the reasons to keep those memos secret had evaporated, the President felt it was important for the American people to understand how those methods came to be authorized and used.¶ The President, through the Attorney General, instituted a new process to consider invocation of the so-called “state secrets privilege,” where the government can protect information in civil lawsuits. This process ensures that this privilege is never used simply to hide embarrassing or unlawful government activities. But, it also recognizes that its use is absolutely necessary in certain cases for the protection of national security. I know there has been some criticism of the Administration on this. But by applying a stricter internal review process, including a requirement of personal approval by the Attorney General, we are working to ensure that this extraordinary power is asserted only when there is a strong justification to do so.¶ Stifles Change Emphasis on privacy rights limits public change. Baker, C. Edwin. Nicholas F. Gallichio Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania. 2004. “Auotnomy and Informational Privacy, or Gossip: The Central Meaning of the First Amendment.” Page 255-257. Nevertheless, another possible basis for the growing popularity of privacy rights may be a sign of cultural sickness. Troublingly, the high valuation of privacy may reflect increasing desires to withdraw from civil society and especially from the public sphere. This increasingly common preference for virtually complete withdrawal stands in dramatic contrast to the classic vision of a private realm as a necessary base to which a person periodically repairs, but always with the hope and expectation of returning to the public world. My fear is that the current positive valuation of privacy reflects a society in which all value is increasingly seen as located in private life. To an increasing extent, people seem to find all meaning in private interactions of family and other personal associations or, even more disconcertingly, in a more purely commodityoriented world of private consumption with value largely based on wealth and material goods.117 According to this account, the valueorientation of commercial advertisers has virtually won. My concern is not with people recognizing that privacy and private life have true worth, but with their loss of a sense of value in public life. The public sphere is increasingly devalued and disinhabited. Though this point requires more development, my claim is that as a normative matter, the classical vision of society and of public life is more appealing, and the newer vision of “withdrawal” represents a dangerous decline.¶ Withdrawal represents a direct threat to the First Amendment values of dissent and challenge to the status quo.118 Often people will not merely withdraw themselves, but will also seek to enforce withdrawal. They fear that an active public sphere would disrupt conventional norms and private life. Not everyone loves a parade if, for example, it is a civil rights, antiwar, or neo–Nazi march. In his useful study of gay politics, Larry Gross noted how protection of privacy has been central to the gay agenda. In the years immediately after the “liberal” British Wolfenden Report in 1957,119 which recommended decriminalizing private homosexual behavior, and the British adoption of this policy, what resulted was an increase in prosecutions for arguably public homosexual behavior as the government tried to enforce closeting. Gross explained that mainstream opinion was often most adamant about preserving the public prevalence of heterosexual norms. Conservative policy could tolerate the private practice of homosexuality, while focusing its attention on the suppression of any public expression of homosexuality.120 In an American example of the same phenomenon, the Houston Post, which apparently accepted the private homosexuality of its star minority columnist, nevertheless fired him when it became known that the paper had forced him to delete from his column a public disclosure of his homosexuality. Eventually, the paper rehired him, but only after public protests by Houston’s Hispanic community and the local chapter of Queer Nation.121 Public/Private Distinction Allows Domestic Violence Private and public distinction creates spaces where law enforcement won’t engage domestic violence this allows for it to be perpetrated. Elizabeth M. Schneider, Professor of Law, 2002 (“BATTERED WOMEN & FEMINIST LAWMAKING” Pg 351 DoP: 7/24/2002, DoA: 7/18/13, http://www.brooklaw.edu/~/media/PDF/LawJournals/JLP_PDF/jlp_vol10ii.ashx) ¶ Privatization arrangements also prevail in many sorts of ¶ employment agreements.80 We have seen in the United StatesSupreme Court within the last couple of years an endorsement of ¶ the legality and propriety of these kinds of arrangements, in ¶ which people sign away their right to seek a public remedy in ¶ favor of a privatized remedy.81 Our president has initiated a ¶ discussion about the desirability of privatizing much or all of our ¶ Social Security system,82 which is the system of old age pensions ¶ for people in the United States. It has always been organized as a ¶ public agency, administered by public servants who were ¶ answerable, as governmental agencies are, but powerful interests ¶ promote to substitute this public system for a private one by ¶ making security in one’s old age an individual matter of ¶ accumulating money, investing it, and then moving one’s ¶ investment around in an entrepreneurial manner. So I see a lot of ¶ evidence that this trend toward privatization is continuing and ¶ accelerating, and I wonder what that means for the movement for ¶ the protection of battered and vulnerable women and children. ¶ One of the things that Liz talks about in her book is the ¶ Violence Against Women Act of 1994.83 But as Renée mentions, ¶ in a development that came after the book was published, the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Morrison¶ declared unconstitutional the civil rights remedy of the Violence ¶ Against Women Act, the portions that would have given women ¶ who were victims of gender-motivated violence a right to seek a ¶ private remedy in the federal courts of the United States.84 One ¶ can put forth various [one] explanations of this decision, but to me it ¶ represents a rather subtle statement of the old premise that this ¶ kind of violence really is a private matter. It is not important ¶ enough, and it does not have significant enough nation-wide ¶ effects for the federal courts to have any jurisdiction to consider ¶ it. It has to be considered (if at all) by local courts, by local ¶ authorities. State courts are all right for those cases, but the ¶ federal courts—the big courts, the important courts, the courts ¶ that deal with momentous matters significant to the nation and the ¶ nation’s health—really do not have any jurisdiction over this ¶ rather small private matter. I am being perhaps a bit sarcastic,¶ but I think that is a defensible reading of what the court was ¶ saying in Morrison.¶ 85 And if I am right in my reading of this case ¶ together with other developments in United States constitutional ¶ law, I see a gradual but relentless enlargement of this sphere of ¶ privacy, inside of which the government may not or will not be ¶ inclined to look. I do not think that is a good thing for vulnerable ¶ people or for battered women. Terrorism Digital Surveillance Stops Inevitable Terrorist Attack Lack of digital surveillance leads to terrorist attacks Sorcher, Sara. Staff Editor. June 25, 2013. Insiders: NSA's Communications Surveillance Good Way to Target Terrorists. http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/insiders-nsa-s-communicationssurveillance-good-way-to-target-terrorists-20130624. Accessed 7/16/2013. The National Security Agency's surveillance programs are effective tools for seeking out terrorists, according to 85.5 percent of National Journal's National Security Insiders.¶ "In the digital age, when every individual's digital trail increases year by year, there is no faster way to draw a picture of a network, or a conspiracy, than by piecing together different data streams," one Insider said. "This capability, in years to come, won't be a nice-to-have; it'll be critical."¶ Another Insider said that the NSA must have the tools necessary to root out terrorists or another 9/11 becomes not just possible, but certain. "If we eliminate the online- and phone-surveillance programs and a dirty bomb explodes in an American city, we have only ourselves to blame," the Insider said. "The days of gentlemen not reading other gentlemen's mail are over." Digital Surveillance Key to Stopping Al Qaeda US must monitor Al-Qaeda and its different initiatives to prevent terrorism from spreading. Evan F. Kohlmann, 2006, Terrorism Researcher, The Real Online Terrorist Threat, Foreign Affairs, Jstor, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20032074 In truth, although catastrophic computer attacks are not entirely inconceivable, the prospect that militants will be able to execute them anytime soon has been overblown. Fears of such science-fiction scenarios, moreover, have led policymakers to overlook the fact that terrorists currently use the Internet as a cheap and efficient way of communicating and organizing. These militants are now dedicated to waging an innovative, low-intensity military campaign against the United States.Jihadists are typically organized in small, widely dispersed units and coordinate their activities online, obviating the need for a central command. Al Qaeda and similar groups rely on the Internet to contact potential recruits and donors, sway public opinion, instruct would-be terrorists, pool tactics and knowledge, and organize attacks. The RAND Corporation's David Ronfeldt andjohn Arquilla have called this phenomenon "netwar," which they define as a form of conflict marked by the use of "network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies." In many ways, such groups use the Internet in the same way that peaceful political organizations do; what makes terrorists' activity threatening is their intent. To counter terrorists, the U.S. government must learn how to monitor their activity online, in the same way that it keeps tabs on terrorists in the real world. Doing so will require a realignment of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, which lag behind terrorist organizations in adopting information technologies. At present, unfortunately, senior counterterrorism officials refuse even to pay lip service to the need for such reforms. That must change-and fast. Digital Surveillance Solves Terrorism (1/2) Digital monitoring is useful, empirically has worked and is relatively simple Tom Gjelten, NPR international correspondent, 6/15/13, The Case For Surveillance: Keeping Up With Terrorist Tactics, http://www.npr.org/2013/06/15/191694315/high-tech-surveillance-targets-evolving-terrorist-tactics Date accessed 7/17/13 Since public revelations that the National Security Agency is collecting telephone records and reviewing Internet communications in the U.S. and abroad, officials have been making the case that the programs are vital. They argue that the tactics match the new ways terrorists are planning and communicating.¶ There was a time when America's enemies conspired face-to-face, or communicated through couriers, or by leaving messages for each other somewhere. But in the digital age, that has changed.¶ FBI Director Robert Mueller made that point back in 2008, as Congress considered whether to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.¶ "In this day and age, our ability to gain intelligence on the plans, the plots of those who wish to attack us is dependent on us obtaining information relating to cellphones, Internet, email, wire transfers, all of these areas," he said.¶ If all the action was in that electronic space five years ago, it's even more so today, as intelligence and security officials constantly point out.¶ Speaking in February, the NSA's general counsel, Rajesh De, threw out some figures on the explosive growth in communication data.¶ "More data crosses the Internet every second today than existed on the Internet 20 years ago. Global mobile traffic grew 70 percent last year alone," he said.¶ Officials say these trends highlight the challenge facing spy agencies: With so much communication now taking place in the digital world, intelligence officers have to be able to follow that communication.¶ James Bamford, the author of several books on the NSA, says spies used to focus on getting human sources inside an organization — agents who could report on what people in the organization were saying and doing. But human sources no longer matter so much, Bamford says. Intelligence officers use new approaches because their adversaries are interacting in new ways. ¶ "During the day, they're on cellphones, or they're on email, or they're on social-networking sites. By intercepting that information, you develop patterns and look at who these people might be involved with," he says. ¶ To justify the NSA's collection of telephone records and its selective monitoring of online communication overseas, U.S. officials cite these "revolutionary" changes in the information space. John Negroponte was the director of National Intelligence when wiretapping programs were expanded during the Bush administration. He defends the NSA's new emphasis.¶ "I'd say it's a testament to how surveillance methods have kept up with the geometric progression of these communication methods," he says.¶ Congressional critics of the expanded surveillance operations say they're not convinced that these programs have really proved their value in fighting terrorism. They ask whether other types of intelligence gathering might be just as effective.¶ Negroponte, who served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, says no one method is sufficient. He recalls how in 2006, the combination of different intelligence sources led the U.S. military to the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab alZarqawi.¶ "I believe his phone number was detected through human intelligence. Somebody gave us his phone number. Then, that phone number was monitored through signals intelligence. And then his movements were tracked by geo-spatial intelligence — drones and so forth," he says. "So it's actually the integration of these different methodologies that actually give you the best results."¶ The expanded use of telephone and Internet surveillance is in part an adaptation to the information revolution. The NSA, the CIA and other agencies will defend these programs vigorously on that basis, despite concerns that Americans' privacy has been put at risk.¶ But that's not the whole story: It's also clear that the programs are popular in the spy business simply because they're convenient and efficient. They make intelligence gathering easier. Digital surveillance thwarted over 50 possible terrorist threats Kastrenakes, Jacob. Journalist. June 18, 2013. 'Over 50' terrorist plots were stopped by surveillance efforts, says NSA director. http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/18/4441774/over-50-terrorist-plotsstopped-NSA-surveillance. Accessed 7/16/2013. Speaking to a congressional committee this morning, General Keith Alexander revealed that government surveillance efforts have thwarted “over 50” possible terrorist threats since 9/11, including plans to bomb the New York Stock Exchange and NYC subway system. Alexander, who heads the NSA, specifically noted that programs like the Verizon metadata collection may have been able to stop 9/11 if they had been in place at the time. He suggested that this program as well as “other intelligence” — which he did not disclose — assisted in foiling the 50 or so threats. Digital Surveillance Solves Terrorism (2/2) The solution is not targeted takedowns which provide little intelligence; surveillance is critical to catching next-generation terrorists Congressional Research Service. 2007 (An office of the Library of Congress. “Terrorist Capabilities for Cyberattack: Overview and Policy Issues”. 22 Jan. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-024.pdf) Some security experts do not think it is worthwhile to hijack or disrupt the web sites created by terrorists. This is because terrorists will usually find a way to quickly put their sites back up under different, multiple names, which may be even more difficult to monitor. Instead, U.S. intelligence sources can gain valuable information by simply monitoring the web sites they already know about. This may also include monitoring the Internet addresses of those who frequent these web sites. However, more skilled analysts are needed to help translate the communications and information that is posted on the many different terrorist web sites. It has been empirically proven that digital surveillance disrupts terrorist attacks Gerstein, Josh-- White House reporter for POLITICO, specializing in legal and national security issues. June 18th, 2013. “NSA: PRISM stopped NYSE attack.” Published on Politico.com. Recently leaked communication surveillance programs have helped thwart more than 50 “potential terrorist events” around the world since the Sept. 11 attacks, National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander said Tuesday. Alexander said at least 10 of the attacks were set to take place in the United States, suggesting that most of the terrorism disrupted by the program had been set to occur abroad. The NSA also disclosed that [C]ounterterrorism officials targeted fewer than 300 phone numbers or other “identifiers” last year in the massive call-tracking database secretly assembled by the U.S. government. Alexander said the programs were subject to “extraordinary oversight.” ”This isn’t some rogue operation that a group of guys up at NSA are running,” the spy agency’s chief added. The data on use of the call-tracking data came in a fact sheet released to reporters in connection with a public House Intelligence Committee hearing exploring the recently leaked telephone data mining program and another surveillance effort focused on Web traffic generated by foreigners. Alexander said 90 percent of the potential terrorist incidents were disrupted by the Web traffic program known as PRISM. He was less clear about how many incidents the call-tracking effort had helped to avert. Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce said the Web traffic program had contributed to arrests averting a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange that resulted in criminal charges in 2008. Joyce also indicated that the PRISM program was essential to disrupting a plot to bomb the New York City subways in 2009 and 40 potential cyber attacks in the years 2001-2009. “Without the [Section] 702 tool, we would not have identified Najibullah Zazi,” Joyce said. Terrorists are using the internet to expand, the United States needs to monitor them. Richard A. Posner, 2008, Senior Lecturer in Law, The University of Chicago. “Privacy, Surveillance, and Law”, The University of Chicago Law Review, Jstor, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20141907 Privacy is the terrorist's best friend, and the terrorist's privacy has been enhanced by the same technological developments that have both made data mining feasible and elicited vast quantities of per sonal information from innocents: the internet, with its anonymity, and the secure encryption of digitized data which, when combined with that anonymity, make the internet a powerful tool of conspiracy. The government has a compelling need to exploit digitization in defense of national security. But if it is permitted to do so, intelligence officers are going to be scrutinizing a mass of personal information about US citizens. And we know that many people do not like even complete strangers poring over the details of their private lives. But the fewer of these strangers who have access to those details and the more profes sional their interest in them, the less the affront to the sense of privacy. One reason people do not much mind having their bodies examined by doctors is that they know that doctors' interest in bodies is profes sional rather than prurient; and we can hope that the same is true of intelligence professionals. Preventing Terrorism Necessitates Domestic Spying We need technology that can gather information against terrorists, even if it necessitates collecting that of US citizens. Glenn Sulmasy, 2013, Department of Humanities, Professor of Law, U.S. Coast Guard Academy, “Why We Need Government Surveillance”, Center for National Policy, http://cnponline.org/ht/d/ViewBloggerThread/i/42295 Opinion: Edward Snowden is a hero The current threat by al Qaeda and jihadists is one that requires aggressive intelligence collection and efforts. One has to look no further than the disruption of the New York City subway bombers (the one being touted by DNI Clapper) or the Boston Marathon bombers to know that the war on al Qaeda is coming home to us, to our citizens, to our students, to our streets and our subways. This 21st century war is different and requires new ways and methods of gathering information. As technology has increased, so has our ability to gather valuable, often actionable, intelligence. However, the move toward "home-grown" terror will necessarily require, by accident or purposefully, collections of U.S. citizens conversations with potential overseas persons of interest. Where is NSA leaker Edward Snowden? What could authorities do with Snowden? Snowden's path to top secret clearance Where is Edward Snowden? An open society, such as the United States, ironically needs to use this technology to protect itself. This truth is naturally uncomfortable for a country with a Constitution that prevents the federal government from conducting "unreasonable searches and seizures." American historical resistance towards such activities is a bedrock of our laws, policies and police procedures. But what might have been reasonable 10 years ago is not the same any longer. The constant armed struggle against the jihadists has adjusted our beliefs on what we think our government can, and must, do in order to protect its citizens. However, when we hear of programs such PRISM, or the Department of Justice getting phone records of scores of citizens without any signs of suspicious activities nor indications of probable cause that they might be involved in terrorist related activities, the American demand for privacy naturally emerges to challenge such "trolling" measures or data-mining. The executive branch, although particularly powerful in this arena, must ensure the Congress is kept abreast of activities such as these surveillance programs. The need for enhanced intelligence activities is a necessary part of the war on al Qaeda, but abuse can occur without ensuring the legislative branch has awareness of aggressive tactics such as these. Our Founding Fathers, aware of the need to have an energetic, vibrant executive branch in foreign affairs, still anticipated checks upon the presidency by the legislature. Working together, the two branches can ensure that both legally, and by policy, this is what the citizens desire of their government -- and that leaks such as Snowden's won't have the impact and damage that his leaks are likely to cause. Terrorists Use the Internet to Plan Attacks (1/2) Terrorists use the internet to plan attacks Thomas, Timothy L. Lieutenant Colonel of U.S. Army. 2003. Al Qaeda and the Internet:¶ The Danger¶ of “Cyberplanning”. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a485810.pdf. Date Accessed: 7/16/13 We can say with some certainty, al Qaeda loves the Internet. When the latter¶ first appeared, it was hailed as an integrator of cultures and a medium for¶ businesses, consumers, and governments to communicate with one another. It¶ appeared to offer unparalleled opportunities for the creation of a “global village.” Today the Internet still offers that promise, but it also has proven in some¶ respects to be a digital menace. Its use by al Qaeda is only one example. It also has¶ provided a virtual battlefield for peacetime hostilities between Taiwan and¶ China, Israel and Palestine, Pakistan and India, and China and the United States¶ (during both the war over Kosovo and in the aftermath of the collision between¶ the Navy EP-3 aircraft and Chinese MiG). In times of actual conflict, the Internet¶ was used as a virtual battleground between NATO’s coalition forces and elements of the Serbian population. These real tensions from a virtual interface involved not only nation-states but also non-state individuals and groups either¶ aligned with one side or the other, or acting independently. Evidence strongly suggests that terrorists used the Internet to plan their¶ operations for 9/11. Computers seized in Afghanistan reportedly revealed that¶ al Qaeda was collecting intelligence on targets and sending encrypted messages¶ via the Internet. As recently as 16 September 2002, al Qaeda cells operating in¶ America reportedly were using Internet-based phone services to communicate¶ with cells overseas. These incidents indicate that the Internet is being used as a¶ “cyberplanning” tool for terrorists. It provides terrorists with anonymity, command and control resources, and a host of other measures to coordinate and integrate attack options. The internet is used by terrorists to recruit and plan attacks Mueller, Robert S. 2012 (Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Statement Before the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies”. 7 March. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/fbi-budget-request-for-fiscal-year2013) The basis from which acts of terrorism are committed—from organizations to affiliates/surrogates to self-radicalized individuals—continue to evolve and expand. Of particular note is al Qaeda’s use of online chat rooms and websites to recruit and radicalize followers to commit acts of terrorism. And they are not hiding in the shadows of cyber space: al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has produced a full-color, English-language online magazine. Terrorists are not only sharing ideas; they are soliciting information and inviting communication. Al Shabaab, the al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, uses Twitter to taunt its enemies—in English—and encourage terrorist activity. Terrorists use information on the internet to plan attacks Thomas, Timothy L. 2003. Lieutenant Colonel of U.S. Army. Al Qaeda and the Internet:¶ The Danger¶ of “Cyberplanning”. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a485810.pdf. Date Accessed: 7/16/13 The Internet is used to gather information on potential targets. The¶ website operated by the Muslim Hackers Club reportedly featured links to US¶ sites that purport to disclose sensitive information like code names and radio frequencies used by the US Secret Service. The same website offers tutorials in viruses, hacking stratagems, network “phreaking” and secret codes, as well as links¶ to other militant Islamic and cyberprankster web addresses.17Recent targets that¶ terrorists have discussed include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention¶ in Atlanta; FedWire, the money-movement clearing system maintained by the¶ Federal Reserve Board; and facilities controlling the flow of information over¶ the Internet.18Attacks on critical infrastructure control systems would be particularly harmful, especially on a system such as the Supervisory Control and Data¶ Acquisition (SCADA) system. Thus any information on insecure network architectures or non-enforceable security protocols is potentially very damaging.¶ Terrorists have access, like many Americans, to imaging data on potential targets, as well as maps, diagrams, and other crucial data on important facilities or networks. Imaging data can also allow terrorists to view counterterrorist ¶ activities at a target site. One captured al Qaeda computer contained engineering¶ and structural architecture features of a dam, enabling al Qaeda engineers and¶ planners to simulate catastrophic failures.19 A2: Terrorist Don’t use Internet Terrorists do use the Internet—they use it to communicate and send emails, they outline their philosophy for everyone to see, and they outline their strategy. Ian Brown and Douwe Korff [Associate Director of Cyber Security at University of Oxford, UK, Professor of International Law at London Metropolitan University, Terrorism and the Proportionality of Internet Surveillance, European Journal of Criminology, Mar 26, 2009, Pages 123-124] Terrorist use of new technologies provides new opportunities for intelligence gathering and disruption of operations by intelligence agencies. They can use active and passive attacks (e.g. viruses and surveillance/traffic analysis) on terrorist computers to gather address books, cookies, passwords and similar information. Counter-terrorist operations include the use of black propaganda to destroy trust. If agencies can identify and ‘take out’ purveyors of good technical information, they can flood channels with misinformation and leave the less informed to propagate bad information. At the same time they gather intelligence on participants, organizations and their modus operandi. Most ideological debate takes place on open recognized sites, including senior participants, which allows up-and-coming leaders to be identified (Shahar 2007). Jihadi websites provide much information about their organizations, including core beliefs; ideological divisions; ultimate goals and overall game plan; methods proposed to reach these goals; who makes decisions and how these are made. They often detail ideological splits and identify clerics who will dispute Qu’ranic interpretations who can be co-opted, intimidated or killed, providing a mechanism for intelligence agencies to challenge terror groups’ legitimacy and siphon off recruits. Movements often split over theo- logical (not tactical) disagreements. The internet is becoming the premier method of terrorist communication Congressional Research Service. 2007 (An office of the Library of Congress. “Terrorist Capabilities for Cyberattack: Overview and Policy Issues”. 22 Jan. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-024.pdf) Just as people all over the world now use the Internet, terrorists also use it as a modern tool for communication. Terrorists and extremist groups have reportedly generated thousands of Internet web sites to support psychological operations, fund raising, recruitment, and coordination of activities. Recently, the Department of State’s Counterterrorism Director noted “the most worrisome scenario of another attack in the homeland is lone operatives who slip into the country and take directions through cyberspace.” A significant concern is that some of these web sites used for the suspected terrorist activity are hosted on Internet Service Providers inside the United States. The level of technical sophistication of the extremist groups that use and operate these web sites has also increased. In 2006 it was reported that an organization linked to al-Qaeda produced a 26-page manual providing instructions on the use of the Google search engine to further the goals of global jihad. Recently British forces in Iraq have found print-outs of Google-Earth pictures that reportedly were to be used for targeting of coalition forces. Terrorists Use the Internet to Plan Attacks (2/2) Terrorist groups can use the internet to infiltrate vital US networks and explore their flaws. Thomas, Timothy L. Lieutenant Colonel of U.S. Army. 2003. Al Qaeda and the Internet:¶ The Danger¶ of “Cyberplanning”. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a485810.pdf. Date Accessed: 7/16/13 The Internet can be used to divert attention from a real attack scenario. Al Qaeda can plant threats on the Internet or via cell phones to mislead law¶ enforcement officials. Terrorists study how the United States collects and analyzes information, and thus how we respond to information.¶ Terrorists know when their Internet “chatter” or use of telecommunications increases, US officials issue warnings. Terrorists can thus introduce false¶ information into a net via routine means, measure the response it garners from the¶ US intelligence community, and then try to figure out where the leaks are in their ¶ systems or what type of technology the United States is using to uncover their¶ plans. For example, if terrorists use encrypted messages over cell phones to discuss a fake operation against, say, the Golden Gate Bridge, they can then sit back¶ and watch to see if law enforcement agencies issue warnings regarding that particular landmark. If they do, then the terrorists know their communications are¶ being listened to by US officials.3 The Internet is Key to Terrorist Communication The internet is becoming the premier method of terrorist communication Congressional Research Service. 2007 (An office of the Library of Congress. “Terrorist Capabilities for Cyberattack: Overview and Policy Issues”. 22 Jan. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-024.pdf) Just as people all over the world now use the Internet, terrorists also use it as a modern tool for communication. Terrorists and extremist groups have reportedly generated thousands of Internet web sites to support psychological operations, fund raising, recruitment, and coordination of activities. Recently, the Department of State’s Counterterrorism Director noted “the most worrisome scenario of another attack in the homeland is lone operatives who slip into the country and take directions through cyberspace.” A significant concern is that some of these web sites used for the suspected terrorist activity are hosted on Internet Service Providers inside the United States. The level of technical sophistication of the extremist groups that use and operate these web sites has also increased. In 2006 it was reported that an organization linked to al-Qaeda produced a 26-page manual providing instructions on the use of the Google search engine to further the goals of global jihad. Recently British forces in Iraq have found print-outs of Google-Earth pictures that reportedly were to be used for targeting of coalition forces. Internet Key to Terrorist Funding Terrorists can transfer funds digitally, and there is nothing we can do to stop them Bucci, Steven. 2009 (Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies. "The Confluence of Cyber Crime and Terrorism". 12 Jun. http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/theconfluence-of-cyber-crime-and-terrorism) A new wrinkle that is developing is the use of virtual worlds. There is hard evidence of money transfers having been made within these worlds. This is done by using real cash to buy virtual currency, conducting various transactions within the virtual environment, and then converting it back into real cash again in a completely different temporal location. It is all safe, clean, legal, and nearly impossible to trace. Internet Key to Terrorist Education Digital terrorist libraries contain detailed instructions on how to conduct sophisticated cyber attacks Congressional Research Service. 2007 (An office of the Library of Congress. “Terrorist Capabilities for Cyberattack: Overview and Policy Issues”. 22 Jan. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-024.pdf) The Washington Times has reported that Islamic extremists are calling for creation of an Islamist hackers’ army to plan cyberattacks against the U.S. government and that postings on the extremist bulletin board, al-Farooq, carry detailed cyberattack instructions, and include spyware programs for download that can be used to learn the passwords of targeted users. Other extremist websites reportedly resemble online training camps that may offer instructions for how to create a safe-house, how to clean a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, or what to do if captured. Terrorist organizations are building out digital libraries with resources on how to conduct attacks Congressional Research Service. 2007 (An office of the Library of Congress. “Terrorist Capabilities for Cyberattack: Overview and Policy Issues”. 22 Jan. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-024.pdf) Senior leadership of al-Qaeda, who reportedly have access to the most modern technology equipment, and other terrorist groups are reportedly building a massive and dynamic online library of training materials, many of which are supported by subject matter experts who answer questions on message boards or in chat rooms. This online library covers such areas as how to mix poisons for chemical attacks, how to ambush U.S. soldiers, how to coordinate a suicide bomb attack, and how to hack computers. One discussion forum popular with supporters of terrorism is called Qalah, or Fortress, where potential al Qaeda recruits can find links to the latest in computer hacking techniques in a discussion area called “electronic jihad.” Cyberterror Impacts: Economy Cyber Terror attacks have the capability of causing economic damage- Stock markets and actual loss to companies Cashell, Jackson, Jickling, and Webel; 2004 (Brian Cashell, William D. Jackson, Mark Jickling, and Baird Webel, April 1, 2004, Government and Finance Division, CRS report for Congress, The Economic Impact of Cyber-attacks, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32331.pdf) accessed 7/26/13 A central issue, in both public and private sectors, is whether we are devoting enough resources to information security. Part of the answer must come from economic analysis. What are the costs, both historical and potential, of security breaches? How frequently can attacks be expected? Can these factors be quantified precisely, so that organizations can determine the optimal amount to spend on information security and measure the effectiveness of that spending? No one in the field is satisfied with our present ability to measure the costs and probabilities of cyber-attacks. There are no standard methodologies for cost measurement, and study of the frequency of attacks is hindered by the reluctance of organizations to make public their experiences with security breaches. This report summarizes the limited empirical data on attack costs, and surveys recent theoretical work that seeks to overcome the absence of reliable and comprehensive statistics. Investigations into the stock price impact of cyber-attacks show that identified target firms suffer losses of 1%-5% in the days after an attack. For the average New York Stock Exchange Corporation, price drops of these magnitudes translate into shareholder losses of between $50 million and $200 million. Several computer security consulting firms produce estimates of total worldwide losses attributable to virus and worm attacks and to hostile digital acts in general. The 2003 loss estimates by these firms range from $13 billion (worms and viruses only) to $226 billion (for all forms of overt attacks). The reliability of these estimates is often challenged; the underlying methodology is basically anecdotal. The insurance industry’s response to rising perceptions of cyber-risk has been twofold. Initially, most companies excluded, and continue to exclude, cyber-attacks from standard business insurance coverage. After this initial exclusion, several insurers then began selling specialized cyber-risk policies. Growth of the market has been slow; lacking the empirical data to construct actuarial tables, insurers are unable to price risk with the degree of confidence they enjoy in traditional insurance lines. Uniqueness: Risk of Terrorism is High Terrorism continuously poses a serious threat to the U.S. Gertz, Bill, senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon, June 19, 2013 The threat posed by al Qaeda terrorism around the world continues to increase despite President Barack Obama’s recent claim that the central group behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is on the path to defeat, according to U.S. and foreign counterterrorism officials and private experts. Obama said in a speech to the National Defense University May 23 that because of the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and most of his top aides, “we are safer.” While terrorist threats still exist, “the core of al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan is on the path to defeat,” the president said. However, a U.S. counterterrorism official said the threat posed by al Qaeda is growing. “From Africa to Pakistan, it is spreading systematically,” the official said. The official blamed the Obama administration policy of focusing its counterterrorism efforts almost exclusively on central al Qaeda. The focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan resulted in a lack of targeted counterterrorism efforts in other locations, the official said. The official added that counterterrorism efforts have been weakened by the administration’s policy of dissociating Islam from al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorism. The policy was a key effort of John Brennan, White House counterterrorism chief during the first Obama administration. As CIA director, Brennan has expanded the policy of limiting links between Islam and terrorism at the agency. The result is that Islamist terror groups are flourishing, posing direct threats to the United States and to U.S. interests outside the country, the official said. That assessment is bolstered by a new report by the private Lignet intelligence group. The report made public Tuesday says the U.S. government’s overreliance on sanctions and surveillance has limited the war on terror. The result is “a decentralized al Qaeda structure—and a much greater threat,” the report said. “Al Qaeda has transitioned from a hierarchical cell structure to a franchise organization that is now responsible for four times as many terrorist attacks a year as it was before 9/11,” the report said. Terrorist attack against the United States is imminent Jenkins, Brian Michael. senior adviser to the RAND president. July 10, 2013. Could Terrorists Pull Off a Mumbai-Style Attack in the U.S.? http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/worldreport/2013/07/10/could-terrorists-launch-a-mumbai-style-attack-in-the-united-states. Date Accessed 7/17/13. The event provided the latest evidence that the means of an armed terrorist attack are certainly available in the United States. We've seen it over and over again, in Newtown, Connecticut; Aurora, Colorado; on the campus of Virginia Tech, to name just a few.¶ Although these killings involved a single shooter without a terror agenda, they demonstrate that one person, with little or no training, can acquire and effectively use firearms to achieve high body counts. A review of the most deadly mass killings in the United States, going back to the Columbine High School murders in 1999, show that an average of 15 people died per attack. That's close to what each of the trained terrorist teams achieved in Mumbai.¶ [Read the U.S. News Debate: Should People Be Allowed to Carry Guns Openly?]¶ But acquiring the firepower needed to carry out a mass murder is only one part of the equation. An armed terrorist attack along the lines of that carried out in Mumbai presents a series of logistical challenges, starting with recruiting and training a willing and able suicide assault force.¶ In Mumbai, there were 10 terrorists, armed with assault rifles, pistols, grenades and improvised explosives. They carried out coordinated attacks across the city, paralyzing a metropolis of 14 million people for 60 hours while mesmerizing the world's media. It was a complex operation and likely the culmination of months of training.¶ There are two ways a Mumbaistyle attack could be carried out in the United States. Terrorist planners could assemble and train a team of attackers abroad and attempt to infiltrate them into the United States, or homegrown terrorists could assemble and launch a Mumbai-style attack. So far, neither has happened in the modern history of terrorism in the United States.¶ Bringing a team of trained terrorists into the United States would be extremely difficult today, an audacious endeavor even by al-Qaida standards. Improved intelligence worldwide has degraded the operational capabilities of al-Qaida and has made its operating environment more hostile. And any large mobilization of terrorist personnel would likely be noticed by intelligence gatherers. Terror threat increases with escaped al-Qaeda leaders while Iraq copes with lose of U.S. expertise. Yasee, Jabbar. Washington Post writer. Sly, Liz. , Post’s Beirut bureau chief, Washington Post writer. July 22, 2013. Washington Post. Iraq jailbreak highlights al-Qaeda affiliate’s ascendancy. Date accessed: July 26, 2013. Iraq’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that an unspecified number of prisoners had escaped from Abu Ghraib but none from a second facility that also came under assault. In Washington, U.S. officials closely monitoring the jailbreak said the number of escapees was thought to be 500 to 600, including a significant number of al-Qaeda operatives.¶ Members of the Iraqi parliament who said they had been briefed by security officials asserted that the escapees included some top “emirs,” or leaders, of the al-Qaeda in Iraq franchise, many of whom had been captured by U.S. troops.¶ Iraq’s security forces set up checkpoints on highways leading west to Syria and Jordan and around Baghdad’s airport to snare fugitives. At least some prisoners were recaptured in the dragnet, according to Iraqi news media reports.¶ But even if the prisoners are recaptured, the scale of the attacks on the heavily guarded facilities reinforced an impression among many Iraqis that their security forces are struggling to cope with a resurgent al-Qaeda since U.S. forces withdrew in 2011, taking with them much of the expertise and technology that had been used to hold extremists at bay. Terror Threat Increasing Goes Nuclear Terrorists have capabilities of accumulating weapons of mass destruction Perl, Raphael. December 21, 2004. Head of the OSCE Action against Terrorism Unit, Specialist in International Affairs Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division. Terrorism and National Security: Issues and Trends. http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/IB10119.pdf. Date Accessed 7/28/13. Looming over the entire issue of¶ international terrorism is a trend toward¶ proliferation of weapons of mass destruction¶ (WMD). For instance, Iran, seen as the most¶ active state sponsor of terrorism, has been¶ secretly conducting a longstanding uranium¶ enrichment program, and North Korea has¶ both admitted to having a clandestine program¶ for uranium enrichment and claimed to have¶ nuclear weapons. (See CRS Issue Brief¶ IB91141, North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons¶ Program.) On December 19, 2003, Iran signed¶ an agreement allowing international inspections of nuclear sites; on December 21, 2003¶ Libya announced similar intentions. Indications have also surfaced that Al Qaeda has¶ attempted to acquire chemical, biological,¶ radiological, and nuclear weapons. As a¶ result, stakes in the war against international¶ terrorism are increasing and margins for error¶ in selecting appropriate policy instruments to¶ prevent terrorist attacks are diminishing. A2: Terrorists Are Not Tech Savvy Terrorists are more capable with technology than the United States government Congressional Research Service. 2007 (An office of the Library of Congress. “Terrorist Capabilities for Cyberattack: Overview and Policy Issues”. 22 Jan. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-024.pdf) A recent study of more than 200,000 multimedia documents on 86 sample websites concluded that extremists exhibited similar levels of web knowledge as U.S. government agencies, and that the terrorist websites employed significantly more sophisticated multimedia technologies than U.S. government websites. The study concluded that these extremist websites support advanced Internetbased communication tools such as online forums and chat rooms more frequently than U.S. government web sites. Because of perceived anonymity, terrorist likely feel safer when working together on the Internet. A2: Digital Surveillance of Terrorists Outside of US Many terrorist websites are hosted on servers within the United States Congressional Research Service. 2007 (An office of the Library of Congress. “Terrorist Capabilities for Cyberattack: Overview and Policy Issues”. 22 Jan. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-024.pdf) Just as people all over the world now use the Internet, terrorists also use it as a modern tool for communication. Terrorists and extremist groups have reportedly generated thousands of Internet web sites to support psychological operations, fund raising, recruitment, and coordination of activities. Recently, the Department of State’s Counterterrorism Director noted “the most worrisome scenario of another attack in the homeland is lone operatives who slip into the country and take directions through cyberspace.” A significant concern is that some of these web sites used for the suspected terrorist activity are hosted on Internet Service Providers inside the United States. The level of technical sophistication of the extremist groups that use and operate these web sites has also increased. In 2006 it was reported that an organization linked to al-Qaeda produced a 26-page manual providing instructions on the use of the Google search engine to further the goals of global jihad. Recently British forces in Iraq have found print-outs of Google-Earth pictures that reportedly were to be used for targeting of coalition forces. A2: Terror Talk Turn: Defining terrorism is critical in solving it – this outweighs your root cause arguments TTSRL 8 (Transnational Terrorism, Security and the Rule of Law, policy Brif no. 2, 10/1/8, www.transnationalterrorism.eu/tekst/publications/WP3%20Del%204.pdf) JPG Yet the real business can be spoiled, some authors claim, by the lack of a universally agreed definition of terrorism. ‘An objective definition of terrorism is not only possible: it is also indispensable to any serious attempt to combat terrorism,’ holds Ganor (quoted in Schmid, 2004a: 375). He thus reiterated his earlier statement on the importance of this issue, in which he had declared that a common understanding of what constitutes terrorism is important, among other purposes, for 1) a development of common international strategies, 2) effective results of the international mobilization against terrorism, 3) enforcement of international agreements against terrorism, and 4) effective extradiction procedures (Ganor, 1998). Similarly, Schmid also points to a positive role of a universal definition in coordinating the states’ anti-terrorist strategies, quoting Dean and Alexander, who consider the absence of a universal definition of terrorism as the main factor likely to encourage future terrorism – more eminent than, e.g., disagreement as to the root causes, religionization of politics or exploitation of the media (Schmid, 2004a: 378). However, the focus is here shifted from the academia to the fields of strategic and legal discourse, and Ganor and Schmid’s statements therefore cannot be considered as proper arguments in favour of the universal academic definition of terrorism. Nonetheless, they pave the way to the conclusion that in fact, there is a search going on not for one universal definition of terrorism, but for manifold definitions of terrorism, which, in each of the fields listed above (academic, strategic and legal), are required to play a peculiar role and therefore focus on various issue areas in their quest. Whereas the strategic discourse may be assumed to be primarily concerned with terrorism as a method of combat, in the legal discourse, the focus rests rather with those who can be punished for commiting terrorist acts, the perpetrators. In the absence of a universal legal definition, capabilities of prosecuting those who commit terrorist crimes are limited – nullum crimen sine lege – and the extradition channels are obstructed. Defining terrorism is key to prevent abuses of it – the alternative allows cooption TTSRL 8 (Transnational Terrorism, Security and the Rule of Law, policy Brif no. 2, 10/1/8, www.transnationalterrorism.eu/tekst/publications/WP3%20Del%204.pdf) JPG The first reason is that the absence of a commonly accepted definition invites abuse. In view of the delegitimization, stigmatization and securitization issues discussed in the next section, this seems to be a serious case for expanding a common understanding of terrorism. Double standards and the might makes right principle applied both in the international and domestic scene – styling resistance movements, guerillas or mere political opposition as “terrorists” - have in recent times become a favourite instrument of authoritarian governments to legitimize crushing those actors abroad – in which the label “terrorism” is used as a powerful instrument in the hands of the stronger. This should be, it can be argued, prevented on normative grounds. The academia, which ought to be critical towards the realm of politics – even if it cannot be detached from it – should then play a crucial role in the deconstruction of similar processes. Yet, to meet such expectations, it should possess useful instruments of analysis. In line with the “strategic” argument outlined above, Jessica Stern of Harvard University also concedes that ‘how we define terrorism profoundly influences how we respond to it’. Yet she adds another reason in favour of the definition – its relevance for theory and research: ‘The definition inevitably determines the kind of data we collect and analyze, which in turn influences our understanding of trends and our predictions about the future’ (1999: 12). The same argument is presented by Schmid, who speaks of the universalist definition as a prerequisite of a ‘responsible theory’ (2006: 3). Such arguments may be radicalized: arbitrariness in definitions as points of departure for research perhaps not only influences academics’ results and hinders their comparability, but it also generates a sense of uncertainty that the participants in the discourse talk about, indeed, the same phenomenon at any given point of time, which limits their potential for cooperation. Uniformly defining terrorism in the academia thus seems relevant both in theoretical and practical terms. From the theoretical point of view, such clarification would provide a paradigmatic stable point of departure for the research on terrorism – instead of the current state of confusion where results of individual researchers and teams can be compared or complement each other only to a limited extent. From the practical point of view, it invite abuse. would contribute to mitigating the ambiguities associated with the term that Cyberattacks US Is Vulnerable to Cyberattacks Director of National Intelligence agrees US is vulnerable to cyberattacks; we are compromising information to foreign countries. James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, 2011, “Statement for the Record on the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence”, http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/DNISFR021011.pdf As we expand our ability to create and share knowledge, maintain our society and produce economic goods, we are developing new vulnerabilities and enabling those who would steal, corrupt, harm or destroy public and private assets vital to our national interests. In the past year, we have seen a dramatic increase in malicious cyber activity targeting US computers and networks; almost two-thirds of US firms report that they have been the victim of cybersecurity incidents or information breaches, while the volume of malicious software (“malware”) on American networks more than tripled from Industry estimates that the production of malware has reached its highest levels, with an average of 60,000 new pieces identified per day. Almost half of all US computers have been compromised, according to another industry survey. This current environment favors those who desire to exploit our vulnerabilities with the trend likely getting worse over the next five years because of the slow adoption of defensive best practices and rapid advances in offensive vulnerability discovery and In April a large number of routing paths to various Internet Protocol addresses were redirected through networks in China for 17 minutes due to inaccurate information posted by a Chinese Internet Service Provider. This diversion of data would have given the operators of the servers on those networks the ability to read, delete, or edit e-mail and other information sent along those paths. This incident affected traffic to and from U.S. Government and military sites, including sites for the Senate, the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, and the office of the Secretary of Defense, as well as a number of Fortune 500 firms. information technology supply chain can hide many risks. Such vulnerability was demonstrated by employees at a US firm who were convicted for supplying counterfeit computer hardware to U.S. Last year some of our largest information technology and defense contractor companies discovered that throughout much of 2009 they had been the targets of a systematic effort to penetrate their networks and acquire proprietary information. The intrusions attempted to gain access to and potentially modify the contents of source code repositories, the intellectual „crown jew Our identities are increasingly vulnerable. Cyber criminals are stalking prospective victims on social networking sites, acquiring personal information to tailor „spear phishing‟ emails to gather 28 more information that can be used to facilitate identity theft. They are intercepting messages exchanged by mobile devices to validate transactions, and masquerading as their victims to steal funds from their bank accounts. Further, the consolidation of data captured in emails, social networks, Internet search engines, and geographic location of mobile service subscribers increases the potential for identification and targeting of government personnel by criminals, or by intelligence organizations. In the last year, we have witnessed the emergence of foreign military capabilities in cyber space. This formalization of military cyber capabilities creates another tool that foreign leaders may use to undermine critical infrastructures that were previously assumed secure before or during conflict. The IC is reaching out to the private sector to ensure current understanding of the dynamic cyber environment. More government-private sector and international cooperation is still required across the cybersecurity landscape. Cyberattack Impacts: Laundry List Cyber attacks by terrorist organizations are happening in the status quo, and they are become increasingly dangerous, with some groups gaining the capacity to destroy the economy and kill millions of civilians by attacking infrastructure Panetta, Leon. 2012 (United States Secretary of Defense. Published by the United States Department of Defense online as "Remarks by Secretary Panetta on Cybersecurity to the Business Executives for National Security, New York City". 11 Oct. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=5136) I know that when people think of cybersecurity today, they worry about hackers and criminals who prowl the Internet, steal people's identities, steal sensitive business information, steal even national security secrets. Those threats are real and they exist today.¶ But the even greater danger [is] -- the greater danger facing us in cyberspace goes beyond crime and it goes beyond harassment. A cyber attack perpetrated by nation states or violent extremist groups could be as destructive as the terrorist attack on 9/11. Such a destructive cyber-terrorist attack could virtually paralyze the nation.¶ Let me give you some examples of the kinds of attacks that we have already experienced.¶ In recent weeks, as many of you know, some large U.S. financial institutions were hit by so-called Distributed Denial of Service attacks. These attacks delayed or disrupted services on customer websites. While this kind of tactic isn't new, the scale and speed with which it happened was unprecedented.¶ But even more alarming is an attack that happened two months ago when a very sophisticated virus called Shamoon infected computers in the Saudi Arabian State Oil Company Aramco. Shamoon included a routine called a ‘wiper’, coded to self-execute. This routine replaced crucial systems files with an image of a burning U.S. flag. But it also put additional garbage data that overwrote all the real data on the machine. More than 30,000 computers that it infected were rendered useless and had to be replaced. It virtually destroyed 30,000 computers.¶ Then just days after this incident, there was a similar attack on RasGas of Qatar, a major energy company in the region. All told, the Shamoon virus was probably the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date.¶ Imagine the impact an attack like that would have on your company or your business.¶ These attacks mark a significant escalation of the cyber threat and they have renewed concerns about still more destructive scenarios that could unfold.¶ For example, we know that foreign cyber actors are probing America's critical infrastructure networks. They are targeting the computer control systems that operate chemical, electricity and water plants and those that guide transportation throughout this country.¶ We know of specific instances where intruders have successfully gained access to these control systems. ¶ We also know that they are seeking to create advanced tools to attack these systems and cause panic and destruction and even the loss of life.¶ Let me explain how this could unfold. An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cyber tools to gain control of critical switches. They could, for example, derail passenger trains or even more dangerous, derail trains loaded with lethal chemicals. ¶ They could contaminate the water supply in major cities or shutdown the power grid across large parts of the country.¶ The most destructive scenarios involve cyber actors launching several attacks on our critical infrastructure at one time, in combination with a physical attack on our country. Attackers could also seek to disable or degrade critical military systems and communication networks.¶ The collective result of these kinds of attacks could be a cyber Pearl Harbor; an attack that would cause physical destruction and the loss of life. In fact, it would paralyze and shock the nation and create a new, profound sense of vulnerability. Cyberattack Impacts: Terrorists are a Threat Terrorists, given the capability, would launch full-scale cyberattacks Mueller, Robert S. 2012 (Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Statement Before the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies”. 7 March. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/fbi-budget-request-for-fiscal-year2013) To date, terrorists have not used the Internet to launch a full-scale cyber attack, but we cannot underestimate their intent. Terrorists have shown interest in pursuing hacking skills. And they may seek to train their own recruits or hire outsiders, with an eye toward pursuing cyber attacks. These adaptations of the terrorist threat make the FBI’s counterterrorism mission that much more difficult and challenging. Terrorist organization are capable of cyberattacks against both United States government targets and infrastructure, and they are aware of the value those strikes hold for their cause Congressional Research Service. 2007 (An office of the Library of Congress. “Terrorist Capabilities for Cyberattack: Overview and Policy Issues”. 22 Jan. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-024.pdf) A recent study of more than 200,000 multimedia documents on 86 sample websites concluded that In April 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) stated in a letter to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that cyberwarfare attacks against the U.S. critical infrastructure will become a viable option for terrorists as they become more familiar with the technology required for the attacks. Also according to the CIA, various groups, including Al Qaeda and Hizballah, are becoming more adept at using the Internet and computer technologies, and these groups could possibly develop the skills necessary for a cyberattack. In February 2005, FBI director Robert Mueller, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that terrorists show a growing understanding of the critical role of information technology in the U.S. economy and have expanded their recruitment to include people studying math, computer science, and engineering. Cyberattack Impacts: North Korea Is a Threat US and South Korean military secrets are at risk from hackers. Associated Press, 2013, “Hackers targeting U.S., South Korea are after military secrets, cybersecurity experts say”, CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57592604/hackers-targeting-u.s-south-korea-are-after-military-secrets-cybersecurity-experts-say/ The hackers who knocked out tens of thousands of South Korean computers simultaneously this year are out to do far more than erase hard drives, cybersecurity firms say: They also are trying to steal South Korean and U.S. military secrets with a malicious set of codes they've been sending through the Internet for years. The identities of the hackers, and the value of any information they have acquired, are not known to U.S. and South Korean researchers who have studied line after line of computer code. But they do not dispute South Korean claims that North Korea is responsible, and other experts say the links to military spying add fuel to Seoul's allegations. Researchers at Santa Clara, California-based McAfee Labs said the malware was designed to find and upload information referring to U.S. forces in South Korea, joint exercises or even the word "secret." McAfee said versions of the malware have infected many websites in an ongoing attack that it calls Operation Troy because the code is peppered with references to the ancient city. McAfee said that in 2009, malware was implanted into a social media website used by military personnel in South Korea. "This goes deeper than anyone had understood to date, and it's not just attacks: It's military espionage," said Ryan Sherstobitoff, a senior threat researcher at McAfee who gave The Associated Press a report that the company is releasing later this week. He analyzed code samples shared by U.S. government partners and private customers. McAfee found versions of the keyword-searching malware dating to 2009. A South Korean cybersecurity researcher, Simon Choi, found versions of the code as early as 2007, with keyword-searching capabilities added in 2008. It was made by the same people who have also launched prior cyberattacks in South Korea over the last several years, Choi said. Versions of the code may still be trying to glean military secrets from infected computers. Sherstobitoff said the same coded fingerprints were found in an attack on June 25 - the anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War - in which websites for South Korea's president and prime minister were attacked. A day later the Pentagon said it was investigating reports that personal information about thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea had been posted online.’ Cyberattack Impacts: Iran Is a Threat Iranian Hackers have the ability to steal information and use it to shut down energy and infrastructure. Dana Liebelson, 2013, reporter for MotherJones, “Why Iran's Hackers Might Be Scarier Than China's”, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/who-has-scarier-hackers-china-or-iran May was a grim month for American cybersecurity. First, the Obama administration accused China of hacking government computers, potentially to exploit weaknesses in the US military. Then, US officials announced that hackers, believed to be sponsored by the Iranian government, had successfully broken into computer networks that run US energy companies, giving Iran the means to sabotage power plants. This week, the Washington Post reported that Chinese cyberspies had hacked more than two dozen big-name US weapons programs, including the F-35 fighter jet, an army program for downing ballistic missiles, and the Navy's Littoral Combat ship. Not all cyberthreats are equal, but one question remains: Who poses the greater danger—Chinese or Iranian hackers? To date, Chinese hackers have gotten more public attention, thanks to a February 2013 New York Times investigation of a top-secret government hacking operation based in Shanghai, and high-profile attacks, originating from China, on US media outlets. But experts point out that though China has greater capabilities for cyberwarfare and is actively stealing US military secrets, Iran's attacks could ultimately be more worrisome, because its hackers are targeting critical infrastructure and developing the ability to cause serious damage to the United States' power grid. "The Chinese are engaged in cyberespionage, which is more or less understood," says Richard Bejtlich, the chief security officer at Mandiant, a company that offers cybersecurity services for Fortune 100 companies. "We know what lines they will and will not cross. But a country like Iran is much more willing to be destructive. They go ahead and delete computers, they corrupt them, and they cause a lot of trouble." James Lewis, a cybersecurity specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who frequently advises the White House, agrees that Iran's "attacks on critical infrastructure are probably the bigger threat…Iran is much more unstable." Hackers directly backed by the Iranian government have demonstrated the capability to destroy critical information and an interest in causing damage to US computer systems, not simply hacking them to collect information. According to the Wall Street Journal, in their most recent campaign, Iranian-linked hackers broke into computer systems to gain information on how US energy companies run their operations, acquiring the means to "disrupt or destroy them in the future." Iranian hackers were also blamed by US officials for erasing thousands of hard drives owned by Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil company, in August 2012. Cyberattack Impact: US Retaliation Security Leader Says U.S. Would Retaliate Against Cyberattacks Mark Mazzetti and David E. Sanger.(Authors of New York Times.)"Security Leader Says U.S. Would RetaliateAgainstCyberattacks."March12,2013.NewYorkTimes.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/us/ intelligence-official-warns-congress-that-cyberattacks-pose-threat-to-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 The chief of the military’s newly created Cyber Command told Congress on Tuesday that he is establishing 13 teams of programmers and computer experts who could carry out offensive cyberattacks on foreign nations if the United States were hit with a major attack on its own networks , the first time the Obama administration has publicly admitted to developing such weapons for use in wartime.¶ “I would like to be clear that this team, this defend-the-nation team, is not a defensive team,” Gen. Keith Alexander, who runs both the National Security Agency and the new Cyber Command, told the House Armed Services Committee. “This is an offensive team that the Defense Department would use to defend the nation if it were attacked in cyberspace. Thirteen of the teams that we’re creating are for that mission alone.”¶ General Alexander’s testimony came on the same day the nation’s top intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., warned Congress that a major cyberattack on the United States could cripple the country’s infrastructure and economy, and suggested that such attacks now pose the most dangerous immediate threat to the United States, even more pressing than an attack by global terrorist networks.¶ Cyberattack Impacts: Harms National Security Cyberattacks are a serious threat to our national security, lives, infrastructure, and economy Dorgan, Byron L. 2013 (Former United States Senator. “Cyber Terror is a New Language Of War We Barely Understand”. 16 July 13. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.policymic.com/articles/54927/cyberterror-is-the-new-language-of-war-that-we-understand-only-vaguely) A new novel I’ve just co-authored with David Hagberg titled Gridlock is a story about a computer virus created in Russia, stolen by the Iranians and used to shut down the electric power grid in the U.S. It causes chaos, loss of life, and brings our economy to its knees … all done by an enemy we can’t see using digital weapons rather than firearms. Our [the] book is fiction, but that scenario and many others now constitute real and serious threats to our country every day. Those threats are to our personal identity, our bank accounts and the information we store on our computers. Most importantly, the threats are to our country and the vital services and national security interests that are essential to the functioning of our economy. Cyberattack Impacts: Economy Cyberterrorism and cyberattacks can demolish the economy, technology leadership, an harm critical infrastructure Borchgrave ’12 (Arnaud de Borchgrave, member of the Atlantic Council and editor-at-large at UPI and the Washington Times, “Cyber Pearl Harbor,” New Atlanticist, 10/2/2012, http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/cyber-pearlharbor?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+new_atlanticist+%28N ew+Atlanticist%29) A shadowy hacker group in the Middle East has disrupted the electronic banking operations of some of the United States' largest financial institutions, The Seattle Times reported. But this is hardly new. Five years ago, Goldman Sachs' chief technology officer reported this venerable financial institution had sustained more than 1 million "intrusion attempts in a single day." A military cybernaut expert, speaking privately, said the Pentagon sustains up to 6 million such probes a day. How many were successful remains highly classified. But one Pentagon cyber expert said the vast building's internal communications system was disrupted once for 48 hours. The number of hostile hacker penetrations remains top secret. At Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp and Bank of America, the Seattle newspaper reported, a group identifying itself as Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters attacked their websites and "left customers temporarily unable to access their checking accounts, mortgages and other services." Electronic crime is a fast-spreading plague. In recent years, there have been massive denial-of-service attacks. Computers are flooded with communications demands that cause systems to back up, seize up and shut down. These Islamist cyber fighters said their attacks would continue until a video that insults Prophet Muhammad and triggered riots from Indonesia to Pakistan to Egypt to Libya is removed from the Internet. The 15-minute video, the work of a rank amateur, went viral several weeks ago and can no longer be deleted. Cyber terrorists have been lurking the 'Net a lot longer than the offending video. And critical electronic infrastructure -- from valves that regulate water flows from dams to air traffic control and transnational banking systems -- is vulnerable everywhere. Israel and the United States have been waging electronic warfare against Iran's secret underground uranium enrichment activities. Clearly, Iran is retaliating by using electronic terrorist groups, both homegrown and Middle Eastern. In mid-September, the FBI warned of "a new trend in which cyber criminal actors are using spam and phishing emails" as weapons to attack the global networks of financial institutions." This week, speaking at a Woodrow Wilson International Center meeting devoted to the growing cyber threat, U.S. Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, chief of the U.S. Cyber Command (also head of the National Security Agency), since it was launched two years ago, said the cyber threat has grown in 10 years "from exploitation to disruption to destruction of computer networks." Russia understood this when the Soviet Union collapsed. The old Soviet Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information quickly became a cyber command as the new Russian leaders gave priority to one area where they could perhaps compensate for U.S. military and economic superiority. This gave the Kremlin a two-decade lead over the United States. USCYBERCOM under Alexander wasn't activated until September 2010. China activated a cyber command in the mid-1990s. This week, Alexander said cyber attacks that would crash stock exchanges and markets "are all possible today." He also said "education is the key to understand what's already happening." At the same event, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, ranking member and former chairwoman of the Homeland Security Committee, said "over 200 cyberattacks against our national assets, such as critical water treatment and transportation networks are just the tip of the iceberg." Collins said she was most concerned about an attack on the nation's electric power grid. The electronic stealing of intellectual property is critical and already with us round the clock. "Imagine," she said, "if someone had stolen iPhone5 information and got to market first." Some company intrusions simply plant an electronic spy to monitor -- and steal -- proprietary secrets. Massive electronic threats follow on the heels of massive physical infrastructure threats -- the vast system of highways, bridges, airports, railroads, pipelines, power lines, dams, waterways, water treatment plants, schools and other publicly owned and publicly regulated facilities, all dangerously neglected as hundreds of billions were spent on two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cyberattack Impacts: Hurt Businesses Targeted Attacks on SMBs (Small and Medium Sized Businesses) Up Ryan Naraine, a journalist and social media enthusiast specializing in Internet and computer security issues, July 13, 2012, “Upsurge in targeted attacks against small businesses”, ZDNET, http://www.zdnet.com/upsurge-in-targeted-attacks-against-small-businesses-7000000883/, Date Accessed: July 23, 2013 Symantec is reporting a significant uptick in targeted attacks against SMBs (small- and medium-sized businesses) in the first half of 2012 with about 36 percent of all targeted attacks hitting businesses with 250 or fewer employees.¶ According to the Symantec Intelligence Report the 36 percent number is up from 18 percent at the end of December 2011.¶ "50% of attacks focused on companies with less than 2500 employees," the report added, noting that it's possible that smaller companies are now being targeted as a stepping stone to a larger organization because they may be in the partner ecosystem and less well-defended. "Targeted attacks are a risk for businesses of all sizes – no one is immune to these attacks," the company warned. Cyberattack Impacts: Infrastructure Cyber attack could shut down the US for weeks, us infrastructure relies on data run systems Llewellyn King,executive producer and host of "White House Chronicle", 6/10/12, The Devastating Effects of a Cyber-Attack Against a Country's Energy Grid, http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Devastating-Effects-of-a-Cyberattack-Against-a-Countries-EnergyGrid.html, date of access- 7/21/13 Computer war has grown up. It has moved from the age of the equivalent of black powder to the equivalent of high-explosive shells -- not yet nuclear devices but close.¶ Enemies with sophisticated computer technology, money and determination can now contemplate the possibility of taking down the electrical systems of large swaths of the nation. Just a small interruption in power supply is devastating; as has been demonstrated by the recent power outages in 10 states, caused by severe weather.¶ The world as we know it stops when power fails; gasoline cannot be pumped, air conditioning and all other household appliances cannot be used, plunging us into a dark age without the tools of a dark age – candles, firewood, horses and carts.¶ At the center of this vulnerability is a device most of us have never heard of but is an essential part of modern infrastructure. It is the programmable logic controller (PLC).¶ In appearance the PLC is usually a small, black box about the size of a woman's purse. It came on the scene in the 1960s, when microprocessors became available and has grown exponentially in application and deployment ever since. The full computerization of the PLC put it silently but vitally in charge of nearly every commercial/industrial operation, from assembly lines to power dispatch.¶ These devices are the brain box of everything from air traffic systems to railroads. They replaced old-fashioned relays and human commands, and made automation truly automatic.¶ The revolution brought on by the PLC is an “ultra-important part” of the continuing story of technological progress, according to Ken Ball, an engineering physicist who has written a history of these devices.¶ Now the PLC -- this quiet workhorse, this silent servant -- is a cause of worry; not so much from computer hackers, out for a bit of fun through manipulating a single controller, but from the wreckage that can be achieved in a government-sponsored cyberattack with planning and malice aforethought.¶ Such an attack could be launched for diverse purposes against many aspects of our society. But the most paralyzing would be an attack on the electrical system; on the controllers that run power plant operations and the grid, from coal to nuclear to natural gas to wind turbines and other renewables.¶ Such a coordinated attack could bring the United States to its knees for days or weeks with traffic jams, abandoned cars, closed airports and hospitals reliant on emergency generators while fuel supplies last.¶ Cyber attack devastating, it would take out important infrastructure necessary to prevent deaths. FRANCIS, DAVID. Staff analyst for the fiscal times,3/11/13, The Coming Cyber Attack That Could Ruin Your Life, The fiscal times, http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/03/11/The-Coming-Cyber-Attack-that-Could-Ruin-Your-Life.aspx#page1, date access- 7/21/13 Last month, a private security firm announced that Chinese military hackers had launched attacks on the U.S. government and private companies nearly 147 times in the last seven years, a formal declaration of a secret cyber war that’s been going on for decades.¶ This war has not yet had a major impact on the lives of average American citizens: Attacks have resulted in minor service disruptions only, such as not being able to log into online accounts. ¶ But experts warn these kinds of service breaks are just a small symptom of the serious damage cyber terrorists and hackers can cause. Officials have said that hackers could cause a cyber 9/11 – an attack could cause widespread turmoil, including the disappearance of money, electrical failure, and even death. And America could be the battlefield in which these new techniques of war are tested. ¶ “An adversary looking to cause chaos could pick any part of critical infrastructure, from banking to power to health care,” said Jeffrey Carr, chief executive officer of Taia Global, a cyber security firm. “All of those are vulnerable to cyber attack.” ¶ The most harmful cyber attacks have the ability to impact nearly every part of American life, putting lives and essential privacy at risk. Without increased vigilance, experts say it’s only a matter of time before a worst-case scenario becomes a reality. ¶ Hackers have attempted to infiltrate critical infrastructure components like mass transit and power grids, although few Americans are aware of it. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says they have had limited success. But all it takes it one breach to cause chaos.¶ “We know of specific instances where intruders have successfully gained access to these [critical infrastructure] systems," Panetta said last October in New York. "We also know that they are seeking to create advanced tools to attack these systems and cause panic and destruction and even the loss of life. ”¶ Attacks like the one Panetta described could turn off the power to large parts of the country. Public transportation systems could malfunction and operators to lose control of systems that prevent crashes. Attackers could also take down communication systems and Internet access.¶ According to Tom Kellermann, vice president of cyber security for Trend Micro, attacks on infrastructure could also provide false information to people making life and death decisions. For instance, hackers could target air traffic control systems, providing false information that could cause planes to crash. “Everyone implicitly trusts his or her computer,” he said. “A cyber attack can corrupt this information.”¶ So far, cyber attacks have had limited access to bank accounts for short periods of time, and some personal information has been stolen. But according to Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute, a think tank that studies data privacy, hackers want to do more than disrupt: they want to make money disappear. ¶ “In a successful attack against a bank, credentials and passwords are gone,” he said. “Hackers are trying to go into accounts to steal large sums of money.” Maybe, but imagine, for example, that cyber thieves were able to steal just 1 percent or less from JP Morgan’s $2 trillion in assets. ¶ Health care systems are also vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. Many doctors and hospitals are now keeping electronic medical records. Hackers can get access to this information, making changes that could potentially lead to deadly instances where doctors prescribe unnecessary drugs or order irrelevant procedures for the patient. ¶ “I have never seen an industry with more gaping security holes,” Avi Rubin, a computer scientist and technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, told the Washington Post last year. “If our financial industry regarded security the way the health-care sector does, I would stuff my cash in a mattress under my bed."¶ According to Ponemon, hackers can target individuals without the person ever knowing it. “An attack could be occurring if you computer is running weird and slow,” he said. “Often times, hackers will attack computers at time when the user is most likely sleeping.” When the system is shut down, of course, hackers can’t get in. Once a system has been infiltrated, there’s no limit to what hackers can steal.¶ “Hackers have the ability to capture info from your devices. They can steal your password, your documents and your spreadsheets,” Ponemon said. “You can buy dozens of antivirus programs that usually stop most of the bad stuff out there. But there are always some malware programs that have no signature and can bypass security.” Equally troubling is the hacker’s ability to conduct surveillance on a victim, Ponemon said.¶ “They turn on and off your camera,” Ponemon said, referring to the Web cameras that are standard in today’s computers. “They can hack into the voice part of your phone and wiretap a real conversation or use your phone to listen in on real-time conversations.”¶ Or as Taia Global’s Carr said, “I don’t think there is a limit on the imagination on how much harm could be done.” Cyberattack Impacts: Mass Death Cyber attack could devastate us- defense secretary agrees. Tapping into infrastructure would shut down the US and lead to mass death. ELISABETH BUMILLER, staff analyst, 10/11/12, Panetta Warns of Dire Threat of Cyberattack on U.S., New York times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/world/panetta-warns-of-dire-threat-of-cyberattack.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, date access- 7/21/13 Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta warned Thursday that the United States was facing the possibility of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” and was increasingly vulnerable to foreign computer hackers who could dismantle the nation’s power grid, transportation system, financial networks and government. In a speech at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York, Mr. Panetta painted a dire picture of how such an attack on the United States might unfold. He said he was reacting to increasing aggressiveness and technological advances by the nation’s adversaries, which officials identified as China, Russia, Iran and militant groups. ¶ “An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cyber tools to gain control of critical switches,” Mr. Panetta said. “They could derail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.” ¶ Defense officials insisted that Mr. Panetta’s words were not hyperbole, and that he was responding to a recent wave of cyberattacks on large American financial institutions. He also cited an attack in August on the state oil company Saudi Aramco, which infected and made useless more than 30,000 computers. ¶ But Pentagon officials acknowledged that Mr. Panetta was also pushing for legislation on Capitol Hill. It would require new standards at critical private-sector infrastructure facilities — like power plants, water treatment facilities and gas pipelines — where a computer breach could cause significant casualties or economic damage. ¶ In August, a cybersecurity bill that had been one of the administration’s national security priorities was blocked by a group of Republicans, led by Senator John McCain of Arizona, who took the side of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and said it would be too burdensome for corporations. ¶ The most destructive possibilities, Mr. Panetta said, involve “cyber-actors launching several attacks on our critical infrastructure at one time, in combination with a physical attack.” He described the collective result as a “cyber-Pearl Harbor that would cause physical destruction and the loss of life, an attack that would paralyze and shock the nation and create a profound new sense of vulnerability.” ¶ Mr. Panetta also argued against the idea that new legislation would be costly for business. “The fact is that to fully provide the necessary protection in our democracy, cybersecurity must be passed by the Congress,” he told his audience, Business Executives for National Security. “Without it, we are and we will be vulnerable.” ¶ With the legislation stalled, Mr. Panetta said President Obama was weighing the option of issuing an executive order that would promote information sharing on cybersecurity between government and private industry. But Mr. Panetta made clear that he saw it as a stopgap measure and that private companies, which are typically reluctant to share internal information with the government, would cooperate fully only if required to by law. ¶ “We’re not interested in looking at e-mail, we’re not interested in looking at information in computers, I’m not interested in violating rights or liberties of people,” Mr. Panetta told editors and reporters at The New York Times earlier on Thursday. “But if there is a code, if there’s a worm that’s being inserted, we need to know when that’s happening.” ¶ Cyberattack Impacts: Mass Death Cyberattacks could gridlock society and kill millions Pogatchnik, Shawn. 2013 (Reporter for the Associated Press. “AP Interview: Ex-FBI Chief on Risk of Cyber Terror”. 7 July. Accessed 16 July 13. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-interview-ex-fbi-chief-riskcyber-terror) Speaking to The Associated Press ahead of the Global Intelligence Forum starting Monday in Ireland, Freeh said hackers seeking to take control of, or take down, key pieces of U.S. infrastructure could do more damage than the attackers of 9/11. He said computer systems controlling power plants, the navigation of aircraft and ships, and even the switching of street lights could be hijacked to gridlock societies and kill large groups of people. "People traditionally think of this threat as somebody stealing their identity or their credit card number, or making it inconvenient to go to the ATM (cash machine). That's a very benign view of the potential for what cyber terrorism really is," Freeh said. "You could manipulate transportation systems, aviation guidance systems, highway safety systems, maritime operations systems. You could shut down an energy system in the northeast U.S. in the middle of winter. The potential for mass destruction in terms of life and property is really only limited by (the attackers') access and success in penetrating and hijacking these networks," he said. Cyberattack Impact: Prevents Retaliation When coupled with a traditional attack, a cyberattack would allow a terrorist organization to pre-emptively cripple response Bucci, Steven. 2009 (Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies. "The Confluence of Cyber Crime and Terrorism". 12 Jun. http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/theconfluence-of-cyber-crime-and-terrorism) If the attacker has used weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosives) in the kinetic part of the attack, the cyber component can also hinder the ability to rally consequence-management assets. The victim will have suffered a catastrophic attack and will be unable to respond effectively to the results. The continued cyber intrusions will not only keep them from striking back with any real effect, but may make them ineffectual in mobilizing their firstresponder forces. A2: Cannot Stop Cyberattack Successful cyber defense is possible Dorgan, Byron L. 2013 (Former United States Senator. “Cyber Terror is a New Language Of War We Barely Understand”. 16 July 13. Accessed 16 July 13. http://www.policymic.com/articles/54927/cyberterror-is-the-new-language-of-war-that-we-understand-only-vaguely) It is certain that those who wish America ill will continue these attacks. Our new novel describes a scenario of what could happen if we don’t take these new cyber-terror threats seriously. But if we understand the threat and work hard with the best and brightest in the public and private sectors, we can successfully defend America and its citizens against this new weapon used by terrorists. Solvency: Digital Surveillance Solves Cyberattacks The NSA’s data mining can stop Cyber Terrorism Michaels, Jim; 2013 (Military Writer at USA TODAY and author of "A Chance in Hell," a widely praised book on the Iraq war, June 6, 2013, “NSA data mining can help stop cybercrime, analysts say.” USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/06/nsa-data-mining-cyber-crimedata/2397165/) July 22, 2013) The huge volume of telephone records turned over to the U.S. government could help investigators identify and deter a range of terrorist acts, including cyberattacks, analysts say. "Once you have this big chunk of data and you have it forever… you can do all sorts of analytics with it using other data sources," said Joseph DeMarco, former head of the cybercrime unit in the U.S. attorney's office in New York City. "A data set like this is the gift that keeps on giving," said DeMarco, a partner at the law firm DeVore & DeMarco. The government obtained an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordering a Verizon subsidiary to turn over phone records to the National Security Agency. The records do not include the content of phone calls and the order does not authorize eavesdropping. Still, the information can be helpful to investigators looking for patterns, linking people and networks. Also, phone numbers can be attached to computers, allowing hackers to get into networks through telephone lines. The data can also be viewed against other databases that help investigators see patterns and links among people and networks. "All the data is critical," said Robert Rodriguez, a cybersecurity expert and former Secret Service agent. The government considers many cyberattacks to be acts of terror, DeMarco said. "The definition of terrorism includes cyberterrorism," he said. The court order also raises questions about the relationship between the government and industry at a time when so much critical infrastructure, such as power grids and banking, is in the hands of industry and may be vulnerable to cyberattack. US Cyber Command is using digital surveillance to thwart cyberattacks and maintain offensive capabilities Talitha Dowds, Director and Senior Fellow of the Proliferation Prevention Program, “A New Phase of Nuclear Terrorism – Cyber Warfare” DoP: MAR 25, 2011 Date of acees: 7/20/13 http://csis.org/blog/new-phase-nuclear-terrorism-cyber-warfare As Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discussed the "remote" threat of a major cyberattack within the next two years, NSA and US Cyber Command director Gen. Keith Alexander told Congress that the US was training its own cyberwarriors as well. In yesterday's hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Alexander emphasized that "this team, this defend-the-nation team, is not a defensive team... This is an offensive team that the Defense Department would use to defend the nation if it were attacked in cyberspace. 13 of the teams that we’re creating are for that mission alone."¶ As The New York Times reports, Alexander says 27 additional teams are dedicated to training and surveillance, and more will be able to "defend our networks in cyberspace." He did not go into detail about the projects, but he said that training was the most important task at hand, and that defense was best served by monitoring incoming traffic to the US with systems that could check for attacks. Current fears about cyberwarfare have focused on China, which is considered responsible for recent attacks on The New York Times and other papers, but Clapper has said that "isolated state or nonstate actors" are more likely to launch high-stakes campaigns that could take out critical infrastructure. Cybercrime Cybercrime Impacts: Hurts Economy Cybercrimes hurt econ; costs globe billions and U.S. Jobs Ellyne Phneah, writer for ZDNET, July 23, 2013, “Cybercrime can cost economy up to $500B”, ZDNET, http://www.zdnet.com/cybercrime-can-cost-economy-up-to-500b-7000018420/, Date Accessed July 23, 2013. Cybercrimes cost the global economy up to US$500 billion annually, and can potentially result in the loss of 500,000 jobs in the United States alone. These findings were highlighted in a report released Tuesday by the Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and commissioned by McAfee. Aimed at measuring real-world losses from cyberattacks, the center enlisted economists, intellectual property experts, and security researchers to develop the report. The researchers also based their estimates on comparisons to real-world analogies such as losses in car crashes, piracy, pilferage and crime, and drugs. The generally accepted range for cybercrime losses to the global economy was between US$100 billion and US$500 billion, the report noted.¶ The report further estimated a total of 508,000 jobs could potentially be lost in the U.S. alone, due to cyberespionage. The CSIS' commerce department in 2011 estimated US$1 billion in export value was equal to 5,080 jobs, which meant the high end estimate of US$100 billion in losses would translate to 508,000 lost jobs, the report explained. Cybercrime Impacts: Worse than Physical Crime Cost of Cybercrime overtakes Physical Crime IBM Reports Adam Emery,14 Mar 2006, “U.S. Businesses: Cost of Cybercrime Overtakes Physical Crime”, IBM, http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19367.wss#contact, Date Accessed: July 24, 2013 Nearly 60 percent of U.S. businesses believe that cybercrime is more costly to them than physical crime, reports a recent IBM survey of companies in the healthcare, financial, retail and manufacturing industries. The costs resulting from cybercrime, these businesses report, are primarily from lost revenue, loss of current and prospective customers and loss of employee productivity. Hackers Hackers Destroy Privacy Lack of cyber security turns digital privacy- hackers can steal your private information otherwise. Steve Largent and Rick Boucher, congressmen, “Good cybersecurity means better privacy – opinion” March 2013, DoA: 7/17/13 http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/05/technology/security/cybersecurityprivacy/index.html Such views are nonsense. Quite simply, digital privacy cannot exist without cybersecurity. Weak security equals weak privacy. Want better privacy? Raise your security game to prevent hackers from stealing private data. Let the experts from the private sector and government communicate with each other so when they see threats, they can alert others and work together to create a solution.¶ Despite this common-sense connection, a seemingly never-ending debate drags on about how our nation can improve its cybersecurity. There is lots of talk, but little action to support privacy's enabler.¶ That could change if Congress passes The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and the President signs it into law. CISPA passed the House (248-168) about a year ago, and since then has been the subject of considerable discussion, with no discernible progress.¶ Critics don't like the fact that CISPA enables information sharing between the federal government and the private sector in order to prevent cyberattacks and to pursue cybercriminals, hackers, fraudsters and others intent on harm. As they see it, such cooperation constitutes a potential privacy invasion that is so egregious as to merit no further consideration.¶ Their concerns are, no doubt, well intended. But they are also out of touch with reality and risk unintended consequences that only serve to allow cybercriminals to operate with impunity.¶ The breadth and scale of the threat of cyberattacks on our nation's critical infrastructure -- financial institutions, electric and water utilities and air traffic control systems, to name just a few -- to say nothing of consumers' personal data, is no longer in debate. Meanwhile, the avenues and opportunities by which hackers have to penetrate our networks are growing hand in hand with our increasingly mobile communications ecosystem. On the consumer side, for example, a recent study concludes more than 40% of U.S. smartphone users will click on unsafe links this year, potentially spreading malware that can steal data and dollars to their friends, family and colleagues.¶ Related story: Wake up, America! China is attacking¶ Hackers destroy Digital Privacy and violate Constitutional liberties. Rogers, Mike, Member of the House of Representatives and Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Ruppersburg, Dutch, also a member of the House of Reps, andn a ranking member on Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. 4/16/13 Protecting Internet freedom is a priority http://thehill.com/special-reports/defense-and-cybersecurity-april-2013/294319-protectinginternet-freedom-is-a-priority Date Accessed; 7/20/13 The privacy and civil liberties rights enshrined in the Constitution that we swore to protect are threatened daily as foreign hackers steal unfathomable amounts of information from our computer networks. These networks contain our most important personal information, including our banking, medical and family records. Secure computer networks are vital to ensuring that the Internet remains a key and open forum for individual expression — America simply cannot turn a blind eye to this threat any longer. A2: Hacktivism Good “Hacktivism” is overblown and doesn’t cause social change Dorothy E. Denning, 2001, Georgetown University, “ACTIVISM, HACKTIVISM, AND CYBERTERRORISM: THE INTERNET AS A TOOL FOR INFLUENCING FOREIGN POLICY”, http://ncfm.org/libraryfiles/Children/NetworkNetWar/MR1382.ch8.pdf In the area of hacktivism, which involves the use of hacking tools and techniques of a disruptive nature, the Internet will serve mainly to draw attention to a cause, since such incidents are regularly reported by news media. Whether that attention has the desired effect of changing policy decisions related to the issue at hand is much less certain. Hacktivists may feel a sense of empowerment, because they can control government computers and get media attention, but that does not mean they will succeed in changing policy. So far, anecdotal evidence suggests that for the majority of cases, they will not. Econ Attacks on Small Businesses Up Targeted Attacks on Small and Medium Sized Businesses increased in 2012. Ryan Naraine, a journalist and social media enthusiast specializing in Internet and computer security issues, July 13, 2012, “Upsurge in targeted attacks against small businesses”, ZDNET, http://www.zdnet.com/upsurge-in-targeted-attacks-against-small-businesses-7000000883/, Date Accessed: July 23, 2013 Symantec is reporting a significant uptick in targeted attacks against SMBs (small- and medium-sized businesses) in the first half of 2012 with about 36 percent of all targeted attacks hitting businesses with 250 or fewer employees.¶ According to the Symantec Intelligence Report (download PDF) the 36 percent number is up from 18 percent at the end of December 2011.¶ "50% of attacks focused on companies with less than 2500 employees," the report added, noting that it's possible that smaller companies are now being targeted as a stepping stone to a larger organization because they may be in the partner ecosystem and less well-defended. "Targeted attacks are a risk for businesses of all sizes – no one is immune to these attacks," the company warned. Cybercrime Hurts Businesses Cost of Cybercrime overtakes Physical Crime IBM Reports Adam Emery,14 Mar 2006, “U.S. Businesses: Cost of Cybercrime Overtakes Physical Crime”, IBM, http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19367.wss#contact, Date Accessed: July 24, 2013 Nearly 60 percent of U.S. businesses believe that cybercrime is more costly to them than physical crime, reports a recent IBM survey of companies in the healthcare, financial, retail and manufacturing industries. The costs resulting from cybercrime, these businesses report, are primarily from lost revenue, loss of current and prospective customers and loss of employee productivity. Cyber Crime on the Rise, ATM Hesit nets $45 Million PAISLEY DODDS, London bureau chief for The Associated Press, 05/11/2013 ,“World Attempts To Adjust To The 3Rise Of Cyber Crime”, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/11/cyber-crime-rise-worries-world_n_3259640.html, Date Accessed: July 24, 2013 International law enforcement agencies say the recent $45 million dollar ATM heist is just one of many scams they're fighting in an unprecedented wave of sophisticated cyberattacks.¶ Old-school robberies by masked criminals are being eclipsed by stealth multimillion dollar cybercrime operations which are catching companies and investigators by surprise.¶ "We are seeing an unprecedented number of cyberscams that include phishing for financial data, viruses, credit card fraud and others," Marcin Skowronek, an investigator at Europol's European Cybercrime Center in The Hague said on Saturday.U.S. Investigators said Thursday a gang hit cash machines in 27 countries in two attacks — the first netting $5 million in December and then $40 million in February in a 10-hour spree that involved about 36,000 transactions.¶ Hackers got into bank databases, eliminated withdrawal limits on prepaid debit cards and created access codes. Others loaded that data onto any plastic card — even a hotel keycard — with a magnetic stripe¶ A similar scam yielded some 50 arrests this year in Europe during a joint police operation between Romanian police and Europol, Skowronek said.¶ The operation took more than a year, involved some 400 police officers across Europe and required work comparing bank losses to illegal transactions and then cross-referencing suspects, said Skowronek, who said many national police forces were beefing up their undercover work in the cyberworld to catch criminals. ¶ Some 36,000 debit card and credit card holders in some 16 countries were affected, Skowronek said. The amount stolen was unclear. "Compare this to a physical bank security. If someone walks in today, they're probably not going to get very much money, the dye pack is going to explode, they will be caught on video, they're probably not going to get away with it, and they're probably going to spend a long time in jail," said Urban. "Online, in the cyberworld, we're not there yet." Cybercrime overtakes drug market costing the global economy $338 Billion a year Zack Whittaker, September 7, 2011, “Cybercrime costs $338bn to global economy; More lucrative than drugs trade”, ZD NET, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/cybercrime-costs-338bn-to-global-economymore-lucrative-than-drugs-trade/57503, Date Accessed: July 26, 2013 cybercrime is costing the global economy $338 billion a year, overtaking a still a lucrative trade in the underground drugs market.¶ The Norton Cybercrime Report 2011 outlines the cost of cybercrime worldwide, with 74 million in the United States alone falling victim to online scams, phishing attacks and exploitative malware; costing the U.S. economy an estimated $32 billion. ¶ But the report suggests that more than 69 percent, at two-thirds of online adults, have fallen victim to cybercrime; a figure that is still on the rise. Norton reports that Businesses Retaliate Businesses vow to retaliate against cyber attacks Paresh Dave, 5/31/13, Business Reporter at Los Angeles Times, Business Reporter at San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Time, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/31/business/la-fi-hacking-back-20130531, Doa- 7/29/13 Frustrated by their inability to stem an onslaught of computer hackers, some companies are considering adopting the standards of the Wild West to fight back against online bandits.¶ In taking an eyefor-an-eye approach, some of the companies that have been attacked are looking at retaliating against the attackers, covertly shutting down computers behind the cyber assaults or even spreading a new virus to stymie the hackers.¶ Such retaliation is illegal in the United States, but companies see it as a way to curtail the breaches, particularly if the attack is originating from another country, where the legality of retaliatory attacks is unclear.¶ Companies also view counterattacking as a way to bypass U.S. authorities, avoiding publicly admitting that they've been attacked and exposing themselves to lawsuits from loss of confidential data or service disruptions.¶ Many companies that have publicly acknowledged costly cyber breaches declined to say whether they retaliated or considered hacking back, and no company was willing to talk about the issue out of fear of additional attacks. ¶ But analysts say hacking back has become part of a serious debate among companies, lawmakers and cyber-security experts.¶ "From a technical perspective, it's not that challenging," in and shutting them down isn't said Alex Harvey, a security strategist for the security solutions provider Fortinet. " Breaking hard, but a new one will just pop. You'll get a couple of minutes of peace and quiet."¶ Security platform provider FireEye says a single organization is targeted by malware about every three minutes. From detection to damage control, the average firm of more than 1,000 workers spends nearly $9 million annually on cyber security, according a survey last year by the independent Ponemon Institute .¶ In a recent report about combating intellectual property theft, a private commission led by former U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr. and former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair called for "informed deliberations" about whether corporations and individuals should have more flexibility to defend intrusions.¶ Federal lawmakers remain at odds about how to deter cyber crime. Many in the security industry strongly advise against retaliation. Federal law bars any unauthorized computer intrusion, and it offers no exception for digital self-defense.¶ "I don't think companies should be hiring gunslingers to fight back," FireEye co-founder Ashar Aziz said. "Before we encourage every random company to hack, we have to look at what makes sense to disrupt cyber crime." ¶ Aziz and other information security experts promote what they say are smarter alternatives. For instance, companies can bolster security by creating multiple versions of sensitive data, with only one version being the legitimate one. In that case, attackers are likely to get their hands on worthless data rather than precious information.¶ Companies remain intrigued by the idea of shutting down an attacker's system.¶ The report from the commission chaired by Huntsman and Blair notes that counterattacks have the potential to deter hackers because the cost of doing business rises. However, the commission stopped short of recommending legalizing retaliatory hacking "because of the larger questions of collateral damage."¶ Many cyber attacks rely on a network of computers. These infected machines might be owned by innocent Internet users who, for example, accidentally clicked on a bad link in their email. Surreptitiously accessing this computer violates federal law, even if it's to update out-of-date software or remove the malicious program.¶ "If Honda comes over and attacks Ford, then Ford can't send someone over to attack Honda," said Anthony DiBello, head of strategic partnerships at Pasadena-based Guidance Software.¶ But some legal experts say it's not so clear-cut. Under one legal argument, the hacker becomes subject to the rules and policies of the organization it attacks by virtue of connecting to that network. Counterattacks could be justified in the same way that an employer has the right to monitor activities on an employee's work computer.¶ Microsoft Corp. has taken another approach, considered by some to be a "responsible" counterattack. The company sues unidentified hackers and secures court approval to shut down computers engaged in malicious activity. But that approach may not be feasible for most companies, which don't have the computer giant's cash coffer.¶ Rodney Joffe, senior technologist at the security software manufacturer Neustar Inc. and a regular cyber-security advisor to the White House, said counterattacks and even legally sanctioned actions provide only temporary relief.¶ "It makes a great splash and creates a sudden vacuum, but there's hundreds of people who fit into that vacuum because it doesn't take attackers very long to climb back over the wall," Joffe said. Econ Decline-War And Economic decline causes war Sean O’Donnell, staff writer, 2-26-2009, “Will this recession lead to World War III?,” Baltimore Republican Examiner, http://www.examiner.com/republican-in-baltimore/will-this-recession-lead-toworld-war-iii Could the current economic crisis affecting this country and the world lead to another world war? The answer may be found by looking back in history. One of the causes of World War I was the economic rivalry that existed between the nations of Europe. In the 19th century France and Great Britain became wealthy through colonialism and the control of foreign resources. This forced other up-and-coming nations (such as Germany) to be more competitive in world trade which led to rivalries and ultimately, to war. After the Great Depression ruined the economies of Europe in the 1930s, fascist movements arose to seek economic and social control. From there fanatics like Hitler and Mussolini took over Germany and Italy and led them both into World War II. With most of North America and Western Europe currently experiencing a recession, will competition for resources and economic rivalries with the Middle East, Asia, or South American cause another world war? Add in nuclear weapons and Islamic fundamentalism and things look even worse. Hopefully the economy gets better before it gets worse and the terrifying possibility of World War III is averted. However sometimes history repeats itself. Solvency-Data Collection Data collection Necessary to keep expanding IT Security efficient. Eileen Yu, senior editor at ZDNet Asia, where she oversees the business tech news site, June 12, 2013, “Complexity, targeted attacks to drive security spend to $67B”, ZDNET, http://www.zdnet.com/complexity-targeted-attacks-to-drive-security-spend-to-67b-7000016717/, Date Accessed: July 23, 2013 Increasing complexity and number of targeted attacks are pushing companies to spend more on IT security, driving the global market to a 8.7 percent climb to hit US$67.2 billion this year.¶ Key market drivers are mobile security, big data, and advanced targeted attacks.¶ In a statement released Wednesday, Gartner projected the security technology and service market will further expand to US$86 billion in 2016. The market researcher pointed to three market drivers: mobile security, big data, and advanced targeted attacks. ¶ To support these security requirements as well as business needs, more data is needed to more effectively detect advanced attacks, the research firm added, noting that this presented challenges when identifying patterns of potential risk across diverse data sources. Constitution People interpret the constitution differently all the time, for example, whether the second amendment allows people to own machine guns. No reason why it is the law that everyone must follow. Mount, Steve [Bachelor of Arts, Political Science, 1989, University of Vermont]. "Constitutional Topic: Constitutional Interpretation." US Constitution.net. Craig Walenta, 24 Jan. 2010. Web. 25 June 2013. <http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_intr.html>. The Constitution is short; it cannot and does not attempt to cover every eventuality. Even when it seems it is clear, there can be conflicting rights, conflicting spheres of power. When disputes arise, it comes time for people, and most importantly judges of the Judicial Branch, to interpret the Constitution. The concept of constitutional interpretation is foreign in some countries, where the constitution makes a reasonable effort to cover every eventuality. These constitutions are generally rigid and little changing, adapting slowly to advances in political views, popular opinion, technology, and changes in government. The U.S. Constitution, however, has been termed a Living Constitution, in part because it grows and adapts to internal and external pressures, changing from one era and generation to the next. When a new situation arises, or even a new variation on an old situation, the Constitution is often looked to for guidance. It is at this point that the various interpretations of the Constitution come into play. There is no one right way to interpret the Constitution, and people often do not always stick to one interpretation. Below, then, are the major divisions in interpretation; your own personal beliefs may fall into several of these categories: Originalism, Modernism/Instrumentalism, Liberalism Historical/Contemporary, Democratic/Normative Reinforcement. Prism Prism Solves Terrorism Prism is necessary to search for terrorists Schmitt, Eric, Sanger, David E., Savage, Charlie. June 7, 2013. Administration Says Mining of Data Is Crucial to Fight Terror. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-called-crucial-tofight-terror.html?pagewanted=all. Date Accessed: 7/16/13. [Obama] argued that “modest encroachments on privacy” — including keeping records of phone numbers called and the length of calls that can be used to track terrorists, though not listening in to calls — were “worth us doing” to protect the country. The programs, he said, were authorized by Congress and regularly reviewed by federal courts. ¶ But privacy advocates questioned the portrayal of the program’s intrusion on Americans’ communications as modest. When Americans communicate with a targeted person overseas, the program can vacuum up and store for later searching — without a warrant — their calls and e-mails, too. ¶ Mr. Obama acknowledged that he had hesitations when he inherited the program from George W. Bush, but told reporters that he soon became convinced of its necessity. “You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” he said. “We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.” ¶ To defenders of the N.S.A., the Zazi case underscores how the agency’s Internet surveillance system, called Prism, which was set up over the past decade to collect data from online providers of e-mail and chat services, has yielded concrete results. ¶ “We were able to glean critical information,” said a senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It was through an e-mail correspondence that we had access to only through Prism.” ¶ John Miller, a former senior intelligence official who now works for CBS News, said on “CBS This Morning,” “That’s how a program like this is supposed to work.” ¶ Veterans of the Obama intelligence agencies say the large collections of digital data are vital in the search for terrorists. “If you’re looking for a needle in the haystack, you need a haystack,” Jeremy Bash, chief of staff to Leon E. Panetta, the former C.I.A. director and defense secretary, said on MSNBC on Friday.¶ Under the program, intelligence officials must present Internet companies with specific requests for information on a case-by-case basis, showing that the target is a foreigner and located outside the United States, a senior law enforcement official said Friday. If the N.S.A. comes across information about an American citizen during the search, it turns over that material to the F.B.I. for an assessment, the official said. Prism Solves Terrorism Patriot Act and surveillance of citizens enables NSA to thwart dozens of terrorist attacks Cohen, Tom, Staff writer cnn, 6/13/13, CNN, NSA director: Data mining follows law, thwarts terror, http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/12/politics/nsa-terror-hearing, Date Accessed: 7/17/13 Phone records obtained by the government through a secret surveillance program disclosed last week helped to prevent "dozens" of terrorist acts, the director of the National Security Agency told a Senate hearing on Wednesday.¶ Army Gen. Keith Alexander provided the most detailed account so far from a government official of the program in which the agency collects phone records that then can be accessed under federal court permission to investigate suspected terrorists.¶ The scope of the secret program – potentially [involved] involving phone records of every American -- set off a political firestorm when details emerged with publication of a leaked document.¶ Further leaks revealed other secret programs that collect computer activity and other information.¶ Critics on the right and left accused the government of going well beyond the intended reach of the Patriot Act enacted after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.¶ Questioned by senators from both parties at a hearing on broader cybersecurity issues, Alexander provided a spirited defense for the programs he described as critical to counter-terrorism efforts.¶ "I think what we're doing to protect American citizens here is the right thing," he said. "Our agency takes great pride in protecting this nation and our civil liberties and privacy, and doing it in partnership with this committee, with this Congress, and with the courts."¶ Alexander added that he welcomed a public debate over protecting America while preserving civil liberties.¶ "To date, we've not been able to explain it because it's classified, so that issue is something that we're wrestling with," he said. "... This isn't something that's just NSA or the administration doing that and so on. This is what ... our nation expects our government to do for us. So, we ought to have that debate. We ought to put it out there."¶ In the end, he said, some aspects of the giant surveillance apparatus created after 9/11 would have to remain classified.¶ "And they should be, because if we tell the terrorists every way that we are going to track them, they will get through and Americans will die," he said.¶ Alexander also rejected the claim that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who admitted leaking the topsecret documents on electronic surveillance programs and is now in hiding, could tap into any American's phone or e-mail.¶ "I know of no way to do that," he said, calling Snowden's statement "false."¶ In an exchange with Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Alexander said he believed the program under Section 215 of the Patriot Act was "critical" in helping the intelligence community corroborate information on possible threats.¶ "It is dozens of terrorist events that these have helped prevent," Alexander said of the Section 215 program and another that collects information on foreign computer use.¶ He would not discuss specific disrupted plots, saying they were classified, but he told Leahy that the two programs together played a role in helping to stop a planned attack on the New York subway system.¶ Information developed overseas was passed along to the FBI, which was able to identify suspect Najibullah Zazi in Colorado and ultimately uncover a plot, he said. Zazi pleaded guilty to terror-related charges in 2010.¶ In response to questions from senators about why the Section 215 program needed to collect billions of U.S. phone records, Alexander explained that the agency held the records for five years in the event that an investigation uncovered an overseas terrorist link to a specific area in the United States.¶ With a database of phone records, the agency can go "back in time" to figure out the number and date that a suspect called, he said.¶ "We won't search that unless we have some reasonable, articulable suspicion about a terroristrelated organization," Alexander said.¶ Once permission is granted, "we can now look and say, 'who was this guy talking to in the United States and why?'"¶ "The system just gives us back who he was talking to," Alexander explained. "But if you didn't collect it, how do you know who he was talking to?"¶ Obtaining further information, such as the content of the call, would require a court order, he said.¶ GOP Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska pressed Alexander on the issue, asking if the search could span "the breadth of telephone records."¶ "The American public is fearful that in this massive amount of data you get that there's the ability of the federal government to synthesize that data and learn something more than maybe what was ever contemplated by the Patriot Act," Johanns said.¶ Alexander will return to the panel on Thursday to give a classified briefing on the programs in order to provide more information, and he pledged to work with the committee to come up with more detailed explanations for the American public.¶ He explained his caution on Wednesday by saying revelations such as the classified documents about the secret programs were harmful to national security efforts.¶ "I would rather take a public beating and people think I am hiding something than to jeopardize the security of this country," Alexander said.¶ Prism Constitutional Supreme court affirms that surveillance doesn’t violate the fourth amendment John Yoo, 6/7/13, political appointee, the Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, during the George W. Bush administration, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350498/nsas-surveillance-no-clear-constitutional-violationsjohn-yoo, Doa- 7/29/13 The latest Obama administration controversy will not prove as bad as it first seems. Apparently, the administration has been asking Verizon for all of the “metadata” on all of its customers’ calling — the phone numbers called and received, but not the content of the calls themselves.¶ In the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush administration’s Justice Department (in which I served) approved a program that may have relied on similar technology, but was far narrower in scope. Both programs, however, seek to use communications coming into the United States from a known terrorist abroad to identify an alQaeda network within the country.¶ The program does not represent a violation of the Constitution because the Fourth Amendment does not protect dialed phone numbers, in contrast to the content of the communications, because individuals lose privacy over those numbers when they are given to the phone company. The Constitution protects the content of the communications, whether it be a phone call, e-mail, or old-fashioned letter. And Congress approved a change to the FISA statute to allow such collection, and a court of federal judges approved it. And as commander-in-chief, the president has the wartime authority to find and intercept enemy communications, known as signals intelligence. Analyzing such metadata — what is sometimes called data mining — is perhaps the most effective way to find terrorist cells in the U.S. and stop future attacks because the Obama administration has dropped our best methods for producing intelligence (the detention and interrogation of al-Qaeda leaders).¶ The revelation of broad e-mail surveillance is more troubling, but it is because we don’t know the program’s scope. If the program only intercepts the content of e-mails for foreigners abroad, as is being reported, there is no constitutional violation. As the Supreme Court has made clear, the Fourth Amendment does not protect the communications of non-U.S. persons that take place abroad. In fact, the Justices reached that conclusion because they observed that it would be impossible for the U.S. to fight a war against a foreign enemy if limited by the Fourth Amendment. Allowing the government to intercept foreign, potentially enemy signals intelligence abroad without a warrant recognizes the reality of war, as opposed to the precise targeting of communications that would apply if domestic law enforcement were the framework.¶ We shouldn’t expect any measured response to the Obama administration’s program from the usual libertarian critics, should we? When news broke in 2006 that the National Security Agency had been collecting phone-call metadata, Senate Democrats called for President Bush’s censure or perhaps impeachment, New York Times and Washington Post editorial writers attacked Bush as a violator of the Constitution, academic leaders such as Yale law-school dean Harold Koh called it “quite shocking” and without judicial approval, and Senator Patrick Leahy had a hearing where he yelled “are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaeda?”¶ I suspect that we will hear nary a peep from these sources about Obama, proving yet again that the criticism of the Bush anti-terrorism programs was motivated by partisan politics, not enduring principle. But, unfortunately, the program will be questioned because of the Obama administration’s serious mistakes on its IRS investigations into conservative groups and Justice Department surveillance of journalists to stop leaks. The Obama administration’s destruction of the American people’s trust in their government’s ability to run its core tax and law-enforcement functions will harm our government’s ability to carry out its duty to protect the nation. Prism Legal PRISM is legal under the Patriot Act, there has yet to be a successful constitutional challenge to it. Bill Blum, former judge and death penalty defense attorney, Is the Surveillance State Constitutional?, Jun 11, 2013¶ Truth Dig,http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/is_the_surveillance_state_constitutional_20130611/, Doa7/29/13 The surveillance state is real and very much alive, but is it legal? The answer may surprise you. Despite constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure, the Supreme Court and Congress have given the other branch of American government extraordinary power.¶ As classified documents recently published by The Guardian and The Washington Post reveal, the FBI and the National Security Agency are collecting the phone activity logs (the so-called metadata, encompassing billions of calls per day) of all telephone users in the country. The revelations also confirm that the feds are collecting, screening and reading at least some of the emails and other electronic communications made by suspected terrorists abroad, some of which might “incidentally” include communications made or received by Americans at home, to quote from the declassification memo released Saturday by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, describing the NSA’s PRISM computer system used to acquire such information. ¶ Surely, you might think, such all-encompassing surveillance must be unconstitutional, and ultimately will be stopped or modified by the Supreme Court. ¶ Think again. President Obama, among many others, has assured us that the government’s spying operations are entirely legal. ¶ The problem is not that the president has taken leave of his senses, or suddenly taken the rest of us for fools. The problem is that he may well be correct, at least according to the way the Supreme Court has thus far interpreted the Constitution. Because of their classified status, and notwithstanding the recent press revelations, the NSA surveillance operations’ extent and exact methodology remain largely unknown. But from a civil liberties standpoint, what we do know isn’t very encouraging. ¶ Phone Records¶ Operating under various code names, such as Trailblazer, Stellar Wind and Ragtime, authority for the 215 collection of telephone metadata—the phone numbers each of us calls and the numbers of those who call us—derives from Sections and 505 of the Patriot Act, which was initially passed in 2001 and amended key provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.¶ the FBI on behalf of the NSA to apply for court orders requiring phone companies to produce business records “to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” The section served as the legal basis for the order published by The Guardian that was Section 215 (codified at 18 United States Code 1861) authorizes issued in April by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to Verizon Business Services.¶ The court deliberates in secret, issues its orders on an “ex parte” basis without hearing from those affected by them, and only rarely publishes its decisions, although the Justice Department reports annually to Congress on the overall volume of surveillance applications. In 2012, the FBI submitted 1,789 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. One was withdrawn; all the others were approved. ¶ Section 505 (codified at 18 USC 2709) authorizes the FBI to issue national security letters, without any judicial oversight, to obtain subscriber information and toll billing records from telecom carriers. Recipients of national security letters are subject to gag orders that forbid them from ever revealing the letters’ existence. In 2011, the FBI issued 16,511 such letters. ¶ Those seeking to declare these sections unconstitutional face at least one enormous obstacle: the 1979 case of Smith v. Maryland, in which the Supreme Court held that telephone users have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the records of their calling activities. As the Smith ruling instructs, absent a privacy expectation, no illegal search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment occurs. Unless the Supreme Court overrules or distinguishes Smith from the NSA’s current spying platforms, legal challenges to orders like the one issued to Verizon are likely to meet with little success. A2: Prism Destroys All Privacy Obama argues there are limits to the surveillance allowed under Prism. Hennessey, Kathleen. June 19, 2013. Obama defends NSA digital surveillance programs. http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-obama-defends-nsa-surveillance20130619,0,3630725.story. Date Accessed 7/17/13. BERLIN -- President Obama tried to reassure skeptical Europeans about sweeping U.S. digital surveillance programs expanded under his watch, arguing that the programs are circumscribed, overseen by a court and effective.¶ "What I can say to everybody in Germany and everybody around the world is this applies very narrowly," Obama said Wednesday after a meeting in which German Chancellor Angela Merkel pressed the president on whether the programs were violating the privacy rights of German citizens.¶ "This is not a situation in which we are rifling through the ordinary emails of is not a situation where we can go on to the Internet and start searching any way we want."¶ Obama argued that the collection of bulk data on phone German citizens or American citizens or French citizens or anybody else," he said. "This records and Internet activity has averted "at least 50 threats," repeating claims made by other administration officials since details about the programs were disclosed two weeks ago. A2: Congress is Reigning in Prism/NSA Spying The White House has urged Congress to reject the measure to reign in NSA spying. ThinkProgress; July 24, 2013 (American political blog that provide[s] a forum that advances progressive ideas and policies, “National Security Brief: White House Calls On Congress To ‘Reject’ Measure Reining In NSA Spying” ThinkProgress.org, http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/07/24/2347191/house-nsa/, Date Retrieved; July 24, 2013) The Hill reports that the House is expected to vote on an amendment to a Defense Appropriations bill that is aimed at limiting the National Security Agency’s powers to collect information on Americans’ telephone and internet traffic. One measure — put forward by Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) — will prevent the NSA from using the PATRIOT Act to collect records of people who are not under investigation and another says the Agency cannot target U.S. citizens. NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander lobbied the House yesterday in an effort to dial back congressional opposition to NSA spying and the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee oppose the measures, as does the White House. “[W]e oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence Community’s counterterrorism tools,” a statement from White House press secretary Jay Carney says. “This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation.” Amash told the New York Times that Alexander’s lobbying didn’t change any minds and that his measure will most likely pass. “I think the American people are overwhelmingly in support of reining in the blanket surveillance of the NSA,” he said. A2: Data Collection Leads to Government Oppression Data collection helps increase transparency and check government encroachment Jamie Yap, January 31, 2013, “Big-data analytics can serve as checks and balances”, ZDNET, http://www.zdnet.com/big-data-analytics-can-serve-as-checks-and-balances-7000010611/, Date Accessed: July 23, 2013 The ability of big-data collection and analysis can serve as checks and balances on government bodies, ensuring agencies are both administratively efficient and transparent as public service providers to citizens.¶ An underlying force of big data is the move from structured to unstructured information such as socialmedia posts, photographs, and video clips. Unless social-media data is controlled or censored by the government, issues of national interest getting discussed and circulated on social networks can serve as checks and balances on a country's leaders, said David Menninger, head of business development and strategy at Greenplum, the big-data analytics provider owned by EMC.¶ "For example, say there's higher occurrence of a type of complaint about aging infrastructure, that creates a checks and balance for the authorities," he said at an interview Thursday. Menninger, who is based in the US, was in Singapore to meet company executives and business partners.¶ Gathering and analyzing all that data enables governments to better serve the people. They know what critical issues need immediate attention, where to concentrate their resources, and spend money where it is most needed to do the most good, he noted.¶ Going a step farther, big-data analytics can also be used to maintain transparency and fight potential graft in governments, Menninger pointed out. Espionage Espionage-Russia Russian-US Cold War Espionage still a threat Ross, Brian (Staff Writer ABC News) Jun 2013 Edward Snowden Steps Into Secret U.S.-Russia Spy Scuffle http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/edward-snowden-steps-secret-us-russia-spyscuffle/story?id=19495341#.UeViQPlQFZ4 Date Accessed: 7/16/13 An ABC News review of public reports shows that in the past 16 months alone, at least six people have been accused or convicted of spying for the U.S. in Russia, including two Americans who were kicked out of the country and four Russians purportedly recruited by U.S. intelligence -- all sent to prison. Another American, a lawyer, was reportedly expelled from Russia this May because he rebuffed Russian agents' attempt to recruit him to spy for them.¶ "Espionage is alive and well" between the old Cold War foes, said David Major, a former senior FBI counter-intelligence officer and now President of the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, which tracks spy cases the world over.¶ Some of the cases, like that of blown CIA agent Ryan Fogle, splashed across headlines the world over. But several others, like the case of a Russian intelligence colonel who worked with the CIA and got 18 years behind bars for it, barely made a ripple in American media.¶ Prior to 2012, the whole world took notice in 2010 when the FBI rounded up 10 undercover Russian agents in America – including the "SoHo Spy" Anna Chapman – but far fewer heard in 2011 when it was revealed a Russian intelligence official in Moscow had given the spy ring up and then fled to the U.S. That man, Col. Alexander Poteyev, reportedly had been recruited by the CIA.¶ Now with Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency with a head and, reportedly, laptops full of U.S. secrets, Major said the Russians have been handed a victory, even if Snowden insists he's not working with any governments.¶ "One of the highest targets [for foreign intelligence agencies] has always been the NSA, one of the hardest targets for them ever to penetrate," Major said. "[Russian intelligence] is going to look at this case as an opportunity, as a treasure trove of intelligence that [will be] exploited to the extent that they can, and then when they decide, they'll move on." Espionage is a difficult to manage, yet growing problem to the U.S Lewis, James A(Director of Technology at CSIS) December 2002 Assessing the Risks of Cyber Terrorism, Cyber War and Other Cyber Threatshttp://www.steptoe.com/publications/231a.pdf Date Accessed: 7/16/2013 Espionage opportunities created by a greater reliance on internet-accessible computer ¶ networks will create greater risk for national security than cyber attacks. Terrorist groups ¶ are likely to use the Internet to collect information on potential targets, and intelligence¶ services can not only benefit from information openly available on the web but,14 more¶ importantly, can benefit from the ability to clandestinely penetrate computer networks¶ and collect information that is not publicly available. This is very different from hacking, ¶ in that in the event of a successful penetration of a hostile network, a terrorist group or an ¶ intelligence service will want to be as unobtrusive as possible. A sophisticated opponent ¶ might hack into a system and sit there, collecting intelligence and working to remain ¶ unnoticed. It will not disrupt essential services or leave embarrassing messages on ¶ websites, but remain quietly in the background collecting information. Collection ¶ techniques for the Internet differ significantly from earlier signals and communications ¶ intercept techniques, and while different kinds of data will be collected, the overall effect ¶ may be to make some espionage activities much more rewarding. This topic, the ¶ implications for espionage of the greater use of computer networks and Internet ¶ protocols, deserves further study. Espionage-China Espionage is top threat to the US- China has been accused of espionage Hosenball, Mark. (Investigative Producer NBC, Staff Writer on Reuters) Mar 2012 Cyber-attacks leading threat against U.S.: Spy Agencies http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/12/us-usa-threatsidUSBRE92B0LS20130312 Date Accessed: 7/15/13 (Reuters) - Intelligence leaders said for the first time on Tuesday that cyber attacks and cyber espionage have supplanted terrorism as the top security threat facing the United States. That stark assessment, in an annual "worldwide threat" briefing that covered concerns as diverse as North Korea's belligerence and Syria's civil war, was reinforced in remarks by the spy chiefs before the Senate Intelligence Committee. They expressed concern that computer technology is evolving so quickly it is hard for security experts to keep up. "In some cases, the world is applying digital technologies faster than our ability to understand the security implications and mitigate potential risks," James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, told the committee. In written testimony, Clapper softened his analysis somewhat, playing down the likelihood of catastrophic attacks on the United States in the near term - either through digital technologies, or from foreign or domestic militants employing traditional violence. But this year's annual threat briefing underscored how, a decade after the Iraq war began and nearly two years after the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, digital assaults on government and computer networks have supplanted earlier security fears. On Monday, White House national security adviser Tom Donilon, citing complaints from U.S. businesses about alleged Chinese cyber espionage, said the issue is a growing challenge to economic relations between the United States and China. China cyber attacks are growing and the us needs to actively search for hackers. David Feith, an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong “Timothy L. Thomas: Why China Is Reading Your Email” DoP: 2013 March, DoA: 7/17/13 http://stream.wsj.com/story/latestheadlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-200781/ For several years, Washington has treated China as the Lord Voldemort of geopolitics—the foe who must not be named, lest all economic and diplomatic hell break loose. That policy seemed to be ending in recent weeks, and Timothy Thomas thinks it’s about time.¶ The clearest sign of change came in a March 11 speech by Tom Donilon, President Obama’s national security adviser, who condemned “cyber intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale” and declared that “the international community cannot tolerate such activity from any country.” Chinese cyber aggression poses risks “to international trade, to the reputation of Chinese industry and to our overall relations,” Mr. Donilon said, and Beijing must stop it.¶ “Why did we wait so long?” wonders Mr. Thomas as we sit in the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office, where the 64-year-old retired lieutenant colonel has studied Chinese cyber strategy for two decades. More than enough evidence accumulated long ago, he says, for the U.S. to say to Beijing and its denials of responsibility, “Folks, you don’t have a leg to stand on, sorry.” Beijing's cyber attacks are rooted in military strategy, says one of America's foremost experts. The best way to combat them is for the U.S. to go on the cyber offensive too. The US is developing Cyber defense teams to monitor data to protect from cyber attacks. Robertson Adi, Adi RobertsonWa is a reporter for The Verge.,“NSA head says 13 'offensive teams' being trained for cyberwarfare” DoP: 3/13/13, DoA: 7/16/13,¶ http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/13/4099958/nsa-head-says-13-offensive-teams-being-trained-for-cyberwarfare As Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discussed the "remote" threat of a major cyberattack within the next two years, NSA and US Cyber Command director Gen. Keith Alexander told Congress that the US was training its own cyberwarriors as well. In yesterday's hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Alexander emphasized that "this team, this defend-the-nation team, is not a defensive team... This is an offensive team that the Defense Department would use to defend the nation if it were attacked in cyberspace. 13 of the teams that we’re creating are for that mission alone."¶ As The New York Times reports, Alexander says 27 additional teams are dedicated to training and surveillance, and more will be able to "defend our networks in cyberspace." He did not go into detail about the projects, but he said that training was the most important task at hand, and that defense was best served by monitoring incoming traffic to the US with systems that could check for attacks. Current fears about cyberwarfare have focused on China, which is considered responsible for recent attacks on The New York Times and other papers, but Clapper has said that "isolated state or nonstate actors" are more likely to launch high-stakes campaigns that could take out critical infrastructure.¶ China Espionage Impact: Innovation China cyber attacks on threaten innovation by top companies McGarry, Brendan, staff analyst and writer, 5/21/13, China’s Cyber Attacks Threaten Social Order: Analyst, Defense Tech, http://defensetech.org/2013/05/21/chinas-cyber-attacks-threaten-social-order-analyst/, date access- 7/21/13 China’s communist party that its cyber attacks against Western targets threaten to undermine the Chinese economy and social order, an analyst said.¶ When asked what President Barack The U.S. president should tell the leader of Obama should say to President Xi Jinping at their next meeting in June, James Mulvenon, a vice president at Defense Group Inc., a technology company in Vienna, Va., was blunt.¶ “This is imperiling your own economic development, which is imperiling your social stability, which is your No. 1 priority,” Mulvenon said May 21 during a panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “The only message that will get through to a general secretary of the Chinese communist party is that economic development and social stability are threatened by the brazen scope and scale of this intrusion.”¶ China was a frequent topic of discussion during the discussion, part of an event called “Threat and Response: Combating Advanced Attacks and Cyber-Espionage,” which drew a roomful of academics, executives, government and military officials, and reporters.¶ A Chinese espionage group since 2006 has stolen hundreds of terabytes of information from at least 141 companies across 20 major industries, including aerospace and defense, according to a February report from Mandiant, a closely held company based in Alexandria, Va., which sells information-security services.¶ Obama should tell Xi that such actions “are undermining that last remaining pillar of strategic cooperative Sino-U.S. relations,” Mulvenon said. “The trade and business community are some of the loudest critics of what’s going on the Chinese side who traditionally have been the strongest proponents of cooperative Sino-U.S. relations.”¶ Mulvenon also criticized China’s official response to the report.¶ “The Chinese, in my view, have always been terrible strategic communicators but they reached a new low recently when their response to the Mandiant report was — and this is an official spokesman at the Ministry of National Defense said — there is no Unit 61398,” he said. “We have hundreds of pieces of open-source data identifying that unit is public knowledge,” he added. “Their literally response at the official level is to deny reality.”¶ U.S. companies are already being hurt by the theft of intellectual property, according to Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike Services, a security technology firm based in San Francisco, and former executive assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A biotechnology company that typically takes five years to take an idea to market has noticed Chinese competitors churning out similar products in 18 months, Henry said.¶ “It’s not because they’ve come up with some newfangled manufacturing process,” he said during the panel. It’s because concept and engineering resources are “being stolen, and they’re going right from manufacturing and to market.”¶ Chief executive officers must be responsible for the security of their companies’ networks, according to Chris Inglis, deputy director of the National Security Agency, the Pentagon’s code-breaking wing.¶ “We need to hold CEOs or the appropriate parties accountable for the resilience, the security, integrity of those things that generate revenue or generate whatever the business is of that particular organization,” he said in separate remarks at the event.¶ Similar to the way they pay attention to finances under Sarbanes-Oxley, the 2002 legislation designed to protect investors from fraudulent accounting practices, executives may “spend an equal amount of time to the integrity and the resilience of their networks because it’s not just a commodity whose fate may have an effect on their bottom line, it’s a foundation for their business,” Inglis said.¶ A bill sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, would make it easier for intelligence agencies to share information with the private sector. The legislation, Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, H.R. 624, has been referred to the Senate Intelligence Committee.¶ The U.S. Defense Department in a report released May 5 for the first time blamed China directly for targeting its computer networks. The attacks were focused on extracting information, including sensitive defense technology.¶ “In 2012, numerous computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, continued to be targeted for intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military,” it states. “The accesses and skills required for these intrusions are similar to those necessary to conduct computer network attacks.”¶ China called the accusations “groundless” and “not in line with the efforts made by both sides to strengthen mutual trust and cooperation,” according to a May 9 article published on the state-run website, “People’s Daily Online.” The country is a “victim itself of cyberattacks,” it states.¶ The U.S. faces a dilemma in talks with China because the U.S. has tried to make a distinction between types of spying in cyberspace, including traditional espionage, which it says cannot be legislated or governed through treaty, and commercial espionage, which it says can, Mulvenon said.¶ “This has been a real clangor with the Chinese because they don’t see the distinction because in their system the same people are doing both,” he said. China has single, large-scale, state-owned companies in each sector of the economy, making it easy for government spies to pass intelligence to corporate executives, he said.¶ “They don’t believe us when we tell them we are statutorily precluded from doing commercial espionage and we even give them a very practical reason: We say if the United States conducted commercial espionage on behalf of its companies, we wouldn’t know how to share the proceeds without somebody who didn’t get it suing us in the U.S. government for anti-trust violations,” Mulvenon said.¶ Russia is much stealthier than China when it comes to cyberspace espionage, Mulvenon said. “They use a lot more crypto,” he said, referring to cryptography. China Espionage Impact: Competitiveness Chinese government-backed hackers have cost the United States nearly $2 trillion in “lost and stolen property” and hurts economic competitiveness Kredo, July 22, 2013 (Adam, Adam Kredo is a senior writer for the Washington Free Beacon” Mike Rogers: China, Iran, and Russia Launching Cyber Attacks Against U.S.”, The Washington Free Beacon, http://freebeacon.com/mike-rogers-china-iran-and-russia-launching-cyber-attacks-against-u-s/, Date accessed; July 25, 2013) Chinese government-backed hackers have cost the United States nearly $2 trillion in “lost and stolen property” that was seized through illicit Internet attacks, Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Monday.¶ The theft of proprietary information and technology by the Chinese constitutes “the largest transfer of wealth illegally in the world’s history,” according to Rogers, who warned that the United States is not prepared to combat these cyber threats.¶ Chinese military units identify vulnerable U.S. companies and then instruct a team of hackers to steal industrial secrets and other information, according to Rogers, who spoke at an event sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).¶ “We are in a cyber war today,” Rogers said. “Most Americans don’t know it. They go about their lives happily. But we are in a cyber war today.”¶ China poses the largest threat, according to Rogers.¶ The Communist regime is “primarily” engaged in economic espionage, he said, explaining that China’s “military and intelligences services” have seized U.S. industrial technology, repurposed it domestically, and then “illegally” competed with the United States in the world market. China Espionage Impact-Media The Chinese Govermennt is hacking into American computers to try to intimidate the media. Rogers, Mike, Member of the House of Representatives and Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Ruppersburg, Dutch, also a member of the House of Reps, andn a ranking member on Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. 4/16/13 Protecting Internet freedom is a priority http://thehill.com/special-reports/defense-and-cybersecurity-april-2013/294319-protectinginternet-freedom-is-a-priority Date Accessed; 7/20/13 Most associate cybersecurity with the protection of government, utility, transportation and financial systems. But cybersecurity is not limited to military information and energy grids. National news organizations including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post recently all reported that they were subject to cyberattacks. The recent cyberattacks on media outlets were an attempt to intimidate and harass newspapers that dared publish information critical of the Chinese government. Cyberattackers have hacked into American think tanks that have published papers critical of the Chinese government, in an attempt to squash any dissent. The Chinese are very good at squashing internal political dissent, and they are now attempting to bring those threats across the ocean to our shores. Espionage-Iran Iran is a serious cyber threat J. Nicholas Hoover.Senior editor for InformationWeek Government.April 26, 2012.Congress RaisesAlarmOnIranianCyberThreat. InformationWeek.http://www.informationweek.com/government/security/congress-raises-alarm-oniranian-cyber-t/232901044.DateRetrieved: July 17, 2013 The Iranian cyber threat to the United States is on the rise, lawmakers and foreign policy observers warned in a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday. "There should be little doubt that a country that kills innocent people around the world, guns down its own people, and threatens Israel would not hesitate to carry out a cyber-attack against the U.S.," said counterterrorism and intelligence subcommittee chairman Patrick Meehan, R-Pa., whose subcommittee held a joint hearing with the cybersecurity, infrastructure protection, and security technologies subcommittee. Warnings about the threat of an Iranian attack came from all angles during the hearing, but the hearing did not include participation by a single intelligence or military official. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recently testified to Iran's improvement in the cyber arena. Meehan called Iran's growing cyber capabilities a "real and genuine challenge and threat to the United States and its interests," noting the recent attack of a proIranian group called the Iranian Cyber Army on the government news agency Voice Of America. A Meehan-penned op-ed titled "Iranian Cyber Threat Cannot Be Underestimated" appeared on the website of Congressional news site The Hill on Thursday. Panelists called to attention recent media reports about Iranian diplomats involved in planned cyber-attacks against nuclear power plants and other targets. The country also recently claimed that the downing of a drone inside the country was thanks to a hack of the drone's GPS signals. "They're taking their gloves off right now in the cyber environment," said Frank Cilluffo, associate VP and director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute and a former Bush administration homeland security official. Panelists at the session were quick to point out that Iran does not yet pose the same level of technical threat as Russia and China, but said that Iran's intentions help make it dangerous. "As yet, Iran has not shown itself to be a similarly advanced or persistent threat" as Russia and China, Cilluffo said. "The bad news is that what they lack in capability, they make up for in intent and are not as hesitant as other countries may be." Ilya Berman, VP of the hawkish and conservative American Foreign Policy Council, agreed with Cilluffo's assessment, adding that Iran poses a potentially significant threat in the asymmetric world of cyberspace. "Cyberspace is a field that advantages asymmetric actors," he said. "As a result, the capabilities are an issue, but intent is even more of an issue. Unlike in Russian and China, where conflicts exist but at least we have diplomatic relations with those countries, there are a number of threats on the table with Iran." Berman recommended that the United States government create a stronger deterrence strategy against Iranian cyber-attacks. "We have had an abject lack of a deterrent strategy in facing Iran, and [the cyber world] is crying out for a deterrence strategy so that the Iranian regime recognizes that there are redlines that they can't cross," he said. A2: Economic Espionage Isn’t Happening Business are afraid to report economic espionage Danielson 2009 (Mark E.A.,” Economic Espionage: A Framework for a Workable Solution”, writes for MINN. J.L. SCI. & TECH., http://mjlst.umn.edu/prod/groups/ahc/@pub/@ahc/@mjlst/documents/asset/ahc_asset_366029.pdf, Date accessed; July 25, 2013) A. ECONOMIC COSTS¶ Quantifying the losses attributed to economic espionage is a ¶ difficult task. Thefts often go unreported to federal or state law ¶ enforcement agencies. Businesses may be reluctant to step ¶ forward and admit being targeted for a myriad of reasons. An ¶ admission may signal to investors that a company is unable to ¶ protect its valuable proprietary information.12 Such concerns are ¶ valid: studies have indicated that a company’s stock tends to ¶ decline following an admission it has been struck by economic ¶ espionage.13 An admission may compromise joint ventures or ¶ forestall lucrative government contracts.14 By naming names, a ¶ business may prejudice its ability to obtain future contracts in ¶ that state.15 Further, organizations may worry that by coming ¶ clean they may reveal vulnerabilities and signal to copycats that ¶ they are an easy target.16 Patriot Act Patriot Act Upholds the Social Contract The patriot act works to uphold the social contract Casman, Betsey Sue. Master of Arts in Ethics and Policy Studies. 2011. "The Right to Privacy in Light of the Patriot Act and Social Contract Theory". http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2087&context=thesesdissertations. Date Accessed 7/21/13. Locke has placed the ¶ duty the good of society in the hands of the “executor” and describes his duties outside ¶ which are legislated and sometimes even against the law– he names this “prerogative”. ¶ The Executive (in the United States) has made no excuses for its behavior in vigilant ¶ surveillance. This Executive privilege is but the duty of the “executor” to protect.¶ Throughout this document, the Executive has continually maintained that certain ¶ legislation did not apply when national security was an issue. This was the basis for ¶ warrantless searches. Exigent circumstances have also been used to circumvent the ¶ prescribed law. The enactment of the Patriot Act is very clearly and reasonably designed ¶ for the preservation of life and property; the sole goals that Locke stated were the purpose ¶ of the society of which men had consigned (at least part of) their rights. Locke’s reason ¶ for the social contract is to retain as much personal freedom with the protection of ¶ authority to safeguard the property of each and every man The Patriot Act upholds the social contract Casman, Betsey Sue. Master of Arts in Ethics and Policy Studies. 2011. "The Right to Privacy in Light of the Patriot Act and Social Contract Theory". http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2087&context=thesesdissertations. Date Accessed 7/21/13. Though the authors may have described different reasons for entering into the ¶ ‘social contract’, they all seem to agree that the reason behind the existence of the social ¶ contract and its continued existence is the security of its citizenry. Therefore, it is agreed upon that society must act for the interest of the whole when dealing with a threat, ¶ especially a threat on the level of war. It can be argued that that is the sole purpose of the ¶ Patriot Act and that though some of its individual clauses or statutes may seem to violate ¶ other tenets held to be sacred to Americans, the Patriot Act as a whole is designed to ¶ honor and defend the social contract. Patriot Act Balances National Security and Privacy Homeland Security says it prioritizes national security at the expense of Privacy while preserving both – States Secret Privilege proves Palin, Philip J, 9/18/11, Homeland Security Watch, Brennan: Counterterrorism and the Law, http://www.hlswatch.com/index.php?s=patriot+act , Date Accessed : 7/17/11 We’ve also worked to uphold our values and the rule of law in a second area—our policies and practices here at home. As I said, we will use all lawful tools at our disposal, and that includes authorities under the renewed PATRIOT Act. We firmly believe that our intelligence gathering tools must enable us to collect the information we need to protect the American people. At the same time, these tools must be subject to appropriate oversight and rigorous checks and balances that protect the privacy of innocent individuals.¶ As such, we have ensured that investigative techniques in the United States are conducted in a manner that is consistent with our laws and subject to the supervision of our courts. We have also taken administrative steps to institute additional checks and balances, above and beyond what is required by law, in order to better safeguard the privacy rights of innocent Americans.¶ Our democratic values also include—and our national security demands—open and transparent government. Some information obviously needs to be protected. And since his first days in office, President Obama has worked to strike the proper balance between the security the American people deserve and the openness our democratic society expects.¶ In one of his first acts, the President issued a new Executive Order on classified information that, among other things, reestablished the principle that all classified information will ultimately be declassified. The President also issued a Freedom of Information Act Directive mandating that agencies adopt a presumption of disclosure when processing requests for information. The President signed into law the first intelligence authorization act in over five years to ensure better oversight of intelligence activities. Among other things, the legislation revised the process for reporting sensitive intelligence activities to Congress and created an Inspector General for the Intelligence Community.¶ For the first time, President Obama released the combined budget of the intelligence community, and reconstituted the Intelligence Oversight Board, an important check on the government’s intelligence activities. The President declassified and released legal memos that authorized the use, in early times, of enhanced interrogation techniques. Understanding that the reasons to keep those memos secret had evaporated, the President felt it was important for the American people to understand how those methods came to be authorized and used.¶ The President, through the Attorney General, instituted a new process to consider invocation of the so-called “state secrets privilege,” where the government can protect information in civil lawsuits. This process ensures that this privilege is never used simply to hide embarrassing or unlawful government activities. But, it also recognizes that its use is absolutely necessary in certain cases for the protection of national security. I know there has been some criticism of the Administration on this. But by applying a stricter internal review process, including a requirement of personal approval by the Attorney General, we are working to ensure that this extraordinary power is asserted only when there is a strong justification to do so.¶ Patriot Act Good – Computer Trespasser Exception Stops Hackers The Patriot Act allows the Government to search a company’s computer system after an attack. Nancy J. King, 2003, College of Business, Oregon State University, Electronic Monitoring to Promote National Security Impacts Workplace Privacy, Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journalhttp://www.cob.sjsu.edu/malos_s/privacy%20and%20national%20security.pdf The USA PATRIOT Act also [created] some new employer rights that relate to electronic monitoring of the workplace. The most important new right arises from Section 217 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which creates a new “computer trespasser” exception to the ECPA.12 This exception authorizes law enforcement to assist employers who are providers of electronic communications systems when hackers or other unauthorized persons have accessed the employers’ computer systems. Before the USA PATRIOT ACT, law enforcement agencies needed a search warrant to intercept the contents of Internet communications sent by a computer trespasser (for example, a computer hacker), even if the owner of the computer system under attack gave its consent for law enforcement to intercept electronic communications on that system. Delays in obtaining a warrant often impaired law enforcement efforts to apprehend the hacker. Now, employers can permit law enforcement to intercept communications on the employers’ computer systems. A2-“Patriot Act Violates Liberties” Patriot Act vital; safeguards in place to protect liberties Sales, Nathan A. SEPTEMBER 8, 2011. A Vital Weapon. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/09/07/do-we-still-need-thepatriot-act/the-patriot-act-is-a-vital-weapon-in-fighting-terrorism. Date Accessed 7/17/13. America needs the Patriot Act because it helps prevent terrorism while posing little risk to civil liberties. The law simply lets counterterrorism agents use tools that police officers have used for decades. And it contains elaborate safeguards against abuse.¶ Consider the three provisions Congress renewed last May.¶ 1. Congress authorized “roving wiretaps” back in 1986 -- court orders that allow police to monitor criminals even if they switch phones. The Patriot Act allows the same thing in terrorism investigations. The law levels the playing field: If a roving wiretap is good enough for Tony Soprano, it’s good enough for Mohamed Atta.¶ The Patriot Act features strict safeguards. Agents can’t eavesdrop unless they get a judge’s permission. They must demonstrate that the suspect is a terrorist. And they must notify the judge when they go up on a new phone.¶ 2. Grand juries in criminal cases routinely subpoena “business records” from companies like banks and retailers. The Patriot Act lets counterterrorism agents get the same documents.¶ The law simply lets counterterrorism agents use tools that police officers have used for decades.¶ The act’s protections are even stronger than the grand jury rules. Prosecutors issue subpoenas unilaterally, but the Patriot Act requires the F.B.I. to get a judge’s approval. Americans can’t be investigated on the basis of First Amendment activities, and special limits apply to sensitive materials like medical or library records. ¶ 3. Before 9/11, it was difficult for authorities to monitor “lone wolves” with murky ties to overseas terrorist groups. The F.B.I. suspected that Zacarias Moussaoui was a terrorist, but agents hadn’t connected him to Al Qaeda, so it wasn’t clear they could search his apartment. Congress fixed that problem. Now, agents can monitor a terrorist even if they haven’t yet found evidence he belongs to a foreign terrorist organization.¶ Again, the Patriot Act has robust safeguards. Agents have to convince a judge to let them track a lone wolf. This tool can only be used to investigate international terrorism, not domestic. And it doesn’t apply to Americans, only to temporary visitors like tourists. Citizens trade off digital privacy for security to prevent terror under the patriot act Zarka, Heater, Staff writer, 5/8/07, Yahoo, How the Patriot Act Helps United States Citizens, http://voices.yahoo.com/how-patriot-acthelps-united-states-citizens-326827.html, Date accessed: 7/17/13 Many people believe that most terrorist attacks are spontaneous and random. However, the attacks are methodical and wellplanned. Generally, the terrorists commit numerous crimes before an attack actually occurs. For example, they may use false student visas to obtain entry, trafficking of drugs, provide material support to terrorist organizations, and steal weapons and explosives prior to the attack. When all this activity is going on is when officials need to "pounce" on the terrorists.¶ The PATRIOT Act was established to "deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes" (Bullock, Haddow, & Coppola, 2006, pg.519). And in order to deter terrorist acts, the PATRIOT Act allows the government a variety of "tools". Some of the tools are as follows: permits the seizure of voicemails, permits execution of a search warrant with delayed notification (sneak and peek warrants), as well as other procedures.¶ Creates new laws regarding the financing of terrorist organizations. Permits detention of suspected terrorists for up to seven days without charges or without initiating deportation. Relaxes the restrictions on information sharing between agencies. Grants access to internet and computer information. The government can check medical records, student records, and credit records secretly and without permission. They are also able to monitor financial activities and records (Bullock, Haddow, & Coppola, 2006). The above is a list of only a few of the tools available for law enforcement officials concerning terrorism. Most if not all of the above list, will actually allow officials to notice terrorist activity before an attack occurs. Some of the terrorist activities include false visas, theft, money laundering, extortion, financial support to terrorist organizations, and selling drugs. The terrorists commit those activities in order to support themselves, their group, and their mission (the attack). As mentioned above a terrorist attack is well planned out. With the Patriot Act, we are able to monitor suspected terrorists without many prior restrictions. The Patriot Act also created new legislation as well as strengthened some penalties for terrorist related crimes, so instead of 10 years imprisonment they get 15 (example). According to Howard & Sawyer, 2006, "The radicals conclude that the United States has strategically killed Muslims to terrorize the Islamic nation" (Sawyer, & Howard, 2006, pg.221). Therefore, Al-Qaeda justifies the killing of as many American citizens as possible as Bin Laden declared war on the U.S. and her allies. That means that the United States should be granted extensive authority to monitor terrorist activity. However, as the years have passed since 9/11 many people are in an uproar about constitutional freedoms and rights concerning the Patriot Act. It seems like another devastating attack will have to occur on U.S. soil before they realize the severity of terrorism.¶ FISA Upholds 1st Amendment Protections FISA protects rights of citizens under the first amendment. Casman, Betsey Sue. Master of Arts in Ethics and Policy Studies. 2011. "The Right to Privacy in Light of the Patriot Act and Social Contract Theory". http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2087&context=thesesdissertations. Date Accessed 7/21/13. Of course, as in every argument or debate, there is an alternate viewpoint. In this ¶ case, there are some that see the expanded government power from the Patriot Act as an ¶ important tool in the protection of all Americans. The arrival of September 11, 2001, ¶ ushered in a new and foreboding era in the history of terrorism. Thus the U.S. ¶ intelligence agencies are faced not only with detecting and preventing the hijacking of ¶ airliners, but also with detecting and intercepting and preventing foreign-sponsored ¶ terrorists from unleashing biological, chemical, and portable nuclear weapons within our ¶ borders, all of which constitute a clear and present security threat to this nation. In order ¶ swiftly and effectively to meet these daunting challenges, speed and secrecy are of the ¶ utmost importance (Privacy Opposing Viewpoints, 2006). This argument goes on to ¶ note that there is still protection for citizens even under these heightened security ¶ measures. FISA specifically and affirmatively seeks to protect and preserve the ¶ inalienable rights guaranteed to American citizens, as well as to aliens lawfully admitted ¶ for permanent residence. FISA states that ‘no United States person may be considered a ¶ foreign power or an agent of a foreign power solely upon basis of activities protected by ¶ the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States’ (Privacy Opposing ¶ Viewpoints, 2006). Therefore, you are still protected from prosecution from any source ¶ of information gathered against you that is protected by the first amendment, even if your ¶ fourth amendment rights have been violated to get it. CIPSA A2: Endless Invasion of Privacy Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act has limitations in place to place to prevent it from invading your privacy. Rogers, Mike, Member of the House of Representatives and Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Ruppersburg, Dutch, also a member of the House of Reps, andn a ranking member on Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. 4/16/13 Protecting Internet freedom is a priority http://thehill.com/special-reports/defense-and-cybersecurity-april-2013/294319-protectinginternet-freedom-is-a-priority Date Accessed; 7/20/13 These attackers have stolen Americans’ most personal information, including banking and health records, which can be used for identity theft or blackmail purposes. Using sophisticated distributed denial of service attacks, foreign cyberattackers are also shutting down websites critical to Americans’ everyday lives, such as banking websites — compromising not only your bank account, but also the freedom of the Internet. CISPA was drafted to protect individuals’ privacy and civil liberties while still enabling effective cyber threat information-sharing. At the suggestion of several privacy and civil liberties groups, we made numerous changes to the act to further narrow its scope and purpose to ensure protection of these liberties. CISPA does not allow the federal government to read your email or your Facebook posts or monitor your Internet activity. The definitions in the bill were narrowed on the House floor to better ensure the bill’s authorities could not be misinterpreted or misused for broader purposes. CISPA was also amended to restrict how the government can use the threat information shared by industry to four narrow categories: cybersecurity; investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crimes; protection of individuals from the danger of death or physical injury; and protection of minors from physical or psychological harm such as child pornography. CISPA can keep the government in check Rogers, Mike. Ruppersburg, Dutch.(House of Representatives). 4/16/13 Protecting Internet freedom is a priority http://thehill.com/special-reports/defense-and-cybersecurity-april-2013/294319-protectinginternet-freedom-is-a-priority Date Accessed; 7/20/13 Contrary to some assertions, CISPA does not provide any new authorities for the government to monitor private networks. Moreover, a private company can restrict the information it shares, to minimize or anonymize any personal information before sharing the cyber threat information. CISPA is also designed to prevent companies from sharing information about an individual customer or subscriber. Finally, the bill also requires an annual report from the intelligence community’s inspector general to ensure that none of the information provided to government is mishandled or misused. Making the Internet more secure will itself protect Americans’ privacy, civil liberties and Internet freedoms, which are presently being whittled away with each successful foreign cyberattack. Few of us can imagine life without the Internet. We believe this bill is necessary to protect the very freedom and openness that created the immeasurable benefits the Internet has provided to the world. Wire Taps Wiretaps Solve Terrorism Wire Tapping has been instrumental in preventing terrorist attacks Michael Hewitt, Liberty University, 2008, Running head: WIRETAPPING: A NECESSITY, Wiretapping: A Necessity for Effectively Combating Terrorism in the 21st Century, http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=honors In analyzing post 9-11 wiretapping, it is necessary to analyze the effects that its¶ use has had on national security and domestic society in the realm of National Security,¶ wiretapping has proven to be instrumental in the identification and prosecution of terrorists, effectively helping to diminish this threat. In the domestic realm, wiretapping¶ has proven to be an effective means of preventing terrorist attacks in the U.S., and of¶ putting Americans at ease. The most obvious evidence that the use of wiretapping has been successful in¶ protecting American national security is the "fact that there has been no serious terrorist¶ incident on American shores since its passage in 2001" (Spangler, 2005, para. 13).¶ Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and a staunch defender of the Patriot Act and its¶ wiretapping provisions, has pointed out that “because of necessary secrecy laws, we may¶ never know the full positive effects the Patriot Act is having on terrorism” (Spangler,¶ 2005, para. 13). Hatch did however note that the Justice Department has credited key¶ provisions of the Patriot Act with playing a role in the terrorism-related convictions of¶ hundreds of suspects. It has largely been the tools of wiretapping and other forms of¶ electronic surveillance, which have received the credit for the success of hundreds of¶ anti-terrorism operations since 2001. Most notable among these operations was the¶ "recent apprehension in England of scores of suspects, who were charged with making¶ plans to blow up as many as ten airliners traveling to the United States" (Criminal, 2006,¶ para. 24). In this operation, electronic surveillance played an instrumental part in¶ allowing British agents to monitor the activities of a terrorist cell. "'We have been¶ looking at meetings, movement, travel, spending and the aspirations of a large group of¶ people' said Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's antiterrorism branch" (ABCNews,¶ 2006, para. 2). In this case, British agents substantially monitored the terrorist cell before ¶ making the arrests. (ABCNews, 2006, para. 24) Another such situation was the¶ uncovering of "evidence indicating that a Pakistani charity was diverting funds originally contributed for earthquake relief to finance the planned terrorism attacks on these jumbo¶ jets" (Criminal, 2006, para. 16). It is, however, difficult to attain the exact details of the¶ results of these operations, because in these investigations, "details leading up to the¶ filing of formal charges is not usually revealed" (Criminal, 2006, para. 16). It is known¶ however, that since September 11, 2001 thousands of individuals classified as terrorists¶ have been subjected to electronic surveillance procedures. The surveillance, specifically¶ wiretapping, of individuals suspected of terrorist activities, has resulted in nearly a 20%¶ conviction rate (Criminal 2006). Wiretaps Solve Crime Wiretaps are instrumental in taking down domestic drug trafficking operations Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. 2012 (“Wiretap Report 2012”. Accessed 17 July 13. http://www.uscourts.gov/Statistics/WiretapReports/wiretap-report-2012.aspx) Federal and state prosecutors often discuss the importance of wiretap surveillance as an investigative tool. A wiretap in the Eastern District of California uncovered incriminating cellular telephone communications and text messages that led to the arrest of 32 individuals and the seizure of 19 vehicles, 35 firearms, $650,000 in cash, approximately 5,000 marijuana plants, and about 200 pounds of processed marijuana. At the state level, a wiretap in Orange County, California, was instrumental in solving a cold homicide case that occurred in 1988. Without the interceptions, the targeted subjects probably would not have been arrested and would have escaped prosecution. A wiretap reported for a previous year in a larceny investigation in Queens County, New York, revealed that a "sophisticated" group of individuals were counterfeiting checks, money orders, and credit cards that were then used to commit grand larceny and fraud. Credit-card making machines and counterfeit credit cards were seized, and 12 individuals were apprehended. Several separate state jurisdictions reported that interceptions were instrumental in uncovering drug-trafficking organizations operating in the United States. Wiretaps are key to getting criminals to cooperate with law enforcement Chang, Alisa. 2012 (Congressional reporter for NPR. “Wall Street Wiretaps: Investigators Use Insiders’ Own Words To Convict Them”. 26 Dec. Accessed 17 Dec 13. http://www.npr.org/2012/12/26/168021457/wall-street-wiretaps-investigators-use-insiders-ownwords-to-convict-them) But the problem was, most of these people they confronted would just lawyer up and resist. What the feds needed was something to make people cooperate. And in early 2008, they decided, let's do a wiretap. Many of them, like Carroll, were longtime organized crime and narcotics investigators. They knew, in those worlds, when you needed leverage to make someone cooperate, you recorded them planning something criminal. Human Trafficking Impacts – Children are Trafficked 100,000 children are being used as prostitutes in the U.S. each year. Stanton, July 8, 2013, (Emily, writer for USN “Study: At Least 100,000 Children Being Used in U.S. Sex Trade”, Washington Whispers, U.S.News, http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washingtonwhispers/2013/07/08/study-at-least-100000-children-being-used-in-us-sex-trade, Date accessed: July 28, 2013) Sexual trafficking is largely seen as something that happens abroad, but the underground sex trade is very much alive in the United States – especially for minors, according to a new report from the National Colloquium on Shelter and Services for Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Victims.¶ Human trafficking is a $9.8 billion domestic industry, with at least 100,000 children being used as prostitutes in America each year, according to the report from Shared Hope International, an organization working to eradicate sex trading. Shared Hope presented its findings in a congressional briefing Monday attended by Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., co-chairs of the Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking and Reps. Ted Poe, R-Texas, and Jim Costa, D-Calif., co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus for Victims' Rights. Solvency: Mobile Phone Searches Solve Human Trafficking Mobile phones searches solve Human trafficking. Mark Latonero, The Research Director at the University of southern California on Communication Leadership & Policy., “Rise of phones in human trafficking” DoP: 2012 DoA: 7/17/13, https://technologyandtrafficking.usc.edu/the-rise-of-mobile-phones-in-human-trafficking/ Based on the evidence gathered in the previous section, a key finding of this report is that mobile phones play a central role in facilitating potential cases of DMST [ Domestic Minor Sexual Trafficking]. Online advertisements for potential DMST victims commonly contain a mobile phone contact number. Logistical information such as time, place, pricing, and types of services are communicated through phone calls or text messages on mobile phones. As an increasing number of websites develop mobile applications, posting of advertisements can be done primarily via mobile phone, as can viewing and responding to these advertisements.¶ Because the social actors involved in trafficking can use mobile phones to communicate, coordinate, organize, advertise, etc., the information transmitted across mobile networks could serve multiple evidentiary and investigatory purposes. The widespread use of mobile phones can also be utilized for social outreach and interventions.¶ Scant research or policy attention to date has focused on the issue of mobile phone use in DMST. The intersection of mobility, digital technologies, and minor sex trafficking brings new challenges and opportunities that require careful research and analysis.¶ For example, technology-facilitated sex trafficking networks often rely upon the anonymity or contrived identities of victims and traffickers in order to operate.[1] According to Samantha Doerr, public affairs manager at Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit:¶ “Child sex trafficking is simply a very different problem than other technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation … We need to look at the methods and language used for advertising—how johns go about searching, the use of mobile phones in child sex trafficking, and how a transaction is coordinated.”[2]¶ Although the field of technology forensics is exploring ways to disrupt human trafficking online by using trace data to identify perpetrators, mobile technology is already shifting the spaces from which we can collect those traces.¶ A2: Tracking pre-paid phones is against the fourth amendment United States Court upheld that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy. Latonero, 2012, (Mark, The Research Director at the University of southern California on Communication Leadership & Policy., “Rise of phones in human trafficking”, https://technologyandtrafficking.usc.edu/the-rise-of-mobile-phones-in-human-trafficking/, Date accessed: July 29, 2013) In a recent case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the court held that the defendant had no “reasonable expectation of privacy in the data emanating from his [pay-as-you-go] cell phone that showed its location.”[16] The defendant, a “courier in a large-scale drug-trafficking operation,” challenged law enforcement agents’ tracking of his cell phone to locate the defendant, arguing that it constituted a “warrantless search that violated the Fourth Amendment.”[17] In finding that the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights had not been violated, the court explained, “if a tool used to transport contraband gives off a signal that can be tracked for location, certainly the police can track that signal. The law cannot be that a criminal is entitled to rely on the expected untrackability of his tools.”[18] This decision calls into question the privacy protection associated with pre-paid devices. Crime Data mining-Prevents Crime Data mining prevents crime; Richmond Crime Rates Prove Nicola Leske, East Coast Tech Correspondent for Reuters, June 12, 2012, Charleston Police to use data mining to fight crime, Reuters,http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2012/06/12/charleston-police-to-usedata-mining-to-fight-crime/, Date Accessed July 21,2013 IBM can point to some successes: Richmond, Virginia, which in 2005 was ranked the fifth most dangerous city in the United States dropped to the 99th spot after it began using IBM’s data mining technology to reduce crime. Data mining can be used to predict and prevent crimes; Charleston Police Department to use it. Nicola Leske, East Coast Tech Correspondent for Reuters, June 12, 2012, Charleston Police to use data mining to fight crime, Reuters,http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2012/06/12/charleston-police-to-usedata-mining-to-fight-crime/, Date Accessed July 21,2013 It’s not quite Minority Report but the Charleston Police Department in South Carolina aims to predict and prevent crimes from happening with the help of IBM’s data analytics tools. To start the CPD wants to focus on reducing the happen at similar times of day and in similar locations. number of burglaries in Charleston which it says often “The individuals committing these crimes tend to have predictable patterns, and incidents usually take place near their homes or familiar locations. In addition, property crimes are not displaceable crimes, which means the criminals won’t simply move two miles to another location’” the CDP said. IBM’s predictive analytivcs software aims to uncover hidden patterns and insights from structured and unstructured data to pinpint where and when a crime would be committed. It also promises that its models will help anticipate threats, identify suspicious actors and effectivley allocate resources. Eventually the Charleston police wants to use IBM’s software to localize what it calls criminal hotspots and deploy police officers accordingly to prevent crimes befor they occur. Charleston has more than 400 police officers who work on evaluating and forecasting crime patterns. It joins cities such as New York, Rochester, Las Vegas, Memphis, Los Angeles, Vancouver or Richmonf that use IBM software to fight crime. Crime Becoming Increasing Complex; Dating mining is necessary to Deter Crime LEUL WOLDU ASEGEHGN, July 2003, “THE APPLICATION OF DATA MINING IN CRIME PREVENTION: THE CASE OF OROMIA POLICE COMMISSION”, ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES, http://shawndra.pbworks.com/f/THE+APPLICATION+OF+DATA+MINING+IN+CRIME+PREVENTION+THE+ CASE+OF+OROMIA+POLICE+COMMISSION.pdf, Crime has increasingly become as complex as human nature. Modern technological advancement and tremendous progress in communication have facilitated criminals of every corner of the world to commit a crime using sophisticated equipment in one place and then escape to another place (Thakur, 2003). These days the glob is facing the proliferation of problems such as illicit drug trafficking, smuggling, hijacking, kidnapping, and terrorism. However, these days Law enforcement and investigating agencies have recognized the tremendous value in extracting hidden knowledge embedded in their data warehouses which could be valuable in the process of combating crimes (Megaputer Intelligence, 2002). The police departments want to reveal frequent crime patterns from historical reports to help them investigate new cases. Most law enforcement agencies today are faced with large volume of data that must be processed and transformed into useful information (Brown, 2003). Data mining can greatly improve crime analysis and aid in reducing and preventing crime. Brown (2003) stated "no field is in greater need of data mining technology than law enforcement." One of the early applications of data mining in the law enforcement was by the FBI of the federal government of the United State for the investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing case. The FBI adopted data mining techniques to scrutinize large volume of data gathered from various sources to track down criminals (Berry and Linoff, 1997). Similarly, Berry and Linoff (1997) reported that the Treasury Department of the United States adopted data mining technology to extract suspicious money laundering or fraud patterns. This is particularly aiming at detecting criminals involving in money laundry or fraud Datamining can detect crimes. Shyam Varan Nath, President and Founder at Oracle Exadata SIG, President and Founder at Oracle BIWA SIG Oracle Corporation, No Date, “ Crime Pattern Detection Using Data Mining”, Brown Computer Science, http://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci2950-t/crime.pdf,Date Accessed July 21,2013 Data mining can be used to model crime detection problems. Crimes are a social nuisance and cost our society dearly in several ways. Any research that can help in solving crimes faster will pay for itself. About 10% of the criminals commit about 50% of the crimes. Here we look at use of clustering algorithm for a data mining approach to help detect the crimes patterns and speed up the process of solving crime. We will look at k-means clustering with some enhancements to aid in the process of identification of crime patterns. We applied these techniques to real crime data from a sheriff’s office and validated our results. We also use semi-supervised learning technique here for knowledge discovery from the crime records and to help increase the predictive accuracy. We also developed a weighting scheme for attributes here to deal with limitations of various out of the box clustering tools and techniques. This easy to implement data mining framework works with the geospatial plot of crime and helps to improve the productivity of the detectives and other law enforcement officers. It can also be applied for counter terrorism for homeland security.¶ Cluster (of crime) has a special meaning and refers to a geographical group of crime, i.e. a lot of crimes in a given geographical region. Such clusters can be visually represented using a geo-spatial plot of the crime overlayed on the map of the police jurisdiction. The densely populated group of crime is used to visually locate the ‘hot-spots’ of crime. However, when we talk of clustering from a data-mining standpoint, we refer to similar kinds of crime in the given geography of interest. Such clusters are useful in identifying a crime pattern or a crime spree. Some well-known examples of crime patterns are the DC sniper, a serial-rapist or a serial killer. These crimes may involve single suspect or may be committed by a group of suspects. The below figure shows the plot of geospatial clusters of crime.¶ Data Mining Decreases Crime Rates; Memphis Proves ¶ Emily Badger, staff writer at The Atlantic Cities, MAR 14, 2012, “How To Catch a Criminal With Data”, The Atlantic Cities, http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2012/03/how-catch-criminaldata/1477/, Date Accessed: July 21, 2013¶ About seven years ago, researchers from the University of Memphis approached the city’s police department with the idea that they might be able to detect patterns in local crime – geographic hot spots on the city’s map and moments in time when they’re most likely to flare up – if they could just have access to the department’s crime data. Police departments produce reams of this stuff: arrest warrants, crime-scene reports, traffic citations, mug shots, dispatch transcripts and incident times. But that data has traditionally been painstaking to cross-reference, to mine for connections and even future trends.¶ You can almost picture a scene out of that iconic moment in Moneyball, when the grizzled veterans learn that their time-honed human intuition may be replaced by an algorithm. But, of course, analytics work. Williams pulls up some of the most recent results at hand. Comparing the period of March 1-13 this year to the same stretch of 2006, the year in which Memphis really got this program underway, serious crime (the homicides, robberies, rapes, vehicle thefts, etc.) fell by 31.2 percent in the city. And it’s not just that crime dropped, or that officers can now hand over stronger cases to prosecutors.¶ The software here was relying only on data already contained within the police department (this does suggest that a first-time offender would have been much harder to catch). But that data has never been this useful before. ¶ “The problem of these islands of information is arguably the No. 1 problem,” says Mark Cleverley, director for IBM Public Safety Solutions, who was standing nearby. “And it’s an old problem.” ¶ Combine these tools with other streams of information from outside of a police department, and they become even more effective. Subpoenaed phone or financial transaction records can instantly be visualized for connections. Or otherwise mundane insights – say the first Tuesday of every month is a common payday for local cash workers – can be woven into predictive models. Datamining can prevent crimes. The Economist, Jul 20th 2013, “Predictive policing Don’t even think about it”, http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582042-it-getting-easier-foresee-wrongdoing-and-spotlikely-wrongdoers-dont-even-think-about-it, Date Accessed: July 21,2013 Intelligent policing can convert these modest gains into significant reductions in crime. Cops working with predictive systems respond to call-outs as usual, but when they are free they return to the spots which the computer suggests. Officers may talk to locals or report problems, like broken lights or unsecured properties, that could encourage crime. Within six months of introducing predictive techniques in the Foothill area of Los Angeles, in late 2011, property crimes had fallen 12% compared with the previous year; in neighbouring districts they rose 0.5% (see chart). Police in Trafford, a suburb of Manchester in north-west England, say relatively simple and sometimes cost-free techniques, including routing police driving instructors through high-risk areas, helped them cut burglaries 26.6% in the year to May 2011, compared with a decline of 9.8% in the rest of the city.¶ So far, predictions have mostly been made about people who have already had contact with the justice system—such as convicted criminals. The growth of social media provides a lot of crunchable data on everyone else. Firms that once specialized in helping executives measure how web users feel about their brands now supply products that warn police when civil unrest approaches, and help them closely follow crises. Cops in California admit to trawling social networks for early warnings of wild parties. ECM Universe, an American firm, offers software that crawls sites “rife with extremism” to identify people who deserve closer attention.¶ These projects make life difficult for many criminals. But smart ones use the internet to make predictions of their own. Nearly 80% of previously arrested burglars surveyed in 2011 by Friedland, a security firm, said information drawn from social media helps thieves plan coups. Status updates and photographs generate handy lists of tempting properties with absent owners. It does not take a crystal ball to work out what comes next. Richmond Fights Crime with Data Mining Ian Harvey, Aug. 6, 2007, “Fighting crime with databases”, CBC News, http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/data-mining.html, Date Accessed: July 21, 2013 Using some sophisticated software and hardware they started overlaying crime reports with other data, such as weather, traffic, sports events and paydays for large employers. The data was analyzed three times a day and something interesting emerged: Robberies spiked on paydays near cheque cashing storefronts in specific neighbourhoods. Other clusters also became apparent, and pretty soon police were deploying resources in advance and predicting where crime was most likely to occur. Coupled with some other technological advancement, such as surveillance videos wirelessly transmitted to patrol cars, major crime rates dropped 21 per cent from 2005 to 2006. In 2007, major crime is down another 19 per cent. Data mining solves for crime; Vancouver decreases property crime by 24% Ryan Prox, Professor at Simon Fraser University Surrey in BC, July 11th 2013, “How Vancouver Tapped Big Data Analytics to Fight Crime”, A Smarter Planet Blog, http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2013/07/how-vancouver-tapped-big-data-analytics-to-fightcrime.html, Date Accessed: July 24, 2013 Since the deployment of investigative big data analytics software from IBM and geospatial mapping software from Esri in 2009, the Vancouver PD has been able to spot where crime is headed, and, in many cases, help stop it before it otherwise would occur. Property crime rates have dropped citywide per 1,000 residents by 24 percent and violent crime rates have decreased by nine percent from 2007 to 2011. Here are videos about the project. As a result of this project, the PD had undergone an important cultural shift. Analysis is now front and center throughout the decision making process. It’s used to determine how to effectively deploy officers, how to best assess situations, and how to plan for large scale events like the Winter Olympics, which Vancouver hosted in 2010. Impacts: Organized Crime Hurts National Security Organized crime is responsible for the smuggling of drugs, humans, and weapons of mass destruction, which poses a threat to national security and democracy Paula Dobriansky,2001 [American foreign policy expert who has served in key roles as a diplomat and policy maker in the administrations of five U.S. presidents, both Democrat and Republican, “The Explosive Growth of Globalized Crime,”Arresting Transnational Crime, 2001, (http://guangzhou.usembassychina.org.cn/uploads/images/sqVFYsuZI0LECJTHra1S_A/ijge0801.pdf)] First, the impact is felt directly on the streets of American communities. Hundreds of thousands of individuals enter the United States illegally each year. Smuggling of drugs, firearms, stolen cars, child pornography, and other contraband occurs on a wide scale across our borders. Second, the expansion of American business worldwide has opened new opportunities for foreign-based criminals. When an American enterprise abroad is victimized, the consequences may include the loss of profits, productivity, and jobs for Americans at home. international criminals engage in a variety of activities that pose a grave threat to the national security of the United States and the stability and values of the entire world community. Examples include the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, trade in banned or dangerous substances, and trafficking in women and children. Corruption and the enormous flow of unregulated, crime-generated profits are serious threats to the stability of democratic institutions and free. Organized Crime Destroys Rule of Law Organized crime undermines rule of law United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime; 2013 (“Transnational organized crime threat assessments”. Accessed 17 July 13. http://www.unodc.org/unodc/data-and-analysis/TOC-threatassessments.html) The world population grows every year, and so does the volume of exchanges among people. The vast majority of these exchanges are legitimate and beneficial, but a significant share is not. Transnational criminal markets crisscross the planet, conveying drugs, arms, trafficked women, toxic waste, stolen natural resources or protected animals' parts. Hundreds of billions of dollars of dirty money flow through the world every year, distorting local economies, corrupting institutions and fuelling conflict. Transnational organized crime has become a central issue in international affairs, an important factor in the global economy, and an immediate reality for people around the world. Aside from the direct effects - drug addiction, sexual exploitation, environmental damage and a host of other scourges organized crime has the capacity to undermine the rule of law and good governance, without which there can be no sustainable development. Drug Trade Impacts: Drugs & Crime Destroy Society – Laundry List Drugs and crime destroy economies, erode social relations, undermine democracy, and result in vigilantism Office of the President of the United Nations General Assembly’s 66th Session. 2012 (“Thematic Debate of the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Drugs and Crime as a Threat to Development On the occasion of the UN International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking”. 26 Jun. Accessed 17 July 13. http://www.un.org/en/ga/president/66/Issues/drugs/drugscrime.shtml) Drugs and crime undermine[s] development by eroding social and human capital. This degrades quality of life and can force skilled workers to leave, while the direct impacts of victimisation, as well as fear of crime, may impede the development of those that remain. By limiting movement, crime impedes access to possible employment and educational opportunities, and it discourages the accumulation of assets. Crime is also more “expensive” for poor people in poor countries, and disadvantaged households may struggle to cope with the shock of victimisation . Drugs and crime also undermine[s] development by driving away business. Both foreign and domestic investors see crime as a sign of social instability, and crime drives up the cost of doing business. Tourism is a sector especially sensitive to crime issues. Drugs and crime, moreover, undermine[s] the ability of the state to promote development by destroying the trust relationship between the people and the state, and undermining democracy and confidence in the criminal justice system. When people lose confidence in the criminal justice system, they may engage in vigilantism, which further undermines the state. Drug Trade Impacts: Drug Money Fuels Terrorism The drug trade is a major source of terrorist income McCraw, Steven C. 2003 (Assistant Director of the FBI Office of Intelligence. Testimony given before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 20 May. Accessed 17 July 13. http://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/international-drug-trafficking-and-terrorism) In framing the issue, the Committee astutely recognizes these links and the threat they present to the American people. That is why all aspects of the terrorist enterprise including funding and support must be attacked. The criminal nexus to terrorism including drug trafficking is why our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners throughout the U.S. and the world are essential to combating global terrorism. They constitute an army of dedicated professionals who bring tremendous resources and capabilities to the war on terrorism. In fact, the successes of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces are in large part to their unwavering commitment to the safety of our nation and its citizens.¶ Today's Committee meeting focuses on the ties of drug trafficking and international terrorism which is clearly a problem. Drug trafficking is a highly lucrative enterprise generating billions of dollars in profit that terrorist organizations can easily tap into. The ties between international terrorist organizations and drug trafficking varies greatly from organization to organization. For example, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), aka the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is strongly tied to drug trafficking in Colombia. The objective of the FARC is to overthrow the established order in Colombia and replace it with a socialist dictatorship. In its attempts to destabilize the Government of Colombia, the FARC conducts bombings, extortions, selective assassinations, kidnappings, and armed confrontations with Colombian police and military forces. In an effort to finance its agenda, the FARC has conducted countless kidnappings for ransom of Colombian and foreign nationals, including the most recent kidnaping/capture of American citizens in Colombia. They have also forced businesses to pay "war taxes" in exchange for FARC protection. However, drug trafficking profits are the FARC's principal source of funding. Moreover, it appears much of their agenda is based upon protecting and exploiting drug trafficking operations in Colombia and the region.¶ Historically, Afghanistan has been a major source of heroin throughout the world. Recently, al-Qa'ida and Sunni extremists have been associated through a number of investigations with drug trafficking. We have observed elements of the Taliban shipping and selling illegal drugs into the US. A recent joint FBI and DEA investigation resulted in the arrests of 16 Afghan and Pakistani subjects for involvement in a drug ring that was possibly linked to Al-Qa'ida and the Taliban. The investigation determined that heroin, grown and processed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was being shipped to the U.S. Profits from the sale of the heroin were laundered through Afghan and Pakistani owned businesses and then sent back to associates of terrorist organizations. Criminal and financial links to the Taliban regime and their involvement with Al-Qa'ida were established. The subjects were also involved in a number of other criminal activities including document/mail fraud, operating an illegal money transmitting business, and other white collar crimes.¶ Historically, Hizballah's direct involvement in narcotics trafficking has been limited, and the group's leaders have condemned the drug trade on religious grounds. However, we have seen individuals with suspected Hizballah ties involved in drug related activities and we believe that funds from these activities eventually make their way to Hizballah coffers in Lebanon. The FBI has investigated and continues to investigate, efforts by individuals and entities associated with Hizballah to traffic illegal drugs in the U.S. Acts of terrorism attributed to Hizballah have little or no connection to narcotic issues. Rather, these acts were intended to further their political and terrorist agendas. Hizballah utilizes funds from drug trafficking as one of many methods to fund these agendas.¶ By way of example, the FBI conducted an investigation which employed an undercover operation to target Hizballah cells in the U.S. ¶ The investigation has focused on distinct, but related, criminal enterprises which have participated in a host of criminal activity from fraud schemes to drug trafficking to fund their activities and provide funds to the overall Hizballah organization. A number of the subjects have been indicted and the investigation is continuing.¶ The Al-Ittihad al-Islami, or AIAI, Somalia's largest militant Islamic organization, is suspected of smuggling an illegal narcotic leaf known as Khat ("cot") into the United States. Arrests and shipment seizures indicate a sharp increase in demand for the drug. Proceeds from East African Khat sales are likely remitted to Middle Eastern banks via Hawala network and wire services. It is likely that these funds pass through the hands of suspected AIAI members and other persons with possible ties to terrorist groups.¶ The bottom line is that terrorists and terrorist groups will resort to any method or means to fund and facilitate their terrorist agendas. As state sponsorship of terrorism has come under greater international condemnation, the tremendous profit potential associated with drug trafficking make it an attractive from the perspective of terrorist groups. This is further evidence that the prospect of terrorist-related drug trafficking represents a continuing and significant threat to our national security. Drug Trade Impacts: Drug Trade Causes Latin American Instability Drug trafficking breeds instability in Latin America Williams, Phil. Felbab-Brown, Vanda. 2012 (Phil Williams is the Director of the Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and Vanda Felbab-Brown is a fellow at the Latin American Initiative and 21st Century Defense Initiative in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institute. April. Accessed 17 July 13. http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/people.cfm?authorID=850) Burgeoning and unconstrained drug production and other illicit economies thus have profound negative consequences for states and local stability. Most fundamentally, illicit economies provide an opportunity for belligerent groups to increase their power along multiple dimensions not simply by gaining control of physical resources, but also [and] by obtaining support from local populations. Such belligerents hence pose a serious security threat to local governments and, depending on the objectives of the group, to regional and global security and U.S. interests as well. With large financial profits, the belligerent groups improve their fighting capabilities by increasing their physical resources, hiring greater numbers of better paid combatants, providing them with better weapons, and simplifying their logistical and procurement chains. Crucially and frequently neglected in policy considerations, such belligerents derive significant political capital—legitimacy with and support from local populations—from their sponsorship of the drug economy. They do so by protecting the local population’s reliable (and frequently sole source of) livelihood from the efforts of the government to repress the illicit economy. They also derive political capital by protecting the farmers from brutal and unreliable traffickers, by bargaining with traffickers for better prices on behalf of the farmers, by mobilizing the revenues from the illicit economies to provide otherwise absent social services such as clinics and infrastructure, as well as other public goods, and by being able to claim nationalist credit if a foreign power threatens the local illicit economy. In short, sponsorship of illicit economies allows nonstate armed groups to function as security providers and economic and political regulators. They are thus able to transform themselves from mere violent actors to actors that take on proto-state functions. Gangs Impacts: Gangs Cause Crime Gangs are a major source of crime within the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2011 (“2011 National Gang Threat Assesment”. Acessed 17 July 13. http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/2011-national-gang-threat-assessment) There are approximately 1.4 million active street, prison, and OMG gang members comprising more than 33,000 gangs in the United States. Gang membership increased most significantly in the Northeast and Southeast regions, although the West and Great Lakes regions boast the highest number of gang members. Neighborhood-based gangs, hybrid gang members, and national-level gangs such as the Sureños are rapidly expanding in many jurisdictions. Many communities are also experiencing an increase in ethnic-based gangs such as African, Asian, Caribbean, and Eurasian gangs.¶ Gangs are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions and up to 90 percent in several others, according to NGIC analysis. Major cities and suburban areas experience the most gang-related violence. Local neighborhood-based gangs and drug crews continue to pose the most significant criminal threat in most communities. Aggressive recruitment of juveniles and immigrants, alliances and conflict between gangs, the release of incarcerated gang members from prison, advancements in technology and communication, and Mexican Drug Trafficking Organization (MDTO) involvement in drug distribution have resulted in gang expansion and violence in a number of jurisdictions.¶ Gangs are increasingly engaging in non-traditional gang-related crime, such as alien smuggling, human trafficking, and prostitution. Gangs are also engaging in white-collar crime such as counterfeiting, identity theft, and mortgage fraud, primarily due to the high profitability and much lower visibility and risk of detection and punishment than drug and weapons trafficking.¶ US-based gangs have established strong working relationships with Central American and MDTOs to perpetrate illicit cross-border activity, as well as with some organized crime groups in some regions of the United States. US-based gangs and MDTOs are establishing wide-reaching drug networks; assisting in the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and illegal immigrants along the Southwest Border; and serving as enforcers for MDTO interests on the US side of the border. ¶ Many gang members continue to engage in gang activity while incarcerated. Family members play pivotal roles in assisting or facilitating gang activities and recruitment during a gang members’ incarceration. Gang members in some correctional facilities are adopting radical religious views while incarcerated. ¶ Gangs encourage members, associates, and relatives to obtain law enforcement, judiciary, or legal employment in order to gather information on rival gangs and law enforcement operations. Gang infiltration of the military continues to pose a significant criminal threat , as members of at least 53 gangs have been identified on both domestic and international military installations. Gang members who learn advanced weaponry and combat techniques in the military are at risk of employing these skills on the street when they return to their communities.¶ Gang members are acquiring high-powered, military-style weapons and equipment which poses a significant threat because of the potential to engage in lethal encounters with law enforcement officers and civilians. Typically firearms are acquired through illegal purchases; straw purchases via surrogates or middle-men, and thefts from individuals, vehicles, residences and commercial establishments. Gang members also target military and law enforcement officials, facilities, and vehicles to obtain weapons, ammunition, body armor, police gear, badges, uniforms, and official identification.¶ Gangs on Indian Reservations often emulate national-level gangs and adopt names and identifiers from nationally recognized urban gangs. Gang members on some Indian Reservations are associating with gang members in the community to commit crime. ¶ Gangs are becoming increasingly adaptable and sophisticated, employing new and to facilitate criminal activity discreetly, enhance their criminal operations, and connect with other gang members, criminal organizations, and potential recruits nationwide and even worldwide. advanced technology Gangs Impacts: Gangs Key to Drug Trade U.S.-based gangs are integral to international drug trade operations Schmidt, Mark. 2012 (Staff writer for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. “U.S. Gang Alignment with Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations”. 22 Mar. Accessed 17 July 13. http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/u-s-gang-alignment-with-mexican-drug-trafficking-organizations) MDTOs were in search of U.S.-based partners who would not cooperate with law enforcement. Accordingly, the loyalty and discipline attributes of gangs made them ideal partners. Theoretically, the loyalty and discipline of U.S. gangs would hinder cooperation with law enforcement, and thus better protect the drug trafficking operation. The success of their working relationship is, in part, because gangs and Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) are likeminded organizations. As criminal enterprises, loyalty, discipline, and territoriality are cornerstone philosophies on how gangs and MDTOs manage their respective organizations. This is because criminal enterprises must function in a covert capacity if they wish to survive law enforcement intervention and rival criminal takeover. Without loyalty to the organization, whether a gang or a DTO, rivals and law enforcement could easily infiltrate and dismantle the organization from the inside. Discipline is paramount to keep members inline so that their actions do not disrupt the organization or its operations. Controlling and expanding one’s territory is also important to the survivability of the organization as it protects the economic area of operation from competitors. Solvency: Digital Surveillance Solves Organized Crime Electronic surveillance is required for taking down organized crime Boerman, Brian; 2008 (Attorney at Baker Botts LLP, 2008, “BEYOND THE WIRE: AN ANALYSIS OF NON-TELEPHONIC CONVERSATIONS UNDER TITLE III,” NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, Accessed: July 22, 2013, Page 599-600) (https://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv4/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__journal_of_law_an d_liberty/documents/documents/ecm_pro_060973.pdf) Electronic surveillance has become, arguably, the greatest weapon on the war against organized crime. Though organized crime is not limited only to the traditional conception of “the mob,” the use of wiretaps and electronic bugs against the Mafia in New York is a terrific example of how such electronic surveillance can be used to increase both the safety and efficiency of law enforcement. Such tactics were at the heart of the Mafia Commission Trial of the mid-1980s that sent most of the Mafia leadership to prison. Evidence was gathered from bugs planted in the homes, cars, and meeting places of Paul Castellano, Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, Gennaro “Jerry Lang” Langella, and Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo (so named for his habit of ducking prosecutions). These electronic surveillance techniques made their capture quicker and easier, and less risky, than if traditional methods had been used. The non-technological strategy of infiltration can supply a wealth of information but is difficult and dangerous. Even Joe Pistone, the famed Donnie Brasco, had his investigation supplemented by wiretaps. Mob informants can be tremendously helpful, but first they must be flipped. Electronic surveillance can aid in this area as well. For example, Henry Hill cooperated with the government after hearing a recording where he was marked for execution. Wiretaps have also provided key evidence against drug rings and motorcycle gangs such as the Bandidos. Wikileaks Harms National Security Wikileaks Threatens National Security Wikileaks is a threat to national security and it is necessary to find the anonymous sources posting classified information Montabalno, Elizabeth (Staff Writer Information Weekly)Mar 2010 Army: Wikileaks A National Security Threat http://www.informationweek.com/government/security/army-wikileaks-a-national-securitythrea/223900094 Date Accessed: 7/16/13 Wikileaks.org is considered a threat to national security because it posts classified intelligence information, according to a 2008 U.S. Army document Wikileaks posted Monday.¶ The document, attributed to the Army Counterintelligence Center and titled "Wikileaks.org -- An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, or Terrorist Groups?", cited the leaking of classified Army materials as the chief reason Wikileaks is harmful to national security.¶ "Such information could be of value to foreign intelligence and security services (FISS), foreign military forces, foreign insurgents, and foreign terrorist groups for collecting information or for planning attacks against U.S. force, both within the United States and abroad," the document says.¶ The Army has tried to sniff out a possible mole within its own ranks who might be leaking materials to Wikileaks, doubting the site's assertion that it receives classified materials from former government agency employees, according to the document.¶ "These claims are highly suspect, however, since Wikileaks.org states that the anonymity and protection of the leakers or whistleblowers is one of its primary goals," according to the document.¶ Because anyone can post to the site and there is no editorial oversight, the public may use Wikileaks as a source of misinformation, or to create lies or propaganda to promote a positive or negative image of a targeted audience, according to the document. ¶ The Army has sought not only to identify anyone within its own ranks leaking documents to the site, but also to encourage other organizations to do the same to try to take the site down.¶ "Web sites such as Wikileaks.org have trust as their most important center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insider, leaker, or whistleblower," the document stated. "Successful identification, prosecution, termination of employment, and exposure of persons leaking the information by the governments and businesses affected by information posted to Wikileaks.org would damage and potentially destroy this center of gravity and deter others from taking similar actions." Wikileaks harms national security and caused the death of foreign intelligence officers Hoth, Jim (Author of Gateway Pundit, and Washington Post) May 2012 Horrible… Wikileaks Document Led to Hanging Death of Western Spy This Week in Tehran http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/05/horrible-wikileaks-document-led-to-hanging-death-ofwestern-spy-this-week-in-tehran/ The leaked US documents by far left hero Bradley Manning and Wikileaks website led to the hanging death this week of Western spy Majid Jamali Fashi in Tehran. The Wikileaks scandal led to the hanging death of Western spy Majid Jamali Fashi in Tehran Times of Israel reported, via OrbusMax: WikiLeaks may have been responsible for exposing Majid Jamali Fashi, the 24-year-old kickboxer who was hanged in Tehran on Tuesday morning after “confessing” to assassinating a nuclear scientist on behalf of Israel, a British media report said. The Times of London reported Wednesday that a document from the US Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, seemingly drew attention to Fashi. The September 2009 US diplomatic document — identified by the code 09BAKU687 — quotes an Iranian source who was a licensed martial arts coach and trainer as describing to his American contacts pressure from the Iranian regime to train soldiers and militiamen in martial arts. Fashi was reportedly in Baku for an international martial arts competition only days before the US Embassy document was written. The suggestion is that the Iranian authorities identified Fashi as someone who was in illicit contact with the West on the basis of the document. He was arrested days after the publication of the document by WikiLeaks in December of 2010 and charged with carrying out the January 2010 assassination of nuclear scientist Masoud AliMohammadi on behalf of the Mossad. Wikileaks is a specific threat to national security and is only the tip of the iceberg – more groups and people will follow their example Eric Sterner, Fellow, The George C. Marshall Institute, February 2011, Date Accessed July 16,2013, “Wikileaks and Cyberspace Cultures in Conflict”, The George C. Marshall Institute, http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/931.pdf Wikileaks and Assange represent a mindset as much as a specific security threat to the United States. The mindset raises long-term challenges for U.S. national security. Even should the United States successfully deny Wikileaks access to cyberspace and punish it in some fashion for harming U.S. national security, other individuals and organizations will spring up and perform the same function. Indeed, multiple mirror websites sprung up with archived Wikileaks data when the latter’s web presence declined. Former Wikileaks associates have already started a new entity under the moniker “OpenSecrets.Org.” Writing in The Washington Post, Tim Hwang calls them expansionists, “who hold that the Web should remake the rest of the world in its own image. They believe that decentralized, transparent and radically open networks should be the organizing principle for all things in society, big and small.”9 One often finds a belief that cyberspace also liberates the individual, that it empowers people to rise above the artificial constraints that social institutions place upon them. Thus, for expansionists, it becomes essential to the spread of human liberty. Expansionists subscribe to a certain worldview and often ascribe to themselves some higher responsibility to a principle that should exempt them from state authority.10 Thus, some give little thought to “hacktivism” against entities that do not share their worldview, ranging from corporations to governments. In other words, Wikileaks only represents a surge in the tide of an expansionist worldview. Of course, it is not possible to define a group that calls itself “expansionist” and subscribes to a specific doctrine. Rather, expansionism as used here reflects a strain of loosely consistent thought when it comes to discussions of cyberspace and its relation to society. Wikileaks Threatens National Security Wikileaks hurts diplomacy efforts, while justifying weapons proliferation and war HEATHER HURLBURT, Executive Director of the National Security Network, November 30th, 2010, Date Accessed July 16, 2013, “Why Wikileaks Is Bad for Progressive Foreign Policy”, http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/79483/wikileaks-round-iii-will-it-matter-much# But underlying all those discrete policy positions is a common set of assumptions and values: that we live in a complex world where posturing, rigid ideology, and indiscriminate use of force will not get us, as a society or a global commons, to where we need to go; that quiet talk is much more effective than loud threats; that, in the long run, America’s national interests will be best served if we see and act on them as inextricably linked with the interests of others. I’ve called them progressive, because they are. They’re also, with a bit less emphasis on the global good, realist. Or you might simply say they are sane and reasonable. But if we can’t conduct quiet diplomacy and have it stay quiet, it’s a lot harder to make this approach work. Could Sadat and Begin have gotten to Camp David without months of quiet preparation? Could Nixon have gone to China? And back here within the U.S., you can count upon the opponents of progressive policies to use the Wikileaks dumps to advance their agenda. They'll take items out of context and use them to justify ideas like bombing Iran, rejecting the START treaty, and god-knows-what to North Korea. The Wikileakers claim to promote the politics of peace and moderation. But this latest dump could very easily have the opposite effect, by giving the absolutists a chance to spread their stereotypes and illusions of a black and white world. Wikileaks Helps Terrorists Wikileaks is detrimental to the government and helps terrorists plan and coordinate attacks Leanord, Tom (Staff writer The Telegraph) Mar 2010 Pentagon deems Wikileaks National Security Threat http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7475050/Pentagon-deems-Wikileaks-a-nationalsecurity-threat.html WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization which tries to offer a means of anonymously exposing confidential documents, has become a thorn in the side of governments and private corporations. Its latest revelation concerns itself, namely a 2008 document attributed to the Army Counterintelligence Centre which concluded that the site constitutes a threat to military operations and US security. The information could be used by foreign intelligence, insurgents or terrorists for "planning attacks", the report added. Its authors warned that the lack of editorial oversight over what could be posted could lead to it being used to spread lies and propaganda. Their report also revealed that the army had tried to discover the identity of a possible mole leaking information to the site. An army spokesman confirmed to the New York Times that the document, which provided no specific evidence to support its fears, was genuine. Leaks to the site that might have alarmed military chiefs include details of military equipment, troop strengths and its publication in 2007 of almost the entire order of battle for US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wikileaks also published a copy of "standard operating procedures" at the Guantánamo Bay detention centre which purportedly revealed the use of "extreme psychological stress" on detainees. The website, which relies on donations, almost closed down this year because it ran out of money. It has also faced attempts by governments such as those of North Korea and Thailand to block access to its site. Wikileaks Places Lives at Risk; Gives Terrorists a ‘hit list’. Robert Winnett, Political Editor for the Daily Telegraph, July 30, 2010, Date Accessed July 16, 2013, The Telegraph (UK), , “Wikileaks Afghanistan: Taliban ‘hunting down informants,” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7917955/Wikileaks-AfghanistanTaliban-hunting-down-informants.html More dire, the most recent release included information that identified critical infrastructure vulnerabilities. Earlier mass releases of classified information and unfiltered military reports from Iraq and Afghanistan placed the lives of U.S. allies and pro-democracy forces at risk by, among other things, giving terrorist groups a “hit list.”2 Wikileaks Hurts US-Pakistani Relations Wikileaks hurts U.S. Pakistani Relations; Released Information Fuels Anti-American sentiment Jayshree Bajoria, South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, December 6, 2010, Date Accessed July 16th,2013, How WikiLeaks Hurts U.S.-Pakistan Ties, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/wikileaks-hurts-us-pakistan-ties/p23565, The release of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables (NYT) by WikiLeaks.org has further shaken Washington's already strained relations with Pakistan, a strategic ally central to any success in Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism. The cables discuss U.S. concerns over Pakistan's continued support for certain militant groups, its nuclear program, the country's fragile civil-military relations, human rights abuses by Pakistan's security services, and more. Pakistani media has been covering the cable leaks extensively, and some stories have further fueled anti-U.S. sentiment (Reuters), with Pakistan's right-wing Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami staging a rally Dec. 5 to protest Pakistan's alliance (AFP) with the United States. A2: Wikileaks Solves For Transparency Wikileaks does not increase transparency – Bypassing the legal framework creates a governmental backlash that leads to even more secrecy Fenster, Mark. (Professor at the University of Florida) March 2012. Disclosure's Effects: WikiLeaks and Transparency. http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=mark_fenster Date Accessed: 7/17/2013 First, WikiLeaks’ ability to receive and distribute leaked information cheaply, quickly, and seemingly unstoppably allows it to bypass the legal framework that would otherwise permit courts and officials to consider and balance disclosure’s effects. For this reason, WikiLeaks threatens to make transparency’s balance irrelevant.238 Second, its recent massive disclosures of U.S. military and diplomatic documents, and the uneven and unpredictable effects they have had to date, should force us to reconsider and test the assumption that disclosure produces effects that can serve as the basis for judicial and administrative prediction, calculation, and balancing. For this reason, WikiLeaks threatens transparency’s balance by disproving its assumption that disclosure guarantees measurable consequences that can be estimated ex ante. Turn: Wikileaks decreases transparency by creating a government backlash and increased digital surveillance Päivikki Karhula. (Staff Writer for International Federation of Libraries Association) Jan 2011 What is the effect of WikiLeaksfor Freedom of Information? http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/faife/publications/spotlights/wikileaks-karhula.pdf Date Accesed: 7/17/13 What is the possible impact of WikiLeaks? Is it going to increase or restore the space of free speech or advance transparency of public documents? Or is it going to have the opposite effect and make governments strengthen their restrictions and increase different forms of Internet censorship? There are several valid concerns and evident signs about stricter legislation and more in depth surveillance practices which may find their grounds on WikiLeaks. Shortly after cable leaks three US senators (Ensign, Lieberman, Brown) introduced a bill aimed at stopping WikiLeaks by making it illegal to publish the names of military or intelligence community informants. According to Brown, The Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act (SHIELD) would prevent anyone from compromising national security in the future in a similar manner to WikiLeaks.17 Another bill under discussion would give the US government extended rights to wiretap all online communication and Internet traffic including foreign-based service providers. The wiretapping bill would also require software developers which enable peer-to-peer communication to redesign their service to allow interception.18 Concerns have been raised if WikiLeaks is used to gain support for this legislation.19 A2: Wikileaks Solves For Transparency Wikileaks hurts national security; slows declassification and openness in Gov’t HEATHER HURLBURT, Executive Director of the National Security Network, November 30th, 2010, Date Accessed July 16, 2013, “Why Wikileaks Is Bad for Progressive Foreign Policy”, http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/79483/wikileaks-round-iii-will-it-matter-much# In the last few years, there has been some progress toward classifying fewer documents and using the more rarefied classifications less frequently. This series of leaks will almost surely reverse that progress. A top-secret classification would have kept any of these documents off the shared network from which they were allegedly downloaded by a very junior soldier. You can bet that the intelligence community will make that point—not only to justify stronger classification of new documents but also to slow the declassification of old ones. Civilian administrations at least since Clinton’s have been trying to speed up those efforts. Now they will go even more slowly, making it harder to learn the whole story of how our government analyzed an issue, treated an individual, or reacted to a crisis. And make no mistake: You can't get the comprehensive history of a diplomatic episode from Wikileaks any more than someone could learn the comprehensive truth about you by downloading the top 20 emails from your inbox right now. Digital Surveillance Solvency Data Collection is Key to Cyber Security Technology Data collection Necessary to keep expanding IT Security efficient. Eileen Yu, senior editor at ZDNet Asia, where she oversees the business tech news site, June 12, 2013, “Complexity, targeted attacks to drive security spend to $67B”, ZDNET, http://www.zdnet.com/complexity-targeted-attacks-to-drive-security-spend-to-67b-7000016717/, Date Accessed: July 23, 2013 Increasing complexity and number of targeted attacks are pushing companies to spend more on IT security, driving the global market to a 8.7 percent climb to hit US$67.2 billion this year. ¶ Key market drivers are mobile security, big data, and advanced targeted attacks.¶ In a statement released Wednesday, Gartner projected the security technology and service market will further expand to US$86 billion in 2016. The market researcher pointed to three market drivers: mobile security, big data, and advanced targeted attacks. ¶ To support these security requirements as well as business needs, more data is needed to more effectively detect advanced attacks, the research firm added, noting that this presented challenges when identifying patterns of potential risk across diverse data sources. A2: Tor Prevents Digital Surveillance You can reveal the identity of Tor users by scanning data carefully Biryukov, Alex. Pustogarov, Ivan. Weinmann, Ralf-Philipp. 2013 (Security researchers at the University of Luxembourg. "Trawling for Tor Hidden Services: Detection, Measurement, Deanonymization". Accessed 15 July 2013. http://www.ieeesecurity.org/TC/SP2013/papers/4977a080.pdf) We have analyzed the security properties of Tor hidden services and shown that attacks to deanonymize hidden services at a large scale are practically possible with only a moderate amount of resources. We have demonstrated that collecting the descriptors of all Tor hidden services is possible in approximately 2 days by spending less than USD 100 in Amazon EC2 resources. Running one or more guard nodes then allows an attacker to correlate hidden services to IP addresses using a primitive traffic analysis attack. Furthermore, we have shown that attackers can impact the availability and sample the popularity of arbitrary hidden services not under their control by selectively becoming their hidden service directories. Transparency Uniqueness: Privacy Decreasing Now No Privacy Now-Social Media Palmer, Shelly. 06/16/2013. PRISM: There Simply is No Privacy... None. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shelly-palmer/prism-there-simply-is-no_b_3451721.html Being an active member of a social networking community - whether it's Facebook, Twitter, or anything else - means ceding a fair amount of privacy. The information, photos and check-ins you share are already public information (to an extent), even if your security settings are maxed out. Nothing you do on the Internet is truly private, and nothing you put on the Internet will ever really be deleted. Surrendering your right to privacy is the price of living an Internet-based "connected" life. There is an immense lack of digital privacy protection regarding mobile phones Hubert A.-M. Moik. CEO of MobiDigger, a cell phone digital privacy company. August 2012. Protect your privacy:¶ Mobile & Digital Privacy and Awareness. http://www.mobidigger.com/2012/Privacy_Study_MobiDigger_2012.pdf. Date Accessed 7/17/13. Contrary to conventional wisdom, privacy concerns are not limited to the Internet. It also ¶ encloses mobile phones, which penetration in America reached 104.6% in 2011 (totaling 331.6 ¶ million subscribers) therefore exceeding the US population1¶ . Even one-third of American ¶ households now have wireless device only2¶ . Users are largely unaware that cell phone ¶ messages -even simple text messages- ultimately can end up in the hands of strangers and ¶ even on the Internet. Worse, for example, new “smart phones” send information about the ¶ phone’s location to databases. Though such databases usually are not public, they also are not ¶ private; this information, then can pose a danger to the person who uses their phone to ¶ communicate with strangers or other acquaintances, to whom they normally would not reveal ¶ their locations. Private cell-phone information can also be revealed through a “reverse search,” ¶ in which anyone can search a cell phone number to find the owner’s name and address. Digital privacy has largely dissappeared Amy Joi O'Donoghue. Writer for Deseret news.June 7 2013."Addressing the illusion of digital privacy."Deseret News.http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865581375/Addressing-the-illusion-ofdigital-privacy.html?pg=all. Date Retrieved: July 17, 2013. “You can’t have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” President Barack Obama said. “You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”¶ Some say that choice has already been made in the aftermath of 9/11, with the approval of the Patriot Act that followed, and the pursuit of security at a time of free-flowing information of all types that gives the nation's enemies — from individuals to organizations to nations — the ability to cause catastrophic harm.¶ But it's a choice and policy being assessed this week in the halls of Washington, D.C., as well as in the burgs and hamlets of the nation by individuals and families who increasingly use technology to navigate their lives.¶ "Digital privacy is an illusion," said Eric Swedin, a professor at Weber State University who teaches history, particularly the history of technology. Swedin has also taught computer science and has specialized in information security — such as how hacking works and how to defend a system against hackers.¶ "When you do something digitally, it can be monitored and copied. Corporations do this all the time," Swedin said.¶ He said Google, for example, keeps track of searches.¶ "Google cares not about you as an individual, they care about you as a marketing category … and this gives you ads that are discerned from your personal searches."¶ Swedin said digital eavesdropping into cellphone records should not be a surprise given the wide-open nature of the Internet and the domestic security urgency that gripped the nation in the wake of 9/11.¶ "You can learn a lot really fast about a person just from looking at that information," he said. "My suspicion, and it is just a suspicion, is that the intelligence community since 9/11 has been totally enamored with something called 'total information awareness.' It is this belief that if you have enough data and the right kind of computer programs, you can find criminal behavior before it happens." Surveillance happening now, and Citizens like it James Vlahos Contributing writer at The New York Times Contributing Editor at Popular Mechanics Contributing Editor at Popular Science October 1, 2009. “Surveillance Society: New High-Tech Cameras Are Watching You Popular mechanics”, http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/4236865 Most Americans would probably welcome such technology at what clearly is a marquee terrorist target. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in July 2007 found that 71 percent of Americans favor increased video surveillance. What people may not realize, however, is that advanced monitoring systems such as the one at the Statue of Liberty are proliferating around the country. High-profile national security efforts make the news—wiretapping phone conversations, Internet moniÂtoring—but state-of-the-art surveillance is increasingly being used in more every-day settings. By local police and businesses. In banks, schools and stores. There are an estimated 30 million surveillance cameras now deployed in the United States shooting 4 billion hours of footage a week. Americans are being watched, all of us, almost everywhere. We have arrived at a unique moment in the history of surveillance. The price of both megapixels and gigabytes has plummeted, making it possible to collect a previously unimaginable quantity and quality of data. Advances in processing power and software, meanwhile, are beginning to allow computers to surmount the greatest limitation of traditional surveillance—the ability of eyeballs to effectively observe the activity on dozens of video screens simultaneously. Computers can't do all the work by themselves, but they can expand the capabilities of humans exponentially. ¶ Uniqueness: Privacy Violations Inevitable Violations of our privacy are inevitable, the proliferation of security technology is increasing rapidly. Brin, David. Doctor of Philosophy in space science, 2010 fellow at the Institute of Ethics. 1998. The Transparent Society. “Chapter One: The Challenge of an Open Society.” http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety1.html Alas, they do appear to be our only options. For the cameras are on their way, along with data networks that will send a myriad images flashing back and forth, faster than thought. ¶ In fact, the future has already arrived. The trend began in Britain a decade ago, in the town of King's Lynn, where sixty remote-controlled video cameras were installed to scan known "trouble spots," reporting directly to police headquarters. The resulting reduction in street crime exceeded all predictions; in or near zones covered by surveillance, crime dropped to one seventieth of the former amount. The savings in patrol costs alone paid for the equipment in a few months. Dozens of cities and towns soon followed the example of King's Lynn. Glasgow, Scotland, reported a 68 percent drop in crime citywide, while police in Newcastle fingered over 1,500 perpetrators with taped evidence. (All but seven pleaded guilty, and those seven were later convicted.) In May 1997, a thousand Newcastle soccer fans rampaged through downtown streets. Detectives studying the video reels picked out 152 faces and published 80 photographs in local newspapers. In days, all were identified. ¶ Today over 300,000 cameras are in place throughout the United Kingdom, transmitting round-the-clock images to a hundred constabularies, all of them reporting decreases in public misconduct. Polls report that the cameras are extremely popular with citizens, though British civil libertarian John Wadham and others have bemoaned this proliferation of snoop technology, claiming, "It could be used for any other purpose, and of course it could be abused." ¶ Visitors to Japan, Thailand, and Singapore will see that other countries are rapidly following the British example, using closed circuit television (CCTV) to supervise innumerable public areas.*¶ This trend was slower coming to North America, but it appears to be taking off. After initial experiments garnered widespread public approval, the City of Baltimore put police cameras to work scanning all 106 downtown intersections. In 1997, New York City began its own program to set up twenty-four-hour remote surveillance in Central Park, subway stations and other public places. ¶ No one denies the obvious and dramatic short-term benefits derived from this early proliferation of surveillance technology. That is not the real issue. Over the long run, the sovereign folk of Baltimore and countless other communities will have to make the same choices as the inhabitants of our two mythical cities. Who will ultimately control the cameras?¶ Consider a few more examples:¶ How many parents have wanted to be a fly on the wall while their child was at day care? This is now possible with a new video monitoring system known as Kindercam, linked to high-speed telephone lines and a central Internet server. Parents can log on, type "www.kindercam.com," enter their password, and access a live view of their child in day care at any time, from anywhere in the world. Kindercam will be installed in two thousand daycare facilities nationwide by the end of 1998. Mothers on business trips, fathers who live out of state, as well as distant grandparents can "drop in" on their child daily. Drawbacks? Overprotective parents may check compulsively. And now other parents can observe your child misbehaving! ¶ Some of the same parents are less happy about the lensed pickups that are sprouting in their own workplaces, enabling supervisors to tune in on them the same way they use Kindercam to check up on their kids.¶ That is, if they notice the cameras at all. At present, engineers can squeeze the electronics for a video unit into a package smaller than a sugar cube. Complete sets half the size of a pack of cigarettes were recently offered for sale by the Spy Shop, a little store in New York City located two blocks from the United Nations. Meanwhile, units with radio transmitters are being disguised in clock radios, telephones and toasters, as part of the burgeoning "nannycam" trend. So high is demand for these pickups, largely by parents eager to check on their babysitters, that just one firm in Orange County, California, has recently been selling from five hundred to one thousand disguised cameras a month. By the end of 1997, prices had dropped from $2,500 to $399.¶ Cameras aren't the only surveillance devices proliferating in our cities. Starting with Redwood City, near San Francisco, several police departments have begun lacing neighborhoods with sound pickups that transmit directly back to headquarters. Using triangulation techniques, officials can now pinpoint bursts of gunfire and send patrol units swiftly to the scene, without having to wait for vague phone reports from neighbors. In 1995 the Defense Department awarded a $1.7 million contract to Alliant Techsystems for its prototype system SECURES, which tests more advanced sound pickup networks in Washington and other cities. The hope is to distinguish not only types of gunfire but also human voices crying for help.¶ So far, so good. But from there, engineers say it would be simple to upgrade the equipment, enabling bored monitors to eavesdrop through open bedroom windows on cries of passion, or family arguments. "Of course we would never go that far," one official said, reassuringly.¶ Consider another piece of James Bond apparatus now available to anyone with ready cash. Today, almost any electronics store will sell you night vision goggles using state-of-the-art infrared optics equal to those issued by the military, for less than the price of a video camera. AGEMA Systems, of Syracuse, New York, has sold several police departments imaging devices that can peer into houses from the street, discriminate the heat given off by indoor marijuana cultivators, and sometimes tell if a person inside moves from one room to the next. Military and civilian enhanced-vision technologies now move in lockstep, as they have in the computer field for years. ¶ In other words, even darkness no longer guarantees privacy.¶ Nor does your garden wall. In 1995, Admiral William A. Owens, then Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described a sensor system that he expected to be operational within a few years: a pilotless drone, equipped to provide airborne surveillance for soldiers in the field. While camera robots in the $1 million range have been flying in the military for some time, the new system will be extraordinarily cheap and simple. Instead of requiring a large support crew, it will be controlled by one semi-skilled soldier and will fit in the palm of a hand. Minuscule and quiet, such remote-piloted vehicles, or RPVs, may flit among trees to survey threats near a rifle platoon. When mass-produced in huge quantities, unit prices will fall.¶ Can civilian models be far behind? No law or regulation will keep them from our cities for contraptions will get smaller, very long. The rich, the powerful, and figures of authority will have them, whether legally or surreptitiously. The cheaper, and smarter with each passing year.¶ So much for the supposed privacy enjoyed by sunbathers in their own back yards. ¶ Moreover, surveillance cameras are the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Other entrancing and invasive innovations of the vaunted information age abound. Will a paper envelope protect the correspondence you send by old-fashioned surface mail when new-style scanners can trace the patterns of ink inside without ever breaking the seal?¶ say you correspond with others by email and use a computerized encryption program to ensure that your messages good will all the ciphers and codes do, if some adversary has bought a "back door" password to your encoding program? Or if a wasp-sized camera-drone flits into your room, sticks to Let's are only read by the intended recipient. What the ceiling above your desk, inflates a bubble lens and watches every key-stroke that you type? (A number of unnerving techno-possibilities will be discussed in chapter 8.)¶ In late 1997 it was revealed that Swiss police had secretly tracked the whereabouts of mobile phone users via a telephone company computer that records billions of movements per year. Swisscom was able to locate its mobile subscribers within a few hundred meters. This aided several police investigations. But civil libertarians expressed heated concern, especially since identical technology is used worldwide.¶ The same issues arise when we contemplate the proliferation of vast databases containing information about our lives, habits, tastes and personal histories. As we shall see in chapter 3, the cash register scanners in a million supermarkets, video stores, and pharmacies already pour forth a flood of statistical data about customers and their purchases, ready to be correlated. (Are you stocking up on hemorrhoid cream? Renting a daytime motel room? The database knows.) Corporations claim this information helps them serve us more efficiently. Critics respond that it gives big companies an unfair advantage, enabling them to know vastly more about us than we do about them. Soon, computers will hold all your financial and educational records, legal documents, and medical analyses that parse you all the way down to your genes. Any of this might be examined by strangers without your knowledge, or even against your stated will. Transparency Impacts: Key to Economy Reciprocal transparency is key to economic growth and prosperity Field, Chris., Western Australian Ombudsman, June 10, 2013, Promoting Accountable and Transparent Decision Making in the Public Sector, http://www.ombudsman.wa.gov.au/Publications/Documents/speeches/030610-Speech-by-Chris-Fieldto-Legal-Wise-Conference-2010.pdf In short, there are very many reasons why accountability and transparency in ¶ government is important and very many good reasons to be thankful that we largely take ¶ that importance as a universal truth. For today’s purposes I simply want to focus on one ¶ reason why accountable and transparent government is important. Accountable and ¶ transparent government is, in my view, an integral step on the path to creating the most ¶ prosperous, productive economies - economies that allow individuals, businesses and ¶ governments to create the highest possible standard of living for the highest possible ¶ number of people. ¶ In its recent 2009 Prosperity Index, the Legatum Institute assessed 104 countries, ¶ representing approximately 90% of the world’s population, in terms of a series of measures, such as whether a country possesses “an honest and effective government ¶ that preserves order and encourages productive citizenship” or whether it features ¶ “transparent and accountable governing institutions that promote economic growth”. Now is the Key Time for Transparency The rise of Technological Surveillance Era is among us, and the result will determine our future. Brooke, Heather (Campaigning Journalist and Writer for The Guardian) Nov 2010 WikiLeaks: the revolution has begun – and it will be digitized. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/29/the-revolution-will-be-digitised Date Accessed: 7/17/13 But data has a habit of spreading. It slips past military security and it can also leak from WikiLeaks, which is how I came to obtain the data. It even slipped past the embargoes of the Guardian and other media organizations involved in this story when a rogue copy of Der Spiegel accidentally went on sale in Basle, Switzerland, on Sunday. Someone bought it, realised what they had, and began scanning the pages, translating them from German to English and posting updates on Twitter. It would seem digital data respects no authority, be it the Pentagon, WikiLeaks or a newspaper editor.¶ Individually, we have all already experienced the massive changes resulting from digitisation. Events or information that we once considered ephemeral and private are now aggregated, permanent, public. If these cables seem large, think about the 500 million users of Facebook or the millions of records kept by Google. Governments hold our personal data in huge databases. It used to cost money to disclose and distribute information. In the digital age it costs money not to.¶ But when data breaches happen to the public, politicians don't care much. Our privacy is expendable. It is no surprise that the reaction to these leaks is different. What has changed the dynamic of power in a revolutionary way isn't just the scale of the databases being kept, but that individuals can upload a copy and present it to the world . In paper form, these cables equate, on the Guardian's estimate, to some 213,969 pages of A4 paper, which would stack about 25m high – not something that one could have easily slipped past security in the paper age.¶ To some this marks a crisis, to others an opportunity. Technology is breaking down traditional social barriers of status, class, power, wealth and geography – replacing them with an ethos of collaboration and transparency.¶ The former US ambassador to Russia James Collins told CNN the disclosure of the cables, "will impede doing things in a normal, civilised way". Too often what is normal and civilised in diplomacy means turning a blind eye to large-scale social injustices, corruption and abuse of power. Having read through several hundred cables, much of the "harm" is embarrassment and the highlighting of inconvenient truths. For the sake of a military base in a country, our leaders accept a brutal dictator who oppresses his population. This may be convenient in the short term for politicians, but the long-term consequences for the world's citizens can be catastrophic.¶ Leaks are not the problem; they are the symptom. They reveal a disconnect between what people want and need to know and what they actually do know. The greater the secrecy, the more likely a leak. The way to move beyond leaks is to ensure a robust regime for the public to access important information.¶ Thanks to the internet, we have come to expect a greater level of knowledge and participation in most areas of our lives. Politics, however, has remained resolutely unreconstructed. Politicians, see themselves as parents to a public they view as children – a public that cannot be trusted with the truth, nor with the real power that knowledge brings .¶ Much of the outrage about WikiLeaks is not over the content of the leaks but from the audacity of breaching previously inviolable strongholds of authority. In the past, we deferred to authority and if an official told us something would damage national security we took that as true. Now the raw data behind these claims is increasingly getting into the public domain. What we have seen from disclosures like MPs' expenses or revelations about the complicity of government in torture is that when politicians speak of a threat to "national security", often what they mean is that the security of their own position is threatened.¶ We are at a pivotal moment where the visionaries at the vanguard of a global digital age are clashing with those who are desperate to control what we know. WikiLeaks is the guerrilla front in a global movement for greater transparency and participation. There are projects like Ushahidi that use social networking to create maps where locals can report incidents of violence that challenge the official version of events. There are activists seeking to free official data so that citizens can see, for example, government spending in detail.¶ Ironically, the US state department has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for technical innovation as a means of bringing democracy to places like Iran and China. President Obama has urged repressive regimes to stop censoring the internet, yet a bill before Congress would allow the attorney general to create a blacklist of websites. Is robust democracy only good when it's not at home?¶ It used to be that a leader controlled citizens by controlling information. Now it's harder than ever for the powerful to control what people read, see and hear. Technology gives people the ability to band together and challenge authority. The powerful have long spied on citizens (surveillance) as a means of control, now citizens are turning their collected eyes back upon the powerful (sousveillance).¶ This is a revolution, and all revolutions create fear and uncertainty. Will we move to a New Information Enlightenment or will the backlash from those who seek to maintain control no matter the cost lead us to a new totalitarianism? What happens in the next five years will define the future of democracy for the next century, so it would be well if our leaders responded to the current challenge with an eye on the future. Link: Pretending Privacy Exists Masks Surveillance (1/2) We can never go back to an age with complete privacy, governments that claim to do so are simply making surveillance more hidden. The only option is to encourage accountability through complete transparency. Brin, David. Doctor of Philosophy in space science, 2010 fellow at the Institute of Ethics. 1998. The Transparent Society. “Chapter One: The Challenge of an Open Society.” http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety1.html The issue of threatened privacy has spawned a flood of books, articles and media exposés — from Janna Malamud Smith's thoughtful Private Matters, and Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy's erudite Right to Privacy all the way to shrill, paranoiac rants by conspiracy fetishists who see Big Brother lurking around every corner. Spanning this spectrum, however, there appears to be one common theme. Often the author has responded with a call to arms, proclaiming that we must become more vigilant to protect traditional privacy against intrusions by faceless (take your pick) government bureaucrats, corporations, criminals, or just plain busybodies.¶ That is the usual conclusion — but not the one taken here.¶ For in fact, it is already far too late to prevent the invasion of cameras and databases. The djinn cannot be crammed back into its bottle. No matter how many laws are passed, it will prove quite impossible to legislate away the new surveillance tools and databases. They are here to stay.¶ Light is going to shine into nearly every corner of our lives.¶ The real issue facing citizens of a new century will be how mature adults choose to live — how they might compete, cooperate and thrive — in such a world. A transparent society.¶ Regarding those cameras for instance — the ones topping every lamppost in both city one and city two — we can see that very different styles of urban life resulted from just one decision, based on how people in each town answered the following question.¶ Will average citizens share, along with the mighty, the right to access these universal monitors? Will common folk have, and exercise, a sovereign power to watch the watchers?¶ Back in city number one, Joe and Jane Doe may walk through an average day never thinking about those microcameras overhead. They might even believe official statements claiming that all the spy eyes were banished and dismantled a year or two ago, when in fact they were only made smaller, harder to detect. Jane and Joe stroll secure that their neighbors cannot spy on them (except the old-fashioned way, from overlooking windows). In other words, Jane and Joe blissfully believe they have privacy.¶ The inhabitants of city number two know better. They realize that, out of doors at least, privacy has always been an illusion. They know anyone can tune in to that camera on the lamppost — and they don't much care. They perceive what really matters: that they live in a town where the police are efficient, respectful, and above all accountable. Homes are sacrosanct, but out on the street any citizen, from the richest to the poorest, can walk both safely and use the godlike power to zoom at will from vantage point to vantage point, viewing all the lively wonders of the vast but easily spanned village their metropolis has become, as if by some magic it had turned into a city not of people but of birds.¶ Sometimes, citizens of city number two find it tempting to wax nostalgic about the old days, before there were so many cameras, or before television invaded the home, or before the telephone and automobile. But for the most part, city number two's denizens know those times are gone, never to return. Above all, one thing makes life bearable: the surety that each person knows what is going on, with a say in what will happen next. And has rights equal to those of any billionaire or chief of police Link: Pretending Privacy Exists Masks Surveillance (2/2) People have been calling for individuals to retain absolute privacy online, but these merely cover up the inevitability of surveillance. Brin, David. Doctor of Philosophy in space science, 2010 fellow at the Institute of Ethics. 1998. The Transparent Society. “Chapter One: The Challenge of an Open Society.” http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety1.html Recent years have witnessed widespread calls to "empower" citizens and corporations with tools of encryption — the creation of ciphers and secret codes — so that the Internet and telephone lines may soon fill with a blinding fog of static and concealed messages, a haze of habitual masks and routine anonymity. Some of society's best and brightest minds have begun extolling a coming "golden age of privacy," when no one need ever again fear snooping by bureaucrats, federal agents, or in-laws. The prominent iconoclast John Gilmore, who "favors law 'n' chaos over law 'n' order," recently proclaimed that computers are literally extensions of our minds, and that their contents should remain as private as our inner thoughts. Another activist, John Perry Barlow, published a widely discussed "A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace" proclaiming that the mundane jurisdictions of nations and their archaic laws are essentially powerless and irrelevant to the Internet and its denizens (or "netizens"). Among the loose clan of self-proclaimed "cypherpunks," a central goal is that citizens should be armed with broad new powers to conceal their words, actions, and identities. The alternative, they claim, will be for all our freedoms to succumb to a looming tyranny.¶ In opposing this modern passion for personal and corporate secrecy, I should first emphasize that I like privacy! Outspoken eccentrics need it, probably as much or more than those who are reserved. I would find it hard to get used to living in either of the cities described in the example at the beginning of this chapter. But a few voices out there have begun pointing out the obvious. Those cameras on every street corner are coming, as surely as the new "privacy laws" really prevent hidden eyes from getting tinier, more mobile and clever? In software form they will cruise the data highways . "Antibug" technologies will arise, but the resulting surveillance arms race can hardly favor the "little guy." The rich, the powerful, police agencies, and a technologically skilled elite will always have an advantage. millennium.¶ Oh, we may agitate and legislate. But can Alternative Solvency: Transparency Checks Government Oppression (1/2) Transparency solves-only by instilling the need for openness can we adequately be aware of what’s going on to adequately criticize the government and make them accountable Brin, David. Doctor of Philosophy in space science, 2010 fellow at the Institute of Ethics. 1998. The Transparent Society. “Chapter One: The Challenge of an Open Society.” http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety1.html What distinguishes society today is not only the pace of events but also the nature of our tool kit for facing the future. Above all, what has marked our civilization as different is its knack for applying two extremely hard-won lessons from the past.¶ In all of history, we have found just one cure for error — a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.¶ Scientists have known this for a long time. It is the keystone of their success. A scientific theory gains respect only by surviving repeated attempts to demolish it. Only after platoons of clever critics have striven to come up with refuting evidence, forcing changes, do a few hypotheses eventually graduate from mere theories to accepted models of the world.¶ Another example is capitalism. When it works, under just and impartial rules, the free market rewards agility, hard work and innovation, just as it punishes the stock prices of companies that make too many mistakes. Likewise, any believer in evolution knows that death is the ultimate form of criticism, a merciless driver, transforming species over time.¶ Even in our private and professional lives, mature people realize that improvement comes only when we open ourselves to learn from our mistakes, no matter how hard we have to grit our teeth, when others tell us we were wrong. Which brings up a second observation.¶ Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.¶ This ironic contradiction, which I will later refer to as the "Paradox of the Peacock," has had profound and tragic effects on human culture for centuries. Accounts left by past ages are filled with woeful events in which societies and peoples suffered largely because openness and free speech were suppressed, leaving the powerful at liberty to make devastating blunders without comment or consent from below.¶ If neo-Western civilization* has one great trick in its repertoire, a technique more responsible than any other for its success, that trick is accountability. Especially the knack — which no other culture ever mastered — of making accountability apply to the mighty. True, we still don't manage it perfectly. Gaffes, bungles and inanities still get covered up. And yet, one can look at any newspaper or television news program and see an eager press corps at work, supplemented by hordes of righteously indignant individuals (and their lawyers), all baying for waste or corruption to be exposed, secrets to be unveiled, and nefarious schemes to be nipped in the bud. Disclosure is a watchword of the age, and politicians have grudgingly responded by passing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), truth-in-lending laws, open-meeting rules, then codes to enforce candor in real estate, in the nutritional content of foodstuffs, in the expense accounts of lobbyists, and so on.¶ Although this process of stripping off veils has been uneven, and continues to be a source of contention, the underlying moral force can be clearly seen pervading our popular culture, in which nearly every modern film or novel seems to preach the same message — suspicion of authority. The phenomenon is not new to our generation. Schoolbooks teach that freedom is guarded by constitutional "checks and balances," but those same legal provisions were copied, early in the nineteenth century, by nearly every new nation of Latin America, and not one of them remained consistently free. In North America, constitutional balances worked only because they were supplemented by a powerful mythic tradition, expounded in story, song, and now virtually every Hollywood film, that any undue accumulation of power should be looked on with concern.¶ Above all, we are encouraged to distrust government.¶ The late Karl Popper pointed out the importance of this mythology in the dark days during and after World War II, in The Open Society and its Enemies. Only by insisting on accountability, he concluded, can we constantly remind public servants that they are servants. It is also how we maintain some confidence that merchants aren't cheating us, or that factories aren't poisoning the water. As inefficient and irascibly noisy as it seems at times, this habit of questioning authority ensures freedom far more effectively than any of the older social systems that were based on reverence or trust.¶ And yet, another paradox rears up every time one interest group tries to hold another accountable in today's society.¶ Whenever a conflict appears between privacy and accountability, people demand the former for themselves and the latter for everybody else.¶ The rule seems to hold in almost every realm of modern life, from special prosecutors investigating the finances of political figures to worried parents demanding that lists of sex offenders be made public. From merchants anxious to see their customers' credit reports to clients who resent such snooping. From people who "need" caller ID to screen their calls to those worried that their lives might be threatened if they lose telephone anonymity. From activists demanding greater access to computerized government records in order to hunt patterns of corruption or incompetence in office to other citizens who worry about release of personal information contained in those very same records. Alternative Solvency: Transparency Checks Government Oppression (2/2) Transparency is key to government accountability when it comes to digital privacy Notley, Tanya. Journalist. 4 August 2011. Why digital privacy and security are important for development. http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/aug/04/digitaltechnology-development-tool. Date Accessed 7/17/13. If you believe an over-arching ambition of development should be to ensure the benefits of progress and plenty are shared fairly among citizens, then you will likely agree it's important to have a government willing to create policies that attempt to remedy existing inequities. To do this in a democratic way, these policies, and the practices to implement them, need to be transparent to ensure people can assess how government and development money is being spent, where it is being distributed and if it achieves what was intended.¶ Access to information technologies – such as mobile phones, the internet, social networking sites and video – can play a critical role in helping people hold governments and development agencies accountable. When used to collect, monitor and assess information about needs, spending, activities and impacts, technologies support not only accountability but also – by allowing people to participate in their own governance – freedom of expression and civic participation. Impacts: Government Secrecy Hurts Government Effectiveness Secrecy inhibits the government’s effectiveness Casman, Betsey Sue. Master of Arts in Ethics and Policy Studies. 2011. "The Right to Privacy in Light of the Patriot Act and Social Contract Theory". http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2087&context=thesesdissertations. Date Accessed 7/21/13. Some literature is much more cautionary in what it infers regarding the Patriot ¶ Act. Where they see the need for the government intervention, they are still wary in light ¶ of the implications of that much increased and discretionary government power. Seth ¶ Kreimer examines the accumulation of data by governmental officials and bureaucrats (of ¶ all types governmental and non) in the course of daily events (license dispensation, benefits, and government proceedings). Kreimer writes, “This information gathered in ¶ one place is available in many other arenas. Every employer accumulates information ¶ about her employees; every granter of credit files data about her customers, every transfer ¶ of funds leaves an increasingly accessible data trail, all of which is susceptible to ¶ government subpoena or request” (Kreimer, 1991). Kreimer notes that this expansion of ¶ government translates into an increase of the effective power of government, which ¶ means an increase in the ability to deploy governmental sanctions effectively. It also ¶ provides for a less straightforward means of exerting governmental power; it has the ¶ power through obtained information to publish offender names - a proven deterrent ¶ almost effective as prosecution. (Kreimer, 1991). Kreimer notes that information is ¶ currency; the prerequisite for political self-determination and a security against ¶ usurpation by secret cabals. Secrecy interferes with rational decision-making, ¶ accountability, and the choice of national goals (Kreimer, 1991). Please note that ¶ Kreimer wrote this article in 1991 a full decade before the events that transpired and the ¶ everlasting impact of September 11, 2001. There was obviously at least some support for ¶ this expansion of the Government’s gathering and disseminating information (antiprivacy, if you will) before the events of 9/11. The examination of the Government’s ¶ balancing of act of protecting both privacy rights and right to release information is ¶ studied and reported through the Government’s use of constitutional law. A2: Leaks Bad – They’re Impossible to Stop The United States government does not store data securely enough; Snowden proves Pogatchnik, Shawn. 2013 (Reporter for the Associated Press. “AP Interview: Ex-FBI Chief on Risk of Cyber Terror”. 7 July. Accessed 16 July 13. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-interview-ex-fbi-chief-riskcyber-terror) He said the NSA gave Snowden system-wide access with "the ability to extract and copy top-secret documents detailing secured and elaborate programs." He noted that a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found that employee insiders committed around a third of all breaches of sensitive data. And that, he [Freeh] said, was the biggest issue for government agencies and corporations: What should be accessible on its own internal intranet connections, and who should be cleared to see it? As things stand now, he said, "too many people have too much access" to sensitive documents in companies and government agencies. He suggested that a group's most confidential information might have to be left without an electronic fingerprint at all and be kept, old school, like the Coca-Cola company's recipe for its soft drinks once was under lock and key in a safe. A2: Schneier/”Transparency Destroys Privacy” Transparency upholds privacy, by checking the surveillance power of the elites and while creating a mutual respect for the privacy of others David Brin is a physicist and author of best-selling novels, 08 (“David Brin Rebuts Schnier in Defense of a Transparent Society,” Wired.com, 03.12.08, http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/03/brin_rebuttal) How did we get the freedom we already have, becoming the first civilization in history to (somewhat) defy ancient patterns? Yes, it's imperfect, always under threat. We swim against hard currents of human nature. But reciprocal accountability is the innovation that lets us even try.¶ Schneier claims that The Transparent Society doesn't address "the inherent value of privacy." But several chapters do, and I conclude that privacy is an inherent human need, too important to leave in the hands of state elites, who are themselves following ornate information-control rules written by other elites -- rules, by the way, that never work. (Robert Heinlein said "'privacy laws' only make the bugs smaller.")¶ Attacking a caricature of my position, Schneier suggests that transparency would end privacy, making everyone walk around naked. It does take some mental flexibility to realize how a generally open society will be privacy friendly. But it was a generally open society that invented modern privacy.¶ Look around. Today, the person who most capably defends your privacy is ... you. But you can't catch Peeping Toms and busybodies if everyone is shrouded in clouds of secrecy.¶ Try the "restaurant analogy." People who are nosey, leaning toward other diners in order to snoop, are caught by those other diners. Moreover, our culture deems such intrusion to be a worse sin than anything that may be overheard.¶ Now try setting up a restaurant where customer tables are separated by paper shoji screens. ¶ This provides the surface illusion of greater privacy, but peepers can press their ears against the screen and peer through little slits with impunity.¶ Which approach better protects privacy? Which have people overwhelmingly chosen?¶ Continuing, Schneier poses a thought experiment: "Think of your existing power as the exponent in an equation that determines the value of information. The more power you have, the more additional power you derive from the new data."¶ But this is precisely the age-old problem that Enlightenment civilization was invented to solve! Just take Schneier's formulation and replace the words "information" and "new data" with "secrets." Now, it can be argued that both versions are true. But which version gives you a worse case of the creeps? If civilization becomes a cloud of secrecy (as some are now trying to achieve), that's when elites can really exploit disparities of power.¶ How have we fought this? One early Enlightenment trick was to divide the elites. Sic 'em on each other! Unions versus management, tort lawyers versus megacorporations, regulators versus moguls and activist nongovernmental organizations against any power center you can name. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the boomer innovation, let citizens clump en masse, pooling influence to increase their common "Schneier exponent" and use information advantageously. It's an Enlightenment method of great power and flexibility. Each person can find and join an NGO suited to any passion or interest.¶ But the next step in people empowerment is even more impressive -- those burgeoning "smart mobs" Howard Rheingold and Vernor Vinge talk about, recently joined by Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody. It's agile. It's wired. Every generation innovates, or the enlightenment dies.¶ Oh, I can hear cynical snorts. Yes, it's flawed! Elites keep rediscovering tricks of secret collusion. Still, if it's hopeless, how come we're having this conversation?¶ Almost monthly, we hear of some angry cop arresting a citizen on trumped "privacy violations," for using a cellphone camera or MP3 recorder to capture an interaction with authority. And each month, judges toss the arrests, forcing police to apologize. Every time. So much for those power exponents.¶ Schneier even cites this trend, swerving his essay at the end, from doubt into a paean for "sousveillance" or citizens shining light upward upon the mighty.¶ Or ... a transparent society.¶ How to explain this veer? I suppose that he meant light should shine in one direction, from masses onto elites, not the other way. Sounds nice. But who defines which other person is a dangerous elite? Won't the definitions be controlled by, well, elites, who then exploit every exception?¶ And can you show me once, in history, when elites let themselves be blinded?¶ This flaw erupts in most anti-transparency arguments. "Light should shine on power groups I worry about, but not at me or mine." Yes, that's human. I'm human too.¶ But look around the restaurant some time (discreetly) and see your fellow citizens in action -- mostly minding their own business, enjoying privacy while seldom having to enforce it, needing no screens or vigilant authorities to protect them, or to make them behave. Privacy is good! And, guess what? It happens when we empower people to see.¶ Sure, it ain't perfect. We'll still need protectors. There are countless quibbles. We've a long way to go. ¶ Still, please, consider how we got what we already have. A2: Agamben Rights Agamben’s attempt to remove the limits on being destroys any possibility of rights that can help to preserve human dignity Frances Daly, philosophy researcher, Australian National University, BORDERLANDS, 2004, http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no1_2004/daly_noncitizen.htm There is much in Agamben’s analysis of contemporary society, particularly via his use of a Debordian critique of the spectacle, that forcefully restates some of the central problems of social life that we perceive in commodification, a fetishized distancing and an alienation of the very nature of what it means to be human. But perhaps the rather overstated or one-dimensional nature of Agamben's understanding of alienation reveals one of the problems with his use of this critique. He refers to the "absolutely banal man" who is tempted to evil by the powers of right and law (Agamben, 1993; 32); we have the 'falsification of all production' and the 'complete control of social memory and social communication'; or the "absolute systematic falsification of truth, of language and opinion […] without escape" (Agamben, 2002). Because it is precisely in such a critique that one would expect Agamben to not merely acknowledge the "complete triumph of the spectacle" but to explain the relation between the spectacle and what 'positive possibility' there remains within conditions of alienation that might be used to counter these conditions. There would seem to be an enormous gap between Agamben's critique of this society and the state of simply being that continues to be a possibility. This state of death that Agamben would argue now colonizes all structures of power and that eradicates any experience of democracy might well still possess some kind of antagonistic clash, as Toni Negri argues, but it is difficult for us to see just where resistance to this state might emerge (Negri, 2003: 1). Certainly, Agamben calls for making all residents of extraterritorial space (which would include both citizen and non-citizen) as existing within a position of exodus or refuge, and in this we can perhaps see some basis for resistance. A position of refuge, he argues, would be able to "act back onto" territories as states and 'perforate' and alter' them such that "the citizen would be able to recognize the refugee that he or she is" (Agamben, 2000: 26). In this Agamben directs our attention usefully to the importance of the refugee today – both in terms of the plight of refugees and their presence in questioning any assumption about citizen rights, and also in placing the refugee, or "denizen" as he says using Tomas Hammar's term, as the central figure of a potential politics (Agamben, 2000: 23). But he also reduces the concepts of right and the values they involve to forms of State control, eliding all difference within right and thereby terminating an understanding of the reasons for a disjuncture between legality and morality and of an existing separation of rights from the ideal of ethicality, in which liberation and dignity exist to be realized beyond any form of contract. . It is always possible to suppose that a self-fashioned potentiality is simply available to us, and in some senses it is, but not because a type of theory merely posits the social and the historical as completely open to our manipulation or 'perforation'. Likewise, we cannot merely assume that changing 'forms of life' necessarily amount to types of refusal. Such a claim would only make sense if it were put forward on the basis of an appreciation of an impulse to freedom from particular types of constraint and oppression. It would also require a sense of how this impulse takes place within a variety of conditions, some of which might be easily altered and some of which might not. In the absence of an engaged sense of what this impulse means, and of the context in which elements of freedom and unfreedom do battle, it is impossible to speculate on the nature of the subjectivity or potentiality which might be emerging or which might be in stages of decomposition. Agamben merely presumes that a strategy by which we all identify as refugees will renew a politics and thereby end the current plight of the refugee, as if no other reality impinges on this identification. This is also assumed on the basis that the State – in Agamben's theorizing, the abstraction of an all-encompassing, leviathan State – is equally, readily and easily liable to perforation. This contradiction is indicative of a wider problem where what we encounter is a form of critique that is oddly inappropriate to the type of issue it addresses. . Much can be said in criticism of the doctrine of right, of the limited nature of the understanding of freedom and rights in documents on rights, of the assumption of the place of citizen rights as the locus of the fundamental rights of the human, and most significantly, the absence of any sense of the undetermined nature of what being might mean. But what must be stated, I feel, is that it would be a serious impoverishment of the ethical problem that we currently face to deny any potential value of rights in carrying forth traces of an impetus towards human dignity, of the ideals of freedom and equality, and to thus reduce rights to what might be termed an absolute politics. Rights cannot be reduced to citizenship rights as if the ideas of rights and citizenship are coterminous. What most critically needs to be understood is, firstly, why values of freedom and equality have such a limited and fragile place within conditions of such inordinate legalism, and, secondly, what the absence of freedom, which the cause of human rights inevitably suggests, means for the installation of any such rights. Without such an understanding we are left with a gestural politics that contains a posture of radicalism but one which fails to connect the aspirations of those who are struggling to achieve elementary rights with a vision of a world that could accord them a degree of dignity. Alt-Fails Agambens solutions are utopian and collapse into totalitarianism Kohn 2k6 (Margaret, assistant professor of political science @ the u of florida, Bare Life and the Limits of Law, Theory and Event 9.2) Is there an alternative to this nexus of anomie and nomos produced by the state of exception? Agamben invokes genealogy and politics as two interrelated avenues of struggle. According to Agamben, "To show law in its nonrelation to life and life in its nonrelation to law means to open a space between them for human action, which once claimed for itself the name of 'politics'." (88) In a move reminiscent of Foucault, Agamben suggests that breaking the discursive lock on dominant ways of seeing, or more precisely not seeing, sovereign power is the only way to disrupt its hegemonic effects. Agamben clearly hopes that his theoretical analysis could contribute to the political struggle against authoritarianism, yet he only offers tantalizingly abstract hints about how this might work. Beyond the typical academic conceit that theoretical work is a decisive element of political struggle, Agamben seems to embrace a utopianism that provides little guidance for political action. He imagines, "One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good." (64) More troubling is his messianic suggestion that "this studious play" will usher in a form of justice that cannot be made juridical. Agamben might do well to consider Hannah Arendt's warning that the belief in justice unmediated by law was one of the characteristics of totalitarianism. It might seem unfair to focus too much attention on Agamben's fairly brief discussion of alternatives to the sovereignty-exception-law nexus, but it is precisely those sections that reveal the flaws in his analysis. It also brings us back to our original question about how to resist the authoritarian implications of the state of exception without falling into the liberal trap of calling for more law. For Agamben, the problem with the "rule of law" response to the war on terrorism is that it ignores the way that the law is fundamentally implicated in the project of sovereignty with its corollary logic of exception. Yet the solution that he endorses reflects a similar blindness. Writing in his utopian-mystical mode, he insists, "the only truly political action, however, is that which severs the nexus between violence and law."(88) Thus Agamben, in spite of all of his theoretical sophistication, ultimately falls into the trap of hoping that politics can be liberated from law, at least the law tied to violence and the demarcating project of sovereignty. Must Engage Policy To Change Policy involvement is inevitable- we need to proactively engage in policy making for movements to be effective Makani 2k Themba-Nixon, Executive Director of The Praxis Project, Former California Staffer, Colorlines. Oakland: Jul 31, 2000.Vol.3, Iss. 2; pg. 12 The flourish and passion with which she made the distinction said everything. Policy is for wonks, sell-out politicians, and ivory-tower eggheads. Organizing is what real, grassroots people do. Common as it may be, this distinction doesn't bear out in the real world. Policy is more than law. It is any written agreement (formal or informal) that specifies how an institution, governing body, or community will address shared problems or attain shared goals. It spells out the terms and the consequences of these agreements and is the policies reflect the political agenda of powerful elites. Yet, policy can be a force for change-especially when we bring our base and community organizing into the process. In essence, policies are the codification of power relationships and resource allocation. Policies are the rules of the world we live in. Changing the world means changing the rules. So, if organizing is about changing the rules and building power, how can organizing be separated from policies? Can we really speak truth to power, fight the right, stop corporate abuses, or win racial justice without contesting the rules and the rulers, the policies and the policymakers? The answer is no-and double no for people of color. codification of the body's values-as represented by those present in the policymaking process. Given who's usually present, most Today, racism subtly dominates nearly every aspect of policymaking. From ballot propositions to city funding priorities, policy is increasingly about the control, de-funding, and disfranchisement of communities of color. What Do We Stand For? Take the public conversation about welfare reform, for example. Most of us know it isn't really about putting people to work. The right's message was framed around racial stereotypes of lazy, cheating "welfare queens" whose poverty was "cultural." But the new welfare policy was about moving billions of dollars in individual cash payments and direct services from welfare recipients to other, more powerful, social actors. Many of us were too busy to tune into the welfare policy drama in Washington, only to find it washed up right on our doorsteps. Our members are suffering from workfare policies, new regulations, and cutoffs. Families who were barely getting by under the old rules are being pushed over the edge by the new policies. Policy doesn't get more relevant than this. And so we got involved in policy-as defense. Yet we have to do more than block their punches. We have to start the fight with initiatives of our own. Those who do are finding offense a bit more fun than defense alone. Living wage ordinances, youth development initiatives, even gun control and alcohol and tobacco policies are finding their way onto the public agenda, thanks to focused community organizing that leverages power for community-driven initiatives. - Over 600 local policies have been passed to regulate the tobacco industry. Local 100 gun control and violence prevention policies have been enacted since 1991. - Milwaukee, Boston, and Oakland are among the cities that have passed living wage ordinances: local laws that guarantee higher than minimum wages for workers, coalitions have taken the lead by writing ordinances that address local problems and organizing broad support for them. - Nearly usually set as the minimum needed to keep a family of four above poverty. These are just a few of the examples that demonstrate how local policy advocacy has made inroads in areas where positive national policy had been stalled by conservatives. Increasingly, the local policy arena is where the action is and where activists are finding success. Of course, corporate interests-which are usually the target of these policies-are gearing up in defense. Tactics include front groups, organizing for economic pressure, and the tried and true: cold, hard cash. Despite these barriers, grassroots organizing can be very effective at the smaller scale of local politics. At the local level, we have greater access to elected officials and officials have a greater reliance on their constituents for reelection. For example, getting 400 people to show up at city hall in just about any city in the U.S. is quite impressive. On the other hand, 400 people at the state house or the Congress would have a less significant impact. Add to that the fact that all 400 people at city hall are usually constituents, and the impact is even greater. Recent trends in government underscore the importance of local policy. Congress has enacted a series of measures devolving significant power to state and local government. Welfare, health care, and the regulation of food and drinking water safety are among the areas where states and localities now have greater rule. Devolution has some negative consequences to be sure. History has taught us that, for social services and civil rights in particular, the lack of clear federal standards and mechanisms for accountability lead to uneven enforcement and even discriminatory implementation of policies. Still, there are real opportunities for advancing progressive initiatives in this more localized environment. Greater local control can mean greater community power to shape and implement important social policies that were heretofore out of reach. To do so will require careful attention to the mechanics of local policymaking and a clear blueprint of what we stand for. Getting It in Writing Much of the work of framing what we stand for takes place in the shaping of demands. By getting into the policy arena in a proactive manner, we can take our demands to the next level. Our demands can become law, with real consequences if the agreement is broken. After all the organizing, press work, and effort, a group should leave a decisionmaker with more than a handshake and his or her word. Of course, this work requires a certain amount of interaction with "the suits," as well as struggles with the it's worth demanding, it's worth bureaucracy, the technical language, and the all-too-common resistance by decisionmakers. Still, if having in writing-whether as law, regulation, or internal policy. From ballot initiatives on rent control to laws requiring worker protections, organizers are leveraging their power into written policies that are making a real difference in their communities. Of course, policy work is just one tool in our organizing arsenal, but it is a tool we simply can't afford to ignore. Making policy work an integral part of organizing will require a certain amount of retrofitting. We will need to develop the capacity to translate our information, data, and experience into stories that are designed to affect the public conversation. Perhaps most important, we will need to move beyond fighting problems and on to framing solutions that bring A2: Data mining causes corruption Data Mining can prevent government corruption Jamie Yap, January 31, 2013, “Big-data analytics can serve as checks and balances”, ZDNET, http://www.zdnet.com/big-data-analytics-can-serve-as-checks-and-balances-7000010611/, Date Accessed: July 23, 2013 The ability of big-data collection and analysis can serve as checks and balances on government bodies, ensuring agencies are both administratively efficient and transparent as public service providers to citizens.¶ An underlying force of big data is the move from structured to unstructured information such as socialmedia posts, photographs, and video clips. Unless social-media data is controlled or censored by the government, issues of national interest getting discussed and circulated on social networks can serve as checks and balances on a country's leaders, said David Menninger, head of business development and strategy at Greenplum, the big-data analytics provider owned by EMC.¶ "For example, say there's higher occurrence of a type of complaint about aging infrastructure, that creates a checks and balance for the authorities," he said at an interview Thursday. Menninger, who is based in the US, was in Singapore to meet company executives and business partners.¶ Gathering and analyzing all that data enables governments to better serve the people. They know what critical issues need immediate attention, where to concentrate their resources, and spend money where it is most needed to do the most good, he noted.¶ Going a step farther, big-data analytics can also be used to maintain transparency and fight potential graft in governments, Menninger pointed out. Neg Constitutionality Digital Surveillance Violates 4th Amendment Taking away U.S. citizens’ digital privacy in pursuit of national security violates the 4th amendment. Donohue Laura K. Donohue, 2013 [Professor of Law at Georgetown Law and the Director of Georgetown’s Center on National Security and the Law] “NSA Surveillance may be legal – but it’s unconstitutional,” The Washington Post, June 21st, 2013. SM writes: The National Security Agency’s recently revealed surveillance programs undermine the purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was established to prevent this kind of overreach. They violate the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. And they underscore the dangers of growing executive power. The intelligence community has a history of overreaching in the name of national security. In the mid-1970s, it came to light that, since the 1940s, the NSA had been collecting international telegraphic traffic from companies, in the process obtaining millions of Americans’ telegrams that were unrelated to foreign targets. From 1940 to 1973, the CIA and the FBI engaged in covert mail-opening programs that violated laws prohibiting the interception or opening of mail. The agencies also conducted warrantless “surreptitious entries,” breaking into targets’ offices and homes to photocopy or steal business records and personal documents. The Army Security Agency intercepted domestic radio communications. And the Army’s CONUS program placed more than 100,000 people under surveillance, including lawmakers and civil rights leaders. After an extensive investigation of the agencies’ actions, Congress passed the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to limit sweeping collection of intelligence and create rigorous oversight. But 35 years later, the NSA is using this law and its subsequent amendments as legal grounds to run even more invasive programs than those that gave rise to the statute. We’ve learned that in April, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordered Verizon to provide information on calls made by each subscriber over a three-month period. Over the past seven years, similar orders have been served continuously on AT&T, Sprint and other telecommunications providers. Another program, PRISM, disclosed by the Guardian and The Washington Post, allows the NSA and the FBI to obtain online data including emails, photographs, documents and connection logs. The information that can be assembled about any one person — much less organizations, social networks and entire communities — is staggering: What we do, think and believe. The government defends the programs’ legality, saying they comply with FISA and its amendments. It [would] may be right, but only because FISA has ceased to [be] provide a meaningful constraint. Under the traditional FISA, if the government wants to conduct electronic surveillance, it must make a classified application to a special court, identitying or describing the target. It must demonstrate probable cause that the target is a foreign power or an agent thereof, and that the facilities to be monitored will be used by the target. In 2008, Congress added section 702 to the statute, allowing the government to use electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence on non-U.S. persons it reasonably believes are abroad, without a court order for each target. A U.S. citizen may not intentionally be targeted. To the extent that the FISC sanctioned PRISM, it may be consistent with the law. But it is disingenuous to suggest that millions of Americans’ e-mails, photographs and documents are “incidental” to an investigation targeting foreigners overseas. The telephony metadata program raises similar concerns. FISA did not originally envision the government accessing records. Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Congress allowed applications for obtaining records from certain kinds of businesses. In 2001, lawmakers further expanded FISA to give the government access to any business or personal records. Under section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government no longer has to prove that the target is a foreign power. It need only state that the records are sought as part of an investigation to protect against terrorism or clandestine intelligence. This means that FISA can now be used to gather records concerning individuals who are neither the target of any investigation nor an agent of a foreign power. Entire databases — such as telephony metadata — can be obtained, as long as an authorized investigation exists. Congress didn’t pass Section 215 to allow for the wholesale collection of information. As Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who helped draft the statute, wrote in the Guardian: “Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations. How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?” As a constitutional matter, the Supreme Court has long held that, where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, search and seizure may occur only once the government has obtained a warrant, supported by probable cause and issued by a judge. The warrant must specify the places to be searched and items to be seized. There are exceptions to the warrant requirement. In 1979 the court held that the use of a pen register to record numbers dialed from someone’s home was not a search. The court suggested that people who disclose their communications to others assume the risk that law enforcement may obtain the information. More than three decades later, digitization and the explosion of social-network technology have changed the calculus. In the ordinary course of life, third parties obtain massive amounts of information about us that, when analyzed, have much deeper implications for our privacy than before. As for Section 702 of FISA, the Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not protect foreigners from searches conducted abroad. But it has never recognized a foreign intelligence exception to the warrant requirement when foreign-targeted searches result in the collection of vast stores of citizens’ communications. Americans reasonably expect that their movements, communications and decisions will not be recorded and analyzed by the government. A majority of the Supreme Court seems to agree . Last year, the court considered a case involving 28-day GPS surveillance. Justice Samuel Alito suggested that in most criminal investigations, long-term monitoring “impinges on expectations of privacy.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor recognized that following a person’s movements “reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.” [The FISC is supposed to operate as a check. But it is a secret court, notorious for its low rate of denial. From 1979 to 2002, it did not reject a single application]. Over the past five years, out of nearly 8,600 applications, only two have been denied. Congress has an opportunity to create more effective checks on executive power. It could withdraw Sections 215 and 702 and introduce new measures to regulate intelligence collection and analysis. There are many options. James Madison put it best: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Privacy Privacy is a Human Right Privacy is a human right – International community agrees David Banisar of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, 2000. “Privacy And Human Rights”. http://gilc.org/privacy/survey/intro.html. Date Accessed: 7/22/13 Privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights and in many other international and regional treaties. Privacy underpins human dignity and other key values such as freedom of association and freedom of speech. It has become one of the most important human rights issues of the modern age. The publication of this report reflects the growing importance, diversity and complexity of this fundamental right.¶ This report provides details of the state of privacy in fifty countries from around the world. It outlines the constitutional and legal conditions of privacy protection, and summarizes important issues and events relating to privacy and surveillance.¶ Nearly every country in the world recognizes a right of privacy explicitly in their Constitution. At a minimum, these provisions include rights of inviolability of the home and secrecy of communications. Most recently-written Constitutions such as South Africa's and Hungary's include specific rights to access and control one's personal information.¶ Privacy is a Natural Right Privacy is a natural right which is grounded in the rights of freedom and autonomy. J. J. BRITZ, prof at University of Pretoria, 1996 (“THE CONCEPT OF PRIVACY”, http://web.simmons.edu/~chen/nit/NIT'96/96-025-Britz.html) Privacy can be defined as an individual condition of life characterized by exclusion from publicity (Neetling et al., 1996, p. 36). The concept follows from the right to be left alone (Stair, 1992, p. 635; Shank, 1986, p. 12)1 . Shank (1986, p. 13) states that such a perception of privacy set the course for passing of privacy laws in the United States for the ninety years that followed. As such privacy could be regarded as a natural right which provides the foundation for the legal right. The right to privacy is therefore protected under private law.¶ The legal right to privacy is constitutionally protected in most democratic societies. This constitutional right is expressed in a variety of legislative forms. Examples include the Privacy Act (1974) in the USA, the proposed Open Democracy Act in South Africa (1996) and the Data Protection Act in England. During 1994 Australia also accepted a Privacy Charter containing 18 privacy principles which describe the right of a citizen concerning personal privacy as effected by handling of information by the state (Collier, 1994, p. 44-45). The Organization for Economic and Coordination and Development (OECD) also accepted in 1980 the Guidelines for the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flow of Personal Data (Collier, 1994, p. 41).¶ Privacy is an important right because it is a necessary condition for other rights such as freedom and personal autonomy. There is thus a relationship between privacy, freedom and human dignity. Respecting a person's privacy is to acknowledge such a person's right to freedom and to recognize that individual as an autonomous human being. Right to Privacy Exists – Constitution Proves (1/2) The constitution has the right to privacy engrained inside of it. Ralph F. Gaebler, professor of law at Indiana state university, “Is There a Natural Law Right to Privacy?” DoP: 1992, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE, http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1659&context=facpub Walter Murphy has recently argued that "the nature of the American¶ Constitution requires recognition of a thick and powerful right to be¶ let alone."' What is more, he believes this right is so deeply embedded¶ in the Constitution that society cannot remove it, even through¶ formally permissible means, such as amendment, without abrogating¶ the Constitution altogether.¶ In general, there is nothing particularly surprising about the claim¶ that the Constitution includes a right of privacy. And in Murphy's¶ case, in particular, the claim rests upon thirty years of scholarship.¶ Viewed as a whole, this body of work looms as one of the more¶ passionate, and at the same time formidably coherent contributions¶ to the literature of judicial politics. 2 As developed in his many articles¶ and books, Murphy's claim for the existence of a right of privacy¶ emerges from his conviction that, since all Constitutional decision makers must adopt a judicial philosophy with substantive¶ consequences, academic critics, in judging the judges, must in fairness do the same.' His is essentially a pragmatic claim, justified on the¶ ground that it constitutes the best constitutional policy in a world of¶ judicial politics where many legitimate and contradictory claims are¶ possible The constitution implies the right to privacy through the as citizens bring in the natural right for a zone of autonomy Ralph F. Gaebler, professor of law at Indiana state university, “Is There a Natural Law Right to Privacy?” DoP: 1992, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE, http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1659&context=facpub Murphy makes two distinct arguments to support his conclusion¶ that the Constitution must be interpreted to include a broad right of¶ privacy. He describes the first argument as based on "constitutional¶ content." It begins with the assertion that the American Constitution¶ rests upon, or possibly even includes, two political theories, which¶ he calls "constitutionalism" and "representational democracy."¶ Constitutionalism denotes the view that the Constitution primarily¶ embodies personal liberties. Representational democracy denotes the¶ view that the Constitution primarily embodies a structure of¶ government based on popular sovereignty. Although poised in¶ opposition to each other, both of these sub-texts are necessary to¶ make sense of the Constitution, or as Murphy puts it, to render the¶ document more than "the political version of a seed catalogue." In¶ other words, the Constitution is a balancing act; it employs the device of checks and counter-checks not only in its provisions for the¶ structure of government, but even in its philosophical outlook. However, constitutionalism is clearly the more important philosophy¶ of the two, at least for the purpose of establishing the right of¶ privacy.' 2 "The essence of constitutionalism," according to Murphy,¶ "is that citizens bring rights with them into societ y." These rights¶ comprise a "zone of autonomy," within which "each individual¶ should be immune from governmental regulation, even regulation¶ that an overwhelming majority of society considers wise and just."¶ Thus, the right to privacy is implied by the political theory of¶ constitutionalism, which in turn is part of the Constitution. Murphy¶ also argues that the right of privacy is implied by the theory of¶ representational democracy, a claim that I will take up later. Right to Privacy Exists – Constitution Proves (2/2) The constitution provides a right to privacy by the use of wording such as free and autonomous Ralph F. Gaebler, professor of law at Indiana state university, “Is There a Natural Law Right to Privacy?” DoP: 1992, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE, http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1659&context=facpub Murphy's second argument, which he describes as based on¶ "constitutional function," is equally direct. It begins with his¶ commitment to the ideas that the Constitution is a "binding statement¶ of a people's aspirations for themselves and their nation." In Constitution is not merely a charter for government, but¶ serves as the foundation of a moral community as well. From this¶ premise Murphy argues that the Constitution must include a right of¶ privacy because "the notion of a people as free and autonomous as¶ they can be in an interdependent world is and has been among the¶ values, goals, and aspirations of U.S. society. "¶ other¶ words, the .Murphy finds evidence of the Constitution's "aspirational" character¶ in its Preamble and in the Declaration of Independence, which he¶ also regards as a foundational document. Thus, Murphy really regards¶ the U.S. as bound by a constitution, that includes the Constitution¶ of 1787, as amended, the Declaration of Independence, the two¶ political philosophies already mentioned, and possibly other¶ foundational documents or ideas as well.' 3 This is not to say that we can understand Murphy's argument simply by reading, phrase by¶ phrase, his admittedly expanded constitution. In a sense, this argument¶ denies that the Constitution can be read at all; rather, it is a¶ continuing compact, some of whose evidence is composed of written¶ documents. Right to Privacy Exists – Private Property and Artistic Creation Prove Rejection of privacy is a violation of human dignity as it publishes information absent the consent of the victim. Edward j. Bloustein, prof of law at nyu law; 1964 (“Privacy”, December 1964, pg 971, http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i205/s10/readings/week11/bloustein-privacy.pdf The most significant indication of the interest they sought¶ to protect, however, is in their statement that "the principle¶ which protects personal writings and all other personal productions ...against publication in any form is in reality not the¶ principle of private property, but that of inviolate pcrsonality."I¶ I take the principle of "inviolate personality" to posit the individual's independence, dignity and integrity; it defines man's¶ essence as a unique and self-determining being. It is because our¶ Western ethico-religious tradition posits such dignity and independence of will in the individual that the common law secures¶ to a man 'literary and artistic property"-the right to determine¶ "to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, emotions shall be communicated to others." 4 The literary and artistic property¶ cases led Warren and Brandeis to the concept of privacy because, for them, it would have been inconsistent with a belief¶ in man's individual dignity and worth to refuse him the right to¶ determine whether his artistic and literary efforts should be¶ published to the world. He would be less of a man, less of a¶ master over his own destiny, were he without this right.¶ Thus, I believe that what provoked Warren and Brandeis¶ to write their article was a fear that a rampant press feeding on¶ the stuff of private life would destroy individual dignity and integrity and emasculate individual freedom and independence. If¶ this is so, Dean Prosser's analysis of privacy stands clearly at¶ odds with "the most influential law review article ever published,"¶ one which gave rise to a "new tort,"5 not merely to a fancy name¶ for "old torts." Privacy is a Social Good We ought to protect Privacy as a social good rather than an individual right. DANIEL J. SOLOVE, 2002, Assistant Professor, Seton Hall Law School, DIGITAL DOSSIERS AND THE DISSIPATION OF FOURTH AMENDMENT PRIVACY, http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~usclrev/pdf/075502.pdf Protecting privacy through an architecture of power differs from protecting it as an individual right . Privacy is often viewed as an individual right.185 It is seen as an individual possession, and its value is defined in terms of its worth to the individual. This view is severely flawed. John Dewey astutely critiqued the “conception of the individual as something given, complete in itself, and of liberty as a ready-made possession of the individual, only needing the removal of external restrictions in order to manifest itself.”186 According to Dewey, the individual is inextricably connected to society,187 and rights are not immutable possessions of individuals, but are instrumental in light of “the contribution they make to the welfare of the community.”188 The problem with viewing rights in purely individualistic terms is that it pits individual rights against the greater good of the community, with the interests of society often winning out because of their paramount importance when measured against one individual’s freedom In contrast, an architecture of power protects privacy differently and is based on a different conception of privacy. Privacy is not merely a right possessed by individuals, but is a form of freedom built into the social structure. It is thus an issue about the common good as much as it is about individual rights. It is an issue about social architecture, about the relationships that form the structure of our society. Privacy Outweighs National Security We should promote supporting privacy over the national security interests, or a hybrid of both. We must err on the side of privacy because governments are likely to abuse their power. Lisa Nelson, 2004, University of Pittsburg, Privacy and Technology: Reconsidering a Crucial Public Policy Debate in the Post-September 11 Era, Public Administration Review, The origin of liberty in democratic theory is best described by John Stuart Mill as "the civil or social liberty which exists within the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual" (Mill 1956, 2). As Mill explains, the balance between liberty and authority is struck by guaranteeing certain immunities that cannot be violated by those holding political authority. If violated, those in positions of authority have breached their duty as leaders. As a secondary check on political authority, constitutional checks that are established by the consent of the community are a necessary condition of the acts of governing power (Mill 1956, 4). In practice, this means the exercise of political authority is mediated by the immunities of the citizenry and the consent of the governed. The liberty interest in privacy is construed similarly. To paraphrase Justice Robert H. Jackson in his concurring opinion on the 1952 Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (343 U.S. 579) decision, "the Fourth Amendment protects more than privacy; it ensures that governmental invasions of individual privacy are based upon rules established by the people, rules our rulers must follow in order to engage in surveillance." Jackson's description of privacy mirrors that of Mill. The conditions of our liberty interest in privacy are created by the immunities of the citizenry and the consent of the governed. Each serves as a limit on political authority. Yet, the analysis is not quite so simple. The equilibrium of this balance between political authority and the liberty interests of individuals is changed in the face of harm. As Mill explains, government should be established on the harm principle: "That the sole end for which mankind is warranted, individually or collec- tively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others" (Mill 1956, 4). The authority to interfere with a member of a civilized community in defense of liberty occurs when there is a need to prevent harm. In fact, as Mill argues, "it is one of the undisputed functions of government to take precautions against crime before it has been committed, as well as to detect and punish it afterwards" (Mill 1956, 116). Liberty, augmented in our constitutional framework by the principles of privacy, is mediated by the exercise of political authority to protect against harm. What is left unanswered is the type and form of political authority that is ideal for preserving our liberty interests in privacy. In theory, the answer seems quite simple: The exercise of political authority is justified when the political will necessary for the prevention of harm is warranted. Yet, as a practical matter, the perception of harm-and the justification of political authority necessary to combat it-is often problematic. As Mill warns, "the preventative function of government, however, is far more liable to be abused, at the prejudice of liberty, than the punitive function" (Mill 1956, 116). This concern is particularly acute in the post-September 11 environment because it is not only the assertion of political authority, but also the architecture of it that potentially threatens our liberty interest in privacy. Far-reaching regulations that enable the gathering and sharing of information, the concentration of power in the hands of the intelligence community, and the extensive power granted to the executive branch in the name of the "war on terrorism" is seen as altering the structural balance between political authority and social and civil liberties at the expense of democratic principles. The call for increased political authority to protect privacy in the wake of the information age, however, faces similar criticisms. Here, it is argued that under the limits of the Constitution, there is insufficient legal basis for the exercise of political authority to protect privacy. In this sense, protective legislation is seen as potentially overstepping the appropriate constitutional boundaries of political authority and squelching free enterprise and innovation in the information age. Though it seems to be at the other end of the spectrum, the question of whether the Constitution allows for the power of government to adopt and enforce laws to protect private information from intrusion by the private sector is not unlike the question of whether the events of Septem- ber 11 justify increased intelligence gathering and surveillance. Each is a question of enhanced political authority and its relationship to the liberty interests of privacy. Yet, the answer is not so easily discerned from either constitutional doctrine or public sentiments. Rather, the public policy debate must account for the interplay between each, because one is not separate from the other. Interestingly, the war on terror coincides with the ac- celeration of the information age and, as a result, affects the direction of policy debates regarding each. Perhaps the war on terror seems less intrusive and less threatening to our privacy because our notions of privacy have been altered in an unprecedented age of information. Surveillance is becoming commonplace, frequent, and innocuous. More- over, the information age has altered the traditional physical divide between the public and the private with the age of the Interet and other technologies. Physical locale is no longer the definitional quality of privacy, and, as a result, the traditional demarcation of privacy is no longer apt in either legal doctrine or societal perceptions. Similarly, the events of September 11 and the subsequent prominence of surveillance and information gathering may have caused us to be overly sensitized to information sharing in both the government and private sectors. The events of September 11 and the rise of the information age challenge the previous balance between political authority and liberty, but it does not follow that a new balance cannot be struck. Yet, it is necessary to move the debate beyond its current dichotomy, which tends to view the rise of technology and the information age as intruding on privacy. The dichotomy is not helpful because it is impossible to eliminate the specter of terrorism and turn back the clock on the information age. Instead, each is a new factor to be weighed in the quest for a balance between liberty and the exercise of political authority. For this, let us return to Mill. As Mill advocates, the balance is secured by the guarantee of certain immunities that cannot be violated by those holding political authority. As a secondary check on political authority, constitutional checks that are established by the consent of the community are a necessary condition for the acts of governing power. Thus, as a point of departure, the proper course of policy development to protect privacy while fostering the appropriate exercise of political authority requires us to turn to the necessary immunities, which cannot be trammeled, and to the constitutional checks that must remain intact Privacy Impacts: Totalitarianism Violations of privacy are the basis for governmental totalitarianism- the German Democratic Republic proves. Ron Watson, Department of Political Science, Washington University., “The Ethics of Domestic Government Spying” March 2013¶ http://rewatson.wustl.edu/The%20Ethics%20of%20Domestic%20Government%20Spying.pdf Although states can hardly do without spies if they wish to remain secure, there is, of¶ course, a darker, more sinister picture of government spying. This darker picture is one of¶ the government using spying to control every aspect of people's lives, compelling them to¶ act and think only in ways sanctioned by the state. Nowhere is this picture painted more¶ vividly than in Orwell's 1984. Winston, the protagonist, remarks:¶ There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any¶ given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on¶ any wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody¶ all the time . . . You had to live { did live, from habit that became instinct { in the¶ assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness,¶ every movement scrutinized. (Orwell 2007, 3)¶ This darker picture of spying cannot be dismissed as unrealistic, merely a dystopian night-¶ mare. States have often controlled and continue to control their citizens with spying.¶ Nowhere was this kind of control more complete than in the German Democratic Republic ¶ (GDR) during the Cold War, however. Historian Hubertus Knabe summarizes the control¶ exacted by the GDR's secret police (Stasi) as follows: \Precisely the hidden, but for every¶ citizen tangible omni-presence of the Stasi, damaged the very basic conditions for individual¶ and societal creativity and development: sense of one's self, trust, spontaneity." (Bruce¶ 2010, 12) Violation of privacy leads to a totalitarian state Daniel J. Solove. Associate professor of law at the George Washington University Law School."The Digital Person: Technology And Privacy In The Information Age"New York: New York University Press, 2004. Orwell's Totalitarian World. Journalists, politicians, and jurists often describe the problem created by databases with the metaphor of Big Brother--the harrowing totalitarian government portrayed in George Orwell's 1984. Big Brother is an allknowing, constantly vigilant government that regulates every aspect of one's existence. In every corner are posters of an enormous face, with "eyes [that] follow you about when you move" and the caption "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." ¶ Big Brother demands complete obedience from its citizens and controls all aspects of their lives. It constructs the language, rewrites the history, purges its critics, indoctrinates the population, burns books, and obliterates all disagreeable relics from the past. Big Brother's goal is uniformity and complete discipline, and it attempts to police people to an innermost thoughts. Any trace of individualism is quickly suffocated.¶ This terrifying totalitarian state achieves its control by targeting the private life, employing various techniques of power to eliminate any sense of privacy. Big Brother views solitude as dangerous. Its techniques of power are predominantly methods of surveillance. Big Brother is constantly monitoring and spying; uniformed patrols linger on street corners; helicopters hover in the skies, poised to peer into windows. The primary surveillance tool is a device unrelenting degree--even their called a "telescreen" which is installed into each house and apartment. The telescreen is a bilateral television--individuals can watch it, but it also enables Big Brother to watch them.¶ Privacy needs to be protected in order to retain a balance of power between parties DANIEL J. SOLOVE, 2002, Assistant Professor, Seton Hall Law School, DIGITAL DOSSIERS AND THE DISSIPATION OF FOURTH AMENDMENT PRIVACY, http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~usclrev/pdf/075502.pdf The dangers discussed above illustrate why privacy is integral to freedom in the modern state. Privacy must be protected by establishing an architecture of power. The word “architecture” emphasizes that the protection of privacy must be achieved through establishing a particular social structure that distributes power in our various relationships. Certain kinds of legal regulation can be readily analogized to architecture. Typically, we view architecture as the design of buildings and edifices. Buildings structure the way people feel and interact; they form and shape human relationships.182 Neal Kumar Katyal provides a fascinating account of how physical architecture—the way that neighborhoods and buildings are designed—can affect criminal behavior.183 Law resembles architecture in many respects, especially in the way that certain forms of regulation affect social practices. If we think of law as creating a structure, we can better understand the different forms that modern regulation must take to protect liberty in the modern state. We have freedom not simply because we have rights. Our liberty is constructed by various regulatory structures that regulate the safety of the products we buy, the conditions of the apartments we live in, the way that companies must interact with us, and the sanctity of the environment, among others. An architecture of power protects a number of social practices of which privacy forms a significant part. It protects privacy by providing a regulatory structure that shapes relationships and safeguards individual liberties. At the center of my view is the fact that privacy is an aspect of social practices, which involve relationships with other people and entities.184 The need for privacy emerges from within a society, from the various social relationships that people form with each other, with private sector institutions, and with the government. We do not need privacy on a deserted island; rather, the need for privacy is engendered by the existence of society, from the fact that we must live together. Relationships involve some balance of power between the parties. Power is not necessarily a zerosum good, where more power to one party necessarily means less to another. However, certain configurations of power in these relationships have profound effects on the scope and extent of freedom, democracy, equality, and other important values. In the modern world, we are increasingly finding ourselves in a new type of relationship with public and private institutions. These relationships are different because our institutions are more bureaucratic in nature. Bureaucracies use more information and often exercise power over people through the use of personal data. Collecting and using personal information are having an intensifying influence on the effects of power in our social relationships. Therefore, protecting privacy is critical to governing these relationships, and consequently, to regulating the tone and tenor of life in the Information Age. Privacy Impacts: Autonomy (1/2) In a world with spying we damage autonomy. Ron Watson, Department of Political Science, Washington University., “The Ethics of Domestic Government Spying” March 2013¶ http://rewatson.wustl.edu/The%20Ethics%20of%20Domestic%20Government%20Spying.pdf So widespread intuitions support the principle of just cause for DGS. Let us turn to the¶ consequentialist case for just cause. The sophisticated consequentialist, I suggested in the ¶ introduction, would endorse a simple set of principles for DGS. But which principles would¶ she endorse? She obviously could not endorse a principle permitting all DGS, since the con-¶ sequences would be dire. If government agents were always at liberty to spy, people could¶ not develop stable expectations about where, when, and by whom they are being observed¶ without expending considerable resources on countermeasures, nor could they conceal their¶ personal information. People's enjoyment of goods requiring even a modicum of privacy¶ would rapidly diminish. People's autonomy would be gravely threatened, since the pressures¶ to conform to social norms would be virtually unchecked. The liberal democratic culture of¶ free thought, free speech, and free action would be stifled.¶ Further, the bene ts of such a permissive policy would be minimal. Some grave harms¶ might be prevented. But permitting all spying is more likely to lead to ineffective and even¶ harmful spying. Spying for political gain and to protect bureaucratic turfs, for example,¶ would likely be rampant. Privacy hinges on autonomy- it focuses on the control over limitations and confidentiality Casman Susanne, professor at UNLV “The Right to Privacy in Light of the Patriot Act and Social Contract Theory”, DoP: 5-1-2011 DoA: 7/15/13 http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu Pg 17-18 It is differentiated from the total field by virtue of the fact the self is in ¶ some degree involved in excluding in some (or possibly all) circumstances, some (or ¶ possibly all), other persons from knowledge of the person’s possession. (Bates, 1964). ¶ Ruth Gavison’s into three personal basic elements: Solitude: ¶ control over one’s interpersonal interactions with other people, Confidentiality: control ¶ over other people’s access to information about oneself, and Autonomy: control over ¶ what one does, i.e. freedom of will. (Boyle, 2003). ¶ What all of these definitions have in agreement is that privacy is about control, ¶ the amount we wish to divulge to those around us. They also have as part of their ¶ definition that privacy is both a moral and legal right. There is a fundamental aspect to ¶ human nature that defines privacy as a basic component. We assume that privacy is a ¶ moral right, rather than simply a constitutional or legal right. We assume that decomposition of privacy privacy is a 18¶ fundamental right, rather than a right that can be explicated in terms of other fundamental ¶ rights (e.g. life, liberty, or property). (Alfino and Mayes, 2002). Privacy is an elastic ¶ concept. The limited-access view proposes that privacy represents control over unwanted ¶ access, or alternatively, the regulation of, limitations on, or exemption from scrutiny, ¶ surveillance, or unwanted access. Privacy, as a whole or in part, represents control over ¶ transactions between person (s) and other(s), the ultimate aim of which is to enhance ¶ autonomy and /or minimize vulnerability. (Margulis, 2005). Privacy protects Autonomy and individuality. Michael R. Curry, 1997, Department of Geography, University of California, “The Digital Individual and the Private Realm”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2564405 Yet a bit of reflection suggests the difficulty with all of these positions. The difficulty is, putting the matter simply, that the private realm performs important functions in the life of the individual and the group. It is in private that people have the opportunity to become individuals in the sense that we think of the term. People, after all, become individuals in the public realm just by selectively making public certain things about themselves. Whether this is a matter of being selective about one's religious or political views, work history, education, income, or complexion, the important point is this: in a complex society, people adjust their public identities in ways that they believe best, and they develop those identities in more private settings. Privacy Impacts: Autonomy (2/2) Invasions of privacy causes loss of autonomy. Ron Watson, Department of Political Science, Washington University., “The Ethics of Domestic Government Spying” March 2013¶ http://rewatson.wustl.edu/The%20Ethics%20of%20Domestic%20Government%20Spying.pdf This line of argument is supported by a further set of responses that people might have¶ to learning how their government regulates domestic spying. When principles unfairly or¶ unequally target certain groups, they can demean, humiliate, and disrespect members of¶ those groups when they become public. Principles can also have these e ects if they signal¶ to people their chosen pursuits are unworthy, shameful, or depraved. People's self-respect¶ often depends on the existence of spaces for action free from government intrusion. Further,¶ when citizens worry that they are under covert observation by their government, there are a¶ range of activities that can become less enjoyable because they are less private. Finally, when¶ citizens suspect that the government spies on them, they may lose trust in their government¶ and its institutions Privacy is needed in order to retain autonomy DANIEL J. SOLOVE, 2002, Assistant Professor, Seton Hall Law School, DIGITAL DOSSIERS AND THE DISSIPATION OF FOURTH AMENDMENT PRIVACY, http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~usclrev/pdf/075502.pdf government information-gathering can severely constrain democracy and individual selfdetermination. Paul Schwartz illustrates this with his theory of “constitutive privacy.”99 According to Schwartz, privacy is essential to both individuals and communities: “[C]onstitutive privacy seeks to create boundaries about personal information to help the individual and define terms of life within the community.”100 As a form of regulation of information flow, privacy shapes “the extent to which certain actions or expressions of identity are encouraged or discouraged.”101 Schwartz contends that extensive government oversight over an individual’s activities can “corrupt individual decision making about the elements of one’s identity.” Further, inadequate protection of privacy threatens deliberative democracy by inhibiting people from engaging in democratic activities. This can occur unintentionally; even if government entities are not attempting to engage in social control, their activities can have collateral effects that harm democracy and self-determination. Governmental digital surveillance impairs autonomy and self-governance. Oshana, Marina. Ph.D.: University of California, Davis. Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. “How Much Should We Value Autonomy” 2003. Page 112-113. Date Accessed: 7/26/13. In less than normal circumstances, threats to the autonomy of deserving individuals can be great. Protections from the tyranny of majority sentiment, from encroachment upon civil liberties and constitutionally mandated rights, and from the infliction of loss, falsehood, duplicity, and the like take on a heightened urgency. In the aftermath of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese-American citizens who had harmed no one were dispossessed of their autonomy and their property, and were treated in this way with the overwhelming approval of the United States populace. In the aftermath of the unprecedented terrorist events of September 11, 2001, circumstances have been anything but normal. A rekindled patriotism has tempered the willingness of many American citizens to criticize openly, or even question, the political and military policies of the United States. Restrictions that fetter individual autonomy have become commonplace and enjoy increasing public approval.29 There is heightened support for surveillance cameras on select street corners of select urban neighborhoods. Passenger profiling and personal searches at public transport facilities have increased. Investigations of personal computer use and electronic communication have intensified. Persons have been detained, incommunicado, for unspecified crimes. Although restrictions on autonomy are not always or principally privacy concerns, privacy protections are generally essential for autonomy. The aforementioned security measures, both overt and covert, yield, at a minimum, a decline in the level of civil liberty that most of us cherish and regard as crucial to unimpaired selfgovernance. (Detainment by federal authorities for weeks or months unambiguously assails the detainee’s exercise of self-government.) Privacy Impacts: Human Dignity Violations of privacy lead to a violation of dignity as you ignore the rational calculations of that individual. Edward j. Bloustein, prof of law at nyu law; 1964 (“Privacy”, December 1964, pg 971, http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i205/s10/readings/week11/bloustein-privacy.pdf The fundamental fact is that our Western culture defines¶ individuality as including [includes] the right to be free from certain types¶ of intrusions. This measure of personal isolation and personal¶ control over the conditions of its abandonment is of the very¶ essence of personal freedom and dignity, is part of what our¶ culture means by these concepts. A man whose home may be¶ entered at the will of another, whose conversation may be overheard at the will of another, whose marital and familial intimacies may be overseen at the will of another, is less of a man, has less human dignity, on that account. He who may intrude¶ upon another at will is the master of the other and, in fact, intrusion is a primary weapon of the tyrant.7 0¶ I contend that the gist of the wrong in the intrusion cases¶ is not the intentional infliction of mental distress but rather a¶ blow to human dignity, an assault on human personality. Eavesdropping and wiretapping, unwanted entry into another's home,¶ may be the occasion and cause of distress and embarrassment¶ but that is not what makes these acts of intrusion wrongful. They¶ are wrongful because they are demeaning of individuality, and¶ they are such whether or not they cause emotional trauma. Privacy is a Prerequisite to Rights and Autonomy Privacy is essential to autonomy, protection of rights, and personal freedom Michael McFarland, President of Holy Cross University, 2000 (a computer scientist with extensive liberal arts teaching experience and a special interest in the intersection of technology and ethics, has served as the 31st president of the College of the Holy Cross since July 2000. "Why We Care about Privacy" http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/technology/internet/privacy/whycare-about-privacy.html) ¶ Privacy is important for a number of reasons. Some have to do with the consequences of not having privacy. People can be harmed or debilitated if there is no restriction on the public's access to and use of personal information. Other reasons are more fundamental, touching the essence of human personhood. Reverence for the human person as an end in itself and as an autonomous being requires respect for personal privacy. To lose control of one's personal information is in some measure to lose control of one's life and one's dignity. Therefore, even if privacy is not in itself a fundamental right, it is necessary to protect other fundamental rights.¶ The analysis of Rachels and Fried suggests a deeper and more fundamental issue: personal freedom. As Deborah Johnson has observed, "To recognize an individual as an autonomous being, an end in himself, entails letting that individual live his life as he chooses. Of course, there are limits to this, but one of the critical ways that an individual controls his life is by choosing with whom he will have relationships and what kind of relationships these will be.... Information mediates relationships. Thus when one cannot control who has information about one, one loses considerable autonomy."6¶ To lose control of personal information is to lose control of who we are and who we can be in relation to the rest of society. A normal person's social life is rich and varied, encompassing many different roles and relationships. Each requires a different persona, a different face. This does not necessarily entail deception, only that different aspects of the person are revealed in different roles. Control over personal information and how and to whom it is revealed, therefore, plays an important part in one's ability to choose and realize one's place in society. Privacy Impacts: Normalization Invasions of privacy causes a normalizing effect on society. Ron Watson, Department of Political Science, Washington University., “The Ethics of Domestic Government Spying” March 2013¶ http://rewatson.wustl.edu/The%20Ethics%20of%20Domestic%20Government%20Spying.pdf Notice that the dragnet case could plausibly meet all of the four principles discussed¶ above. The problem with cases like Dragnet is that ordinary people reasonably fear abuse¶ when their personal information is collected in droves; they also worry that their harmless¶ counter-normative activities will be exposed, punished, or leveraged against them. They¶ want law enforcement oficials and intelligence agents to possess thick les on suspected terrorists and criminals, but they worry about these same government agents having dossiers on¶ law abiding citizens. The temptations to misuse information for prudential or political gain,¶ they think, are too high. So too are the temptations to police norms prohibiting harmless or¶ even beneficial behavior. Indeed, the more innocents believe that the government possesses¶ detailed dossiers on them, the more likely they will be to self-censor, especially when the¶ conduct challenges the government or its officials. Principles that permit operations like¶ Dragnet, then, are not strategic, since they discourage people from engaging in a range of¶ harmless or beneficial behaviors. They further risk humiliating or disrespecting those who¶ engage in harmless but counternormative activities, fomenting paranoia, undermining trust¶ in the government, and diminishing people's enjoyment of a range of private activities. Browser Fingerprinting Browser fingerprinting infringes on digital privacy Larkin, Erik. Mar 26, 2010. Browser Fingerprints: A Big Privacy Threat. http://www.pcworld.com/article/192648/browser_fingerprints.html Forget cookies--even the ultrasneaky, Flash-based "super cookies." A new type of tracking may identify you far more accurately than any cookie--and you may never know it was there.¶ The method pulls together innocuous data about your browser, such as plug-ins, system fonts, and your operating system. Alone, they don't identify you. Together, they're a digital fingerprint.¶ It's like describing a person. Just saying "brown hair" won't identify anyone. But add in "5 feet, 10 inches tall," "chipped right front tooth," "size 12 shoes," and so on, and soon you have enough information to pull someone out of a crowd, even without their name, Social Security number, or any other of the usual identifiers.¶ Test your browser for unique identifiers without the risk: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group, has set up an interesting online experiment at Panopticlick.eff.org. Panopticlick gathers little details about your browser and computer, mostly using Javascript. In my case, the information it gathered about my browser was enough to uniquely identify my surfing software out of more than 650,000 visitors. Peter Eckersley, a staff technologist with the EFF, says he and his colleagues de--cided to create the site when he heard rumors about this kind of tracking. He wanted to see how accurate it might be.¶ Well, it's pretty accurate. And as it turns out, its use is more than a rumor.¶ Browser fingerprinting was developed for banks to employ to prevent fraud. But now one company, Scout Analytics, offers it as a service to Web sites, and it collects not just browser data but also data about how you type--things like your typing speed and typing patterns.¶ This biometric signature, like the identifiers collected from the browser and the computer, can be gathered using JavaScript alone, making this form of tracking hard to block. Matt Shanahan, senior vice president of strategy at Scout Analytics, says that the company sells its service primarily to paid subscription sites, such as those offering real estate listings, and that it is keen to expand into marketing and advertising by helping sites track visitors in a way that, as he notes, is more accurate than using cookies. (Cookies can be deleted, which makes a repeat visit look like a new. Collecting Information Violates Privacy There are wide sweeping programs to collect our information; this is a violation of privacy in a new technological age. Daniel J. Solove. Associate professor of law at the George Washington University Law School."The Digital Person: Technology And Privacy In The Information Age"New York: New York University Press, 2004. The government has recently been exploring ways to develop technology to detect patterns of behavior based on dossiers. In 2002, it was revealed that the Department of Defense was developing a program called Total Information Awareness (since renamed Terrorism Information Awareness). The program begins with the government amassing personal information from private-sector sources into a massive database of dossiers on individuals. Profiling technology is then used to detect those who are likely to be engaged ¶ in criminal activity. When Congress learned of Total Information Awareness, it halted the program because of its threat to privacy. However, the same type of collection and use of data envisioned by those who dreamed up Total Information Awareness is already being carried out by the government. The digital dossiers that continue to grow in the private sector and in public records are now becoming a tool for the government to monitor and investigate people. The Secret Paradigm. In another way of understanding privacy that I refer to as the "secrecy paradigm," privacy is invaded by uncovering one's hidden world, by surveillance, and by the disclosure of concealed information. The harm such invasions cause consists of inhibition, self-censorship, embarrassment, and damage to one's reputation. The law is heavily influenced by this paradigm. As a result, if the information isn't secret, then courts often conclude that the information can't be private. However, this conception of privacy is not responsive to life in the modern Information Age, where most personal information exists in the record systems of hundreds of entities. Life today is fueled by information, and it is virtually impossible to live as an Information Age ghost, leaving no trail or residue. ¶ The Invasion Conception. Under the traditional view, privacy is violated by the invasive actions of particular wrongdoers who cause direct injury to victims. Victims experience embarrassment, mental distress, or harm to their reputations. The law responds when a person's deepest secrets are exposed, reputation is tarnished, or home is invaded. This view, which I call the "invasion conception," understands privacy to be a kind of invasion in which somebody invades and somebody is invaded. However, digital dossiers often do not result in any overt invasion. People frequently don't experience any direct injury when data about them is aggregated or transferred form one company to another. Moreover, many of the problems of digital dossiers emerge from the collaboration of a multitude of different actors with different purposes. Each step along the way is relatively small and innocuous, failing to cause harm that the invasion conception would recognize as substantial. Centralized Databases Violate Privacy Centralizing databases violate privacy J. J. BRITZ, prof at University of Pretoria, ¶ “THE CONCEPT OF PRIVACY” 1996 http://web.simmons.edu/~chen/nit/NIT'96/96-025-Britz.html � The merging of databases which contains personal information. This is also known as databanking (Frocht & Thomas, 1994, p. 24). By this is meant the integration of personal information from a variety of databases into one central database. The problem here does not in the first place arise from the integration of the information as such. The main problems include the fact that the individual is not aware of personal information being integrated into a central database, that the individual does not know the purpose/s for which the integration is effected, or by whom or for whose benefit the new database is constructed and whether the information is accurate.6 In order to counter these problems relating to privacy and the merging of databases the American Congress passed the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act in the 1980s (Benjamin, 1991, p. 11). A2: “We Consent to Surveillance” Even giving consent to surveillance doesn’t solve the violation, you don’t know when where or how they will spy on you. Ron Watson, Department of Political Science, Washington University., “The Ethics of Domestic Government Spying” March 2013¶ http://rewatson.wustl.edu/The%20Ethics%20of%20Domestic%20Government%20Spying.pdf The conclusion that we cannot assent to being spied upon might strike some as counterintuitive, however. They might point to cases in which someone agrees in advance to¶ be spied on, but the agreement does not specify when, where, or how the spying will take¶ place, thereby leaving open the possibility that the spy can in particular instances conceal¶ her observation from her target. Suppose, for example, a homeowner in crime ridden¶ neighborhood consents to being spied on by his local police department. One can, he agrees,¶ can observe him and his property and conceal this fact from him and others. This case and¶ others like it suggest that one can assent to be spied upon. Digital Surveillance Bad Electronic Surveillance Prevents Free Society Electronic surveillance is inconsistent with a free society ACLU. A nonpartisan non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights.March 1, 1998."Electronic surveillance is inconsistent with a free society."American Civil Liberties Union.http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/big-brother-wires-wiretapping-digitalage. Date Retrieved: July 7, 2013. The cryptography debate offers the nation an opportunity to confront the issue of electronic surveillance anew. If we do not do so in a fully informed and careful way, there will be no limit to the sweep of new technological opportunities for total surveillance potential. Without the right to strong, non-key recovery encryption, the black strips on the backs of our credit, cash and identity cards, the electronic keys being distributed by gasoline companies to enable the purchase of gas with the wave of a wand, the E-Z passes for paying tolls electronically, and the imminent arrival of compact digital cell phones that also function as computers, e-mailers and pagers, will all be vulnerable to both governmental and nongovernmental spying, both authorized and unauthorized. The American Civil Liberties Union has historically opposed all forms of electronic surveillance by the government, and therefore supports the free and unfettered development, production and distribution of the strongest possible encryption technology. Electronic surveillance, whether through bugging devices, wiretaps, or ready access to encryption keys, is fundamentally at odds with personal privacy. It is the worst sort of general search, which necessarily captures not only the communications of its specific targets, but those of countless others who happen to come in contact with the targets or use the same lines. Free citizens must have the ability to conduct direct, instantaneous, spontaneous and private communication using whatever technology is available. Without the knowledge and assurance that private communications are, indeed, private, habits based upon fear and insecurity will gradually replace habits of freedom. The right to privacy has already been severely compromised in this country. Telephones have been tapped by police at least since 1895, and in the past century there has been a constant tug of war between the government's impulse to eavesdrop and the public's desire to resist further encroachments. Although its powers have been limited by both statute and court decision, for all practical purposes the government has prevailed in this struggle. According to statistics compiled by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, surreptitious government surveillance is now at record levels.5 From 1985 to 1995, more than 12 million conversations were intercepted through law enforcement wiretaps, and all but a relative handful were completely innocent (in 1995 alone, nearly two million innocent conversations were intercepted). Although government agents must obtain a warrant, their requests for wiretaps are almost never turned down by judges or magistrates. In fact, only one request by law enforcement for an intercept has been rejected in the last eight years. As will be explained below, all of this wiretapping has produced little in the way of results for law enforcement and yet the expansive surveillance capabilities being sought today through the control of encryption and digital telephony will give the government unprecedented access to all communications -- with or without a warrant. Surveillance Violates Separation of Powers Justifying surveillance in the name of national security violates separation of powers and avoids oversight Casman, Betsey Sue. Master of Arts in Ethics and Policy Studies. 2011. "The Right to Privacy in Light of the Patriot Act and Social Contract Theory". http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2087&context=thesesdissertations. Date Accessed 7/21/13. Congress was not in agreement with this unchecked power of the Executive ¶ branch and countered Olmstead by enacting the Communications Act of 1934. Within¶ the Communications of Act of 1934 was provision 605. The Michigan Law Review¶ published an article which defined provision 605 as follows, “605 prohibits both ¶ unauthorized interception of any private radio or wire communications and unauthorized ¶ use of publication of any information contained in such communications’ (“FISA: ¶ Legislating..” 1980, 1119). Though this provision was upheld by the Supreme Court ¶ when challenged (Nardone v. United States), it did not stem the continued warrantless ¶ electronic surveillance by the executive branch. The first reason it did not deter the ¶ executive branch was that the information was not necessarily being gathered for a ¶ criminal prosecution, but in essence it was being gathered for information’s sake. With ¶ no trial to dismiss the evidence as illegally obtained, there was no reason for the ¶ government to rethink its approach to gathering it. The second reason that provision 605 had little effect was that the executive branch stated that it did not apply to national ¶ security cases. National security was the justification that was used to circumvent ¶ Congress (and the law) in 1934 and today. Cinquegrana notes, “Almost 7000 wiretaps ¶ and 2200 microphone surveillances were used by the Executive between 1940 and the ¶ mid-1960’s in internal security investigations concerning foreign intelligence agents and ¶ Communist Party leaders, as well as major criminal activities.” Digital Surveillance Hurts US Competitiveness United States Surveillance Threatens US Competitiveness Richard Stiennon, 2013 (Forbes staff analyst focusing on it security. “NSA Surveillance Threatens US Competitiveness” DoP: 6/07/2013, DoA: 7/19/13 http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardstiennon/2013/06/07/nsa-surveillancethreatens-us-competitiveness/) The vast foreign and domestic spying by the NSA revealed this week threatens the global competitiveness of US tech companies.¶ We are told we live in a digital world and the future is bright for tech startups as costs of launching new products and services plummet and global markets open up to the smallest vendor. Yet, there is a world wide perception that any data that is stored or even routed through the United States is sucked into cavernous NSA data centers for analysis and cataloging. That perception was solidified in 2006 when former AT&T technician Mark Klein blew the whistle on the fiber tap that ATT had provided to the NSA in some of its data centers. Those perceptions have had real consequences for US tech firms seeking to offer global services. Email archiving services such as ProofPoint could not sell to even Canadian customers without building local infrastructure. Even establishing separate data centers in Canada and Europe is not enough to assure customers that their data would forever stay out of the grasp of US intelligence services.¶ One of the fastest growing segments of the tech industry is cloud services, with Salesforce.com one of the leading examples. Box.net, and other cloud storage solutions, are burgeoning. Cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Rackspace are investing billions to serve markets that should be global but will be barred from most countries thanks to the complete abandonment of trust caused by NSA/FBI spying. Terrorism Terrorism Impact-D Terrorism is no longer a threat. Van Buren, Peter. "A Child's Guide to Why NSA Surveillance Is Bad." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 07 June 2013. Web. 02 July 2013. Prior to 9/11 we did not have a mass-scale terror act (by foreigners; American Citizen Timothy McVeigh pulled one off.) Since 9/11 we have not had a mass-scale terror attack. We can say 9/11 was a one-off, an aberration, and cannot be a justification for everything the government wishes to do. There is also the question of why, if the NSA is vacuuming up everything, and even sharing that collection abroad, this all needs to be kept secret from the American people. If it is for our own good, the government should be proud to tell us what they are doing for us, instead of being embarrassed when it leaks. If you're not doing anything wrong then you've got nothing to hide, right? The threat presented by terrorism is insignificant, we are just as likely to be killed by a comet Mueller, October 2005, (John, “Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?”, Foreign Affairs v. 85 n. 5, pg. 2) But while keeping such potential dangers in mind, it is worth remembering that the total number of people killed since 9/11 by al Qaeda or al Qaeda-like operatives outside of Afghanistan and Iraq is not much higher than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year, and that the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000 -- about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteor. Even if there were a 9/11scale attack every three months for the next five years, the likelihood that an individual American would number among the dead would be two hundredths of a percent (or one in 5,000). Although it remains heretical to say so, the evidence so far suggests that fears of the omnipotent terrorist -- reminiscent of those inspired by images of the 20-foot-tall Japanese after Pearl Harbor or the 20-foot-tall Communists at various points in the Cold War (particularly after Sputnik) -- may have been overblown, the threat presented within the United States by al Qaeda greatly exaggerated. The massive and expensive homeland security apparatus erected since 9/11 may be persecuting some, spying on many, inconveniencing most, and taxing all to defend the United States against an enemy that scarcely exists. You aren’t likely to die from terror Ritholtz 13 Barry , 4/29/ , : State University of New York at Stony Brook, Yeshiva University, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, economic analyst, cnbc journalist Calm Down: You Are More Likely to Be Killed By Mundane Things than Terrorism, http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/04/calm-down-you-are-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-mundane-things-than-terrorism/, Doa- 7/30/13 You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack¶ – You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack¶ — You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane¶ — You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack¶ –You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack¶ — You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack¶ – You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack¶ –You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack¶ –You are 9 times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack¶ –You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist¶ –You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack¶ – You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack¶ Let’s look at some details from the most recent official statistics.¶ The U.S. Department of State reports that only 17 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011. That figure includes deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and all other theaters of war.¶ In contrast, the American agency which tracks health-related issues – the U.S. Centers for Disease Control – rounds up the most prevalent causes of death in the United States:¶ ¶ Comparing the CDC numbers to terrorism deaths means:¶ – You are 35,079 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack¶ – You are 33,842 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack¶ (Keep in mind when reading this entire piece that we are consistently and substantially understating the risk of other causes of death as compared to terrorism, because we are comparing deaths from various causes within the United States against deaths from terrorism worldwide.)¶ Wikipedia notes that obesity is a a contributing factor in 100,000–400,000 deaths in the United States per year. That makes obesity 5,882 to times 23,528 more likely to kill you than a terrorist.¶ The annual number of deaths in the U.S. due to avoidable medical errors is as high as 100,000. Indeed, one of the world’s leading medical journals – Lancet – reported in 2011:¶ A November, 2010, document from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services reported that, when in hospital, one in seven beneficiaries of Medicare (the government-sponsored health-care programme for those aged 65 years and older) have complications from medical errors, which contribute to about 180 000 deaths of patients per year.¶ That’s just Medicare beneficiaries, not the entire American public. Scientific American noted in 2009:¶ Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation.¶ But let’s use the lower – 100,000 – figure. That still means that you are 5,882 times more likely to die from medical error than terrorism.¶ The CDC says that some 80,000 deaths each year are attributable to excessive alcohol use. So you’re 4,706 times more likely to drink yourself to death than die from terrorism.¶ Wikipedia notes that there were 32,367 automobile accidents in 2011, which means that you are 1,904 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria noted this week: “Since 9/11, foreigninspired terrorism has claimed about two dozen lives in the United States. (Meanwhile, more than 100,000 have been killed in gun homicides and more than 400,000 in motor-vehicle accidents.) ”¶ According to a 2011 CDC report, poisoning from prescription drugs is even more likely to kill you than a car crash. Indeed, the CDC stated in 2011 that – in the majority of states – your prescription meds are more likely to kill you than any other source of injury. So your meds are thousands of times more likely to kill you than Al Qaeda.¶ The number of deaths by suicide has also surpassed car crashes, and many connect the increase in suicides to the downturn in the economy. Around 35,000 Americans kill themselves each year (and more American soldiers die by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is astronomical and under-reported). So you’re 2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist.¶ The CDC notes that there were 7,638 deaths from HIV and 45 from syphilis, so you’re 452 times more likely to die from risky sexual behavior than terrorism.¶ The National Safety Council reports that more than 6,000 Americans die a year from falls … most of them involve people falling off their roof or ladder trying to clean their gutters, put up Christmas lights and the like. That means that you’re 353 times more likely to fall to your death doing something idiotic than die in a terrorist attack.¶ The agency in charge of workplace safety – the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration – reports that 4,609 workers were killed on the job in 2011 within the U.S. homeland. In other words, you are 271 times more likely to die from a workplace accident than terrorism.¶ The CDC notes that 3,177 people died of “nutritional deficiencies” in 2011, which means you are 187 times more likely to starve to death in American than be killed by terrorism.¶ Scientific American notes:¶ You might have toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by the microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which the CDC estimates has infected about 22.5 percent of Americans older than 12 years old¶ Toxoplasmosis is a brain-parasite. The CDC reports that more than 375 Americans die annually due to toxoplasmosis. In addition, 3 Americans died in 2011 after being exposed to a brain-eating amoeba. So you’re about 22 times more likely to die from a brain-eating zombie parasite than a terrorist.¶ There were at least 155 Americans killed by police officers in the United States in 2011. That means that you were more than 9 times more likely to be killed by a law enforcement officer than by a terrorist.¶ And – according to the 2011 Report on Terrorism from the National Counter Terrorism Center – Americans are just as likely to be “crushed to death by their televisions or furniture each year” as they are to be killed by terrorists.¶ Let’s switch to 2008, to take advantage of another treasure trove of data.¶ According to the Council on Foreign Relations, 33 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide in 2008 from terrorism. There were 301,579,895 Americans living on U.S. soil in 2008, so the risk of dying from terrorist attacks in 2008 was 1 in 9,138,785.¶ This graphic from the National Safety Council – based upon 2008 data – shows the relative risks of dying from various causes:¶ If the risk of being killed by a terrorist were added to the list, the dot would be so small that it would be hard to see. Specifically, the risk of being killed by terrorism in 2008 was 14 times smaller than being killed by fireworks.¶ [The risk of being killed by terrorism] compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.¶ The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has just published, Background Report: 9/11, Ten Years Later [PDF]. The report notes, excluding the 9/11 atrocities, that fewer than 500 people died in the U.S. from terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2010.¶ Terrorism pushes our emotional buttons. And politicians and the media tend to blow the risk of terrorism out of proportion. But as the figures above show, terrorism is a very unlikely cause of death. The impacts of terrorism are overblown and over estimated. Bailey, Ronald. Writer, Award winning Science Correspondent, Lecturer at several prestigious Universities like Harvard, Rutgers and Yale. "How Scared of Terrorism Should You Be?." reason.com. Reason Foundation, 6 Sep 2011. Web. 31 Jul 2013. <http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/howscared-of-terrorism-should>. Checking the Global Terrorism Database, one finds that an additional 14 Americans were killed in broadly defined domestic terrorism incidents since September 2001. Five died from anthrax attacks (2001); two died in an attack on a Knoxville church (2008); two are suspected to have been killed by members of the Minutemen American Defense group in Arizona (2009); an abortion provider was killed in Wichita, Kansas (2009); a guard was stabbed to death at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., (2009); two died in Austin when a man crashed his light plane into a government building over a dispute with the IRS (2009); and a neo- adds up to a grand total of 30 Americans killed in terrorist incidents inside the United States in the last 10 years.¶ Taking these figures into account, a rough calculation suggests that in the last five years, your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million. This compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist. Malthusian terrorist was shot by police during a hostage incident at the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, Maryland (2009). That Islamic Terror is Not a Threat Terrorism is not the greatest threat to the United States Shimron, Yonat. 2011. Islamic Terrorism Threat May Be Overblown, Expert Says. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/islamic-terrorism-overblown_n_922757.html. Date Accessed 7/20/13. “In many ways," said Kurzman, "Islamic terrorism is simply the latest form of transnational revolutionary violence to grab global attention."¶ Put another way: This too shall pass.¶ While mindful of the pain and suffering terrorism has caused, Kurzman has written a book challenging the dominant narrative that worldwide terrorism is out of control.¶ In "The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists," Kurzman argues that Islamic terrorism has accounted for a miniscule number of murders compared with violent death tolls from other causes.¶ In the United States, for example, fewer than 40 people died at the hands of terrorists in the 10 years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That compares with about 140,000 other murders during the same time. Terrorism is not a threat, it is only magnified to persecute Muslims June 10, 2013. ISNA: “Muslim Terrorism is Not a Threat After 9/11″. http://beforeitsnews.com/globalunrest/2013/06/isna-muslim-terrorism-is-not-a-threat-after-911-2455280.html. Date Accessed 7/20/13. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, said that “Muslim terrorism is not a threat after 9/11” in the May/June issue of its magazine, Islamic Horizons. The Boston bombings, committed by Muslim terrorists, happened on April 15. Instead, ISNA characterizes anti-Muslim discrimination as the real threat.¶ The magazine includes an article titled “New York Police Need Strict Oversight” that slams the NYPD’s counter-terrorism intelligence-gathering operations as an infringement upon Muslims’ rights. The ISNA article makes the absurd statement:¶ “Despite being proved by reports such as the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security that Muslim terrorism is not a threat after 9/11, [the] NYPD continues to insist that if Muslims have nothing to hide, they should overlook the violation of their rights.” Domestic Terrorism Is Not a Threat Homegrown terrorism is declining, less risk of attack Brooks, Risa. APRIL 27, 2013. Homegrown terrorism is not on the rise. http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/04/26/threat-jihadist-inspired-homegrown-terrorismremains-small/3o8nzuMFQptSEkKPtfGDqM/story.html. Date Accessed 7/20/13. Consider the pattern of Muslims arrested on terrorist-related charges in the United States since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. From 2002 to 2008, annual arrests of suspects charged with terrorist-related offenses ranged from nearly two dozen in 2003 to fewer than five in 2008. In 2009 the number of arrests spiked to more than 40.¶ Analysts and political officials began to warn that we were finally witnessing the insidious effects of Al Qaeda’s propaganda on American Muslim citizens and residents. The 2009 arrests were cited as evidence that homegrown terrorism was emerging as a serious threat. In 2010, however, the number of terrorism-related arrests fell, only to decline further in 2011, and then again in 2012. In retrospect, the 2009 spike could be explained by several unrelated factors, including the clustering of arrests of individuals long suspected of having militant sympathies and the phenomenon of groups of Somalis, primarily from Minnesota, seeking to travel to the Horn of Africa to join the militant group al-Shabaab. Digital Surveillance Does Not Stop Terrorism Terrorists use Tor to avoid digital surveillance and conduct their online activities Markay, Lachan. 2013 (Former investigative journalist for the Heritage Foundation and current staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon. “Anonymous Jihad”. 1 July 13. Accessed 16 July 13. http://freebeacon.com/anonymous-jihad/) The Tor network has become a go-to means for jihadists and criminals to communicate, raise money, and buy and sell illicit goods and services without fear of being identified or traced by intelligence or law enforcement officials. The network uses technology called “onion routing” (Tor is an acronym for The Onion Router), which refers to layers of encryption that prevent governments or other users from obtaining information about users or websites hosted on the network. Tor uses volunteers’ computers to route traffic through thousands of “nodes” worldwide, obscuring users’ locations and the sources of data hosted on the network. The technology makes it nearly impossible to trace or identify the network’s roughly 500,000 daily users. Terror Discourse is Bad The Discourse of terrorism leads to flawed counterterrorism policies, only increasing the number of threats Joseba Zulaika, PHD and professor at center of Basque Studies, and William A. Douglass, PHD and Coordinator at Center of Basque studies; 1996 (“Terror and Taboo” X NS 1996) So is it not prudent to install metal detectors in airports to try to prevent Lockerbies and Oklahoma Cities? Of course. Metal detectors are necessary with or without terrorism discourse; our concern is whether the promotion of terrorism itself as a quintessential threat is necessary and useful. While we can all agree that we must try to prevent bombings what is lacking is a serious investigation of the extent to which the discourse itself might be partly responsible for them. It is one of the tenets of counterterrorism that any interaction with terrorist “other” is violation of a taboo. Terrorists are kooks, crazies, demented, or at best misguided. Contact with them is polluting; dialogue is pointless since terrorists are, by definition, outside the pale of reason. Yet as anthropologists working in the field we have lived many years in communities that have produced “terrorists.” As a practical matter, we could not simply demonize and then shut them out of awareness. We know that this personal experience with violent political activists makes us vulnerable to various criticisms. Yet it is the very strategy of “tabooing” subjects one has never spoken with or contemplated faced-to-face that we will question on both intellectual ànd moral grounds. Digital Surveillance Does Not Stop Terrorism The US surveillance programs aren’t effective at stopping terrorists-they can’t gain access to their covert communications. Bershidsky, Leonid. Staff Editor. Jun 23, 2013. U.S. Surveillance Is Not Aimed at Terrorists. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is-not-aimed-at-terrorists.html. Accessed 7/16/2013. “People who radicalise under the influence of jihadist websites often go through a number of stages,” the Dutch report said. “Their virtual activities increasingly shift to the invisible Web, their security awareness increases and their activities become more conspiratorial.” ¶ Radicals who initially stand out on the “surface” Web quickly meet people, online or offline, who drag them deeper into the Web underground. “For many, finally finding the jihadist core forums feels like a warm bath after their virtual wanderings,” the report said. ¶ When information filters to the surface Web from the core forums, it’s often by accident. Organizations such as al-Qaeda use the forums to distribute propaganda videos, which careless participants or their friends might post on social networks or YouTube. ¶ Communication on the core forums is often encrypted. In 2012, a French court found nuclear physicist Adlene Hicheur guilty of, among other things, conspiring to commit an act of terror for distributing and using software called Asrar al-Mujahideen, or Mujahideen Secrets. The program employed various cutting-edge encryption methods, including variable stealth ciphers and RSA 2,048-bit keys. ¶ The NSA’s Prism, according to a classified PowerPoint presentation published by the Guardian, provides access to the systems of Microsoft Corp. (and therefore Skype), Facebook Inc., Google, Apple Inc. and other U.S. Internet giants. Either these companies have provided “master keys” to decrypt their traffic - - which they deny -- or the NSA has somehow found other means. Even complete access to these servers brings U.S. authorities no closer to the core forums . These must be infiltrated by more traditional intelligence means, such as using agents posing as jihadists or by informants within terrorist organizations. ¶ Similarly, monitoring phone calls is hardly the way to catch terrorists. They’re generally not dumb enough to use Verizon. Granted, Russia’s special services managed to kill Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev with a missile that homed in on his satellite-phone signal. That was in 1996. Modern-day terrorists are generally more aware of the available technology. ¶ At best, the recent revelations concerning Prism and telephone surveillance might deter potential recruits to terrorist causes from using the most visible parts of the Internet. Beyond that, the government’s efforts are much more dangerous to civil liberties than they are to al-Qaeda and other organizations like it. Digital Surveillance is ineffective at stopping terrorism Bershidsky, Leonid. Staff Editor. Jun 23, 2013. U.S. Surveillance Is Not Aimed at Terrorists. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-23/u-s-surveillance-is-not-aimed-at-terrorists.html. Accessed 7/16/2013. The infrastructure set up by the National Security Agency, however, may only be good for gathering information on the stupidest, lowest-ranking of terrorists. The Prism surveillance program focuses on access to the servers of America’s largest Internet companies, which support such popular services as Skype, Gmail and iCloud. These are not the services that truly dangerous elements typically use. Data Mining Ineffective Data Mining doesn’t efficiently prevent terrorism; Costs outweigh the benefits. Bruce Schneier, March 9th 2006, American cryptographer, computer security specialist, writer, and author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography, “Why Data Mining Won’t Stop Terror”, Wired, http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/03/70357?currentPage=all, Date Accessed: July 28, 2013 Security is always a trade-off, and for a system to be worthwhile, the advantages have to be greater than the disadvantages. A national security data-mining program is going to find some percentage of real attacks and some percentage of false alarms. If the benefits of finding and stopping those attacks outweigh the cost -- in money, liberties, etc. -- then the system is a good one. If not, you'd be better off spending that capital elsewhere.¶ Data mining works best when you're searching for a well-defined profile, a reasonable number of attacks per year and a low cost of false alarms. Credit-card fraud is one of data mining's success stories: all credit-card companies mine their transaction databases for data for spending patterns that indicate a stolen card.¶ Many credit-card thieves share a pattern -- purchase expensive luxury goods, purchase things that can be easily fenced, etc. -- and data mining systems can minimize the losses in many cases by shutting down the card. In addition, the cost of false alarms is only a phone call to the cardholder asking him to verify a couple of purchases. The cardholders don't even resent these phone calls -- as long as they're infrequent -- so the cost is just a few minutes of operator time.¶ Terrorist plots are different. There is no well-defined profile and attacks are very rare. Taken together, these facts mean that data-mining systems won't uncover any terrorist plots until they are very accurate, and that even very accurate systems will be so flooded with false alarms that they will be useless. ¶ All data-mining systems fail in two different ways: false positives and false negatives. A false positive is when the system identifies a terrorist plot that really isn't one. A false negative is when the system misses an actual terrorist plot. Depending on how you "tune" your detection algorithms, you can err on one side or the other: you can increase the number of false positives to ensure you are less likely to miss an actual terrorist plot, or you can reduce the number of false positives at the expense of missing terrorist plots.¶ To reduce both those numbers, you need a well-defined profile. And that's a problem when it comes to terrorism. In hindsight, it was really easy to connect the 9/11 dots and point to the warning signs, but it's much harder before the fact. Certainly, many terrorist plots share common warning signs, but each is unique, as well. The better you can define what you're looking for, the better your results will be. Data mining for terrorist plots will be sloppy, and it'll be hard to find anything useful.¶ Data mining is like searching for a needle in a haystack. There are 900 million credit cards in circulation in the United States. According to the FTC September 2003 Identity Theft Survey Report, about 1 percent (10 million) cards are stolen and fraudulently used each year.¶ When it comes to terrorism, however, trillions of connections exist between people and events -- things that the data-mining system will have to "look at" -- and very few plots. This rarity makes even accurate identification systems useless.¶ Let's look at some numbers. We'll be optimistic -- we'll assume the system has a one in 100 false-positive rate (99 percent accurate), and a one in 1,000 false-negative rate (99.9 percent accurate). Assume 1 trillion possible indicators to sift through: that's about 10 events -- e-mails, phone calls, purchases, web destinations, whatever -- per person in the United States per day. Also assume that 10 of them are actually terrorists plotting. ¶ This unrealistically accurate system will generate 1 billion false alarms for every real terrorist plot it uncovers. Every day of every year, the police will have to investigate 27 million potential plots in order to find the one real terrorist plot per month. Raise that false-positive accuracy to an absurd 99.9999 percent and you're still chasing 2,750 false alarms per day -- but that will inevitably raise your false negatives, and you're going to miss some of those 10 real plots.¶ This isn't anything new. In statistics, it's called the "base rate fallacy," and it applies in other domains as well. For example, even highly accurate medical tests are useless as diagnostic tools if the incidence of the disease is rare in the general population. Terrorist attacks are also rare, any "test" is going to result in an endless stream of false alarms.¶ This is exactly the sort of thing we saw with the NSA's eavesdropping program: the New York Times reported that the computers spat out thousands of tips per month. Every one of them turned out to be a false alarm.¶ And the cost was enormous -- not just for the FBI agents running around chasing dead-end leads instead of doing things that might actually make us safer, but also the cost in civil liberties. The fundamental freedoms that make our country the envy of the world are valuable, and not something that we should throw away lightly.¶ Data mining can work. It helps Visa keep the costs of fraud down, just as it helps Amazon alert me to books I might want to buy and Google show me advertising I'm more likely to be interested in. But these are all instances where the cost of false positives is low (a phone call from a Visa operator or an uninteresting ad) in systems that have value even if there is a high number of false negatives.¶ Finding terrorism plots is not a problem that lends itself to data mining. It's a needle-in-ahaystack problem, and throwing more hay on the pile doesn't make that problem any easier. We'd be far better off putting people in charge of investigating potential plots and letting them direct the computers, instead of putting the computers in charge and letting them decide who should be investigated. Data-mining harms citizens and is ineffective because terrorists and criminals can evade data searches. Codevilla, Angelo; Angelo Codevilla is a professor of international relations at Boston University. He served as a U.S. Navy officer, a foreign service officer, and professional staff member of the Select Committee on Intelligence of the United States Senate; June 14, 2013; "Government Data Mining Threatens Our Citizens, Not Our Enemies." http://cnsnews.com/blog/angelo-codevilla/government-datamining-threatens-our-citizens-not-our-enemies#sthash. Date Accessed: 7/29/2013 Nevertheless, in the 21st century as in World War II, US intelligence puts the bulk of its COMINT resources in sorting through electronic haystacks. Worse, it is recording as many of ordinary citizens' electronic communications as it can get. ¶ This poses no problems to enemies and criminals, while exposing every ordinary citizen to whatever the government may wish to visit upon him.¶ After 9/11, the Defense Department started putting together a computer program it called Total Information Awareness, to bring together all publicly available (and some non publicly available) information about Americans, such as records of telephone calls, credit card transactions, internet and e-mail usage, especially concerning "sensitive" subjects such as contacts with foreigners, but by no means limited to that. The program would sift these gargantuan records in search of "patterns or associations" that would warrant further investigation.¶ After a public outcry, the program shifted to the National Security Agency (NSA), which was already doing something similar with patterns of communication between phones and computers in America and abroad. NSA called it "Transactional Analysis." But this affection for "data mining" can mean only that no sector of the universe of communications is any more interesting than any other. It is a declaration of intellectual bankruptcy akin to airport screeners paying equal attention to grandmas as to imams. ¶ In short: If you have an idea of what you are looking for, you do not need data mining. If you do not, data mining will only provide excuses for indulging your prejudices. The alternative to picking conversations out of cyberspace is to pick them up live through remote sensing, or as they are being transmitted - more like bugging than wiretapping.¶ It happens that technologies for such things as reading vibrations from windows and emanations from cables have made enormous advances and, though only a small part of the US COMINT budget, they have produced disproportionately big results. But to "bug" someone is somehow to designate him as an enemy. Yet, sorting through electronic haystacks is so attractive precisely because it avoids explicit political choices.¶ For example, though US officials wring hands over the fact that financing for much anti-American terror comes from the vast Saudi Arabian royal family and entourage, they have been unwilling to commit emplaced sensors to finding out who is doing what because they would not want to act on the information. They prefer to argue about who our enemies may be. Unfortunately, the US government has come to default conclusions about who the real enemies are - American conservatives.¶ The facts about data mining:¶ It is useful when keyed to known targets or known incidents AND the persons involved do not take fundamental precautions.¶ These precautions have long been easily available to serious criminals, as well as terrorists.¶ Vast troves that consist almost exclusively of data on innocent Americans beg to be used against them.¶ The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and the special court it established cannot hinder abuses. They only legitimize them.¶ Herewith explanations.¶ The best example of what data mining can do comes from the CIA's 2003 kidnapping of Abu Omar on the streets of Milan Italy. CIA contractors then drove Omar to the US air base at Aviano and then flew him to Egypt. Italian police, using cell phone records, found that a few phones had made a pattern of calls around the place of the kidnapping. From that, they reconstructed every detail of the entire episode, including the identities of the CIA people involved. It helped that these master spies had left their frequent flier numbers at the hotel to get credit, and that they used credit cards traceable to the CIA. ¶ But what happens when the targets are intelligent human beings? Anyone who steps up to a checkout stand at Walmart or CVS in a border city like Tucson may notice that the person ahead is buying several piles of prepaid cell phones, and paying for each separately, in cash. These phones are destined for drug cartels. Each phone is used to make just one call or to receive just one call. After that they are thrown in the dumpster. Why? Because, by doing that simple little maneuver, the criminals defeat all the hundreds of billions of high-tech that the US government is throwing into data mining.¶ There is another way to do that. If you are working for a foreign government, or otherwise have serious money, you can have foolproof encryption devices. Even your numbers can be hidden from the US government's big ear.¶ False Hits Collecting data from US citizens produces false hits. Carl Bialik “Ethics Aside, Is NSA’s Spy Tool Efficient” Published by the Wall Street Journal on June 14, 2013. Qualifications [ Senior special writer for the Wall Street Journal in London, Bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Yale University] <http://topics.wsj.com/person/A/biography/1261> Reports about the National Security Agency's program to collect vast amounts of data on personal electronic communications have created an uproar about the implications for privacy. But some statisticians and security experts have raised another objection: As a terror-fighting tool, it is highly inefficient and has some serious downsides.¶ Their reasoning: Any automated approach to spotting something rare necessarily produces false positives. That means for every correctly identified target, many more alarms that go off will prove to be incorrect. So if there are vastly more innocent people than would-be terrorists whose communications are monitored, even an extremely accurate test would ensnare many non-terrorists.¶ A Ph.D. candidate in computational ecology wrote on his blog last week that even a very accurate algorithm for identifying terrorist communications could produce about 10,000 false positives for every real "hit," creating a haystack of false leads to chase in order to find every needle. Several media reports repeated the figure, and some experts agreed. "The false positives will kill you in this kind of system," said Bruce Schneier, a security technologist at U.K. telecommunications company BT Group PLC.¶ Several statisticians agreed with his basic point. Even if the NSA's algorithm "is terribly clever and has a very high sensitivity and specificity, it cannot avoid having an immense false-positive rate," said Peter F. Thall, a biostatistician at the University of Texas' M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. In his arena, false positives mean patients may get tests or treatment they don't need. For the NSA, false positives could mean innocent people are monitored, detained, find themselves on no-fly lists or are otherwise inconvenienced, and that the agency spends resources inefficiently. Surveillance Ineffective Digital surveillance was unable to prevent the boston bombing Knickerbocker, Brad. He’s been the San Francisco bureau chief, Washington bureau news manager and Pentagon correspondent, National News Editor, and Chief Editorial Writer. June 9, 2013. “How do Americans feel about NSA surveillance? Ambivalent.” Date accessed: July 29, 2013. Why weren’t US Army Maj. Nidal Hasan’s e-mail contacts with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (the American-born imam later killed in a US drone attack in Yemen) seen as reason enough to possibly head off Hasan’s killing 13 people at the Army post in Texas? Why weren’t the Tsarnaev brothers’ possible links to radical Islam – including older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s six-month trip to Russia, where he spent considerable time in the Islamic republics of Chechnya and Dagestan – enough to tip off the FBI to investigate further? Shortly after that trip, Tamerlan began posting YouTube videos exhorting jihad. Connecting the dots is exactly what the National Security Agency says it’s trying to do with the now-revealed programs vacuuming up billions of bits of “meta-data” on telephone calls and Internet use. A2: Use a Nuke TERRORISTS ARE UNLIKELY TO BE ABLE TO USE A NUCLEAR WEAPON Keller, May 26, 2002, (Bill, “Nuclear Nightmares”, New York Times, http://www.faughnan.com/scans/020525_NuclearInevitableReivewNYT.pdf, Date accessed: July 30, 2013) If a terrorist did get his hands on a nuclear warhead, he would still face the problem of setting it off. American warheads are rigged with multiple PAL's ( ''permissive action links'') -- codes and self-disabling devices designed to frustrate an unauthorized person from triggering the explosion. General Habiger says that when he examined Russian strategic weapons he found the level of protection comparable to our own. ''You'd have to literally break the weapon apart to get into the gut,'' he told me. ''I would submit that a more likely scenario is that there'd be an attempt to get hold of a warhead and not explode the warhead but extract the plutonium or highly enriched uranium.'' In other words, it's easier to take the fuel and build an entire weapon from scratch than it is to make one of these things go off. Terrorists will stick with conventional weapons-trends prove. Mueller 1/1/2008 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science, Ohio State University. THE ATOMIC TERRORIST: ASSESSING THE LIKELIHOOD Prepared for presentation at the Program on International Security Policy, University of Chicago, January 15, 2008 ] The bottom line. Keller suggests that "the best reason for thinking it won't happen is that it hasn't happened yet," and that, he worries, "is terrible logic" (2002). "Logic" aside, there is another quite good reason for thinking it won't happen: the task is bloody difficult. The science fiction literature, after all, has been spewing out for decades--centuries, even--a wealth of imaginative suggestions about things that might come about that somehow haven't managed to do so. We continue to wait, after all, for those menacing and now-legendary invaders from Mars. Meanwhile, although there have been plenty of terrorist attacks in the world since 2001, all (thus far, at least) have relied on conventional destructive methods--there hasn't even been the occasional gas bomb. In effect the terrorists seem to be heeding the advice found in a memo on an al-Qaeda laptop seized in Pakistan in 2004: "Make use of that which is available...rather than waste valuable time becoming despondent over that which is not within your reach" (Whitlock 2007). That is: Keep it simple, stupid. In fact, it seems to be a general historical regularity that terrorists tend to prefer weapons that they know and understand, not new, exotic ones (Rapoport 1999, 51; Gilmore 1999, 37; Schneier 2003, 236). Indeed, the truly notable innovation for terrorists over the last few decades has not been in qualitative improvements in ordnance at all, but rather in a more effective method for delivering it: the suicide bomber (Pape 2005, Bloom 2005). The probability of nuclear terrorism is low and it wont cause extinction Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ’04 [November 1, Vol. 60, #6, Lexis] There are too many different ways in which terrorists could perpetrate some kind of nuclear attack to mention in this limited space. But keep this in mind: There have been zero cases of nuclear terrorism --neither nuclear nor radiological. There are no known cases of theft or purchase of an intact nuclear weapon, so a terrorist attack with one is more than unlikely. There has not been any documented theft of enough fissile material for a crude nuke--although there have been attempts. There has never been a dirty bomb attack. There has never been a case of nuclear plant sabotage. If there were, it would be awful--but not the end of humanity. No Risk of Nuclear Terrorism-Technical and Logisitical blocks are impossible to overcome Mueller 1/1/2008 [John Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center Professor of Political Science Department of Political Science, Ohio State University. THE ATOMIC TERRORIST: ASSESSING THE LIKELIHOOD Prepared for presentation at the Program on International Security Policy, University of Chicago, January 15, 2008 ] It is essential to note, however, that making a bomb is an extraordinarily difficult task. Thus, a set of counterterrorism and nuclear experts interviewed in 2004 by Dafna Linzer for the Washington Post pointed to the "enormous technical and logistical obstacles confronting would-be nuclear terrorists, and to the fact that neither al-Qaeda nor any other group has come close to demonstrating the means to overcome them." Allison nonetheless opines that a dedicated terrorist group, al-Qaeda in particular, could get around all the problems in time and eventually steal, produce, or procure a "crude" bomb or device, one that he however acknowledges would be "large, cumbersome, unsafe, unreliable, unpredictable, and inefficient" (2004, 97; see also Bunn and Wier 2006, 139; Pluta and Zimmerman 2006, 61). In his recent book, Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor, William Langewiesche spends a great deal of time and effort assessing the process by means of which a terrorist group could come up with a bomb. Unlike Allison, he concludes that it "remains very, very unlikely. It's a possibility, but unlikely." Also: The best information is that no one has gotten anywhere near this. I mean, if you look carefully and practically at this process, you is no public case, at least known, of any appreciable amount of weapons-grade HEU [highly enriched uranium] disappearing. And that's the first see that it is an enormous undertaking full of risks for the would-be terrorists. And so far there step. If you don't have that, you don't have anything. A2: Al-Qaeda Wants Nuke Al Qaeda doesn’t have interest in nuclear weapons Gavin, Francis J. 2010 Gavin is Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin “Same As It Ever Was” International Security 34:3 January 7, 2010. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/isec.2010.34.3.7) A recent study contends that al-Qaida’s interest in acquiring and using nuclear weapons may be overstated. Anne Stenersen, a terrorism expert, claims that “looking at statements and activities at various levels within the al-Qaida network, it becomes clear that the network’s interest in using unconventional means is in fact much lower than commonly thought.”55 She further states that “CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear] weapons do not play a central part in al-Qaida’s strategy.”56 In the 1990s, members of al-Qaida debated whether to obtain a nuclear device. Those in favor sought the weapons primarily to deter a U.S. attack on al-Qaida’s bases in Afghanistan. This assessment reveals an organization at odds with that laid out by nuclear alarmists of terrorists obsessed with using nuclear weapons against the U nited States regardless of the consequences. Stenersen asserts, “Although there have been various reports stating that al-Qaida attempted to buy nuclear material in the nineties, and possibly recruited skilled scientists, it appears that al-Qaida central have not dedicated a lot of time or effort to developing a high-end CBRN capability. . . . Al-Qaida central never had a coherent strategy to obtain CBRN: instead, its members were divided on the issue, and there was an awareness that militarily effective weapons were extremely difficult to obtain.” 57 Most terrorist groups “assess nuclear terrorism through the lens of their political goals and may judge that it does not advance their interests.”58 As Frost has written, “The risk of nuclear terrorism, especially true nuclear terrorism employing bombs powered by nuclear fission, is overstated, and that popular wisdom on the topic is significantly flawed.”59 A2: NSA Prevented Terrorism The NSA’s claim of preventing terrorism is not reliable Lendman 13. Stephen Lendman. 2013. [Research Associate at the Center for Research on Globalization] “NSA Chief General Keith Alexander Lies to Congress.” Global Research. June 15, 2013. SWL In testimony before Senate Appropriations Committee members, NSA Director General Keith Alexander defended the indefensible. He lied doing so. He falsely claimed NSA spying foiled “dozens” of terror plots. ¶ He “didn’t elaborate on the attacks that were stopped, other than to tie them to two well-known foiled 2009 plots.” More on them below. No such plots existed. They were invented. Innocent victims were falsely accused. ¶ No verifiable evidence shows any plots were foiled on Alexander’s watch. He’s been NSA chief since August 1, 2005. His claims don’t wash. ¶ He committed perjury. He’s guilty on multiple counts. Don’t expect recrimination against him. Key Senate members are fully briefed. They’re complicit in state crimes. So are many other congressional members. ¶ Post 9/11, Washington declared war on Islam. Muslims became America’s enemy of choice. They’ve been wrongfully vilified and dehumanized as terrorists. ¶ So-called terror plots are fake. None existed earlier. None exist now. Dozens of innocent men and women were falsely charged, prosecuted, convicted and given long prison terms. Expect more innocent victims persecuted ahead. ¶ Alexander referred to Najibullah Zazi and David Coleman Headley. ¶ Justice Department officials claimed Zazi “received bomb-making instructions in Pakistan, purchased components of improvised explosive devices, and traveled to New York City on September 10 (2009) in furtherance of his criminal plans .” ¶ No evidence whatever supported government accusations. Zazi got no bomb-making instructions. He planned no crimes. His so-called ingredients included hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid. ¶ He bought them at a beauty shop. He did so legally. Anyone can buy the same things. Hydrogen peroxide’s a common bleaching agent. It’s a mild disinfectant. ¶ Acetone’s an inflammable organic solvent. It’s used in nail polish remover, plastics and for cleaning purposes. ¶ Hydrochloric acid’s used in oil production, ore reduction, food processing, pickling, metal cleaning, and over-the-counter eye lubricants, among other applications. It’s found diluted in stomachs. ¶ Zazi’s alleged plot was fabricated. Authorities claimed he planned to attack New York commuter trains and/or other high-profile New York targets. No motive was explained. None existed. ¶ No legitimate evidence surfaced. None was presented. Innocence is no defense. Zazi was declared guilty by accusation. ¶ According to Justice Department officials, Healy was guilty of “a dozen federal terrorism crimes relating to his role in planning the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, and a subsequent proposed attack on a newspaper in Denmark.” ¶ No verifiable evidence links him to any crimes. CIA, Mossad, India’s Research Analysis Wing (RAW, and perhaps Pakistan’s ISI were behind twelve coordinated shooting and bombing Mumbai attacks. They were false flags. ¶ DOJ officials fabricated charges against Healy and others. He’s innocent but guilty as charged. Thousands of political prisoners rot in America’s gulag. ¶ Media scoundrels pronounce guilt before trial. They do so in the court of public opinion. They support the worst state crimes. They violate core journalistic ethics. They [did] it unapologetically. They betray their readers, viewers and listeners in the process. ¶ Post-9/11, dozens of Muslims were falsely convicted of terrorism and/or conspiracy to commit it. ¶ Alexander’s claims about NSA spying foiling plots and keeping America safe don’t wash. ¶ On June 12, London’s Guardian headlined “Senators press NSA director for answers on secret surveillance program.” ¶ It was more show-and-tell than holding Alexander accountable. Congress is fully briefed on what’s ongoing. Key members know the worst of it. Permitting it makes them complicit. ¶ FBI Director Robert Mueller lied like Alexander. In testimony before House Judiciary Committee members, he claimed spying could have foiled 9/11. It will prevent “another Boston,” he said. ¶ Both incidents were state-sponsored false flags. Mueller didn’t explain. House members didn’t ask. Perhaps they know and don’t need to. Maybe key House and Senate members are briefed in advance of US-staged terror plots. ¶ Mueller claims watering down spying leaves America vulnerable. “If you narrow (the scope of surveillance), you narrow the dots and that might be the dot that prevents the next Boston,” he said. ¶ America has no enemies except ones it invents. Mueller lied to Congress. He committed perjury like Alexander. He remains unaccountable. A2: Prism Prevented NYC Bombing Digital surveillance was not necessary to stop the NYC subway bombing Apuzzo and Goldman 06/11/13 (Matt, Adam. NYC bomb plot details settle little in NSA debate http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/nyc-bomb-plot_n_3423721.html) WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration declassified a handful of details Tuesday that credited its PRISM Internet spying program with intercepting a key email that unraveled a 2009 terrorist plot in New York.¶ The details, declassified by the director of national intelligence, were circulated on Capitol Hill as part of government efforts to tamp down criticism of two recently revealed National Security Agency surveillance programs.¶ Najibullah Zazi's foiled plot to bomb the New York subways has become the centerpiece of that effort. It remains the most serious al-Qaida plot inside the United States since the 9/11 terror attacks.¶ In the rush to defend the surveillance programs, however, government officials have changed their stories and misstated key facts of the Zazi plot. And they've left out one important detail: The email that disrupted the plan could easily have been intercepted without PRISM.¶ The debate over the surveillance echoes one from years earlier, over President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping and harsh interrogation tactics. Critics said the government had gone too far but the administration said the techniques were lawful and kept America safe.¶ "What is clear from this information released by the DNI is that each of these programs is authorized by law, overseen by Congress and the courts and subject to ongoing and rigorous oversight," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.¶ Zazi, an Afghan-American cab driver living in the Denver suburbs, was an al-Qaida-trained bomber. In September 2009, he sent a coded message to a Yahoo email address in Pakistan. Months earlier, British officials had linked the Yahoo address to a known al-Qaida operative.¶ "The marriage is ready," the email said in part.¶ The NSA intercepted that email, touching off a frenzied two-week investigation in New York and Colorado that led to Zazi's arrest. He pleaded guilty and provided information that helped send two friends to prison.¶ That much has been known for years. The government has put Zazi back in the news now because the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers revealed the existence of two classified surveillance programs last week.¶ In one program, the government sweeps up the phone records of millions of Americans every day and stores them in a digital library. That program was authorized by the USA Patriot Act, passed shortly after 9/11.¶ The second, called PRISM, taps into major U.S. technology companies and monitors emails in the search for foreign terrorists. That program was authorized by 2007 and 2008 laws that allow the government to monitor, without specific warrants, emails believed to belong to foreigners.¶ When news of the phone-records program broke, officials quickly credited it with thwarting an attack.¶ "Within the last few years, this program was used to stop a terrorist attack in the United States," said Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.¶ A senior intelligence official confirmed soon afterward that Rogers was talking about Zazi, but offered no explanation.¶ On Sunday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also credited the phone program with thwarting the Zazi plot.¶ Now, in talking points declassified by the administration, the government says that Internet eavesdropping, not archiving phone records, disrupted Zazi's plans.¶ The use of PRISM to catch Zazi does little to resolve one of the key questions in the surveillance debate: whether the government needs to take such vast amounts of data, sometimes sweeping up information on American citizens, to keep the country safe.¶ That's because, even before the surveillance laws of 2007 and 2008, the FBI had the authority to – and did, regularly – monitor email accounts linked to terrorists. The only difference was, before the laws changed, the government needed a warrant.¶ To get a warrant, the law requires that the government show that the target is a suspected member of a terrorist group or foreign government, something that had been well established at that point in the Zazi case.¶ In using Zazi to defend the surveillance program, government officials have further confused things by misstating key details about the plot.¶ Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said investigators "found backpacks with bombs." Really, the bombs hadn't been completed and the backpacks the FBI found were unrelated to the plot.¶ Feinstein said the FBI had Zazi under surveillance for six months. Court testimony showed Zazi was watched only for about two weeks before he was arrested.¶ ___¶ Associated Press writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.¶ Equal Prioritization Achieving a balance of national security objectives and digital privacy is necessary. Giuseppe, Vaciago is a lecturer in IT Law at University of Milan, focusing his research on cybercrime and computer forensics. 2013. “Privacy vs. Security? A Dilemma of the Digital Era¶ ”Freedom from Fear magazine.” http://www.freedomfromfearmagazine.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=314:priv acy-vs-security-a-dilemma-of-the-digital-era&catid=50:issue-7&Itemid=187 First and foremost, there are no winners or losers in the efforts to strike a balance between personal rights and public order and security, as these two following examples illustrate. On the one side, Europe adopted a data retention policy necessitating clearer definitions of the types of offences in connection to which stored personal data may be subjected to disclosure. On the other side, during the Bush administration the National Security Agency struck a deal with the main national telecommunications carriers to set up a database of the records of all the phone calls and online activities of American citizens.¶ Secondly, the EU-US joint statement released in Washington on 28 October 2009, as well as the Stockholm Program of 2 December 2009, are and must be treated as urgent calls for the active implementation of the Cybercrime Convention. Without wishing to belittle the importance of this Convention, however, it is clear that in an area such as Internet which connects the entire world, Intergovernmental Organizations also need to intervene, endeavouring to include as many countries as possible.¶ The third and last conclusion is more of a hope: the huge potential of the Internet cannot be exploited merely to keep in touch with old classmates or make free video calls to family and friends. It is precisely as a result of the global interconnectivity it offers, allowing people from different countries and backgrounds to share information and exchange ideas, that the Internet must serve as the starting point for setting up a framework of rules that reconciles privacy protection with the public interest in detecting, investigating and preventing crime both online and offline, in a manner satisfactory to all. We managed to draw up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without the benefit of the Internet as a universal instrument of peace. Imagine what we can now do, with it. Hackers No Impact to Hackers: Encryption Solves Encrypted communications are practically impossible to crack Ou, Geore. 2006 (Network engineer. “Is encryption really crackable?”. 30 Apr. Accessed 17 July 13. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/is-encryption-really-crackable/204) The problem is compounded by the fact that much of the misinformation out there actually sounds somewhat believable and many people just don't know what to believe. So to settle this once and for all, let's look at the facts. One of the things that make these myths plausible is the fact that "128-bit" WEP encryption used in 802.11 Wireless LANs is so pathetically weak. The inside scoop is that WEP was designed during the late 90s during a time when USA export laws were extremely tight. Fearing 802.11 devices would be banned by US export laws, good encryption algorithms were deliberately passed up by the 802.11 group in favor of a weaker one. The WEP algorithm was fundamentally flawed and the 802.11 standards body knew full well that it wasn't a strong encryption algorithm when they selected it. However, WEP's glaring weaknesses are not characteristic of any properly implemented symmetric encryption algorithms used in SSL or VPN implementations. To give you an idea of how good something like DES is, DES is 30 years old and no one has found any weakness or shortcut for cracking it yet though it can be brute forced. Brute force techniques are considered impractical because modern encryption algorithms are 128 to 256 bits long.¶ Further propelling the myth that encryption is worthless is that I often hear people saying that they heard that a 512 bit RSA key was broken. The truth of the matter is that 512 bit (and recently even 660 bit) RSA keys have been broken by the University of Bonn in Germany but that is has absolutely nothing to do with the type of encryption that's used for ordinary bulk encryption. Furthermore, RSA's inventors were well aware of the fact that it takes a much larger key to be secure which is why typical implementations are at a minimum 768 bits and can easily go up to 2048 bits and beyond. To give you an idea what it takes to break an RSA 1620 bit key, you would need a computer with 120 Terabytes of memory before you can even think about attempting it and the memory requirement virtually rules out massively distributed cracking methods. Some may ask why use RSA keys when it's many orders of magnitude slower and requires so many more bits to be secure, the reason is that RSA encryption has the special property of being able to do secure key exchanges in plain sight of an adversary who is trying to break in but still remain safe. For this reason, RSA keys are strictly used for the initial phases of a secure communication session for the purpose of Authentication (where one entity proves who they are) and for secure key exchanges (used for bulk symmetric encryption). Once the initial transaction is complete, the key that was exchanged during the initial RSA phase can now be used for SSL or VPN bulk encryption with algorithms like RC5, 3DES, or AES.¶ The last big factor in encryption myths and bit size inflation is salesmen and marketers because bigger numbers always sound nicer. I've had salesmen come in to my office and try to tell me that RSA or AES encryption was worthless and that I should be using their product which uses some kind of 1000 bit wonder-crypto solution. All it takes is one company to try and out do their competitors and pitch their products using 4096-bit RSA and the next company will come along and pitch 16384-bit RSA keys in their product. Many IT consultants will shy away from quoting smaller bit sizes because they're afraid to be out done by their competitors. ¶ Ah, but what about the dreaded massively distributed cracking brute force method for attacking something like 128 bit RC5 encryption? There are massive zombie farms of infected computers throughout the world and some may have gotten as big as 1 million infected computers. What if that entire army was unleashed upon the commonly used 128 bit RC5 encryption? Surprisingly, the answer is not much. For the sake of argument, let's say we unleash 4.3 billion computers for the purpose of distributed cracking. This means that it would be 4.3 billion or 2 to the 32 times faster than a single computer. This means we could simply take 2 to the 128 combinations for 128-bit encryption and divide it by 2 to the 32 which means that 2 to the 96 bits are left. With 96 bits left, it's still 4.3 billion times stronger than 64 bit encryption. 64 bit encryption happens to be the world record for the biggest RC5 bit key cracked in 2002 which took nearly 5 years to achieve for a massive distributed attack. ¶ Now that we know that the distributed attacks will only shave off a few bits, what about Moore's law which historically meant that computers roughly doubled in speed every 18 months? That means in 48 years we can shave another 32 bits off the encryption armor which means 5 trillion future computers might get lucky in 5 years to find the key for RC5 128-bit encryption. But with 256-bit AES encryption, that moves the date out another 192 years before computers are predicted to be fast enough to even attempt a massively distributed attack. To give you an idea how big 256 bits is, it's roughly equal to the number of atoms in the universe!¶ Once some of these basic facts on encryption become clear, "is encryption crackable" isn't the right question because the real question is "when can it be cracked and will it matter then". This is just like Bank safes which are rated by the time it takes an attacker to crack it open and never sold as "uncrackable". Encryption strength and the number of bits used are selected based on how many decades the data needs to be kept safe. For a secure ECommerce transaction, the data being transmitted is moot after a few decades which is why 128-bit encryption is perfectly suitable since it's considered unbreakable for the next few decades. For top secret classified data that needs to remain secret for the next 100 years, the Government uses NIST certified 256-bit AES encryption. So the next time someone tells you that encryption is crackable, ask him if he'll be around on this earth to see it demonstrated. Hackers Good-Anonymous Anonymous is good for society because it keeps governments and agencies in check. Ivanov, Georgi (MA, HBA in Political Science) Jan 2013 What is Anonymous? Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Shadowy Internet Group. http://www.policymic.com/articles/23922/whatis-anonymous-everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-shadowy-internet-group Date Accessed: 7/18/13 Understanding Anonymous begins with an overview of their history, beginning with 4chan, and evolving into a movement whose primary tools of the trade became denial of service and hacking attacks, accompanied by the public release of sensitive information, including the personal data of individuals involved with the organization placed in the cross-hairs. The public arm of Anonymous consists of press releases and videos that are as much information about its activities as they are about its principles, but also provide commentary on current events. The group does act out against cases where miscarriage of justice or corruption is concerned, and these are actions that, while controversial, have merit. While hacking attacks are done to symbolize opposition to one issue or another, leaking information is a practice that predates Anonymous, but still remains a potent tool in revealing how organizations and governments that would not otherwise release their information, operate. The consequent fallout creates a public relations disaster for the affected parties, but it is a reminder that society works best when there is a degree of accountability and trust between governments and governed. Encrypted communications are practically impossible to crack Ou, Geore. 2006 (Network engineer. “Is encryption really crackable?”. 30 Apr. Accessed 17 July 13. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/is-encryption-really-crackable/204) The problem is compounded by the fact that much of the misinformation out there actually sounds somewhat believable and many people just don't know what to believe. So to settle this once and for all, let's look at the facts. One of the things that make these myths plausible is the fact that "128-bit" WEP encryption used in 802.11 Wireless LANs is so pathetically weak. The inside scoop is that WEP was designed during the late 90s during a time when USA export laws were extremely tight. Fearing 802.11 devices would be banned by US export laws, good encryption algorithms were deliberately passed up by the 802.11 group in favor of a weaker one. The WEP algorithm was fundamentally flawed and the 802.11 standards body knew full well that it wasn't a strong encryption algorithm when they selected it. However, WEP's glaring weaknesses are not characteristic of any properly implemented symmetric encryption algorithms used in SSL or VPN implementations. To give you an idea of how good something like DES is, DES is 30 years old and no one has found any weakness or shortcut for cracking it yet though it can be brute forced. Brute force techniques are considered impractical because modern encryption algorithms are 128 to 256 bits long.¶ Further propelling the myth that encryption is worthless is that I often hear people saying that they heard that a 512 bit RSA key was broken. The truth of the matter is that 512 bit (and recently even 660 bit) RSA keys have been broken by the University of Bonn in Germany but that is has absolutely nothing to do with the type of encryption that's used for ordinary bulk encryption. Furthermore, RSA's inventors were well aware of the fact that it takes a much larger key to be secure which is why typical implementations are at a minimum 768 bits and can easily go up to 2048 bits and beyond. To give you an idea what it takes to break an RSA 1620 bit key, you would need a computer with 120 Terabytes of memory before you can even think about attempting it and the memory requirement virtually rules out massively distributed cracking methods. Some may ask why use RSA keys when it's many orders of magnitude slower and requires so many more bits to be secure, the reason is that RSA encryption has the special property of being able to do secure key exchanges in plain sight of an adversary who is trying to break in but still remain safe. For this reason, RSA keys are strictly used for the initial phases of a secure communication session for the purpose of Authentication (where one entity proves who they are) and for secure key exchanges (used for bulk symmetric encryption). Once the initial transaction is complete, the key that was exchanged during the initial RSA phase can now be used for SSL or VPN bulk encryption with algorithms like RC5, 3DES, or AES.¶ The last big factor in encryption myths and bit size inflation is salesmen and marketers because bigger numbers always sound nicer. I've had salesmen come in to my office and try to tell me that RSA or AES encryption was worthless and that I should be using their product which uses some kind of 1000 bit wonder-crypto solution. All it takes is one company to try and out do their competitors and pitch their products using 4096-bit RSA and the next company will come along and pitch 16384-bit RSA keys in their product. Many IT consultants will shy away from quoting smaller bit sizes because they're afraid to be out done by their competitors. ¶ Ah, but what about the dreaded massively distributed cracking brute force method for attacking something like 128 bit RC5 encryption? There are massive zombie farms of infected computers throughout the world and some may have gotten as big as 1 million infected computers. What if that entire army was unleashed upon the commonly used 128 bit RC5 encryption? Surprisingly, the answer is not much. For the sake of argument, let's say we unleash 4.3 billion computers for the purpose of distributed cracking. This means that it would be 4.3 billion or 2 to the 32 times faster than a single computer. This means we could simply take 2 to the 128 combinations for 128-bit encryption and divide it by 2 to the 32 which means that 2 to the 96 bits are left. With 96 bits left, it's still 4.3 billion times stronger than 64 bit encryption. 64 bit encryption happens to be the world record for the biggest RC5 bit key cracked in 2002 which took nearly 5 years to achieve for a massive distributed attack. ¶ Now that we know that the distributed attacks will only shave off a few bits, what about Moore's law which historically meant that computers roughly doubled in speed every 18 months? That means in 48 years we can shave another 32 bits off the encryption armor which means 5 trillion future computers might get lucky in 5 years to find the key for RC5 128-bit encryption. But with 256-bit AES encryption, that moves the date out another 192 years before computers are predicted to be fast enough to even attempt a massively distributed attack. To give you an idea how big 256 bits is, it's roughly equal to the number of atoms in the universe!¶ Once some of these basic facts on encryption become clear, "is encryption crackable" isn't the right question because the real question is "when can it be cracked and will it matter then". This is just like Bank safes which are rated by the time it takes an attacker to crack it open and never sold as "uncrackable". Encryption strength and the number of bits used are selected based on how many decades the data needs to be kept safe. For a secure ECommerce transaction, the data being transmitted is moot after a few decades which is why 128-bit encryption is perfectly suitable since it's considered unbreakable for the next few decades. For top secret classified data that needs to remain secret for the next 100 years, the Government uses NIST certified 256-bit AES encryption. So the next time someone tells you that encryption is crackable, ask him if he'll be around on this earth to see it demonstrated. Cyberattacks No Impact to Cyberattacks: Threat Overblown (1/2) A cyberattack would not be that severe and countries aren’t likely to launch them against each other. Lewis, James, author of over 90 papers since becoming director of the technology and public policy program at the center for strategic and international studies. December of 2002.“Assessing the Risks of Cyber Terrorism, Cyber War, and Other Cyber Threats” center for strategic and international studies, Washington DC and Steptoe publications.http://www.steptoe.com/publications/231a.pdf Date Accessed: July 16, 2013 Cyber crime is a serious and growing threat, but the risk to a nation-state in deploying cyber-weapons against a potential opponent’s economy are probably too great for any country to contemplate these measures. For example, writers in some of China’s military journals speculated that cyber attacks could disable American financial markets. The dilemma for this kind of attack is that China is as dependent on the same financial markets as the United States, and could suffer even more from disruption. With other critical infrastructures, the amount of damage that can be done is, from a strategic viewpoint, trivial, while the costs of discovery for a nation state could be very great. These constraints, however, do not apply to non-state actors like Al Qaeda. Cyber attacks could potentially be a useful tool (albeit not a fatal or determinative tool) for nonstate actors who reject the global market economy Cyberterrorism is an overblown threat. Dorothy E. Denning, 2001, Georgetown University, “ACTIVISM, HACKTIVISM, AND CYBERTERRORISM: THE INTERNET AS A TOOL FOR INFLUENCING FOREIGN POLICY”, http://ncfm.org/libraryfiles/Children/NetworkNetWar/MR1382.ch8.pdf As previously discussed, terrorist groups are using the Internet extensively to spread their message and to communicate and coordinate action. However, there have been few, if any, computer network attacks that meet the criteria for cyberterrorism. The 1998 email bombing by the Internet Black Tigers against the Sri Lankan embassies was perhaps the closest thing to cyberterrorism that has occurred so far, but the damage cause by the flood of email, for example, pales in comparison to the deaths of 240 people from the physical bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in August of that year. Threat of Cyberterror is overblown – too little payoff for terrorists Ronald Deibert, 2003, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of The Citizen Lab, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, Black Code: Censorship, Surveillance, and the Militarisation of Cyberspace, Journal of International Studies, https://citizenlab.org/wpcontent/uploads/2009/10/Deibert2003.pdf Accompanying electronic surveillance has been the largely undebated militarization of cyberspace. A great deal of attention has focused on the question of cyberterrorism, particularly in the wake of 9/11 and fears of potential terrorist use of electronic networks.55 While some see the possibility of an ‘electronic Pearl Harbour’ being unleashed by terrorists, skilled individuals and non-state actors, many others believe these fears are largely overdrawn and ignore the redundancies built into the architecture of the Internet as well as the relatively low pay-off for groups whose ultimate aim is violence.56 In spite of the alarm, there are no empirical examples of cyber-terrorism to date, unless the term is used so broadly as to encompass politically motivated hacks on websites and occasional inconveniences caused by denial of service attacks. Rather than tools of mass destruction, threats from terrorist actors employing the Internet appear to bode little more than periodic disruptions to Internet traffic. No Impact to Cyberterror: Threat Overblown (2/2) Cyberterrorism is not a threat Green, Joshua. November 2002. The Myth of Cyberterrorism. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0211.green.html. Date Accessed 7/20/13. There's just one problem: There is no such thing as cyberterrorism--no instance of anyone ever having been killed by a terrorist (or anyone else) using a computer. Nor is there compelling evidence that al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization has resorted to computers for any sort of serious destructive activity. What's more, outside of a Tom Clancy novel, computer security specialists believe it is virtually impossible to use the Internet to inflict death on a large scale, and many scoff at the notion that terrorists would bother trying. "I don't lie awake at night worrying about cyberattacks ruining my life," says Dorothy Denning, a computer science professor at Georgetown University and one of the country's foremost cybersecurity experts. "Not only does [cyberterrorism] not rank alongside chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, but it is not anywhere near as serious as other potential physical threats like car bombs or suicide bombers." Cyberattacks have not occurred Fisher, Dennis. October 23, 2009. Report: Cyberterror Not a Credible Threat. http://threatpost.com/report-cyberterror-not-credible-threat-102309/72607. Date Accessed 7/20/13. A new report by a Washington policy think tank dismisses out of hand the idea that terrorist groups are currently launching cyber attacks and says that the recent attacks against U.S. and South Korean networks were not damaging enough to be considered serious incidents.The report, written by James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, looks at cyberwar through the prism of the Korean attacks, which many commentators have speculated originated in North Korea. However, there has been little in the way of proof offered for this assessment, and Lewis doesn’t go down that road. Instead, he focuses on whether the attacks constituted an act of war and whether they could have been the work of a terrorist group.¶ The answer is no on both counts. “The July event was not a serious attack. It was more like a noisy demonstration. The attackers used basic technologies and did no real damage. To date, we have not seen a serious cyber attack. That is only because the political circumstances that would justify such attacks by other militaries have not yet occurred and because most non-state actors have not yet acquired the necessary capabilities. As an aside, this last point undermines the notion of cyber terrorism. The alternative to the conclusion that terrorist groups currently lack the capabilities to launch a cyber attack is that they have these capabilities but have chosen not to use them. This alternative is nonsensical,” Lewis writes. Cyber-warfare is extremely overblown and an ineffective form of terror Ranum, Marcus. Senior scientist at TruSecure Corp and the author of The Myth of Homeland Security. 27th May 2013. “Cyberwar myths: Are cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism overblown?” Accessed: July 29 2013. We've lived under the cyberwar/cyberterrorist cloud for more than a decade. But, we've yet to see a single, credible "cyberwarfare" event. And there's good reason: Cyberwarfare simply isn't an effective form of warfare . A digital attack could cause significant disruptions, but it wouldn't come close to the specter of nuclear Armageddon during the let's debunk five key myths of cyberwarfare: The whole notion of cyberwarfare is a scam. Cyberwarfare Is New. Dust off your history books. Combatants have used information-based countermeasures and deception since ancient times. In the modern context, the only difference is that it occurs in cyberspace. During the late-1990s war in Bosnia, hackers reportedly attacked NATO headquarters, disrupting communications channels to stop the bombing of Serbian positions. Assuming this did happen (NATO never confirmed the report), the cyberattacks would have Cold War. To better understand the hollowness of this threat, forced NATO to take some counteraction. But, the Serbians and their underground supporters had little effect on the bombing campaign. Hackers Set the Tone. If hackers can break into enterprise and government systems with relative ease, then a cyberwarrior's job should be simple, right? Not exactly. To launch a successful attack, cyberwarriors would need predictably effective and highly discriminating weapons -- things that hackers don't have. Common crackers and script-kiddies benefit from the randomness of their haphazard targeting and can't attack critical targets of choice at will. Cyberwarfare Could Devastate the Economy. Demagogues talk about cyberwarfare causing mass disruption of critical services that might ruin the economy. But, one of 9/11's important lessons is the resiliency of the U.S. economy. Cyberwarriors or digital terrorists could cause inconveniences and disruptions -- maybe even cause the economy to sputter -- but it's unlikely they could do permanent damage. Cyberwarfare is an Efficient Form of Offense. Cyberwar is often touted as a battlefield equalizer through which a poor nation or terrorist group could attack a superior force to soften targets in advance of physical strikes. This is utterly ridiculous. Even if a cyberattack reduces a target's responsiveness, you still need a viable military force to take and hold territory. Demagogues argue that cyberwarfare is an option for a nation or terrorist group that just wants to inflict damage and spread fear. The sad truth is that a single fanatic with a gun and homemade explosives is vastly more effective.¶ Cyberwarfare Is Anonymous. What good is anonymity if you're trying to strike fear into a target population or persuade a government to change its policies? There's a reason why terrorists blow up buses and buildings: It's how they get on the six o'clock news. Cyberwarfare units and terrorists may use the Internet to conceal their nefarious activities, but they'll usually race to take credit once their plans come to fruition. For nation-states, an anonymous digital attack might be useful for tweaking a superior enemy, but their identities will eventually be discovered. The whole notion of cyberwarfare is a scam. The security community has been treated to the constant drumbeat of cyberwarfare FUD, but, in the absence of a real threat, we're left with little more than Chicken Little hype and unfounded speculation. ¶ Should we discount the possibility? Like most things in security, common sense and attention to detail will go a lot farther toward improving security than trying to scare people with tales of cyber-invaders. Major Cyber Attack Unlikely to Happen James Bingham, June 6, 2013, “Is the threat of a "cyber Pearl Harbor" as potent as some have suggested?”, http://www.cfr.org/cybersecurity/threat-cyber-pearl-harbor-potent-some-havesuggested/p30863, Date Accessed: July 30, 2013 The most pressing cyber threat is not likely to be a single, sudden attack that cripples the United States. Such attacks are probably limited to sophisticated state actors; they involve elaborate intelligence preparation, great uncertainty for the attacker, and are subject to some deterrence. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. testified that there was only a "remote chance" of "a major cyberattack against U.S. critical infrastructure systems during the next two years that would result in long-term, wide-scale disruption of services." Tech Bad Technopoly creates an endless cycle of dependence, sickening the psyche of the dependent Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York, Vintage Books, pp. 71-72. 1992 http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/mar/hyper/npcontexts_119.html Date accessed- 7/16/13 Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deificaiton of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs. Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress is humanity's superhuman achievement and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved. They also believe that information is an unmixed blessing, which through its continued and uncontrolled production and dissemination offers increased freedom, creativity, and peace of mind. The fact that information does none of these things -- but quite the opposite -- seems to change few opinions, for unwavering beliefs are an inevitable product of the structure of Technopoly. In particular, Technopoly flourishes when the defenses against information break down. ¶ The relationship between information and the mechanisms for its control is fairly simple to describe: Technology increases the available supply of information. As the supply is increased, control mechanisms are strained. Additional control mechanisms are needed to cope with new information. When additional control mechanisms are themselves technical, they in turn further increase the supply of information. When the supply of information is no longer controllable, a general breakdown in psychic tranquillity and social purpose occurs. Without defenses, people have no way of finding meaning in their experiences, lose their capacity to remember, and have difficulty imagining reasonable futures. ¶ One way of defining Technopoly, then, is to say it is what happens to society when the defenses against information glut have broken down. It is what happens when institutional life becomes inadequate to cope with too much information. It is what happens when a culture, overcome by information generated by technology, tries to employ technology itself as a means of providing clear direction and humane purpose. The effort is mostly doomed to failure. Though it is sometimes possible to use a disease as a cure for itself, this occurs only when we are fully aware of the processes by which disease is normally held in check. My purpose here is to describe the defenses that in principle are available and to suggest how they have become dysfunctional. Computers and technology create a shield of ignorance to the real threats by hiding it behind the need for technological advancement and speed. Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York, Vintage Books, pp. 118-20. 1992 http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/mar/hyper/npcontexts_119.html Date accessed- 7/16/13 Because of what computers commonly do, they place an inordinate emphasis on the technical processes of communications and offer very little in the way of substance. With the exception of the electric light, there never has been a technology that better exemplifies Marshall McLuhan's aphorism "The medium is the message." The computer is almost all process. There are, for example, no "great computerers," as there are great writers, painters, or musicians. [I can't resist interjecting here: there are no great "pencilers" or "brushers" either. What is this guy thinking?] There are "great programs" and "great programmers," but their greatness lies in their ingenuity either in simulating a human function or in creating new possibilities of calculation, speed, and volume. Of course, if J. David Bolter is right, it is possible that in the future computers will emerge as a new kind of book, expanding and enriching the tradition of writing technologies. Since printing created new forms of literature when it replaced the handwritten manuscript, it is possible that electronic writing will do the same. But for the moment, computer technology functions more as a new mode of transportation than a as new means of substantive communication. It moves information -- lots of it, fast, and mostly in calculating mode. The computer, in fact, makes possible the fulfillment of Descartes' dream of the mathematization of the world. Computers make it easy to convert facts into statistics and to translate problems into equations. And whereas this can be useful (as when the process reveals a pattern that would otherwise go unnoticed), it is diversionary and dangerous when applied indiscriminately to human affairs. So is the computer's emphasis on speed and especially its capacity to generate and store unprecedented quantities of information. In specialized contexts, the value of calculation, speed, and voluminous information may go uncontested. But the "message" of computer technology is comprehensive and domineering. The computer argues, to put it baldly, that the most serious problems confronting us at both personal and professional levels require technical solutions through fast access to information otherwise unavailable. I would argue that this is, on the face of it, nonsense. Our most serious problems are not technical, nor do they arise from inadequate information. If a nuclear catastrophe occurs, it shall not be because of inadequate information. Where people are dying of starvation, it does not occur because of inadequate information. If families break up, children are mistreated, crime terrorizes a city, education is impotent, it does not happen because of inadequate information. Mathematical equations, instantaneous communication, and vast quantities of information have nothing whatever to do with any of these problems. And the computer is useless in addressing them. Tech pollutes the traditional sense of learning calling into question true learning. Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York, Vintage Books, pp. 16-19. 1992 http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/mar/hyper/npcontexts_119.html Date accessed- 7/16/13 We can imagine that Thamus would also have pointed out to Gutenberg, as he did to Theuth, that the new invention would create a vast population of readers who "will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction...[who will be filled] will the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom"; that reading, in other words, will compete with older forms of learning. This is yet another principle of technological change we may infer from the judgment of Thamus: new technologies compete with old ones -- for time, for attention, for money, for prestige, but mostly for dominance of their world-view. This competition is implicit once we acknowledge that the medium contains an ideological bias. And it is a fierce competition, as only ideological competitions can be. It is not merely a matter of tool against tool -- the alphabet attacking ideographic writing, the printing press attacking the illuminated manuscript, the photograph attacking the art of painting, television attacking the printed word. When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision. In the United States, we can see such collisions everywhere -- in politics, in religion, in commerce -- but we see them most clearly in the schools, where two great technologies confront each other in uncompromising aspect for the control of students' minds. On the one hand, there is the world of the printed word with its emphasis on logic, sequence, history, exposition, objectivity, detachment, and discipline. On the other there is the world of television with its emphasis on imagery, narrative, presentness, simultaneity, intimacy, immediate gratification, and quick emotional response. Children come to school having been deeply conditioned by the biases of television. There, they encounter the world of the printed word. A sort of psychic battle takes place, and there are many casualties -- children who can't learn to read or won't, children who cannot organize their thought into logical structure even in a simple paragraph, children who cannot attend to lectures or oral explanations for more than a few minutes at a time. They are failures, but not because they are stupid. They are failures because there is a media war going on, and they are on the wrong side -- at least for the moment. Who knows what schools will be like twenty-five years from now? Or fifty? In time, the type of student who is currently a failure may be considered a success. They type who is now successful may be regarded as a handicapped learner -- slow to respond, far too detached, lacking in emotion, inadequate in creating mental pictures of reality. Consider: what Thamus called the "conceit of wisdom" -- the unreal knowledge acquired through the written word -- eventually became the pre-eminent form of knowledge valued by the schools. There is no reason to suppose that such a form of knowledge must always remain so highly valued. To take another example: In introducing the personal computer to the classroom, we shall be breaking a four-hundred year-old truce between the gregariousness and openness fostered by orality and the introspection and isolation fostered by the printed word. Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility.... Print stresses individualized learning, competition, and personal autonomy. Over four centuries, teachers, while emphasizing print, have allowed orality its place in the classroom, and have therefore achieved a kind of pedagogical peace between these two forms of learning, so that what is valuable in each can be maximized. Now comes the computer, carrying anew the banner of private learning and individual problem-solving. Will the widespread use of computers in the classroom defeat once and for all the claims of communal speech? Will the computer raise egocentrism to the status of a virtue? These are the kinds of questions that technological change brings to mind when one grasps ... that technological competition ignites total war, which means it is not possible to contain the effects of a new technology to a limited sphere of human activity.... What we need to consider about the computer has nothing to do with its efficiency as a teaching tool. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, and how, in conjunction with television, it undermines the old idea of school. Patriot Act Patriot Act Violates Privacy – “Sneak & Peak Searches” Under the Patriot Act, the government is allowed to search companies without warning the subject of the search. Nancy J. King, 2003, College of Business, Oregon State University, Electronic Monitoring to Promote National Security Impacts Workplace Privacy, Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journalhttp://www.cob.sjsu.edu/malos_s/privacy%20and%20national%20security.pdf Second, an employer may be called upon to assist the government in secret searches of the workplace under “delayed notification” rules. Section 213 of the USA PATRIOT Act permits searches and seizures by the government without prompt notice to the subject of the search and seizure when the government is seeking evidence of a criminal offense. Section 213 searches and seizures have been characterized as “sneak and peek” because they authorize surreptitious searches and seizures (147 Cong. Rec., 2001). Prior to the USA PATRIOT Act, “sneak and peek” searches and seizures had only been permitted in two jurisdictions under court rulings by the 2nd and 9th Circuit Courts of Appeals (U.S. v. Freitas, 1986; U.S. v. Villegas, 1990). Now “sneak and peek” searches and seizures are lawful across the nation (147 Cong. Rec., 2001). Applying Section 213 to the workplace, employers may be required to secretly monitor an employee’s electronic communications as part of a government search and seizure and be prohibited from disclosing its action to the employee under investigation. WikiLeaks A2: Threatens US Diplomacy Wikileaks is not a threat to National Security, Diplomacy between nations will still continue. Helller, Kevin J. (Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne) Dec 2010 Why the Benefits of WikiLeaks Far Outweigh Its Dangers http://opiniojuris.org/2010/12/03/why-wikileaks-good-faroutweighs-its-harm/ Date Accessed: 7/18/13 I have no doubt that some diplomats may respond to WikiLeaks’ disclosures by self-censoring and by avoiding written communications. But it is difficult to believe that WikiLeaks will have any significant or lasting effect on the US’s ability to engage in diplomacy with friendly or unfriendly governments ; after all, this is hardly the first time in U.S. history that diplomatic secrets have been disclosed. Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, said it best a couple of days ago: Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve , and it has for a long time. And I dragged this up the other day when I was looking at some of these prospective releases. And this is a quote from John Adams: ‘How can a government go on, publishing all of their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not. To me, it appears as dangerous and pernicious as it is novel.’ Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets . Many governments — some governments — deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation. So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest. Shield Laws Shield Laws Key to First Ammendment Digital surveillance of journalists has a chilling effect on the first amendment, further reducing our freedoms Conyers, John Poe, Ted (Congressmen) July 2013 [“A shield law is essential to a robust press.” http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/conyers-shield-law-press-freedom-93832.html Date Accessed: 7/17/13] A free and robust press is essential to the transparent and effective functioning of our government. Freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment as a foundational freedom upon which our other freedoms — including speech and privacy — are premised. An unfettered press can inform the public about government abuses that threaten our citizens’ rights. This is not a conservative or liberal principle. It’s an American principle. A free press can hold both Democratic and Republican administrations accountable, as we’ve seen throughout our history, from Watergate and the Pentagon Papers to the recent Internal Revenue Service and National Security Agency scandals. Current events have brought renewed urgency to the need for federal press shield legislation. On May 13, we learned that the Department of Justice had secretly subpoenaed phone records, stemming from a leak investigation, for more than 20 telephone lines of Associated Press offices and journalists over a two-month period. A week later, we learned that in connection with a leak investigation concerning a possible North Korean missile launch, the DOJ had been tracking Fox News reporter James Rosen’s dealings with the State Department and went so far as to label him a “co-conspirator” in order to access his personal emails. Such actions sent a chilling signal to both reporters and their sources. Economy Regular Crime Worse Cybercrime is not the only way to steal Trade secrets. The Economist, February 23, 2013, (“Who needs cyber-spying?”, The Economist, http://www.economist.com/news/china/21572250-old-fashioned-theft-still-biggest-problem-foreigncompanies-china-who-needs, Date accessed: July 30, 2013) ON JANUARY 5th, in a night raid, a gang of criminals broke into a factory near Shanghai owned by Mercury Cable, an American manufacturer of high-voltage equipment. The thieves took not only raw materials but machinery from production lines as well.¶ Who was responsible? Todd Harris, the firm’s American boss, blames a gang led by a former manager at the plant. He claims local police have refused to take action despite repeated complaints, and that former employees and local officials are colluding to “set up a Chinese company making knockoffs.” Cybercrime may be sexier, but the hard reality for companies doing business in China is that oldfashioned skulduggery remains a bigger threat.¶ The Mercury saga is a common tale. A foreign businessman comes to China with dollar signs in his eyes, struggles initially, then finds promising local managers who speak English, and he hands over the keys to his factory. He visits occasionally to woo local politicians over endless banquets. The business at last booms, until one day everything suddenly falls apart. Typically, the foreign firm loses vital intellectual property (IP) and assets, and cannot find any local remedy. China Responds Turn: China will respond to US efforts to crack down on hacking by hacking more. Doing nothing would be the best option. Riley, May 23, 2013, (Michael, senior writer for BloombergBusinessweek, “How the U.S. Government Hacks the World”, BloombergBusinessweek, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-23/howthe-u-dot-s-dot-government-hacks-the-world#p1, Date accessed: July 31, 2013) The key role NSA hackers play in intelligence gathering makes it difficult for Washington to pressure other nations—China in particular—to stop hacking U.S. companies to mine their databanks for product details and trade secrets. In recent months the Obama administration has tried to shame China by publicly calling attention to its cyber-espionage program, which has targeted numerous companies, including Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Intel (INTC), to steal source code and other secrets. This spring, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveled to Beijing to press Chinese officials about the hacking. National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon is scheduled to visit China on May 26.¶ The Chinese response, essentially: Look who’s talking. “You go in there, you sit across from your counterpart and say, ‘You spy, we spy, but you just steal the wrong stuff.’ That’s a hard conversation,” says Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA, and later the CIA, under Bush. “States spying on states, I got that,” says Hayden, now a principal at the Chertoff Group, a Washington security consulting firm. “But this isn’t that competition. This is a nation-state attempting espionage on private corporations. That is not an even playing field.”¶ The tension between the two nations escalated in May, when a Pentagon report to Congress for the first time officially linked China’s government directly to the hacking of U.S. defense contractors. It revealed that U.S. intelligence had been tracking a vast hacking bureaucracy adept at stealing technology from American companies. China’s leaders have long denied being behind the hacks. An article about the Pentagon report in the official People’s Daily newspaper called the U.S. the “real hacking empire.”¶ The U.S. government doesn’t deny that it engages in cyber espionage. “You’re not waiting for someone to decide to turn information into electrons and photons and send it,” says Hayden. “You’re commuting to where the information is stored and extracting the information from the adversaries’ network. We are the best at doing it. Period.” The U.S. position is that some kinds of hacking are more acceptable than others—and the kind the NSA does is in keeping with unofficial, unspoken rules going back to the Cold War about what secrets are OK for one country to steal from another. “China is doing stuff you’re not supposed to do,” says Jacob Olcott, a principal at Good Harbor Security Risk Management, a Washington firm that advises hacked companies.¶ The men and women who hack for the NSA belong to a secretive unit known as Tailored Access Operations. It gathers vast amounts of intelligence on terrorist financial networks, international money-laundering and drug operations, the readiness of foreign militaries, even the internal political squabbles of potential adversaries, according to two former U.S. government security officials, who asked not to be named when discussing foreign intelligence gathering. For years, the NSA wouldn’t acknowledge TAO’s existence. A Pentagon official who also asked not to be named confirmed that TAO conducts cyber espionage, or what the Department of Defense calls “computer network exploitation,” but emphasized that it doesn’t target technology, trade, or financial secrets. The official says the number of people who work for TAO is classified. NSA spokeswoman Vaneé Vines would not answer questions about the unit.¶ The two former security officials agreed to describe the operation and its activities without divulging which governments or entities it targets. According to the former officials, U.S. cyberspies, most from military units who’ve received specialized training, sit at consoles running sophisticated hacking software, which funnels information stolen from computers around the world into a “fusion center,” where intelligence analysts try to make sense of it all. The NSA is prohibited by law from spying on people or entities within the U.S., including noncitizens, or on U.S. citizens abroad. According to one of the former officials, the amount of data the unit harvests from overseas computer networks, or as it travels across the Internet, has grown to an astonishing 2 petabytes an hour—that’s nearly 2.1 million gigabytes, the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pages of text.¶ The agency has managed to automate much of the process, one of the former officials says, requiring human hackers to intervene only in cases of the most well-protected computers. Just like spies in the physical world, the U.S. cyberspies take pains to obscure their tracks or disguise themselves as something else—hackers from China, say—in case their activities are detected.¶ Even as the rest of the Pentagon budget shrinks, the importance of the NSA’s hacking operations has helped create a booming cyber-industrial complex. Specialized units of big defense contractors, and boutique firms that create hacking tools, look for security flaws in popular software programs that allow government hackers to take over computers. A company called KEYW does a robust business training hackers for U.S. intelligence, says Chief Executive Officer Leonard Moodispaw, who cautions that he can’t reveal more. “Our federal partners don’t like it if we’re too explicit.”¶ All this activity gives China leverage against Washington’s complaints, says Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. Beijing can turn U.S. protests about industrial espionage around and claim that Washington is doing something even worse. “It’s OK to steal plans for a new automobile,” Aftergood says the Chinese can argue, “but not our national secrets.” Crime Gangs The Internet is not essential to gangs Pyrooz , David, Decker Scott , and Moule Richard. "Study Explores Gang Activity on the Internet." shsujc.blogspot.com. Sam Houston State University, 20 Mar 2013. Web. 29 Jul 2013. <http://shsucj.blogspot.com/2013/03/study-explores-gang-activity-on-internet.html>. Gangs do not use the Internet for purposes instrumental to the group, such as recruiting new members, drug distribution, meetings or other organizational activities. Gang members recognized that law enforcement monitored their online behaviors, so they limited their discussion of gang activities on the Internet or social media sites. Only 20 percent of gang members surveyed said that their gang had a web site or social media page, and one-third of those were password protected. ¶ Gang members recognized the importance of the Internet, but sites were used mainly as status symbols. Instead of exploiting the Internet for criminal opportunities, YouTube, Facebook, or other social media is used much like an “electronic graffiti wall,” according the study. Crime Low Crime Rate Lowest in 40 Years RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr., May 23, 2011, “Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts”, NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24, crime.html, Date Accessed: July 23, 2013 The number of violent crimes in the United States dropped significantly last year, to what appeared to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years, a development that was considered puzzling partly because it ran counter to the prevailing expectation that crime would increase during a recession.¶ In all regions, the country appears to be safer. The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States. Small towns, especially, are seeing far fewer murders: In cities with populations under 10,000, the number plunged by more than 25 percent last year. Impact Turn Organized crime decreases robbery, theft, kidnapping, and provide a level of security. Felbab-Brown, Vanda. Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. August 2012. “Organized Criminals Won’t Fade Away” Organized crime has a particularly vicious impact on the state if it can create strong bonds with larger segments of the population than the state can. Many people around the world in areas with an inadequate or problematic state presence, great poverty, and social and political marginalization are dependent on illicit economies for their livelihood.¶ Criminal (as well as militant) groups provide the marginalized population with employment and an opportunity for social advancement. They can also provide a level of security, suppressing robberies, thefts, kidnapping, and murders as well as providing informal courts, despite their being instigators of crime and instability in the first place. As a result, criminal entities can gain political capital with local communities.\ Data-Mining Bad Data mining inefficient; wastes money and leads to dead ends Arshad Mohammed and Sara Kehaulani Goo. Washington Post Staff Writers, June 15, 2006, Washington Post,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061402063_2.html, Date Accessed July 21, 2013 "Out of pure resource allocation, it is so unlikely to provide something useful and so likely to provide dead ends and false leads that you are going to spend an enormous amount of resources on things that don't pan out," he said. "Before you start searching haystacks for needles, you've got to have some reason to believe that the needles are there."¶ The federal government's most public experiment with data mining since the terrorist attacks in 2001 failed to get off the ground, after the Homeland Security Department spent $200 million on it and the technology failed to prove what it set out to do, according to several former U.S. officials familiar with the program.¶ The system, originally called CAPPS II, sought to comb airline passenger records and verify information that fliers provided about themselves with information provided by companies that aggregate data about consumers. The problem, according to several officials who worked closely on the program but declined to speak publicly about it, was that the information about consumers was never proved to be effective in evaluating the risk posed by an airline passenger. Human Trafficking Technology Doesn’t Solve There is little research on technology helping decrease sex trafficking. boyd, danah, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research and Research Assistant Professor, NYU, Casteel, Research Assistant, Microsoft Research, Thakor, Mitali, Research Assistant, Microsoft Research and PhD student, MIT, Johnson, Rane. Principal Research Director, Microsoft Research, 2011. Human Trafficking and Technology: A framework for understanding the role of technology in the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the U.S. Page 1. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/focus/education/htframework-2011.pdf. Date Accessed: 7/30/13. To date, there is little empirical research into the role that technology plays in human trafficking. As a result, new interventions and policies are being driven by intuition, speculation, and extrapolation from highly publicized incidents. In order to move towards a more coherent and grounded approach to addressing the role of technology, it is important to begin untangling technology’s role in different facets of the human trafficking ecosystem. Traditional Sources Sex trafficking tips came from traditional sources. Farell, Amy. Ph.D.,Jack McDevitt, Ph.D., Rebecca Pfeffer, M.A., Stephanie Fahy, M.A., NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE ON RACE AND JUSTICE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE, Colleen Owens, Meredith Dank, Ph.D., William Adams, M.P.P. 2012 URBAN INSTITUTE JUSTICE POLICY CENTER. April . “Identifying Challenges to Improve the Investigation and Prosecution of State and Local Human Trafficking Cases.” Page 44. http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412593-State-and-Local-Human-Trafficking-Cases.pdf. Date Accessed: 7/30/13. There are numerous methods that law enforcement agencies in our study sites reported as helping them identify cases of human trafficking. The most frequent method of identification of human trafficking cases was a tip (either from the community, a victim services organization, or through a hotline call), which was cited in 39% of human trafficking investigations (see Table 3.4). In 10% of cases the victim self-reported their victimization to the police, and in another 3% of cases the victim’s family reported the victimization. In 3% of the cases, human trafficking was identified in response to a call for service. Together, these traditionally reactive identification strategies were used to identify 55% of all the cases we reviewed. Internal Link: Technological Innovation is Key to the Economy Technological Innovation accounts for 85% of growth in the economy, Rosenberg, 2004, (Nathan, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) Stanford University, “ INNOVATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH”, pg. 1-2, http://www.oecd.org/cfe/tourism/34267902.pdf, Date accessed: July 28, 2013) Technological innovation, a major force in economic growth¶ It is taken as axiomatic that innovative activity has been the single, most important component of long-term economic growth and this paper will start by drawing upon the findings of a very influential paper published by my colleague at Stanford, Prof. Abramovitx, back in the mid-1950s.¶ In the most fundamental sense, there are only two ways of increasing the output of the economy: (1) you can increase the number of inputs that go into the productive process, or (2) if you are clever, you can think of new ways in which you can get more output from the same number of inputs. And, if you are an economist you are bound to be curious to know which of these two ways has been more important - and how much more important. Essentially what Abramovitz did was to measure the growth in the output of the American economy between 1870 and 1950. Then he measured the growth in inputs (of capital and labor) over the same time period. He then made what were thought to be reasonable assumptions about how much a growth in a unit of labour and how much a growth in a unit of capital should add to the output of the economy. It turned out that the measured growth of inputs (i.e., in capital and labor) between 1870 and 1950 could only account for about 15% of the actual growth in the output of the economy. In a statistical sense, then, there was an unexplained residual of no less than 85%.¶ Surprisingly enough, no economist had ever undertaken this exercise before - partly because it was only after the Second World War that reasonably accurate estimates of inputs and outputs for the American economy, over some very long time period, became available. Now, in any statistical exercise in which you are trying to tease out the relative importance of some variable, and you find yourself with a residual of 85%, you know you are in big trouble! Yet a number of other economists in the late 1950s and 1960s undertook similar exercises, using different methodologies, different time periods, and different sectors of the economy, with roughly similar results – they found themselves left with a very large residual that could not be accounted for. Robert Solow, who later won a Nobel Prize in Economics, was one of those other economists who discovered a very large residual, using a very different methodology and different time period. As it happened, he got the same result for the size of the residual – 85%. It was precisely the size of this residual that persuaded most economists that¶ technological innovation must have been a major force in the growth of output in highly industrialised economies.¶ Although it might be tempting to say that the 85% residual was a negative finding, negative findings can sometimes be extremely useful. In this case the large size of the residual served as a kind of “wake-up call” to the economics profession because most economists for the previous 200 years had been building models in which economic growth was treated as if it was primarily a matter of adding more inputs into the productive process, especially inputs of capital. The large residual told economists that they had to look elsewhere in order to account for economic growth. Tabloid Geopolitics Link-Fear Tabloid Geopolitics uses ready-made stories of fear to control the public – Tabloid agents use discursive tactics to determine who is and isn’t a legitimate speaker Debrix, Francois., assistant professor of IR @ American International, 2008, (Francois, Tabloid Terror: War, Culture, and Geopolitics)pg. 150-152 Judith Butler has argued that public debate in the United States in the aftermath ¶ of 9/11 has been characterized by an exclusion of dissent. Political and media ¶ discourses, Butler goes on to remark, have been driven by the desire to produce ¶ labels (traitor, terrorist-sympathizer, leftist, internationalist, postmodernist, and so ¶ on) that support ready-made explanations aimed at creating a “climate of fear in ¶ which to voice a certain view is to risk being branded and shamed with a heinous ¶ appellation.”¶ 27 Inside the contemporary spaces of alleged debate or dialogue of the global ¶ ¶ mediascape, critical reflection is rendered obsolete, useless, and possibly threatening to the nation and its people. Thus, Henry Giroux adds that, “[j]ust as violence is staged as a global spectacle, language, sound, and image lose their critical functions as they are turned into weapons to combat an enemy that is ubiquitous and to glorify a politics mobilized around an unrelenting campaign of fear.” 28¶ Butler’s and Giroux’s insights are perspicacious commentaries on the ¶ discursive politics of popular shows like The O’Reilly Factor and many other ¶ seemingly open ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ and free-flowing public debates about the future of the United ¶ States and its people in an age of global terror. But these commentaries are also ¶ lucid recognitions of the powerful and dreadful consequences of the ideological ¶ work of imposition, control, and domination of tabloid geopolitics as a discourse of fear, terror, and war. As I have shown in the previous chapters, tabloid geopolitics (in its different instantiations as tabloid realism before 9/11, as tabloid idealism or imperialism after 9/11, and perhaps as a more defensive and desperate ¶ – but also more vicious – tabloid imperialistic and aggressive narrative after the ¶ debacle of the war in Iraq) is a set of discursive and/or visual representations that ¶ seek to take over the American cultural landscape in order to determine what can or cannot be said in the public domain in the new millennium. By dictating what ¶ will be legitimately uttered or not, tabloid geopolitical discourses and representations also decide who will count as valued speaking subjects, as subjects capable of pronouncing “truths.” In addition, the tabloid texts, sights, and sounds also ¶ reveal to their readers/viewers/listeners what or who is not worthy of interest or, ¶ worse yet, what or who needs to be abjected, dehumanized, and eventually killed. ¶ Thus, this tabloid discursive and representational production constantly ¶ ¶ threatens speaking subjects – whoever they are, and whatever they may want to say – with a potentially “uninhabitable identification” (as ¶ ¶ Butler puts it).¶ 29¶ Speaking subjects ¶ (“us” and “them”), if and when they dare to speak, are interpellated into compliance with the dominant narratives and images and into acceptance of not being allowed to voice doubt or questioning. As Giroux clarifies, “in this cold new world, the language of politics is increasingly mediated through a ¶ spectacle of terrorism in which fear and violence become central modalities through which to grasp the meaning of self in society.” ¶ ¶ Link: International Relations International relations is steeped in a long history of discursive storytelling that privileges dangers and threats to shock the audience Debrix, assistant professor of IR @ American International; 8 (Francois, Tabloid Terror: War, Culture, and Geopolitics)pg. 40 In an age dominated by tabloid culture and in which politics is increasingly experienced by the public as trash entertainment, international politics also becomes a ¶ prime target of sensationalism, scandal news, injustice reporting, and crude moralizing. As we saw in Chapter 1, the Y2K (non-)event and the fear of cyberterrorism already contributed to a fusion of international political matters (national ¶ security, state sovereignty, warfare) with low or middlebrow modes of cultural ¶ representation and truth-telling (via cable TV news programs, the internet, home ¶ videos, and so on). Thus, since the late 1990s, American foreign policy and those ¶ who hope to influence its formulation have not been immune from the spread of ¶ tabloid culture. Moreover, those who have written about the foreign affairs of the ¶ United States of late, consciously or not, have often found themselves adopting a style of writing and presentation that is characteristically and perhaps purposefully tabloid. They ¶ seek to shock their audience, try to take them by surprise, announce impending dangers and disasters for the American nation, develop stereotypes about the world outside US borders, and desperately attempt to construct ¶ new international relations villains. Whereas the intervention of ¶ tabloid culture into the domain of international politics can be seen as a late modern or postmodern phenomenon, the conceptualization of international politics and formulation of foreign policies in the United States have gone through historical stages when relatively similar ¶ ¶ discourses and representations of popular or even populist geopolitics took place. The point I wish to make about tabloid culture’s use in certain foreign policy and security ¶ studies circles today is not that it is a unique trend, or that it is not based on any ¶ prior discursive tradition. On the contrary, as I hinted at in the introduction to this ¶ ¶ ¶ book, the tabloid genre of writing American foreign policy draws on a rich legacy ¶ of popular cultural and middlebrow media constructions. Yet, as suggested above ¶ and in the Introduction, the tabloid (realist) genre discussed in this chapter also ¶ possesses specific traits that explain its contemporary appeal and suggest that it is ¶ not just any reproduction of previous popular geopolitics. Impacts Tabloid Imperialism limits what can be said and heard in public debates – Their appeals to horrific impacts turns political agents into apologists for the war machine Debrix, assistant professor of IR @ American International; 8 (Francois, Tabloid Terror: War, Culture, and Geopolitics)pg. 152-153 At the same time, though, the passage from tabloid realism to tabloid imperialism was more than mere technical fine-tuning (although the tabloid style of the ¶ discourse and representations certainly made it look as if it was a continuation of ¶ what had been initiated in the late 1990s). Unlike tabloid realism, tabloid imperialism as a discursive/representational construct was no longer about proliferating simulated scenarios or models (World War III, an electronic or digital Pearl ¶ Harbor, holographic maps, and so forth). Rather, tabloid imperialism became a ¶ matter of deploying vivid, gruesome, or “factual” situations and so-called events, ¶ and more importantly of attaching those real or imagined phenomena to larger than-life and ideationally superior reasons, rationalizations, and ideologies, so ¶ that Americans could not just fear or panic, but also could openly hate, abject, ¶ dehumanize, and agonize over life and death. The new tabloid imperialistic scenarios provided by intellectuals and pundits of statecraft and war (and their media, government, and military supports and supporters) ¶ were not concerned with simulation any more. They were now interested in recapturing good old representation, and in excavating from it images, symbols, or messages that could help to better produce meaning, reality, and truth by idealizing, rationalizing, and ¶ ¶ (conveniently also) glossing over those that “we,” Americans, had to demonize, bestialize, or ¶ kill through “our” heroic actions. Whereas simulation was a crucial technique for tabloid (hyper-)realists, tabloid imperialists openly embraced transcendence and sublimation instead as their main discursive, representational and, finally, ideational strategies. After 9/11, the buffering ¶ ¶ ¶ effect offered by simulation models was ¶ no longer potent. A new Pearl Harbor (although not electronic or digital) was said ¶ to have taken place. As many in the media had noted, the reality of the terrorist ¶ attacks made Hollywood-type trompe l’oeilfictions look obsolete. And tabloid ¶ geopolitical scientists no longer had to craft virtual dangers in order to encourage American citizens to be afraid, seek revenge, assault others, and support an ¶ unending war on and of terror. Tabloid geopolitics uses discourses of threat and security to control the public sphere with entertaining pseudo-realities of political fear – This turns us into passive viewers and prevents public discussion of matters that are meaningful to our personal experiences Debrix, assistant professor of IR @ American International; 8 (Francois, Tabloid Terror: War, Culture, and Geopolitics)pg. 43-45 At the same time though, Gregory’s point about the impact of the form/style ¶ of the medium, of popular culture in general, on the formation of contemporary ¶ imaginative political geographies does not go far enough in diagnosing the peculiarities (and specific rules of formation and the tabloid genre of geopolitical reporting and truth-telling ¶ today is directly affected by the form of the medium. As will be seen below, the particular form of this medium is a effects) of what I have called tabloid ¶ geopolitics. Indeed, ¶ primary reason why producers of contemporary geopolitical discourses, foreign policy analyses, and American security narratives find the ¶ tabloid genre attractive. The tabloid medium allows scholars, ¶ journalists, pundits, and all sorts of experts to deploy relatively ahistorical – but ¶ imaginative and ideological – discourses in textual and representational contexts ¶ that do not (have to) abide by rules of temporal and spatial contingency (the realities they describe are at once past, present or future, as we started to see in Chapter 1 in relation to cyberterror). Sharp, for example, had indicated that Reader’s¶ Digest’s production of “clearheaded facts” was crucial to the magazine’s mission ¶ of educating the public.¶ 24¶ The American citizen had to learn about the Cold War ¶ (as presented from a specifically selected perspective) in order to become more ¶ knowledgeable about the threats and dangers. But, as will also be shown below, ¶ the tabloid discourse of contemporary international politics (and tabloid realism ¶ in particular) does not claim to provide knowledge, and its geopolitical imageries and imaginative geographies are not meant to be instructive or educational. 25¶ Instead, as I already noted in Chapter 1, ¶ ¶ tabloid geopolitics intends to spread a ¶ sense of anxiety and insecurity by providing spectacular scenarios and doomsday ¶ prophecies about “realities” that are generally not tangible or sometimes may not ¶ even be immediately meaningful to the reader’s or viewer’s personal experience. ¶ The “dumbing down” effect of/in the tabloid genre once again gives priority to ¶ entertainment value, and it seeks to condition the public through a lack of knowledge (which often is also an excess of information). Tabloid geopolitical experts ¶ can thus be presented as and remain uncontested “authority figures” who play the ¶ part of knowledgeable intellectuals of statecraft, as the last thing the producers ¶ and operators of tabloid geopolitical media and literatures want is for their audience to know (what they are up to).¶ Thus, contemporary tabloid geopolitical discourses do not create the kind of ¶ “active subjectivity” that some critical geopolitical scholars have argued the reading or watching of popular texts or shows with (geo)political messages and effects ¶ supposedly require. As Gregory intimated was at play recently when US audiences consumed images and commentaries on the war in Iraq in the US media for example, the reading/viewing subject of today’s tabloid geopolitics is generally ¶ asked The reconstruction of American security culture 45 to occupy a very passive position. 26¶ This postmodern version of popular geopolitics adopts a tabloid approach so that the main task asked of the reader/viewer ¶ is to sit down, enjoy the show, and, of course, remain fearful. Other subjects, ¶ agents, and authorities, the tabloid reader/viewer is being told, are doing the acting and are being vigilant on his or her behalf. Unlike some of ¶ ¶ ¶ the recommended ¶ or expected popular Cold War reactions (to the red scare visible on Engelhardt’s ¶ “red maps,” for example), today’s consumer of tabloid geopolitical literatures and ¶ shows does not have to constantly spy on his/her neighbors since the producers of ¶ the “spectacle” are already doing this, supposedly on this consumer’s or citizen’s ¶ behalf. Thus, by and large, adherence to and acceptance of the tabloid narrative ¶ is the main thing that is demanded of the (now passive) “subject” of this popular ¶ geopolitical genre. At the same time, the tabloid narrative today erases any critical ¶ ability that may have remained in previous popular geopolitical enterprises, since ¶ the discourses or representations tabloid geopolitics now provides are simply to ¶ be taken at face value. Its imaginative geographies are meant to be the exact renditions of the way things really are and of the way politics and ideology ought to be. ¶ The facts, events, issues, maps, figures, statistics, and images displayed through ¶ the tabloid medium are what they are, so-called “purely objective realities” that ¶ are not supposed to be contested and do not even require active recognition or ¶ acquiescence. Alternative We must embrace the insecurity of the other in order to keep from demonizing our fears and causing self-destruction Debrix, assistant professor of IR @ American International; 8, (Francois, Tabloid Terror: War, Culture, and Geopolitics)pg. 158-160 The return to non-violence and non-destruction in this apparently unending era of the war on terror – if there is to be such an eventual or eventful return, such a returning event – thus requires a double, complementary movement. It ¶ requires that a tense but salutary balancing act be restored between our fear of the ¶ other (which, ultimately for Levinas, is the fear of our own fragility and death) ¶ and our fear of causing harm to the other. Internal or personal psychoses and ¶ traumas, impossibilities of deciding, undecidabilities (disarming as all these may ¶ be) may well be better, and may leave us better off (as safe/saved human bodies), ¶ than turning our fears into vengeance, retribution, and war. But accepting to live ¶ with those psychoses and traumas, with incomprehension after ¶ 9/11, also requires ¶ that the therapies and feel-good remedies readily prescribed by our contemporary ¶ public comforters and media counselors be constantly challenged, as these tabloid pathologists’ discourses, intent on finding the “truth” about the trauma in the ¶ form of others to be abjected and killed, often cause far more harm than good. ¶ Among the therapies that must be questioned and probably rejected are all those ¶ media representations – used as supports for a message of fear about one’s survival rather than one of fear for one’s life that also recognizes the anxiety about ¶ terminating other lives – that placard faces of others that are never meant to reveal ¶ a precariousness of life. Images of faces of others we have killed (those of dead ¶ Iraqi soldiers seen in Chapter 5, for example), of others we have tortured (the Abu ¶ Ghraib pictures), of others we have abjected (Saddam’s portrait, the 9/11 terrorists’ mug-shots), and of others we have been saving (young Ali and his maimed ¶ body as we saw in Chapter 5) also deface the face of the other and, like the tabloid geopolitical discourses that they reinforce, help us to resolve the ethical tension ¶ that might otherwise keep war and agony at bay.¶ 54¶ Butler is right when she writes that all these representations, discourses ¶ and images of and about America at war “seem to suspend the precariousness ¶ of life.”¶ 55¶ As I suggested above, any attempt at restoring the balance or tension ¶ between the apparently contradictory impulses to kill and to fear to kill require ¶ some representational violence, some discursive rupture, some interruption of the ¶ sublime image. Butler’s and Levinas’ call for a return to the precariousness of life ¶ through a rediscovery of the face of the other (and of the ethical tensions this face ¶ allegorizes) is a fine and justified undertaking. But it still relies upon a form of ¶ hope (the hope that Americans will start to fear as much about killing others as ¶ they do about being killed) rather than on what might be done for events, surprises ¶ as events, to happen, without the hope or expectation that they will happen.¶ 56¶ As ¶ I argued at the end of Chapter 5, it is time to be without hope. It is also time to ¶ stop placing all our hopes in the person or figure of the other, even if the other ¶ presents himself or herself to us as a face that asks us not to kill or not to die alone. ¶ Restoring the precariousness of life (of our lives and of others’) may demand a ¶ certain politics of resistance, one that is neither active nor passive, but that seeks ¶ to take advantage of opportunities presented here and there in everyday American ¶ popular and political culture for representational ruptures. An image that shocks, ¶ that destabilizes, that arrests does not have to make sense, does not have to be ¶ recuperated by meaning, and does not have to be transcended. A geopolitical discourse of imperialism, agonal sovereignty, or surrender of society, law, and culture to the terror of the war machine does not have to be accepted as yet another ¶ piece of defensive or protective American ideology in times of war, for example. ¶ Rather, such images and discourses need to be confronted (when they happen and ¶ as they happen) with a silence, a meaninglessness, a gaping wound in the field of ¶ vision, an unprepared spontaneous reaction perhaps, an unexpected and aleatory ¶ defiance, in other words, with anything that can prolong the moment of incomprehension and undecidability of meaning, with any tool or technique that can ¶ postpone the rationalizations and justifications that the media and other dominant ¶ actors of the public sphere are likely to want to impose. Our precariousness of life ¶ may be dependent upon being on the lookout for events (other sublime events that ¶ surprise) or primal scenes (that shock, as I put it in the Introduction) that do not ¶ terrorize by means of an overwhelmingly vigilantist discourse or by naming or ¶ labeling but, instead, that put us face to face with the incommensurability of the ¶ to-come, of a future not decided beforehand, of an eventness beyond representation (because it cannot even be imagined). Precarious lives may be saved if we ¶ – and others – make the space and take the time to resist having to make sense ¶ of discourses and representations that are far too eager to make sense and far too ¶ quick to produce meaning whereas, upon closer examination, and if we were afforded the space and time to reflect upon them, it would become obvious that they ¶ make no sense at all and that their so-called meaning is nothing but a succession ¶ of carefully crafted mediatized or tabloidized truth-effects. In the end, if we care to rescue our fear of killing others, if we care to retrieve some possibly democratic ¶ questioning, and if we care to save ourselves, this is perhaps what the event and ¶ its to-come have to look like: open spaces and temporal gaps of non-sense and ¶ incommensurate meaning that actually allow us to think, and especially to think about what we are doing when we ¶ melancholically long for the past or when we apprehensively project a supposedly better, safer, and less “evil” future. Perhaps ¶ Levinas should be given the final word. Levinas writes: “The relationship with the ¶ other will never be the feat of grasping a possibility . . . [and] the ¶ future is [also] ¶ what is in no way grasped . . . [The future is] absolutely surprising.”¶ 57¶ Levinas ¶ adds: “The other is the future. The very relationship with the other is the relationship with the future.”¶ 58 For our sake and for the ¶ sake of the other, may the future be more precarious than it presently is. ¶ Transparency Transparency Transparency movement hurts faith in political system; perfect openness does not take into account the complexity, and sensitivity of certain information. Lawrence Lessig , Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, October 9, 2009, “Against Transparency”, The New Republic, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/against-transparency#, Date Accessed: July 19, 2013 How could anyone be against transparency? Its virtues and its utilities seem so crushingly obvious. But I have increasingly come to worry that there is an error at the core of this unquestioned goodness. We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse. And I fear that the inevitable success of this movement--if pursued alone, without any sensitivity to the full complexity of the idea of perfect openness--will inspire not reform, but disgust. The "naked transparency movement," as I will call it here, is not going to inspire change. It will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff. Agamben Link: Digital Technology Digital Technology de-subjectfys it’s users and allows for them to be considered expendable. McWhorter, U of Richmond, “Improper Life: Technology and Biopolitics from Heidegger to Agamben” DoP: 3-26-2012,DoA: 7/20/13, http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/29756-improper-life-technology-andbiopolitics-from-heidegger-to-agamben/ Like Heidegger, Agamben finds the flattening out or homogenization of human being in modern technologies deeply disturbing (36). Just as the typewritten word makes one person's (hand)writing indistinguishable from another's, technologies of all sorts obscure human differences and even eradicate them. Technology de-subjectifies, rendering people docile, inert, and forgetful of the essence of proper action (37, 56). De-subjectified, individuals become expendable; they can be sacrificed. They become, in Agamben's words, Homo sacer, bare life, zoē. This sacrilization of the masses invites -- to put it bluntly -- mass slaughter. Genocide, unchecked pandemic, spectacular scenes of regional deprivation and widespread hunger are familiar in our world, even more or less normal and unremarked. It is exceedingly rare for those responsible for such events to be held to account and punished. And, on Agamben's analysis, that fact makes perfect sense; the essence of Homo sacer is to be kill-able with impunity. Link-Terrorism The 1AC reproduces terror discursively, which justifies securitizing the state of exception. Agamben ‘01 (Giorgio, professor at the university of Verona, On Security and Terror, 9/20//shree) Today we face extreme and most dangerous developments in the thought of security. IN the course of a gradual neutralization of politics and the progressive surrender of traditional tasks of the state, security becomes the basic principle of state activity. What used to one amoung several definitive measures of public administration until the first half of the twentieth century, now becomes the sole criterium of political legitimation. The thought of security bears within it an essential risk. A state which has security as its sole task and source of legitimacy is fragile organism; it can always be provoked by terrorism to become itself terroristic. We should not forget that the first major organization of terror after the war, the Organization de ASmee Secrete (OAS), was established by a French general, who thought of himself as a patriot, convinced that When Politics, the way it was understood by theorist itself to police, the difference between state and terrorism threatens to disappears. In the end security and terrorism may form a single deadly system, in which they justify and legitimate each others’ actions. terrorism was the only answer the guerrilla phenomenon in Algeria and Indochina. of the “science of police” in the eighteenth century, reduces Impacts: State of Exception Destroys All Rights (1/2) The state of exception allows all rights to be suspended indefinitely to preserve national security Agamben, philosopher, “The Camp as 'Nomos'” pg 97, 1998, DoA: 7/18/13 Stanford University Press, http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/biopolitics/HomoSacer.pdf The juridical foundation for Schutzhaft [the idea of protective custody] was the proclamation of the state of siege or of exception and ¶ the corresponding suspension of the articles of the German constitution that guaranteed personal liberties. ¶ Article 48 of the Weimar constitution read as follows: “The president of the Reich may, in the case of a ¶ grave disturbance or threat to public security and order, make the decisions necessary to reestablish public ¶ security, if necessary with the aid of the armed forces. To this end he may provisionally suspend [ausser ¶ Kraft setzen] the fundamental rights contained in articles 114,115,117,118, 123, 124, and 153.” From ¶ 1919 to 1924, the Weimar governments declared the state of exception many times, sometimes ¶ prolonging it for up to five months (for example, from September 1923 to February 1924). In this sense, when the Nazis took power and proclaimed the “decree for the protection of the people and State” ¶ (Verordnung zum Schutz von Volk und Staat) on February 28, 1933, indefinitely suspending the articles of ¶ the constitution concerning personal liberty, the freedom of expression and of assembly, and the ¶ inviolability of the home and of postal and telephone privacy, they merely followed a practice consolidated ¶ by previous governments. Yet there was an important novelty. No mention at all was made of the ¶ expression Ausnahmezustand (“state of exception”) in the text of the decree, which was, from the juridical ¶ point of view, implicitly grounded in article 48 of the constitution then in force, and which without a ¶ doubt amounted to a declaration of the state of exception (“articles 114, 115,117,118,123,124, and 153 ¶ of the constitution of the German Reich,” the first paragraph read, “are suspended until further notice”). ¶ The decree remained de facto in force until the end of the Third Reich, which has in this sense been aptly ¶ defined as a “Night of St. Bartholomew that lasted twelve years” (Drobisch and Wieland, System, p. 26). ¶ The state of exception thus ceases to be referred to as an external and provisional state of factual danger and ¶ comes to be confused with juridical rule itself. National Socialist jurists were so aware of the particularity of ¶ the situation that they defined it by the paradoxical expression “state of willed exception” (einen gewollten ¶ Ausnahmezustand). “Through the suspension of fundamental rights,” writes Werner Spohr, a jurist close to ¶ the regime, “the decree brings into being a state of willed exception for the sake of the establishment of the ¶ National Socialist State” (quoted ibid., p. 28). Impacts: State of Exception Destroys All Rights (2/2) State of exception leads to a state of permament state martial law, where rights can be trampled. Agamben, philosopher, “The Camp as 'Nomos'” pg 97, 1998, DoA: 7/18/13 Stanford University Presshttp://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/biopolitics/HomoSacer.pdf The importance of this constitutive nexus between the state of exception and the concentration ¶ camp cannot be overestimated for a correct understanding of the nature of the camp. The “protection” of ¶ freedom that is at issue in Schutzhaft is, ironically, protection against the suspension of law that ¶ characterizes the emergency. The novelty is that Schutzhaft is now separated from the state of exception on ¶ which it had been based and is left in force in the normal situation. The camp is the space that is opened ¶ when the state of exception begins to become the rule. In the camp, the state of exception, which was ¶ essentially a temporary suspension of the rule of law on the basis of a factual state of danger, is now given a ¶ permanent spatial arrangement, which as such nevertheless remains outside the normal order. When ¶ Himmler decided to create a “concentration camp for political prisoners” in Dachau at the time of Hitler’s ¶ election as chancellor of the Reich in March 1933, the camp was immediately entrusted to the SS and – ¶ thanks to Schutzhaft – placed outside the rules of penal and prison law, which then and subsequently had ¶ no bearing on it. Despite the multiplication of the often contradictory communiqués, instructions, and ¶ telegrams through which the authorities both of the Reich and of the individual Länder took care to keep ¶ the workings of Schutzhat as vague as possible after the decree of February 28, the camp’s absolute ¶ independence from every judicial control and every reference to the normal juridical order was constantly ¶ reaffirmed. According to the new notions of the National Socialist jurists (among whom Carl Schmitt was ¶ in the front lines), which located the primary and immediate source of law in the Führer’s command, ¶ Schutzhaft had, moreover, no need whatsoever of a juridical foundation in existing institutions and laws, ¶ being “an immediate effect of the National Socialist revolution” (Drobisch and Wieland, System, p. 27). ¶ Because of this – that is, insofar as the camps were located in such a peculiar space of exception – Diels, ¶ the head of the Gestapo, could declare, “Neither an order nor an instruction exists for the origin of the ¶ camps: they were not instituted; one day they were there [sie waren nicht gegründet, sie waren eines Tages ¶ da] “ (quoted ibid., p. 30). The paradoxical status of the camp as a space of exception must be considered. The camp is a ¶ piece of land placed outside the normal juridical order, but it is nevertheless not simply an external space. ¶ What is excluded in the camp is, according to the etymological sense of the term “exception” (ex-capere), ¶ taken outside, included through its own exclusion. But what is first of all taken into the juridical order is ¶ the state of exception itself. Insofar as the state of exception is “willed,” it inaugurates a new juridicopolitical paradigm in which the norm becomes indistinguishable from the exception. The camp is thus the Impacts: State of Exception Allows for Atrocities The state of exception leads to the apex of biopolitical control- it subsumes law and judicial protections leading to an environment of totalitarian control, that allows for the extermination of people Agamben, philosopher, “The Camp as 'Nomos'” pg 97, 1998, DoA: 7/18/13 Stanford University Presshttp://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/biopolitics/HomoSacer.pdf Hannah Arendt once observed that in the camps, the principle that supports totalitarian rule and that ¶ common sense obstinately refuses to admit comes fully to light: this is the principle according to which ¶ “everything is possible.” Only because the camps constitute a space of exception in the sense we have ¶ examined – in which not only is law completely suspended but fact and law are completely confused – is ¶ everything in the camps truly possible. If this particular juridico-political structure of the camps – the task ¶ of which is precisely to create a stable exception – is not understood, the incredible things that happened ¶ there remain completely unintelligible. Whoever entered the camp moved in a zone of indistinction ¶ between outside and inside, exception and rule, licit and illicit, in which the very concepts of subjective ¶ right and juridical protection no longer made any sense. What is more, if the person entering the camp ¶ was a Jew, he had already been deprived of his rights as a citizen by the Nuremberg laws and was ¶ subsequently completely denationalized at the time of the Final Solution. Insofar as its inhabitants were ¶ stripped of every political status and wholly reduced to bare life, the camp was also the most absolute ¶ biopolitical space ever to have been realized, in which power confronts nothing but pure life, without any ¶ mediation. This is why the camp is the very paradigm of political space at the point at which politics ¶ becomes biopolitics and homo sacer is virtually confused with the citizen. The correct question to pose ¶ concerning the horrors committed in the camps is, therefore, not the hypocritical one of how crimes of ¶ such atrocity could be committed against human beings. It would be more honest and, above all, more ¶ useful to investigate carefully the juridical procedures and deployments of power by which human beings ¶ could be so completely deprived of their rights and prerogatives that no act committed against them could ¶ appear any longer as a crime. Terrorism-Root Cause The reaction to terrorism with the creation of the state of exception perpetuates a cycle of endless terrorism as supporters rally around their leader against the cruel oppressive Americans Aretxaga 1 – Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texis at Austin, visiting professor at the University of Chicago, former professor at Harvard University [“Terror as Thrill: First Thoughts on the ‘War on Terrorism’ Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 75, No. 1, Winter 2001, Published by The Feorge Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research, pp. 139-150. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3318342] For much of the Muslim world, the U.S. is perceived as the terrorist while Osama bin Laden is the unjustly persecuted saint. To elaborate, bin Laden has emerged as a master of effects. Appearing against the background of a rock the same day George Bush announced the beginning of air strikes in Afghanistan, relaxed, enveloped in the imagery of the desert and speaking softly about justice and the end of Muslim humiliation, Osama bin Laden is-as he warns the U.S.-the mirror image of George Bush at the very moment he launches the U.S. attack on Afghanistan. The mighty military power of a world alliance bombing 143 a devastated Muslim country contrasts with the single, outdated rifle leaning against the rock wall next to Osama bin Laden; the image of a single ana- choret facing an empire, the word "terrorism" binding them in a circular accusation of phantom terror. We are in what Derrida has called "a phantomatic mode of production" caught in the production and actualization of mirroring phantoms: Islamist and Western terrorisms.3 Making Terrorism "To break up the superstition and breaking of legality should be our aim. Nothing would please me more than to see Inspector Heat and his likes take to shooting us down in broad daylight with the approval of the public. Half our battle will be won then; the desintegration of the old morality would have set in its very tem- ple. That is what you ought to aim at. "Joseph Conrad The Secret Agent For all its proclaimed novelty, the layout of the war has been quite conventional and follows a well-known routine of American military intervention: dis- play of military might, surgical airstrikes and covert operations. On the part of the Taliban cum bin Laden network the war takes the form of guerrilla warfare against Western imperialism and particularly the U.S.. This war takes place in the invisible space of the terror imaginary of he U.S. (attacks on buildings and government, germ infection, etc.) and in the visibly impoverished landscape of Afghanistan. If bin Laden's objective is to galvanize support for a radical Islamist movement, the medium is the spectacle created by the imbalance of the struggle, an imbalance that evokes Western imperialism, historical humiliation and arbitrary violence. On the one hand, the war triggers outrage and sympathy among the discontented population of the Middle East, on the other hand, it justifies (and even demands) the suicide attacks on the American population. These two moments are bound together through the psychic mechanism of identification, already signaled by Freud as the primary glue of social groups. First there is identification with the carefully built figure of martyrs in the face of unjust and overpowering violence; then identification with the paladins of justice weilding the sword of God. Of course, this process is mirrored in the U.S.: identification with the victims gives way to identification with the warring government through the binding affective force of patriotism. At the level of public representation, the double figure of martyr and state- like force, these two poles of identification were incarnated in the figures of Osama bin Laden and his aide Sleiman Abou-Gheith. While the first spoke of injustice and peace for Palestinians, the second, in a more stately appearance, threatened a continuing "storm of airplanes."4 The extreme craftiness at using modern technology to tap and recreate anew an old cluster of religious images, contradicts the opinion that assigns to Islamic radicalism an entrenchment in past tradition. The Taliban, like Osama bin Laden's brand of radicalism, does not represent the force of timeless tradition, but a contemporary creation of tradition, a concomitant effect of modernity well known to students of national- ism. If the "invention of tradition"5 is not new to the students of political movements, neither are the tactics that bin Laden is using. The use of an out- rageous attack as a provocation for massive use of force, preferably employed indiscriminately, is typical of anti-colonial guerrilla warfare. A brutally illustra- tive example of this tactic is Gillo Pontecorvo's now classic film, "The Battle of Algiers." State force with its accompanying dirty wars, secret operations and special commandoes or death squads-that is, the use of terror to combat 'terrorism'-reproduce the very terrorist practices they want to eliminate, creating a closed dynamic of mimetic violence that can reproduce organized terror ad infinitum, narrowing if not closing the space for political engagements of other kinds. At the level of the political imaginary we are aiding the discursive and military construction of Terrorism with a capital T, a political figure that was in the making for some time, but which has finally made its world debut after September 11; it as an absolutized enemy with a phantasmic character, rapidly becoming, in the midst of the anthrax scare, mystery and thrill, something like the figure of the "Joker" in the film "Batman." Sex Trafficking Anti-trafficking strategies will continue to fail unless we are able to overcome bare life; only the alt can solve Shelly Feldman, Charles Geisler, and Gayatria A. Menon, 2011, “Accumulating Insecurity Violence and Disposession in the making of everyday life”, University of Georgia Press, http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=sQ2KD0CFZ0MC&oi=fnd&pg=PA166&dq=agamben+human+trafficking+exception&ots=o4dtF5D IRk&sig=izV4qOR0hVTluuGXws75vf166Ss#v=onepage&q&f=false, Date Accessed: July 31, 2013 The end of the cold saw the reemergence of human trafficking on the global political agenda as a new security threat integrated in a continuum of organized crime, illegal migration, drug trafficking, and terrorism. The words of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (2007) echo this logic: “The threat to the United States posed by criminal organizations engaged in smuggling of any kind cannot be overemphasized. By exploiting vulnerabilities in border integrity, these criminal smuggling organizations, whether they traffic in humans, narcotics, or counterfeit merchandise, are an unquestionable threat to the security of the United States.” While the myth of white slavery was reactivated in the public imaginary, security professionals rendered the problem of human trafficking actionable as a security threat (Aradu 2008). In the midst of a context defined by the “War on Terror”, human trafficking has never been far from the overarching concerns with terrorism, organized crime, or irregular migration. In Europe, the EU Hague Programme on the area of freedom, security, and justice has reinforced the securitization of human trafficking by enjoining the member states to develop a more effective approach to “cross-border problems such as illegal migration, trafficking in and smuggling of human beings, terrorism and organized crime, as well as the prevention thereof” (Council of the European Union 2004, 3). Placed in this continuum of threats, human trafficking appeared to partake of the sovereign inscription of power that has been characteristic of national security. Anti- Trafficking strategies entailed the sovereign abandonment of women whose irregular status removed them from the purview of law while being included as de facto sources of labor. Victims of trafficking were to be deported or criminalized in a sovereign move to reduce vulnerabilities and reinforce the “carapace” of the state against undesirable circulations of people.¶ The accounts of victims of trafficking render them as bare, depoliticized life, life which exists beyond the law. Their stories unravel ineluctably and women appear as pure marionettes, deprived of an agency and almost inexplicably having events and people “turn” on them. Boyfriends become traffickers and friends turn into exploiters and profiteers in the blink of an eye. This unexpected turn of events appears to propel them toward the exceptional situation. Their existence “beyond the law” renders them vulnerable both to what Butler (2004,65) has called “petty sovereigns,” the traffickers who can function in this interstitial space, and the “sovereign police” (Agamben 1998, 174). Amnesty International, as many other NGOs involved in anti-traffickings campaigns, as argued that women are “systematically subjected to torture, including rape and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” (Amnesty International 2004). Women’s confessionary stories are renditions of “bare life,” lived outside the law where life can be sacrificed with impunity:¶ Through the paradoxical combination of exceptional suffering and “normality,” trafficked women are tentatively misidentified from categories of migrants, criminals, or prostitutes. Women who are trafficked into prostitution, the argumetnt goes, should not be deprived of their rights on grounds that they are undocumented migrants. The “guilt” of migrants who cross borders illegally, bio political assaying of life proceeds through the epistemically driven and continuously changing interrogation of the worth and eligibility of the living across a terrain of value that is constantly changing” (Dillon 2005, 41). There is a suggestion here that the bio politics of security operates in conjunction with the sovereign power to draw boundaries. Nonetheless, there is no indication of how these boundaries could be made more porous and categorizations challenged. How can dangerous others become victims worthy of protections? ¶ An essential element of protection of victims of trafficking and their rights must be that States do not prosecute or punish trafficked persons for traffickingrelated offences such as holding false passports or working without authorization, even if they agreed to hold false documents or to work without authorization. Whether prostitution is legal or not, States should not prosecute persons for being trafficked into sexual exploitation, even if the person originally agreed to work in the sex industry. (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC] 2006)¶ If the sovereign pardon mediates the transformation of abject lives into lives worthy of care, how is it possible that victims of trafficking are never effectively pardoned? Victims of trafficking are eventually voluntarily returned home, after having testified against their traffickers and having undergone more or less extended periods of rehabilitation. Instead of deportation, voluntary return. Instead of detention centers, rehabilitation shelters. Instead of illegal migrants, victims. Although deployed upon supposedly different categories of subjects, the measures employed do not appear very different. In the shift from illegal migration to an emphasis on the human rights of victims of trafficking—a shift that has been made possible by the mobilization of NGOs in the anti-trafficking struggle—what appears to change is rather the form of incarceration or the mode of normalization. In order to account for the political effects of the sovereign pardon, I turn to Foucault’s “minor” texts on the lettres de cachet. Sovereign pardon does not restore normality as juridical accounts tell us. It ultimately does not restore to their anonymity and everydayness. Rather, the sovereign pardon creates new forms of disciplinary and bio political normalization and extends the reach of power. In France, sovereign pardons led to the “great confinement” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In England, starting from the seventeenth century, the pardon was used to ease labor shortages in the colonies and gave rise to the transportation of felons to the New World (Moore 1989, 19). The pardon was not necessarily based on the evidence of innocence. It could be based on character evidence about the defendant—and information from people who knew the defendant—about whether he or she would reform. Just like transportation in England, internment in France was indicative of the power of sovereign pardons. Defendants could be pardoned if they reformed. Therefore, internment was not simply the rise of a “better” way of punishing, but also emerged in relation to pardon and the extension of sovereign power into a normalizing force for the purpose of protecting pardoned lives. ¶ The sovereign pardon legitimates normalization as merciful action. Although often experienced as punishment, correction cannot be challenged on the same grounds as unjust punishment. Having recourse to pardon leaves the law in place and justifies forms of punishment that do not apply to reformable individuals. The sovereign pardon is not indicative of supreme authority and the arbitrary power of decision of life or death, as in Agamben’s conceptualization. As Farge and Foucault’s historical inquiries into the archives of the Bastille have shown, the pardon was equally underpinned by the power of Patriarchal families.The lettres de cachet targeted excesses to the traditional geographies of labor and the family (Farge and Foucault 1982, 30). Those who disturbed the order of the family were to be punished: unfaithful wives, squandering husbands, and disobedient children. Those who did not belong to a family were the beggars and vagabonds who “acted as disturbers in the system of protections and obligations” (Donzelot 1979, 49). Alternative Alternative: Embrace whatever being-The acceptance of being in whatever form it comes, that belongs by its simple fact of existence. This can create a community that is not grounded in the state. Chang, September, 1993,(Heesok, Department of English Vassar College, “Postmodern Communities: The Politics of Oscillation”, http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.993/review-3.993, Date accessed: July 28, 2013) In order to rescue community from its nostalgic (and¶ finally Christian) assumptions we must, Nancy thinks, return¶ to ontology (first philosophy). A serious reflection on¶ community requires we answer the call to rethink-at the¶ most mundane level--what it means to be-in-common. ¶ [43] For Nancy this call does not arise from a utopian or¶ humanist appeal for a reorganization of social relations in¶ which community is posited as the end result, the work, of a¶ subject labouring on itself. The obscure exigency of¶ community comes from the existential position of our¶ being-there, thrown into the world. This being-there is not¶ a punctual self-presence, a being-oneself. Community or¶ being-in-common is not a predicate of an essentially¶ solitary entity. Rather, being-there (%Dasein%) is none¶ other than a being-with (%Mitsein%). The very possibility¶ of my being alone depends on my ontological potential to¶ share my existence. Emphasizing Heidegger's differential and relational¶ definition of Dasein in order to underline our constitutive¶ being-in-common may be easy enough to follow. What is much¶ more difficult to grasp is that for Nancy, our strange¶ built-in sociality does not provide any groundwork for¶ building a community in any identifiable sense. On the¶ contrary, the fact that we *are* (ontologically) only in¶ relation to one another thwarts-or *resists* (a key word¶ for Nancy)--in advance any self- or communitarian¶ identification with this or that identity trait (being red,¶ being Italian, being communist--to cite Agamben's examples).¶ Our being-in-common is a limit-experience, a feeling for our¶ finitude. What we share at the end of ourselves,¶ ecstatically (so to speak), is not our shared individuality,¶ but our uncommon *singularity*. ¶ [45] The experience of this sharing should not be understood¶ as a selfless fusion into a group (both Nancy and Agamben¶ write continuously against the unsurpassed danger of our¶ political modernity: fascism, Nazism). Rather, our shared¶ singularity takes the form of an *exposure*. We are exposed¶ to the absence of any substantial identity to which we could¶ belong. Exposure to singularity: that means to be scattered¶ together, like strangers on a train, not quite face-to-face,¶ oscillating between the poles of communion and¶ disaggregation.^14^ It is this banal relation without¶ relation that exposes our preidentical singularity, our¶ being-in-common. ¶ [46] Coming now to Agamben, I believe his work helps us to¶ approach this renewed question of community from another¶ angle. Specifically, he gives positive content to what¶ Nancy is inclined, I think, to describe negatively: namely,¶ the concept of singularity. ¶ [47] _The Coming Community_ opens like this: "The coming¶ being is whatever being. In the Scholastic enumeration of¶ transcendentals (%quodlibet ens est unum, verum, bonum seu¶ perfectum%--whatever entity is one, true, good, or perfect),¶ the term that, remaining unthought in each, conditions the¶ meaning of all the others is the adjective %quodlibet%. The¶ common translation of this term as 'whatever' in the sense¶ of 'it does not matter which, indifferently' is certainly¶ correct, but in its form the Latin says exactly the¶ opposite: %Quodlibet ens% is not 'being, it does not matter¶ which,' but rather 'being such that it always matters.' The¶ Latin always already contains, that is, a reference to the¶ will (%libet%). Whatever being has an original relation to¶ desire" (1). ¶ [48] The basis of the coming community, the singular being,¶ is whatever being--not in the sense of "I don't care what¶ you are," but rather, "I care for you *such as you are*." ¶ As *such* you are freed from belonging either to the¶ emptiness of the universal or the ineffability of the¶ individual. ¶ [49] In Agamben's elaboration of singularity, human identity¶ is not mediated by its belonging to some set or class (being¶ old, being American, being gay). Nor does it consist in the¶ simple negation of all belonging (here Agamben parts company¶ with Bataille's notion of the "negative community," the¶ community of those who have no community). Rather, whatever¶ names a sort of radical generosity with respect to¶ belonging. The singular being is not the being who belongs¶ only here or there, but nor is it the being who belongs¶ everywhere and nowhere (flipsides of the same empty¶ generality). This other being always matters to me not¶ because I am drawn to this or that trait, nor because I¶ identify him or her with a favoured race, class, or gender. ¶ And certainly not because he or she belongs to a putatively¶ universal set like humanity or the human race. ¶ [50] The other always matters to me only when I am taken¶ *with all of his/her traits, such as they are*. This¶ defining generosity of the singular means that %quodlibet¶ ens% is not determined by this or that belonging, but by the¶ condition of belonging itself. It belongs to belonging. ¶ The singularity of being resides in its exposure to an¶ unconditional belonging.¶ [51] Such a singularly exposed being wants to belong--which¶ is to say, it belongs to want, or, for lack of a less¶ semantically burdened and empty word, to love: "The¶ singularity exposed as such is whatever you *want*, that is,¶ lovable" (2). ¶ [52] We must be careful here not to conflate Agamben's¶ exposition of whatever being with a more familiar discourse¶ on love: "Love is never directed toward this or that¶ property of the loved one (being blond, being small, being¶ tender, being lame), but neither does it neglect the¶ properties in favor of an insipid generality (universal¶ love): The lover wants the loved one *with all of its¶ predicates*, its being such as it is. The lover desires the¶ *as* only insofar as it is *such*--this is the lover's¶ particular fetishism" (2).¶ [53] But what could a thing with all of its predicates look¶ like? Agamben gives us the example of the human face. ¶ Every face is singular. This does not mean a face¶ individuates a pre-existing form or universalizes individual¶ features. The face as such is utterly indifferent to what¶ makes it different and yet similar. It is impossible to¶ determine from which sphere--the common or the proper--the¶ face derives its singular expressivity. ¶ [54] In this the face is not unlike handwriting in which it¶ is impossible to draw the line between what makes this¶ signature at the same time common and proper, legible and¶ unique. We cannot say for certain whether this hand and¶ this face actualize a universal form, or whether the¶ universal form is engendered by these million different¶ scripts and faces. ¶ [55] Whatever being emerges, like handwriting, like the¶ face, on "a line of sparkling alternation" (20) between¶ language and word, form and expression, potentiality and¶ act. "This is how we must read the theory of those medieval¶ philosophers," Agamben writes, "who held that the passage¶ from potentiality to act, from common form to singularity,¶ is not an event accomplished once and for all, but an¶ infinite series of modal oscillations" (19).^15^ The coming¶ community is founded on the imperceptible oscillations of¶ whatever being. ¶ [56] But what, finally, might the *politics* of whatever¶ belonging be? ¶ [57] Agamben envisions the coming politics not as a¶ hegemonic struggle between classes for control of the State,¶ but as an inexorable agon between whatever singularity and¶ state organization. What the State cannot digest is not the¶ political affirmations of identity (on the contrary), but¶ the formation of a community not grounded in any belonging¶ except for the human co-belonging to whatever being. ¶ [58] "What was most striking about the demonstrations of the¶ Chinese May," Agamben points out, "was the relative absence¶ of determinate contents in their demands" (85). ¶ [59] Here Agamben surely also has in mind the singular¶ example of May 68. I would even say _The Coming Community_¶ is (not unlike Vattimo's book) a belated response to the¶ radical promise--let's say (using the wrong idiom perhaps),¶ the promise of human happiness--exposed in that event. ¶ [60] In these works by two important Italian thinkers,¶ philosophy becomes once again, perhaps, a kind of¶ homesickness, a longing to belong. To a permanent¶ disorientation. To oscillation. To whatever. A2: Alt Utopian The alternative is neither utopian nor impossible – embracing whatever being is key to emancipation. Prozorov, 9 – Professor of Political Science at the University of Helenski (Sergie, “The Appropriation of Abandonment: Giorgio Agamben on the State of Nature and the Political”, February 15 th, International Studies Association, http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p313215_index.html) In his analysis of contemporary world politics (1993; 63-65, 79-86; 2000, 73-90, 109-120), which goes beyond the critique of sovereignty to address the wider context of global capitalism from a post-Marxist perspective of e.g. Walter Benjamin and Guy Debord (see Passavant 2007, 149-153), Agamben offers a somewhat similar diagnosis of the dissolution of sovereignty in the global ‘society of the spectacle’, with three his non-identitarian and antistatist politics does not seek control of the state but rather the deactivation of its powers and its expulsion from the domain of social life, which permits the rearticulation of zoe and bios in the figure of the integral form-of-life. Secondly, while the indirect powers of Schmitt’s lifetime were animated by a certain positive project of transformation, Agamben’s ethics of inoperosity brackets off the teleological dimension of politics and instead focuses on the free use of the ruins of the sovereign order rather than the reconstruction of a new order upon these ruins. Thirdly, these indirect powers are no longer defined in particularistic terms of class, race, ethnicity, etc. but in the neo-universalist terms of ‘whatever singularity’, which wagers on the important caveats that arise from the features of his post-sovereign politics addressed above. Firstly, attainment of peace not through the reciprocity of mutual recognition under a better covenant but in the cessation of the struggle for recognition as such. What Agamben proposes is the radicalization of the dismantlement of sovereign statehood by ‘whatever powers’ that are indiscernible in identitarian and statist terms. Concurring with Schmitt’s critique of the nihilistic and depoliticizing tendencies of global liberalism, Agamben nonetheless finds in this very degradation of politics that ‘all over the planet unhinges and empties traditions and beliefs, ideologies and religions, identities and communities’ (1993, 83) the possibility of a radically new form of political praxis. Whereas utopian thought easily provides us with elaborate visions of a better future, to which it can never lead us, since its site is by definition a nonplace, Agamben’s post-sovereign politics draws its austere resources from the very degradation of historical forms of life in the contemporary global state of exception and thus does not require the articulation of a new emancipatory project. While the conversion of the disastrous scene of contemporary nihilism into the ethos of integral life is not predetermined within history as its telos and rather requires a radical interruption of the historical process as such (see Prozorov 2009), any possible obstacles to such a conversion are presently removed by the process of the dissolution of particularistic communities, the emptying out of traditions and the liquidation of identities. It is for this reason that despite the bleak and even morbid character of the subject-matter of Agamben’s writings, he is able to claim that he is far less pessimistic than his critical interlocutors (see Smith 2004). [The] planetary petty bourgeoisie is probably the form in which humanity is moving towards its own destruction. But this also means that the petty bourgeoisie represents an opportunity unheard of in the history of humanity that it must at all costs not let slip away. Because if instead of continuing to search for a proper identity in the already improper and senseless form of individuality, humans were to succeed in belonging to this impropriety as such, in making of the proper being- thus not an identity and an individual property but a singularity without identity, then they would for the first time enter into a community without presuppositions and without subjects. (Agamben 1993, 65) Ontology First Our Interpretation is that ontological questions come before any political actions can take place-- it is a prerequisite to all political considerations Dillon, Prof of Politics- University of Lancaster, 99 [Michael, Moral Spaces p. 97-98] Heirs to all this, we find ourselves in the turbulent and now globalized wake of its confluence. As Heidegger-himself an especially revealing figure of the deep and mutual implication of the philosophical and the political4-never tired of pointing out, the relevance of ontology to all other kinds of thinking is fundamental and inescapable. For one cannot say anything about any-thing that is, without always already having made assumptions about the is as such. Any mode of thought, in short, always already carries an ontology sequestered within it. What this ontological turn does to other-regional-modes of thought is to challenge the ontology within which they operate. The implications of that review reverberate through-out the entire mode of thought, demanding a reappraisal as fundamental as the reappraisal ontology has demanded of philosophy. With ontology at issue, the entire foundations or underpinnings of any mode of thought are rendered problematic. This applies as much to any modern discipline of thought as it does to the question of modernity as such, with the exception, it seems, of science, which, having long ago given up the ontological questioning of when it called itself natural philosophy, appears now, in its industrialized and corporatized form, to be invulnerable to ontological perturbation. With its foundations at issue, the very authority of a mode of thought and the ways in which it characterizes the critical issues of freedom and judgment (of what kind of universe human beings inhabit, how they inhabit it, and what counts as reliable knowledge for them in it) is also put in question. The very ways in which Nietzsche, Heidegger, and other continental philosophers challenged Western ontology, simultaneously, therefore reposed the fundamental and inescapable difficulty, or aporia, for human being of decision and judgment. In other words, whatever ontology you subscribe to, knowingly or unknowingly, as a human being you still have to act. Whether or not you know or acknowledge it, the ontology you subscribe to will construe the problem of action for you in one way rather than another. You may think ontology is some arcane question of philosophy, but Nietzsche and Heidegger showed that it intimately shapes not only a way of thinking, but a way of being, a form of life. Decision, a fortiori political decision, in short, is no mere technique. It is instead a way of being that bears an understanding of Being, and of the fundaments of the human way of being within it. This applies, indeed applies most, to those mock -innocent political slaves who claim only to be technocrats of decision making. Ontology precedes policy – policy without recognition of ontological flaws have been empirically bad Spanos 8 (William V, Professor of English at Binghamton University, Global American: The Devastation of Language Under the Dictatorship of the Public Realm, p. 172-173, Muse) PJ This argument against the Bush administration and its intellectual deputies by oppositional intellectuals is manifest. There is no question that this presidential administration has gone farther than any other in the history of the U.S. to relocate the power to govern, constitutionally allocated jointly to the Congress, the judiciary, and the executive branches, in the presidency. And this revolutionary reactionary turn behooves oppositional intellectuals to resist this ominous political momentum, that is, to participate in politics, in a far more active way than heretofore. But this oppositional representation of the U.S.’s relation to the world, though true in part, is not finally commensurate with the sociopolitical realities of what the neoconservative deputies of the dominant culture have called the “American Century”—the global realities, that is, produced under the aegis of a commoditydriven techno-capitalist, and republican “America,” the America, in the phrase coined by Theodore Roosevelt, as “Leader of the Free World.” Nor, therefore, is the consequent tendency of recent American oppositional intellectuals to over-determine politics as the privileged site of resistance adequate to the imperatives of these global realities. In the following, all too brief remarks, I want to suggest, not an a comportment towards political resistance that perceives the act of thinking as ontologically prior to, yet indissolubly related with politics. I have inferred this comportment from the decisive disintegration of the base/superstructure and/or disciplinary models of the representation of being enabled by the poststructuralist revolution, but, contrary to the poststructuralists’ tendency to restrict the implications of this revolution to the site of language (textuality) as such, I have, like alternative to this kind of disciplinary oppositional politics, but Edward W. Said, understood this revolution as a historical and “worldly” one.2 More specifically, I read the “postmodern” revolution in thinking, misnamed “theory” (from the Greek, theoria, to see) as the precipitate of the fulfillment in postEnlightenment, capitalist/democratic America of the binary logic of the languages of Western civilization that had their origin in a metaphysical interpretation of being that reduces the many into the One, difference to Identity, be-ing to Being, or, in the binary that has not been emphasized enough, temporality into Spatial (or Territorialized) Object. In other words, I read this revolution as the coming to its end of a gradual but necessary and relentless process of reification—which is to say, of hardening and decay—that has rendered the originative language of thinking depthless: an abstract, quantitative, calculative, and instrumental—utterly thoughtless—sociopolitical agent of brutal violence, torture, mutilation, dispossession, death on those constituencies of the human community (and the land that sustains them) that this system of language and thought deem expendable, those who, in Michel Foucault’s phrase, do not prove “useful and docile” to the dominant culture. The power of policymaking lies in its ability to construct a binary opposition between productive and flawed discussions; moving towards epistemological and ontological forms of kritik is key to examine the way in which policymaking predetermines all the answers. Bleiker, 00 Ph.D. visiting research and teaching affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt, Tampere, Yonsei and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague,(Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University Press) An approach that specifies operational schemes recognises these limits to cognition. Instead of establishing a new and better theory of agency, it is content with formulating a framework that facilitates understanding of how human agency is incessantly constituted and reconstituted in the context of transversal struggles. Expressed in de Certeau's language, one must comprehend forms of action in the context of their regulatory environment. Such an approach departs from ways in which traditional philosophy (and, by extension, international theory) has framed the understanding of human action. This framing process has revolved around three ways of explaining action: teleological, causal and intentional. 39 My analysis breaks with most elements that are entailed in this mode of analysis. It does not assume that agency can be assessed only by establishing links between means and ends. It does not assume that every form of agency needs an identifiable agent that causes an identifiable outcome. It does not assume that agency occurs only if it stands in a relationship with a declared intention. What is left of the concept of human agency if one no longer relies upon causal, teleological and intentional explanations? The Interlude situated between chapters 7 and 8 deals with this question at a conceptual level. Its objective is to outline a framework that facilitates an understanding of the discursive conditions that are necessary for the exertion of human agency. From this vantage point, the most potent forms of transversal dissent operate in tactical, rather than strategic ways. They move along an indeterminate trajectory, transgress political boundaries and slowly transform values. They becomes visible and effective only through maturation over time and space. A further deconstruction of the notion of discourse is necessary to appreciate the unfolding of transversal dissent through tactic and temporality. Despite their power to frame the world, discourses are not monolithic forces that crush everything in sight. They are often thin, unstable, fragmented. They contain cracks. By moving from epistemological to ontological levels of analysis, the inquiry explores the ways in which people can resist discursive domination (chapter 7). Human beings have hyphenated identities. Furthermore, these identities are not frozen in time, but part of a constantly unfolding process of becoming. By tapping into these multiple and shifting dimensions of Being, individuals are able to think and act beyond the narrow confines of the established discursive order. They engage in everyday forms of resistance that allow them to reshape the social context in which they are embedded. Such forms of discursive dissent can be found in countless seemingly insignificant daily acts of defiance. They transform values, transgress boundaries and may eventually promote social change far more effectively than the so-called great events of international politics. Framework Autonomy Autonomy Requires Freedom from Negative Restraints Autonomy requires freedom from coercion, constraint, threat of punishment and constraint from social mores Mendus, Susan; 1987 (Morrell Fellow in Toleration at York, and from 1995 to 2000 she was Director of the Morrell Studies in Toleration Programme, former Academic Co-ordinator for Social Sciences. She was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2004. ("Liberty and Autonomy," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 87 (1986 - 1987), pp. 107-120 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Aristotelian Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4545058 Accessed: 28/07/2013 21:46) We may define the autonomous agent as one who acts in obedience to a law which he has prescribed for himself. This characterization of autonomy captures three crucial features of the concept: firstly, the autonomous agent must be in a position to act. He must not be compelled by external forces such as torture or the threat of legal punishment. Secondly, the autonomous agent's actions must be performed in obedience to a law: he must not be pathologically driven by desires or impelled by irresistible urges which are such as to undermine his rationality. He must, in short, be a rational free chooser. Thirdly, and finally, the autonomous agent must himself create or prescribe the law to which he is obedient: in addition to being independent of others' coercive actions he must also be independent of their will. Thus, the agent who conforms, more or less unthinkingly, to the custom and practice of his day, may be said not to be properly autonomous, since his will is determined by the will of those around him. This characterization of autonomy therefore requires that the agent possess not only the standard negative liberties (freedom from coercion, constraint, and threat of punishment), but also freedom from the suffocating constraint of social mores and customs (from what Mill calls 'the tyranny of public opinion'), and it appears to follow from this that autonomy-based liberalism will promote a tolerant and plural society, since it will emphasize the need for a wide range of choices amongst possible life-styles as a necessary condition of autonomy. Autonomy is a Prerequisite to Morality Autonomy is necessary for morality, autonomy gives us the power to self determine morals Daniel Callahan, Senior Research Scholar and President Emeritus of the Center, Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Medical School and is now a Senior Scholar at Yale. He received his B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D in philosophy from Harvard. 10/1986, A Moral Good, Not a Moral Obsession, The Hastings Center, Vol. 14, No. 5, Autonomy, Paternalism, and Community, Date Accessed- 7/21/2013 A major attraction of the concept of autonomy is that it helps to establish moral independence. Not only does it entail that, as an individual, I am to be treated by others as a moral end rather than a moral means, it also requires that they allow me to pursue my own moral goods. Autonomy can thus be understood as the basis for moral enfranchisement, establishing my standing as an equal in the community and my liberty to pursue my own ends. In the context of medicine, it is a value that has served to establish the rights of patients over physicians, and the right to be spared the paternalistic interventions of those who think they understand my welfare better than I do. The purpose of autonomy is to make me my own moral master. But if autonomy may serve me in some fundamental ways, what would it be like to live in a community for which autonomy was the central value? What kind of a medical practice might emerge with patient autonomy as the sole goal? Let me try to answer that question by first reviewing some of the benefits of giving moral priority to autonomy. Among them are a recognition of the rights of individuals and of their personal dignity; the erection of a powerful bulwark against moral and political despotism; a becoming humility about the sources or certainty of moral claims and demands; and a foundation for the protection of unpopular people and causes against majoritarian domination. Those are powerful benefits, to be meddled with only at our peril. Nonetheless, I believe that if autonomy is made the moral goal of a society, or of medical care within that society, then we are equally at peril in our common life together. Morality is determined by Autonomy; nothing and no one has the ability to tell us how we make Moral judgment calls, including any form of social regulation Schneewind, J.B. Emeritus Professor of Philosophy Johns Hopkins University 1992 The Cambridge Companion to Kant: 10 – Autonomy, obligation, and virtue pg. 309 – 310 http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/companions/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9781139000536&cid =CBO9781139000536A014 Date Accessed: 7/24/13 At the center of Kant's ethical theory is the claim that normal adults are capable of being fully selfgoverning in moral matters. In Kant's terminology, we are "autonomous." Autonomy involves two components. The first is that no authority external to ourselves is needed to constitute or inform us of the demands of morality. We can each know without being told what we ought to do because moral requirements are requirements we impose on ourselves. The second is that in self-government we can effectively control ourselves. The obligations we impose upon ourselves override all other calls for action, and frequently run counter to our desires. We nonetheless always have a sufficient motive to act as we ought. Hence no external source of motivation is needed for our self-legislation to be effective in controlling our behavior. Kant thinks that autonomy has basic social and political implications. Although no one can lose the autonomy that is a part of the nature of rational agents, 3 social arrangements and the actions of others can encourage lapses into governance by our desires, or heteronomy. Kant, as we shall see, found it difficult to explain just how this could happen,- but he always held that the moral need for our autonomy to express itself was incompatible with certain kinds of social regulation. There is no place for others to tell us what morality requires, nor has anyone the authority to do so - not our neighbors, not the magistrates and their laws, not even those who speak in the name of God. Because we are autonomous, each of us must be allowed a social space within which we may freely determine our own action. This freedom cannot be limited to members of some privileged class. The structure of society must reflect and express the common and equal moral capacity of its members. Autonomy-Protects Free Speech Autonomy recognizes and preserves free speech. Daniel J. Solove, 2003, Associate Professor, Seton Hall Law School, The Virtues of Knowing Less: Justifying Privacy Protections against Disclosure, Duke Law Journal, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1373222 One of the most frequently articulated rationales for the value of free speech is that it promotes individual autonomy.94 As one commentator observes, the "value of free expression..,. rests on its deep relation to self-respect arising from autonomous self-determination."95 The disclosure of personal information about others certainly falls within the autonomy of the speaker. Respect for autonomy requires recognition of strong rights of selfexpression. Disclosure protections thus impair the autonomy of speakers who desire to speak about others. Additionally, free speech can be justified in terms of the autonomy of the listener.96 Under this view, free speech protects people's freedom of information consumption. Disclosure protections prevent people from hearing information that they want to know. Autonomy-Individual Autonomy is to be preferred in an individual sense, societal autonomy goals are problematic Daniel Callahan, Senior Research Scholar and President Emeritus of the Center, Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Medical School and is now a Senior Scholar at Yale. He received his B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D in philosophy from Harvard. 10/1986, A Moral Good, Not a Moral Obsession, The Hastings Center, Vol. 14, No. 5, Autonomy, Paternalism, and Community, Date Accessed- 7/21/2013 If we ask what system of values might be best for our individual welfare and desires, then autonomy is a prime candidate. But if we ask what system of values might be best for our life in community, for sustaining a viable society and culture, then autonomy may fare less well. We need to give some thought to that latter question. Yet, in doing so, we may well grant that the notion of autonomy, especially patient autonomy, has hardly become triumphant in the daily life of medicine; in fact, it is probably still more curtailed or denied than honored. We may also grant the powerful tendency of technological medicine to dehumanize and depersonalize, to efface or erase individuality, to attend to our organs and parts rather than our persons. Nor need we deny that, faced with budget pressures and cuts, individual welfare and freedom of choice are likely to be the first victims. In short, it may seem churlish or precious to question the value of autonomy in a medical system that only precisely because autonomy has so often been held up as the value of the future, the ideal yet to be achieved, it is well to ask what that future might look like. The trouble with wanting one's dreams to come true is that they may come true. yesterday first heard of the idea and even today tends to neglect it. Yet Autonomy-Consent Necessary for Morality Moral obligations can only be self accepted Daniel Callahan, Senior Research Scholar and President Emeritus of the Center, Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Medical School and is now a Senior Scholar at Yale. He received his B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D in philosophy from Harvard. 10/1986, A Moral Good, Not a Moral Obsession, The Hastings Center, Vol. 14, No. 5, Autonomy, Paternalism, and Community, Date Accessed- 7/21/2013 Let us¶ grant that others should honor my¶ autonomy and that I should honor theirs.¶ Yet if I should have (or believe I have)¶ moral¶ obligations toward others, could I be¶ relieved of them¶ by their declaration of au-¶ tonomy in the face of my obligations? If,¶ for example, a physician believes that he¶ or she has an obligation to save the life of¶ another, but that person wants to die, is¶ that¶ obligation nullified or overridden by¶ the¶ patient's declaration? The common autonomy doctrine would say it is. For if patients are to be their own moral¶ agents,¶ choosing their own moral good, then no¶ one, it would seem, could have moral obligations to them that they did not choose to¶ allow. If that is the case, we are still left¶ with a troubling puzzle. Are we to under-¶ stand that the physician's obligation vanishes once autonomy has been declared, or¶ that it continues to exist but has been over-¶ ridden by a higher value? If the former is¶ the case, the¶ obligation seems to have no¶ basis whatsoever; if the latter is the case,¶ then the conscience of the¶ physician seems¶ a fragile, disposable matter.¶ There is no absolute morality, rather it is determined by ourselves with our autonomy. Further, only a consenting agreement can create moral obligations outside of respecting others autonomy. Daniel Callahan, Senior Research Scholar and President Emeritus of the Center, Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Medical School and is now a Senior Scholar at Yale. He received his B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D in philosophy from Harvard. 10/1986, A Moral Good, Not a Moral Obsession, The Hastings Center, Vol. 14, No. 5, Autonomy, Paternalism, and Community, Date Accessed- 7/21/2013 If (to be reminded of Wittgenstein) we look not for the meaning of autonomy but for its social uses, what do we see? 1. As moral agents, we are essentially independent of each other and isolated; we are not social animals, but morally self-en- closed, self-encompassing animals. 2. There can be no moral truth or wisdom about individual moral goods and goals and few if any about communal ends; morality is inherently subjective and relativistic. 3. The ideal relationship among human beings is the voluntary, contractual relationship of consenting adults; the community has no standing to say what is good or bad in such relationships. 4. In any weighing of the relative interests of individual and community, the burden of proof is always upon the community to prove its case for restricting the liberty of individuals. 5. The only moral obligations I have toward others are those I voluntarily under- take; there can be no such thing as an in- voluntary moral obligation. 6. The only moral obligations that others have toward me are those that autonomously I allow them to have; all I am owed by others is respect for my autonomy. 7. Respect for the autonomy of others is sufficient ground for overriding my own conscience. Moral obligations can must be agreed to by all other parties involved, if one disagrees, they are an coercive attempt to violate their autonomy Daniel Callahan, Senior Research Scholar and President Emeritus of the Center, Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Medical School and is now a Senior Scholar at Yale. He received his B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D in philosophy from Harvard. 10/1986, A Moral Good, Not a Moral Obsession, The Hastings Center, Vol. 14, No. 5, Autonomy, Paternalism, and Community, Date Accessed- 7/21/2013 To¶ go one step further, does a respect for autonomy mean that we are not allowed to¶ imagine a good for others beyond that¶ which¶ they imagine for themselves? Or¶ that we are not allowed to¶ persuade others¶ that their autonomous moral choices are¶ wrong, or defective, or less valuable than¶ they might be? Of course we are allowed¶ to do those¶ things. The moral autonomy of¶ others does not rule out noncoercive attempts to persuade them to think or act differently. What we cannot do is to impose¶ our values, or the dictates of our con-¶ science, upon them against their will.¶ Does it then follow that the¶ only moral¶ obligations we can owe to autonomous¶ moral agents are those¶ formally agreed to¶ by them in some contractual manner? Apparently so. We can talk with them, exhort¶ them, attempt to persuade them. What we¶ cannot do, under the¶ implicit mutual contract, is to go one step beyond the contract,¶ however¶ powerful our sense of obligation¶ might be or however powerful our alternative notions of what would serve the moral¶ interests of another. The very point of the¶ moral¶ autonomy of another is to empower¶ his or her¶ personal liberty and to restrict¶ that of others toward him or her.¶ Only a¶ voluntary ceding or suspension of autonomy rights can change the nature of that¶ relationship with others. A2: Prefer Justice Autonomy supersedes justice- justice is based off of the idea of self preference Daniel Callahan, Senior Research Scholar and President Emeritus of the Center, Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Medical School and is now a Senior Scholar at Yale. He received his B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D in philosophy from Harvard. 10/1986, A Moral Good, Not a Moral Obsession, The Hastings Center, Vol. 14, No. 5, Autonomy, Paternalism, and Community, Date Accessed- 7/21/2013 It is sometimes said that¶ justice is powerful¶ enough to supersede autonomy, and¶ it is true that most theories of¶ justice allow¶ the¶ suppression or overriding of individual¶ liberty under some circumstances. Yet the¶ most popular and influential¶ contemporary¶ theories of justice (at least in the United¶ States) see the source of a theory of justice¶ in individual needs and¶ desires, and the¶ outcome of a¶ reign of justice as the enthronement of individual¶ autonomy. Justice becomes little more than a¶way station¶ on the road to self-determination.¶ Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Maslow’s Hierarchy Does Not Exist There’s no evidence a Hierarchy of Needs exists. Steve Denning; 2012 (A writer about radical management, leadership, innovation & narrative3/29/2012 ("What Maslow Missed”, Forbes.http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/03/29/what-maslow-missed/, Date Retrieved: July 27, 2013) In reviews of research based on Maslow’s theory, little evidence has been found for the ranking of needs that Maslow described, or even for the existence of a definite hierarchy at all.¶ “Here’s the problem with Maslow’s hierarchy,” explains Rutledge. “None of these needs — starting with basic survival on up — are possible without social connection and collaboration…. Without collaboration, there is no survival. It was not possible to defeat a Woolley Mammoth, build a secure structure, or care for children while hunting without a team effort. It’s more true now than then. Our reliance on each other grows as societies became more complex, interconnected, and specialized. Connection is a prerequisite for survival, physically and emotionally.”¶ “Needs are not hierarchical. Life is messier than that. Needs are, like most other things in nature, an interactive, dynamic system, but they are anchored in our ability to make social connections. Maslow’s model needs rewiring so it matches our brains. Belongingness is the driving force of human behavior, not a third tier activity. The system of human needs from bottom to top, shelter, safety, sex, leadership, community, competence and trust, are dependent on our ability to connect with others. Belonging to a community provides the sense of security and agency that makes our brains happy and helps keep us safe.” Morality Morality: Deontology is Best – Rights Prove Liberal theory prefers deontology Jeremy Waldron, professor at NYU school of law specializing in constitutional theory, law and philosophy, legal philosophy and political theory. “moral autonomy and personal autonomy” accessed 7/21/13. http://philosophy.la.psu.edu/jchristman/autonomy/Waldron.pdf There are several ways in which we may understand a claim that the right has priority over the good. (1) It may be understood as a claim about the deontological character of political morality - as a denial of consequentialism, for example. The idea here would be that we do not construct our political morality by figuring out, first, what is valuable and, secondly, how best to promote it; instead we establish certain moral absolutes - rights, for example - deontologically, without reference to the goals that it might be worthwhile for individuals or societies to.69 Or (2) the priority of the right over the good may be understood as a claim about the relation between individual aspirations and the social demands of morality. People have their own individual conceptions of the good, but these are subject to the demands of right conceived as a system of morally reconciling individual ends Morality: Intention is Key to Morality Intent rather than result matters. The only relevant thing to the morality of an action is a good will. Johnson, Robert, "Kant's Moral Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/kant-moral/>.Date Accessed: 7/23/13 In Kant's terms, a good will is a will whose decisions are wholly determined by moral demands or as he often refers to this, by the Moral Law. Human beings view this Law as a constraint on their desires, and hence a will in which the Moral Law is decisive is motivated by the thought of duty. A holy or divine will, if it exists, though good, would not be good because it is motivated by thoughts of duty. A holy will would be entirely free from desires that might operate independently of morality. It is the presence of desires that could operate independently of moral demands that makes goodness in human beings a constraint, an essential element of the idea of ‘duty’. So in analyzing unqualified goodness as it occurs in imperfectly rational creatures such as ourselves, we are investigating the idea of being motivated by the thought that we are constrained to act in certain ways that we might not want to, or the thought that we have moral duties. Kant confirms this by comparing motivation by duty with other sorts of motives, in particular, with motives of self-interest, self-preservation, sympathy and happiness. He argues that a dutiful action from any of these motives, however praiseworthy it may be, does not express a good will. Assuming an action has moral worth only if it expresses a good will, such actions have no genuine ‘moral worth’. The conformity of one's action to duty in such cases is only related by accident to content of one's will. For instance, if one is motivated by happiness alone, then had conditions not conspired to align one's duty with one's own happiness one would not have done one's duty. By contrast, were one to supplant any of these motivations with the motive of duty, the morality of the action would then express one's determination to act dutifully under any circumstances. Only then would the action have moral worth. Kant's views in this regard have understandably been the subject of much controversy. Many object that we do not think better of actions done for the sake of duty than actions performed out of emotional concern or sympathy for others, especially those things we do for friends and family. Worse, moral worth appears to require not only that one's actions be motivated by duty, but also that no other motives, even love or friendship, cooperate. Yet Kant's defenders have argued that his point is not that we do not admire or praise motivating concerns other than duty, only that from the point of view of someone deliberating about what to do, these concerns are not decisive in the way that considerations of moral duty are. What is crucial in actions that express a good will is that the motivational structure of the agent be arranged so as to give considerations of duty priority over all other interests. It does not require or even recommend a rule-bound character devoid of the warmth of human emotion. Suppose for the sake of argument we agree with Kant. We now need to know what distinguishes the principle that lays down our duties from these other motivating principles, and so makes motivation by it the source of unqualified value. Morality is based on intention; not consequences Sayre McCord. Kant’s Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals; A very brief selective summary of sections I and II © 2000 http://www.unc.edu/~gsmunc/phil22/Kantsum.pdf Date Accessed: 7/23/13 If a good will is unconditionally good then its value, Kant points out, cannot depend upon its having good effects. For if its value did depend on its having good effects it would be valuable only on the condition that it had those effects. Take away the effects and you would take away the source of its value. Since its value is (by assumption only, so far) unconditional, it must then be valuable even absent its having any good effects. Its value must be contained within it. Kant supposes that we all have at least some idea of what he is referring to in speaking of a good will. Loosely speaking, it is the determination to do what, in effect, reason requires as right period. (394-394) Utilitarianism is best for Determining Political Morality Utilitarianism is the best moral philosophy for political action and discussions Shaw, Philosophy Professor, 1999 (William H. Shaw, 1999, Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy at SJSU, “contemporary ethics: taking account of utilitarianism” p 171-2) Utilitarianism ties right and wrong to the promotion of well-being, but it is not only n personal ethic or a guide to individual conduct. lt is also a "public philosophy°" - that is, a normative basis for public policy and the structuring of our social, legal, and political institutions. Indeed, it was just this aspect of utilitarianism that primarily engaged Bentham, john Stuart Mill, his father James, and their friends and votaries. For them utilitarianism was, first and foremost, a social and political philosophy and only secondarily a private or personal moral code. In particular, they saw utilitarianism as providing the yardstick by which to measure, assess, and, where necessary, reform government social and economic policy and the judicial institutions of their day. In the public realm, utilitarianism is especially compelling. Because of its consequentialist character, a utilitarian approach to public policy requires officials to base their actions, procedures, and programs on the most accurate and detailed understanding they can obtain of the circumstances in which they are operating and the likely results of the alternatives open to them. Realism and empiricism are the hallmarks of a utilitarian orientation, not customary practice, unverified abstractions, or wishful Promotion of the well being of all seems to be the appropriate, indeed the only sensible, touchstone for assessing public policies and institutions, and the standard objections to utilitarianism as a personal morality carry little or no weight against it when viewed as a public philosophy. Consider, for instance, the criticisms that utilitarianism is too impersonal and ignores one's individual attachments and personal commitments, that it is coldly calculating and concerned only with maximizing, that it demands too much of moral agents and that it permits one to violate certain basic moral restraints on the treatment of others. The previous two chapters addressed sorne of these criticisms; others will be dealt with in Chapter 8. The point here, though, is that far from undermining utilitarianism as a public philosophy, these criticisms highlight its strengths. We want public officials to be neutral, impersonal. and detached and to proceed with their eyes firmly on the effects of the policies they pursue and the institutions that their decisions shape. Policy making requires public officials to address general issues, typical conditions. and common circumstances. Inevitably, they must do this through general rules, not on a case by case basis. As explained later in this chapter, this fact precludes public officials from violating the rights of individuals as a matter of policy. Moreover, by organizing the efforts of countless individuals and compelling each of us to play our part in collective endeavors to enhance welfare, public officials can make it less likely that utilitarianism will demand too much of any one individual because others are doing too little. Utilitarians — will seek to direct and coordinate people's actions through effective public policy and to reshape, in utilityenhancing ways, the institutions that structure the choices people face. By doing so, utilitarians can usually accomplish more good than they can through isolated individual action, however dedicated and well intentioned. For this reason, they will strive to Easter institutions that false over from individuals much of the task of promoting the general welfare of society. General welfare is a broad goal, of course, and sensible policies and institutions will typically focus on more specific desiderata such as promoting productivity, increasing individual freedom and opportunity, improving people’s physical health, guaranteeing their personal security, and so on — that contribute significantly to people's well-being. Implementing even there goals can prove difficult. Furthermore, many of the problems facing society have no simple answers because they are tangled up with contested issues of fact and controversial questions of psychology, sociology, and economics. To the extent that utilitarians disagree among · themselves over these matters, their policy recommendations will diverge. Nevertheless, by clarifying what is at stake and continually orienting discussion toward the promotion of well-being, a. utilitarian approach provides the necessary framework for addressing questions of institutional design and for fashioning effective public policy. The present chapter explicates the utilitarian approach to three matters that have long engaged social and political philosophers and that concern. Consequentialism is best for Determining Morality of Policies The morality of policies are determined by their consequences David Sanford Horner, 2005 (Policies for a ‘nanosociety’: Can we learn now from our future mistakes? 2005 - bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar) At the same time Moor wishes to retain the notion that consequences count that is that ‘…the evaluation of a given policy requires the evaluation of the consequences and often the consequences of that policy compared with other consequences of other possible policies’ (Moor, 1999, p.66). Moor’s approach involves two stages. Firstly, the application of an ‘impartiality test’ and then secondly the appraisal of the various outcomes and consequences of actions and policies, weighing the good consequences and the bad consequences, of those policies surviving the impartiality test. In the first stage deliberation takes place over the various policies to determine whether or not they meet ethical criteria. A policy is determined to be ethical if (a) it does not cause any unnecessary harm to individuals and groups and (b) it supports individual rights, the fulfilling of duties etc. In the second stage the best policy is selected ‘from the set of just policies arrived at in the deliberation stage by ranking ethical policies in terms of benefits and (justifiable) harms’. In carrying out this evaluation of policies we are required to: ‘…(a) weigh carefully between the good consequences and bad consequences in ethical policies, and (b) distinguish between disagreements about facts and disagreements about principles and values, when deciding which ethical policy should be adopted’ (Tavani, 2004, 60 – 61). A2: Human Rights/Rights More Important Than Consequentialism A government’s first obligation is to protect its citizens and have a consequential concern for their survival and success. Harries explains that governments must weigh consequences Owen Harries, editor and founder of National Interest, Senior Fellow at Centre for Independent Studies, Spring 1993/1994, “Power and Civilization,” The National Interest. Performance is the test. Asked directly by a Western interviewer, “In principle, do you believe in one standard of human rights and free expression?”, Lee immediately answers, “Look, it is not a matter of principle but of practice.” This might appear to represent a simple and rather crude pragmatism. But in its context it might also be interpreted as an appreciation of the fundamental point made by Max Weber that, in politics, it is “the ethic of responsibility” rather than “the ethic of absolute ends” that is appropriate. While an individual is free to treat human rights as absolute, to be observed whatever the cost, governments must always weigh consequences and the competing claims of other ends. So once they enter the realm of politics, human rights have to take their place in a hierarchy of interests, including such basic things as national security and the promotion of prosperity. Their place in that hierarchy will vary with circumstances, but no responsible government will ever be able to put them always at the top and treat them as inviolable and over-riding. The cost of implementing and promoting them will always have to be considered. Social Contracts Locke’s Social Contract Protects Citizens from Violence The purpose of Locke’s social contract is to protect the people from violence Hayman 1991 (Steven J, Assistant Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology, THE FIRST DUTY OF GOVERNMENT: PROTECTION, LIBERTY AND THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, Duke Law Journal, http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3172&context=dlj) Date accessed: 7/26/13 In a state of nature, however, an individual often lacks the power to defend himself against invasion by others, rendering the enjoyment of his rights "very unsecure.' '32 For this reason, individuals agree to form a community "for the mutual Preservation of their Lives, Liberties and Estates," which Locke comprehensively termed "Property.'33 Under the terms of this compact, each individual gives up his natural power to act for his own preservation "to be regulated by the Laws made by the Society, so far forth as the preservation of himself, and the rest of that Society shall require." 34 In addition, he "engages his natural force.., to assist the Executive Power of the Society, as the law thereof shall require." 35 In return, the individual obtains not only benefits from "the labor, assistance, and society of others in the same Community," but also protection from its whole strength."36 In short, according to Locke, the end of government is to direct "the force of all the subjects of the commonwealth" for the purpose of "preserving the members of the commonwealth in peace from injury and violence." 37 Locke emphasized that, because government is established for this purpose, it is "obliged" to secure every individual's life, liberty, and property.38 When it acts contrary to this trust, the government is dissolved and the community regains the right to establish a new form of government.39 Such dissolution occurs, in Locke's view, where the government invades the rights of subjects, or where it fails to use its power to secure those rights Locke implied that the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which King James II was dethroned and replaced by William and Mary, was justified on these grounds. Social Contracts Must be Backed by Force Social Contract must be backed by force Hobbes, Thomas, 1651, Leviathan (https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/748/leviathan.pdf) A COMMONWEALTH [Society] by acquisition is that where the sovereign power is acquired by force; and it is acquired by force when men singly, or many together by plurality of voices for fear of death, or bonds, do authorize all the actions of that man, or assembly, that hath their lives and liberty in his power. And this kind of dominion, or sovereignty, ¶ [differs] from sovereignty by institution only in this, that men who choose their sovereign do it for fear of one another, and not of him whom they institute: but in this case, they subject themselves to him they are afraid of. In both cases they do it for fear: which is to be noted by them that hold all such covenants, as proceed from fear of death or violence, void: which, if it were true, no man in any kind of Commonwealth could be obliged to obedience. ¶ It is true that in a Commonwealth once instituted, or acquired, promises proceeding from fear of death or violence are no covenants, nor obliging, when the thing promised is contrary to the laws; but the reason is not because it was made upon fear, but because he that promiseth hath no right in the thing promised. Also, when he may lawfully perform, and doth not, it is not the invalidity of the covenant that absolveth him, but the sentence of the sovereign. Otherwise, whensoever a man lawfully promiseth, he unlawfully breaketh: but when the sovereign, who is the actor, acquitteth him, then he is acquitted by him that extorted the promise, as by the author of such absolution. Social Contracts Balance Individualism and Cooperation The Social Contract respects individuality and preserves cooperation, which ensures the survival of society – Respect of the private sphere is essential to this concept Michel Rosenfeld, 1985, Professor of Law, New York Law School, Contract and Justice: The Relation Between Classical Contract Law and Social Contract Theory, Iowa Law Review, 70 Iowa L. Rev. 769, Lexis. For those who share the liberal ideal of achieving the greatest possible autonomy for each individual compatible with both equal autonomy for all and the degree of social cooperation necessary to insure the survival of society, the conjunction of the social contract with freedom of contract seems highly desirable. Indeed, this conjunction not only permits neutrality with respect to individual visions of the good, but also strictly limits the realm of individual obligations. These results are achieved by dividing the universe of social relationships into the two separate and distinct spheres of the public and the private. The terms of the social contract govern the relationships in the public sphere and impose a limited number of obligations owed by each party to the social contract to all the other parties ot it. Freedom of contract, on the other hand, operates in an extensive private sphere in which individual obligations are limited to those arising out of particular legal contracts and extend only to the other party or parties to such contract. n4 Thus, in the private sphere, no obligation is owed to anyone unless it has been freely chosen, and, even then, it is only owed to the limited number of individuals to whom the obligor has freely chosen to make a commitment. Social Contracts Protect Justice and Rule of Law Social Contracts protect rule of law and procedural justice. Michel Rosenfeld, 1985, Professor of Law, New York Law School, Contract and Justice: The Relation Between Classical Contract Law and Social Contract Theory, Iowa Law Review, 70 Iowa L. Rev. 769, Lexis. As we have seen, individualism gives rise to circumstances of justice. n60 To look to individualism for independent criteria of compensatory and distributive justice, however, is problematic inasmuch as individualism is committed to allowing each individual to pursue his or her own conception of the good. If an independent criterion of justice required any particular conception of the common good, it would be bound to thwart some individual conceptions of the good and thus contradict the normative aims of individualism. On the other hand, if compensatory and distributive justice could be achieved by purely procedural means that would not require any individual to abandon his or her own conception of the good, then individualism's need for justice could presumably be fulfilled without sacrificing society's neutrality toward individual conceptions of the good. Contract appears to supply the means towards purely procedural justice in the context of an individualist society. Indeed, absent any objective or intersubjective criterion of justice, using contract to achieve purely procedural justice has at least two major advantages: it preserves individual autonomy while bringing about the necessary degree of social cooperation, and it balances conflicting self-interests without requiring any individual to compromise his or her conception of the good. Social Contract Requires Protection of Citizen’s Property A government must protect the property of its citizens Casman, Betsey Sue. Master of Arts in Ethics and Policy Studies. 2011. "The Right to Privacy in Light of the Patriot Act and Social Contract Theory". http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2087&context=thesesdissertations. Date Accessed 7/21/13. The power to protect property is ceded to the government. Locke describes this commonwealth ; “And thus the commonwealth comes by a power to set down what punishment shall belong to the several transgressions which they think worthy of it, committed amongst the members of that society (which is the power of making laws) as well as it has the power to punish any injury done unto any of its members by any one that is not of it (which is the power of war and peace); and all this for the preservation of the property of all the members of that society as far as possible” (Locke 2002, 39). This is how Locke defines the extent of the power of government; it is to protect the property of its members. Property is understood to mean life, liberty, and estate. Locke is quite clear that the only role of this legislative control is that which emulates that which man had in the state of nature. The protection of property of man (including his own life) is that goal and nothing more Conractarianism Protects Governments and Society Contractarianism and Social Contracts protect the government and society. Michel Rosenfeld, 1985, Professor of Law, New York Law School, Contract and Justice: The Relation Between Classical Contract Law and Social Contract Theory, Iowa Law Review, 70 Iowa L. Rev. 769, Lexis. The maximum potential for contract is reached under the contractarian paradigm. Indeed, for the contractarian not only is contract just, but it is just because it is contract. At the level of deep structure, then, the contractarian vision postulates that to be just, human relationships must ultimately be based on the mutual consent of all affected persons. The theory of the social contract naturally complements such a vision. Social contract [*805] theory seeks to construct a philosophically coherent account of the legitimacy of the state and of political institutions that ultimately rests on the mutual consent of the governed. Moreover, the principal vehicle of the contractarian vision is the contractual device which supplies the means for achieving pure procedural justice. Finally, accompanying all this is a body of law that serves the contractarian aim of providing each individual as much freedom to enter into, and to give shape to, contractual relationships as is compatible with an equal freedom for every other individual. In sum, the maximum potential of contract emerges from the deep structure of the contractarian vision. In that context, the contractual device, social contract theory, and a body of contract law supporting freedom of contract would work in harmony to achieve the kind of purely procedural justice designed to bring about the optimal equilibrium between autonomy and welfare. A2: Utilitarianism Upholds Social Contract Utilitarianism does not uphold the Social Contract- Impossible to know other’s conception of good. Michel Rosenfeld, 1985, Professor of Law, New York Law School, Contract and Justice: The Relation Between Classical Contract Law and Social Contract Theory, Iowa Law Review, 70 Iowa L. Rev. 769, Lexis. Another advantage of the contractarian position is that it respects each individual's conception of the good. n175 Initially, utilitarianism may appear [*807] similarly committed, but the process whereby the utilitarian arrives at the formulation of the common good -- the use of the impartial spectator metaphor -- raises a vexing problem. In real life, the impartial spectator would have to be an individual or a group of individuals and, as such, would lack two attributes essential to the impartial spectator theory: thorough impartiality and complete empathy. Indeed, it appears impossible for one individual, harboring his or her own conception of the good, to reproduce another's conception of the good without filtering it through his or her own notions. And even if that were possible, it is highly unlikely that one could exactly reproduce the quality and intensity of another's emotions. Furthermore, allowing an individual to decipher and interpret another's conception of the good appears just short of allowing that individual to judge and criticize the other's perception of self-interest. Mill himself actually took that step by making a distinction between individuals' "real" interests and their "apparent" interests. n176 Once this distinction is permitted, the impartial spectators can use the dichotomy between real and apparent interests to impose their own conception of the good on others. Thus, the utilitarian appears less likely than the contractarian to promote strict respect for individual conceptions of the good. Justice Kantian Justice Requires Restrictions on Freedom by Laws Kantian conceptions of justice require external restrictions on freedom by laws to prevent infringing on others’ freedom Rosen, Allen D. , author “Kant’s Theory of Justice” 1993 published by Cornell university accessed: 7/21/13 http://books.google.com/books?id=U35BsCUu28C&printsec=frontcover&dq=kant's+theory+of+justice+allen+D.+rosen&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RkrsUe upB6nYigKl_oGYAg&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=kant's%20theory%20of%20justice%20allen%20 D.%20rosen&f=false The same underlying conception of justice is present in all of Kant’s laws and principles of justice. The “universal law of justice” in the Rechtslehre, for instance, commands us to “act externally in such a way that the free use of your will can be compatible with the freedom of everyone else according to a universal law.” Employing much the same language, the “principle of innate freedom” in the Rechtslehre asserts that “freedom (independence from the constrain of another’s will) insofar as it is compatible with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with a universal law, is the sole and original right that belongs to each human being by virtue of his humanity.” Again, in Theory and Practice Kant defines justice as “the restriction of each individual’s freedom so that it harmonizes with the freedom of everyone else (insofar as it is possible within the terms of a universal law).” All of these principles, laws, and definitions express essentially the same thought: that justice is a condition in which each individual’s external freedom is restricted so as to make it consistent with the free freedom of all others in the framework of a common law or system of laws. Upholding the “Common Good” is Impossible (1/2) Upholding the “common good” is incompatible with a pluralistic society Thomas Shanks, professor of applied ethics at Santa Clara university, 1992 (“the common good,” 1992 Issues in Ethics V5, N1. Accessed: 7/21/13 http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/commongood.html) It might seem that since all citizens benefit from the common good, we would all willingly respond to urgings that we each cooperate to establish and maintain the common good. But numerous observers have identified a number of obstacles that hinder us, as a society, from successfully doing so. First, according to some philosophers, the very idea of a common good is inconsistent with a pluralistic society like ours. Different people have different ideas about what is worthwhile or what constitutes "the good life for human beings", differences that have increased during the last few decades as the voices of more and more previously silenced groups, such as women and minorities, have been heard. Given these differences, some people urge, it will be impossible for us to agree on what particular kind of social systems, institutions, and environments we will all pitch in to support. And even if we agreed upon what we all valued, we would certainly disagree about the relative values things have for us. While all may agree, for example, that an affordable health system, a healthy educational system, and a clean environment are all parts of the common good, some will say that more should be invested in health than in education, while others will favor directing resources to the environment over both health and education. Such disagreements are bound to undercut our ability to evoke a sustained and widespread commitment to the common good. In the face of such pluralism, efforts to bring about the common good can only lead to adopting or promoting the views of some, while excluding others, violating the principle of treating people equally. Moreover, such efforts would force everyone to support some specific notion of the common good, violating the freedom of those who do not share in that goal, and inevitably leading to paternalism (imposing one group's preference on others), tyranny, and oppression. Upholding the “common good” is impossible because free riders will take advantage of society’s benefits Thomas Shanks, professor of applied ethics at Santa Clara university, 1992 (“the common good,” 1992 Issues in Ethics V5, N1. Accessed: 7/21/13 http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/commongood.html) A second problem encountered by proponents of the common good is what is sometimes called the "free-rider problem". The benefits that a common good provides are, as we noted, available to everyone, including those who choose not to do their part to maintain the common good. Individuals can become "free riders" by taking the benefits the common good provides while refusing to do their part to support the common good. An adequate water supply, for example, is a common good from which all people benefit. But to maintain an adequate supply of water during a drought, people must conserve water, which entails sacrifices. Some individuals may be reluctant to do their share, however, since they know that so long as enough other people conserve, they can enjoy the benefits without reducing their own consumption. If enough people become free riders in this way, the common good which depends on their support will be destroyed. Many observers believe that this is exactly what has happened to many of our common goods, such as the environment or education, where the reluctance of all person to support efforts to maintain the health of these systems has led to their virtual collapse. Upholding the “Common Good” is Impossible (2/2) Upholding the “common good” is impossible because of society’s promotion of individualism Thomas Shanks, professor of applied ethics at Santa Clara university, 1992 (“the common good,” 1992 Issues in Ethics V5, N1. Accessed: 7/21/13 http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/commongood.html) The third problem encountered by attempts to promote the common good is that of individualism. our historical traditions place a high value on individual freedom, on personal rights, and on allowing each person to "do her own thing". Our culture views society as comprised of separate independent individuals who are free to pursue their own individual goals and interests without interference from others. In this individualistic culture it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to convince people that they should sacrifice some of their freedom, some of their personal goals, and some of their self-interest, for the sake of the "common good". Our cultural traditions, in fact, reinforce the individual who thinks that she should not have to contribute to the community's common good, but should be left free to pursue her own personal ends. Upholding the “common good” is impossible because of unequal burden sharing Thomas Shanks, professor of applied ethics at Santa Clara university, 1992 (“the common good,” 1992 Issues in Ethics V5, N1. Accessed: 7/21/13 http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/commongood.html) Finally, appeals to the common good are confronted by the problem of an unequal sharing of burdens. Maintaining a common good often requires that particular individuals or particular groups bear costs that are much greater than those borne by others. Maintaining an unpolluted environment, for example, may require that particular firms that pollute install costly pollution control devices, undercutting profits. Making employment opportunities more equal may require that some groups, such as white males, sacrifice their own employment chances. Making the health system affordable and accessible to all may require that insurers accept lower premiums, that physicians accept lower salaries, or that those with particularly costly diseases or conditions forego the medical treatment on which their live depend. Forcing particular groups or individuals to carry such unequal burdens "for the sake of the common good", is, at least arguably, unjust. Moreover, the prospect of having to carry such heavy and unequal burdens leads such groups and individuals to resist any attempts to secure common goods. Justice Balances Individualism and Cooperation Justice serves to protect the contract of cooperation. Michel Rosenfeld, 1985, Professor of Law, New York Law School, Contract and Justice: The Relation Between Classical Contract Law and Social Contract Theory, Iowa Law Review, 70 Iowa L. Rev. 769, Lexis. Logically, it is conceivable that there could be an individualist who would be completely self-sufficient and would interact with no one else. Under these circumstances, which we might term circumstances of extreme individualism, there would be no need for justice or, for that matter, for contract. If we move away from extreme individualism to a situation in which the individual cannot completely avoid interaction with others, circumstances of justice then arise. n43 Circumstances of justice exist "whenever mutually disinterested persons put forward conflicting claims to the division of social advantages under conditions of moderate scarcity." n44 Indeed, if each individual in seeking to satisfy his or her self-interest cannot [*780] avoid cooperating in some manner with other individuals -- even if such cooperation involved only an agreement of mutual forbearance from interfering with each other's pursuit of self-interest -- a conflict would develop between the need to cooperate and the desire to achieve the maximum possible advantage from such cooperation. n45 Each individual would be forced to cooperate with others in order to advance his or her own self-interests, but would want to keep all the advantages derived from such cooperation. In this context, the function of justice is to provide normatively compelling means to resolve this conflict. The role of justice is to determine how the greater benefits created by social cooperation ought to be divided among the various individual members of society. n46 Freedom/Liberty Value of Freedom: Freedom and Liberty are Different Freedom is not the same as liberty – Freedom has built-in restrictions that are key to protecting people from infringing on the liberty of others Cooray, PhD from Cambridge, 2012 ["What is Freedom." Dr. L.J. Mark Cooray; Noted Author LLB (Hons)(Ceylon), Phd (Cambridge), Phd (Colombo) (2012) http://www.ourcivilisation.com/cooray/cooray.htm; Date accessed: 7/23/13] What is freedom? How is freedom related to liberty? Liberty conveys the idea of the right or the ability of the individual to do what he wants. Freedom on the other hand is a word which contains inbuilt restrictions. My freedom to swing my hands stops at my neighbour's nose. A free society contains individuals who are free to do what they do, whilst respecting the freedoms of others. Freedom is the liberty of the individual coupled with concern by the liberated individual for the liberties of others. ¶ Freedom cannot be defined, except through an analysis of the restrictions on human action. ¶ Therefore, the area of freedom available to the individual in any society is a residuary one. The individual is at liberty to do what law and social custom do not forbid. Therefore, the content of the restrictions on liberty are important. What distinguishes a free society from other societies is the nature and extent of the legal and customary restrictions on freedom. ¶ Freedom can be defined only in terms of the restrictions on freedom - and I show some of the legal restrictions on freedom which historically evolved and were responsible for the rise of western civilisation are analysed in this paper. Security Human Security More Important than State Security Human security takes priority of the security of the state Axworthy, 2010 (Lloyd, Jan, 2010. Human Security and Global Governance: Putting People First, Global Governance. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27800284) Date accessed: 7/26/13 Human security today puts people first and recognizes that their safety is integral to the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security. The security of states is essential, but not sufficient, to fully ensure the safety and well-being of the world's peoples. Several current challenges are particularly compelling. One concerns the evolution of new links between local conflict and the international economy and the impact of these perverse linkages on vulnerable communities. Doubtless, high-value commodities like diamonds or oil can prolong and intensify conflict. Angola and Sierra Leone demonstrate the extreme impact of personal greed on vulnerable populations. The Security Council embargo on rough diamonds from Sierra Leone is a positive first step toward preventing the use of profits from diamond sales to finance wars and crimes against civilians. Government Must Not Violate Liberty The Government should not intrude on any liberty unless the act itself is deemed harmful. Kent Greenawalt, 1989, Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence, Columbia University, Free Speech Justifications, Columbia Law Review, Vol. 89, No. 1. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1122730 A political principle of free speech is warranted only if reasons to protect speech go beyond the reasons for a minimal principle of liberty. According to a minimal principle of liberty, the government should not prohibit people from acting as they wish unless it has a positive reason to do so. The ordinary reason for prohibiting action is that the action is deemed harmful or potentially harmful in some respect; driving a car at 100 miles per hour is forbidden because people are likely to get hurt. Although sometimes the government may constrain behavior in order to compel some action that generates a benefit, or may potentially generate benefits, that subtlety will be disregarded in order to concentrate on harm. What legitimately counts as "harm" is an important and controversial aspect of political theory,4 but here the term is meant in an inclusive, nonrestrictive sense, including indirect harms, psychological harms, harms to the actor, and even harms to the natural order. Thus, sexual intercourse between human beings and animals might be prohibited on the ground that it has deleterious indirect effects on family life, is psychologically bad for the people involved, or is intrinsically unnatural. Since governments have little apparent reason to prohibit action other than to prevent harm the action may cause, an assumption that people should otherwise be left free comes very close to being a principle of rationality for governance. A challenge to the principle is imagi- nable, but the theory of human nature and government it would represent would be most unattractive . Government control of perfectly harmless actions like whistling in one's room might be a technique to induce unquestioning obedience to government authority. In that event, the prohibition would be designed to prevent some harm, such as "unhealthy" independent civic attitudes, but the harm would be unrelated to acts of whistling or their effects.5 Conceivably, such control of "neutral" matters may have a place in training techniques for highly disciplined subgroups, such as monastic orders or military personnel, but accepting its appropriateness for regulating the general class of citizens would be to embrace the kind of extreme totalitarianism suggested by fantasies like George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four.6 The alternative-the "minimal principle of liberty"-is a fundamental premise of all "Western" governments, and in this modest form, is probably accepted as well by almost all authoritarian or dictatorial governments, whether of the right or the left.7 As far as speech is concerned, the minimal principle of liberty establishes that the government should not interfere with communication that has no potential for harm. To be significant, a principle of freedom of speech must go beyond this,8 positing constraints on the regulation of speech that are more robust than constraints on the regulation of other matters. A principle of free speech could establish more strin- gent constraints than the minimal principle of liberty either by barring certain possible reasons for prohibition or by establishing a special value for speech. The latter way is the easier to understand. If some human activities have special value, a good government will need stronger reasons to prohibit them than to prohibit other activities. If speech has more positive value than acts of physical aggression, for example, more powerful reasons will be needed to warrant its suppression. A related but more subtle point is that legislatures or other political actors may be prone in particular instances to undervalue certain kinds of acts; were that true about speech, a principle of free speech might compensate for that tendency. In effect, the principle would tell those involved in government that acts of speech should be assumed to have a higher value than they seem to have in the immediate context. Deontology Bad Deontology Bad-Impractical Deontology doesn’t apply to governmental policies because the theory is impractical; it is impossible to consider every individualistic viewpoint of morality. Woller, 1997 (Gary, Economics Professor at BYU, “A Forum On the Role of Environmental Ethics in Restructuring Environmental Policy and Law for the Next Century.” Policy Currents, June 1997, http://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/APSANET/8cecdffe-5e63-45a8-91764574182cf42d/UploadedFiles/Vol.%207,%20No.%202.pdf, p. 11) At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for public policy. At best, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem or actually making it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies the best way, or any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that any policy that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so. Any number of policies might work, and others, although seemingly consistent with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological principles are an inadequate basis for environmental policy is evident in the rather significant irony that most forms of deontologically based environmental laws and regulations tend to be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits of environmental policy and their attendant incentive structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to environmental preservation. (There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often perverse outcomes of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist would, I believe, be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman, The number of values typically involved in public policy decisions, the broad categories which must be employed and above all, the scope and complexity of the consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning so conclusively that they generate an imperative to institute a specific policy. It is seldom the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the public interest (1958, p. 12). It therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems they address, and the public must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do something about an existing problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient, though perhaps at times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy. Util Bad Util Bad-Individual Rights Utilitarianism cannot protect rights – exclusive focus on the pursuit of welfare causes the trampling of rights will conflict with the pursuit of welfare Erin Byrnes, JD U Arizona, 1999, “Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Unmasking White Privelege to Expose the Fallacy of White Innocense,” 41 Ariz. L. Rev. 535 Moral rights are objectionable not only because they lack social recognition but also because they necessarily imply a correlation between rights and duties. Again, utilitarianism's specific rejection of the tie between rights and duties renders recognition of white privilege nearly impossible. Without this recognition, there can be no meaningful solution. 247 If accepted, moral rights would provide the grounds for the appraisal of law and other social institutions, a system of appraisal antithetical to utilitarianism's rubric of assessment. Moral rights carry with them the expectation that institutions will be erected with an eye towards respect and furtherance of such rights. 248 Such a proposition would certainly require more than just striving towards colorblindness were it applied to affirmative action. Utilitarianism, however, requires that institutions and rights be evaluated solely with respect to the promotion of human welfare, welfare being the satisfaction of overall citizen desires. 249 The assumption, implicit in the foregoing argument, is that moral rights neither fit perfectly nor converge with legal rights. 250 This may not necessarily be the case. David Lyons' "theory of moral rights exclusion" discusses the way in which utilitarians conceive of moral rights working at odds with the utilitarian goal. 251 Lyons' theory describes the way in which a moral right, at some point, gains enough currency to warrant individual exercise of that right. According to Lyons, when a moral right has reached this point, it has achieved the "argumentative threshold" and gains normative force. 252 The potential for this occurrence is precisely what leads to the utilitarian rejection of moral rights. Rejection is predicated on the fact that once the argumentative threshold is reached, a presumption is created against interference upon the individual exercise [*564] of the right. 253 Under a system which recognized moral rights, but still organized itself according to the utilitarian goal of achieving human welfare (which is happiness), individual rights would purportedly run headlong into the pursuit of welfare. 254 Though the pursuit of welfare would be deemed morally relevant and would justify a course of action on welfare's behalf, in a scenario where that course of action constituted a mere "minimal increment of utility," it would be incapable of overcoming the argumentative threshold of rights. 255 Thus, the argument is that the recognition of moral rights is diametrically opposed to utilitarianism because in a moral rights regime, rights act as a limitation upon the utilitarian goal of fulfilling as many individual desires as possible. Util Bad-Predictions Our predictions are flawed, meaning that utilitarianism can never know if they picked the best deciscion Odell, 04. Jack, associate professor of philosophy at the university of Illinois, on consequentialist ethics, pg 103.) Of all the objections A through J, A is the most easily answered. Our study of Russell’s version of act utilitarianism has taught us that any philosopher who promotes act utilitarianism has to concede that its classic formulation always act to maximize the good in the world is indefensible for two reasons. First, the actual consequences of any given action are never available for examination at the time of the action, since they have not yet happened, and so they cannot be a factor in an ethical decision. Second, it cannot make any sense to say one’s actual choice is objectively a better choice than its options. Since none of the options were chosen, we cannot know what their consequences are, and for this reason we cannot be sure what to compare with the consequences of our actual choice. The maxim has to be reformulated in a subjective format, as it is in “act so as to maximize the expectable good in the world.” The act utilitarian has to be satisfied with intended or predicted consequences, and not actual ones.” Util Bad-Majority Tyranny Utilitarianism justifies the tyranny of the majority and the oppression of the minority. Maximiano, Jose Mario. Associate Professor of business ethics DLSU School of Business, November 6, 2003. Business World, “The View from Taft,” p. Lexis) According to the utilitarian principle, the correct action, decision or judgment is the one that will produce the greatest net benefits at the lowest net costs for the greatest number of people. Sad to say, this principle has no eyes to see and no brains to know who are those who have less in life, and those who are disadvantaged and less gifted. Like a horse with blinders, utilitarianism automatically focuses on the majority, regardless of socio-economic status. In the application of the utilitarian principle, therefore, it is possible that those who have more in life would benefit more, while those with less would benefit less. The utilitarian principle seems inadequate when applied to situations that involve the basic rights of others. Was the government ethically correct in demolishing some shanties to pave the way for the beautification project specifically for a visiting leader? Similarly, was the government ethically correct to drive away some indigenous tribes to give way for the construction of a dam? While some would see beautification, greening, cleaning and the construction of the dam as benefits, others may see the same as unjust and unfair, and hence as costs, because those projects may at times violate the basic rights of others. Probability Ignore Low Probability Extremely low probabilities should count as zero—even if there’s some risk, policy decisions can’t be justified by vanishingly small probabilities RESCHER 2003 (Nicholas, Prof of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, Sensible Decisions: Issues of Rational Decision in Personal Choice and Public Policy, p. 49-50) On this issue there is a systemic disagreement between probabilists working on theory-oriented issues in mathematics or natural science and decision theorists who work on practical decision-oriented issues relating to human affairs. The former takes the line that small number are small numbers and must be taken into account as such—that is, the small quantities they actually are. The latter tend to take the view that small probabilities represent extremely remote prospect and can be written off. (De minimis non curat lex, as the old precept has it: in human affairs there is no need to bother with trifles.) When something is about as probable as a thousand fair dice when tossed a thousand times coming up all sixes, then, so it is held, we can pretty well forget about it as a worthy of concern. As a matter of practical policy, we operate with probabilities on the principle that when x ≤ E, then x = 0. We take the line that in our human dealings in real-life situations a sufficiently remote possibility can—for all sensible purposes—be viewed as being of probability zero. Accordingly, such remote possibilities can simply be dismissed, and the outcomes with which they are associated can accordingly be set aside. And in “the real world” people do in fact seem to be prepared to treat certain probabilities as effectively zero, taking certain sufficiently improbable eventualities as no long representing real possibilities. Here an extremely improbable event is seen as something we can simply write off as being outside the range of appropriate concern, something we can dismiss for all practical purposes. As one writer on insurance puts it: [P]eople…refuse to worry about losses whose probability is below some threshold. Probabilities below the threshold are treated as though they were zero. No doubt, remote-possibility events having such a minute possibility can happen in some sense of the term, but this “can” functions somewhat figuratively—it is no longer seen as something that presents a realistic prospect. Low Probability-Policy Paralysis Focusing on catastrophic, low probability impacts causes policy paralysis. POSNER 2004 (Richard, US Court of Appeals judge and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Catastrophe: Risk and Response 19) The reason for the hedge in “essentially” is that I want to avoid making claims of metaphysical certainty. From a scientific standpoint, anything is possible. But some possibilities really are too remote to be worth worrying about, such as the possibility that my next breath will create a black hole or that the entire human population will be persuaded to commit suicide. To put this differently, we have to be selective in responding to the catastrophic risks because if we allow our imaginations to multiply their number indefinitely we’ll end up doing nothing about any of them. The “any risk” logic would make all decision making impossible—evaluate probability over magnitude MESKILL 2009 (David, professor at Colorado School of Mines and PhD from Harvard, “The "One Percent Doctrine" and Environmental Faith,” Dec 9, http://davidmeskill.blogspot.com/2009/12/onepercent-doctrine-and-environmental.html) Tom Friedman's piece today in the Times on the environment (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/opinion/09friedman.html?_r=1) is one of the flimsiest pieces by a major columnist that I can remember ever reading. He applies Cheney's "one percent doctrine" (which is similar to the environmentalists' "precautionary principle") to the risk of environmental armageddon. But this doctrine is both intellectually incoherent and practically irrelevant. It is intellectually incoherent because it cannot be applied consistently in a world with many potential disaster scenarios. In addition to the global-warming risk, there's also the asteroid-hitting-the-earth risk, the terrorists-with-nuclear-weapons risk (Cheney's original scenario), the super-duper-pandemic risk, etc. Since each of these risks, on the "one percent doctrine," would deserve all of our attention, we cannot address all of them simultaneously. That is, even within the one-percent mentality, we'd have to begin prioritizing, making choices and trade-offs. But why then should we only make these trade-offs between responses to disaster scenarios? Why not also choose between them and other, much more cotidien, things we value? Why treat the unlikely but cataclysmic event as somehow fundamentally different, something that cannot be integrated into all the other calculations we make? And in fact, this is how we behave all the time. We get into our cars in order to buy a cup of coffee, even though there's some chance we will be killed on the way to the coffee shop. We are constantly risking death, if slightly, in order to pursue the things we value. Any creature that adopted the "precautionary principle" would sit at home - no, not even there, since there is some chance the building might collapse. That creature would neither be able to act, nor not act, since it would nowhere discover perfect safety. Friedman's approach reminds me somehow of Pascal's wager - quasi-religious faith masquerading as rational deliberation (as Hans Albert has pointed out, Pascal's wager itself doesn't add up: there may be a God, in fact, but it may turn out that He dislikes, and even damns, people who believe in him because they've calculated it's in their best interest to do so). As my friend James points out, it's striking how descriptions of the environmental risk always describe the situation as if it were five to midnight. It must be near midnight, since otherwise there would be no need to act. But it can never be five *past* midnight, since then acting would be pointless and we might as well party like it was 2099. Many religious movements - for example the early Jesus movement - have exhibited precisely this combination of traits: the looming apocalypse, with the time (just barely) to take action. Meta-Ethics Naturalism Acting in accordance with natural facts is the meta-ethic for the round, and as such all moral argumentation must be consistent with it. Moreover, naturalism best responds to moral claims. Papineau [Papineau, David, (Professor of Philosophy of Science at King's College) "Naturalism", (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)] Realist moral naturalism also seems better off than non-naturalist realism in two further respects. The first relates to is hard to see how non-natural moral facts could have any motivating force: after all, if such facts are incapable of having effects of any kind, they will a fortiori be incapable of motivating human beings. True, moral motivation is not a straightforward matter for naturalist moral realists either: if moral facts the motivating force of moral facts. It are natural, then won't it be possible for someone to recognize their existence, yet not be correspondingly moved to action in any way? However, there are various responses naturalist realists can make to this challenge. (Ridge 2006 Section 5, Lenman 2006 Section 2.) The other point on which naturalist moral realists seem better placed than non-naturalists has to do with [in] explaining the supervenience of moral facts on other facts. As noted earlier, intuition seems to demands that two situations that are identical with respect to physical properties will also be morally identical. For naturalists, this will follow from general naturalist principles. Non-naturalists, by contrast, would seem to lack any obvious explanation of why moral facts should so supervene on physical facts Naturalism Determines Morality Naturalism best responds to moral claims Papineau [Papineau, David, (Professor of Philosophy of Science at King's College) "Naturalism", (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)] Realist moral naturalism also seems better off than non-naturalist realism in two further respects. The first relates to the motivating force of moral facts. It is hard to see how non-natural moral facts could have any motivating force: after all, if such facts are incapable of having effects of any kind, they will a fortiori be incapable of motivating human beings. True, moral motivation is not a straightforward matter for naturalist moral realists either: if moral facts are natural, then won't it be possible for someone to recognize their existence, yet not be correspondingly moved to action in any way? However, there are various responses naturalist realists can make to this challenge. (Ridge 2006 Section 5, Lenman 2006 Section 2.) The other point on which naturalist moral realists seem better placed than non-naturalists has to do with [in] explaining the supervenience of moral facts on other facts. As noted earlier, intuition seems to demands that two situations that are identical with respect to physical properties will also be morally identical. For naturalists, this will follow from general naturalist principles. Non-naturalists, by contrast, would seem to lack any obvious explanation of why moral facts should so supervene on physical facts Heredity play a major role in our decision and moral actions as people based on how it effects our environment. Fontanilla Conrado , Staff analist, 8/26/12, Does Heredity Influence How Our Life Would Be? http://conradofontanilla.hubpages.com/hub/Does-Genetics-Influence-Our-Life-Would-Be It is difficult to separate the effect of heredity or genetics from that of environment. But let's assume that that can be done. A person may have the genes to enable him to grow 6 ft tall but due to poverty and inadequacy of food he grew only to 5.5 ft tall. The food is part of his environment. Other parts of his environment are: relationship with parents, brothers or sisters if he has any, classmates, members of his congregation. He learns moral values from them.¶ The phrase "would be" in the question pertains to moral values. A crocodile eats any smaller animal in its pond thus he dominates the pond. Let's say it does not care whether its diet suffers of not. The crocodile is amoral. A man/woman may be imbued with moral values. He knows what is good or bad according to his/her environment. His/her genetics affect his/her capacity to learn and to adapt to his/her environment. But his/her morals guide him/her what s/he "would be." His/her genetics makes him/her what s/he "is." His/her environment makes him/her what s/he "would be."¶ For example, Einstein, derived from his genetic make up, had the capacity to come up with the formula E = mc2.. During World War II he feared that Hitler's Germany might have used this formula to develop a powerful bomb as demonstrated by the V-2 rockets that Germany used to bomb London in 1944. He wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the U.S. and urged him to develop a bomb for use in retaliation against Hitler's Germany in case it unleashed an atomic bomb.¶ Then the atomic bombs developed by the U.S were dropped over Nagasaki and Hirosima killing thousands of Japanese civilians (not combatant soldiers) on the spot and maiming several others for life. Einstein was horrified. He said that had he known that the atomic bomb would be used on civilians he would not have urged President Roosevelt to make them (Einstein, A. Ideas and Opinions. 1954).¶ There is duality in man/woman. One part biological; the other moral. ¶ His/her genetics enables him to adapt to the environment. S/he is incapable of making his/her own food, unlike plants. So s/he must eat plants to live. To live is part of "would be." That leads us to consider morality as scaled in degrees. Eating plant may not arouse some sense of guilt, as a plant is also a creature. Or munching seeds of peanut may give us some pleasure when in fact we are killing germinal life. Up the ladder, if there is such a moral ladder, consider the consumption of chicken meat. We kill the chicken when we prepare it for cooking and consumption. Yet we, except some people, do not feel a moral compunction about it. Hardwired For Survival Humans are naturally aware of biological survival risks Jeanna Bryner, staff analyst and editor, 9/24/07, Modern Humans Retain Caveman Survival Instincts, live science, http://www.livescience.com/4631-modern-humans-retain-caveman-survival-instincts.html Date accessed- 7/16/13 Like hunter-gatherers in the jungle, modern humans are still experts at spotting predators and prey, despite the developed world's safe suburbs and indoor lifestyle, a new study suggests. ¶ The research, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , reveals that humans today are hard-wired to pay attention to other people and animals much more so than non-living things, even if inanimate objects are the primary hazards for modern, urbanized folks. ¶ The researchers say the finding supports the idea that natural selection molded mechanisms into our ancestors' brains that were specialized for paying attention to humans and other animals. These adaptive traits were then passed on to us. ¶ "We're assuming that natural selection takes a long time to build anything anew and that's why this is left over from our past," said study team member Leda Cosmides, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). ¶ Ancestor's eyes ¶ Immersed in a rich, biotic environment, it would have been imperative for our ancestors to monitor both humans and non-human animals. Predators and prey took many different forms—lions, tigers and bears—and they changed often, so constant eyeballing was critical. ¶ While the environment has changed since then, with high-rises emerging where forests once took root and pampered pets taking the place of stalking beasts, our instinct-driven attention has not followed suit. ¶ "Having this pop-out attentional bias for animals is sort of a vestigial behavior," said study team member Joshua New of Yale University's Perception and Cognition Lab. ¶ In the study, groups of undergraduate students from UCSB, watched images displayed on computer monitors. The flashing images alternated between pairs of various outdoor scenes, with the first image showing one scene and the next an alternate version of that scene with one change. Participants indicated each time whether they detected a change. ¶ The photographs included animate categories, such as people and other animals, as well as inanimate ones, such as plants, artifacts that can be manipulated (stapler or wheelbarrow) and fixed artifacts, such as landmarks (windmill or house). ¶ Modern hunter-gatherers ¶ Overall, the subjects were faster and more accurate at detecting changes involving all animals compared with inanimate objects. They correctly detected nearly 90 percent of the changes to "living" targets compared with 66 percent for inanimate objects. ¶ In particular, the students spotted changes in elephant and human scenes 100 percent of the time, while they had a success rate of just over 75 percent for photos showing a silo and 67 percent for those with a coffee mug. ¶ Though we are more likely to meet death via an SUV than a charging wildebeest, the results indicated subjects were slower and less successful at detecting changes to vehicles than to animals. ¶ The researchers compare our attentional bias toward animals to the appendix, an organ present in modern humans because it was useful for our ancestors, but useless now. ¶ These results have implications for phobias and other behaviors that involve focus toward specific categories of objects over others. ¶ "People develop phobias for spiders and snakes and things that were ancestral threats. It's very infrequent to have somebody afraid of cars or electrical outlets," New told LiveScience . "Those statistically pose much more of a threat to us than a tiger. That makes it an interesting test case as to why do tigers still capture attention." Error Theory Error Theory Guides Morality ERROR THEORY DEMANDS THE EPISTEMIC REASON BE SEPARATE FROM MORALITY Rowland, Richard., Journal on Ethics on Social Philosophy, January 2013, Moral Error Theory and the Arguments from Epistemic Reasons, http://www.jesp.org/PDF/Moral%20Error%20Theory_final.pdf Error theorists are not skeptical of hypothetical reasons.10 But they hold ¶ that if there are only hypothetical reasons, our understanding of morality ¶ is radically mistaken, because our understanding of morality entails that ¶ there are categorical reasons.¶ 11 However, our understanding of epistemic ¶ reasons and justification also entails that there are categorical reasons. As ¶ I said, it seems that there is reason for everyone to believe that dinosaurs ¶ once roamed the earth regardless of what they want to believe; there ¶ would still be reason for me to believe that I am in my office writing right ¶ now even if believing this made me extremely unhappy or did not promote any of my desires. Two agents in the same epistemic situation seem ¶ to have the same epistemic reasons, regardless of their desires or goals or the roles that they find themselves in, just as two people who see a child ¶ drowning seem to have moral reasons to save the child regardless of their ¶ desires, goals or roles. So, if there are only hypothetical reasons for belief, ¶ our understanding of epistemic reasons is just as badly mistaken as our ¶ understanding of morality and moral reasons is if there are only hypothetical reasons for action. There is a nuanced difference between nihilism and Error Theory, the later concedes that we try to make moral jdugements. Joyce, Richard., Entry for Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2013, “NIHILISM”, Encyclopedia, http://www.victoria.ac.nz/staff/richard_joyce/acrobat/joyce_nihilism.pdf Even restricting attention to “moral nihilism,” matters remain indeterminate. Its most ¶ prominent usage in the field of metaethics treats it as a synonym for “error theory,” therefore ¶ an entry that said only “Nihilism: see ERROR THEORY” would not be badly misleading. ¶ This would identify moral nihilism as the metaethical view that moral discourse consists of ¶ assertions that systematically fail to secure the truth. (See Mackie 1977; Joyce 2001.) ¶ A broader definition of “nihilism” would be “the view that there are no moral facts.” This ¶ is broader because it covers not only the error theory but also noncognitivism (see¶ NONCOGNITIVISM). Both these theories deny that there are moral facts—the difference ¶ being that the error theorist thinks that in making moral judgments we try to state facts (but ¶ fail to do so, because there are no facts of the type in question), whereas the noncognitivist ¶ thinks that in making moral judgments we do not even try to state facts (because, for ¶ example, these judgments are really veiled commands or expressions of desire). (In ¶ characterizing noncognitivism in this way, I am sidelining various linguistic permissions that ¶ may be earned via the quasi-realist program (see QUASI-REALISM).) While it is not ¶ uncommon to see “nihilism” defined in this broader way, few contemporary noncognitivists ¶ think of themselves as “nihilists,” so it is reasonable to suspect that the extra breadth of the ¶ definition is often unintentional. NEITZSCHE SUPPORTS ERROR THEORY Joyce, Richard., Entry for Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2013, “NIHILISM”, Encyclopedia, http://www.victoria.ac.nz/staff/richard_joyce/acrobat/joyce_nihilism.pdf Various eighteenth- and nineteenth-century continental philosophers (e.g., Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Fichte, Kierkegaard) are associated in one way or another with nihilism, though their nihilistic streaks tend to be each so sui generis as to defy easy categorization. Even Nietzsche, who is often treated as a kind of grandfather of European nihilism, is extremely different to classify (see NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH). In certain moods he seems to be clearly advocating an error theory (moral nihilism). In Twilight of the Idols he writes: There are absolutely no moral facts. What moral and religious judgments have in common is the belief in things that are not real. Morality is just an interpretation of certain phenomena or (more accurately) a misinterpretation. (1889, VIII.1 / 2005: 182) MORAL ERROR THEORY REJECTS FIRST-ORDER MORAL CLAIMS Olson, Jonas., Department of Philosophy at Stockholm University, 2010, Error Theory and Reasons to Believe, people.su.se/~jolso/papers/DefMETapril2010.doc according to moral error theory, first-order moral claims are uniformly false. First-order moral claims are claims that entail something about what some agent morally ought to do or not to do, what would be morally permissible or impermissible for some agent to do or not to do, what there is moral reasons for some agent to do or not to do, and the like; or what would be morally good (bad) or morally (un)desirable, and the like. Hence, if error theory is correct, the claim that, e.g., torture is wrong is false. But the law of the excluded middle entails that if it is false that torture is wrong, it is true that torture is not wrong. And the negative claim that torture is not wrong appears to entail that torture is morally permissible, which is clearly a first-order moral claim. This suggests that contrary to the contentions of many moral error theorists, moral error theory does have distinctive first-order moral implications. And rather vulgar ones at that; anything turns out to be morally permissible! I shall not attempt to resolve this issue here. I note merely that one possible strategy for sidestepping this problem is to opt for a version of moral error theory that says that first-order moral claims rest on false presuppositions and are therefore uniformly neither true nor false. In order not to exclude this version of moral error theory, I shall take moral error theory to be the view that no first-order moral claim is true. Analogously, I shall take epistemic error theory to be the view that no first-order epistemic claim is true, where first-order epistemic claims are claims to the effect that there are epistemic reasons for some agent to believe or not to believe some proposition or that believing some proposition is or would be permissible or impermissible, and the like. Before I get started I need to make a brief preliminary remark about formulations of error theories. It is routinely said that Quasi- Realism QUASI-REALISM BAD BECAUSE IT LEGITAMIZES CONTRADICTING ETHICS Moore, A.W., Philosopher of Philosophy at St. Hugh’s College, July 2002, Quasi-Realism and Relativism, http://users.ox.ac.uk/~shug0255/pdf_files/quasi-realism-and-relativism.pdf If it is true that ‘an ethic is the propositional reflection of the dispositions ¶ and attitudes, policies and stances, of people,’ as Simon Blackburn says in ¶ summary of the quasi-realism that he champions in this excellent and wonder- ¶ fully provocative book (p. 310), then it seems to follow that different dispo- ¶ sitions, attitudes, policies and stances-different conative stares, for ¶ short-will issue in different ethics, each with an equal claim to truth; and ¶ this in turn seems to be one thing that could be reasonably meant by that ¶ slippery polyseme ‘relativism’. If such relativism does follow, a good deal ¶ remains to be said about how much force it has. At the limit it might do no ¶ more than signal the abstract possibility of an ethic rivalling that of humans. ¶ More potently, it might somehow legitimize the different ethics of different ¶ groups of humans in actual conflict with one another. But without the possibility of some such variability of ethic to match a possible variability of ¶ conative state, the quasi-realist’s claim that an ethic ‘reflects’ a particular ¶ combination of conative states appears hollow. OUR COGNATIVE STATES EFFECT OUR MORAL STANDARDS Moore, A.W., Philosopher of Philosophy at St. Hugh’s College, July 2002, Quasi-Realism and Relativism, http://users.ox.ac.uk/~shug0255/pdf_files/quasi-realism-and-relativism.pdf The relativism in question is not the view that, had our conative states been different, different ethical standards might have applied; Blackburn has persistently and persuasively argued that he is not committed to anything like that. Nor is it the view that, had our conative states been different, we might have applied different ethical standards; that is a platitude (and scarcely merits the label ‘relativism’). The view is something lying subtly between these, ¶ namely that, had our conative states been different, we might have applied different ethical standards and it might have been right for us to do so; we might have had different ethical beliefs and those different ethical beliefs ¶ might have been true. Legality Law Determines Morality Legality is the base of societal morals George C. Christie. ON THE MORAL OBLIGATION TO OBEY THELAW. Duke Law Journal December, 1990. There is, however, an epistemologically more basic point that can be made here. The stark separation between law and morality-the assumption that the law does not affect morality-is simply untenable. In particular, I wish to assert that the prevailing public morality of any society is very definitely influenced by the law. 2 4 No serious observer of American society over the past thirty years, and certainly no one who has spent a substantial portion of that time in the South, can have any doubt that decisions like Brown v. Board of Education 25 and federal civil rights legislation have profoundly influenced public perceptions as to the morality of segregation. Furthermore, notions as to what constitutes "theft," "fraud," or "stealing" are profoundly influenced by legal analysis-indeed, "theft" and "fraud" are legal terms of art. My argument, of course, is not that we should go to the opposite extreme and deny the force of morality in the law; instead, I wish to argue that the two are inseparable: It is a chicken-and-egg situation. Many of the writers I have mentioned, for example, use the act of promising as an illustration of the kind of activity that generates moral obligations. Yet, in their often extended discussions as to when promises create binding moral obligations, they curiously fall back on the analysis used by lawyers to determine whether contracts are legally binding. To demonstrate that promises create moral obligations in certain circumstances, these writers sometimes cite actual legal decisions and legal treatises, and they even cite the Uniform Commercial Code and the Restatement of Contracts. 2 6 Some of them even expressly adopt the legal position that promissory obligations are ultimately created by the reasonable objective expectations of the other parties to the transaction and not by the actual subjective intent of the alleged promisor 2 7 If the critics of legal obligation are telling us anything, it appears to be that if a promise creates a legal obligation, it also creates a moral obligation. The example of promising also shows that the separation of morally significant matters (in which moral obligations supply the needed direction) from the problems of social coordination in a complex world (in which law sometimes shows the way) is simply untenable. In a complex world, everything is a matter of social coordination, as the practice of promising demonstrates. The point can be made even more decisively by taking a situation that would appear to provide one of the paradigmatic examples of morality, in and of itself, providing a sufficient basis of obligation, namely, the circumstances under which the killing of another human being is permissible. It is instructive to note that, when Raz discusses this situation, he talks of "laws prescribing behaviour which is morally obligatory independently of the law (e.g. prohibiting murder, The example of promising also shows that the separation of morally significant matters (in which moral obligations supply the needed direction) from the problems of social coordination in a complex world (in which law sometimes shows the way) is simply untenable. In a complex world, everything is a matter of social coordination, as the practice of promising demonstrates. The point can be made even more decisively by taking a situation that would appear to provide one of the paradigmatic examples of morality, in and of itself, providing a sufficient basis of obligation, namely, the circumstances under which the killing of another human being is permissible. It is instructive to note that, when Raz discusses this situation, he talks of "laws prescribing behaviour which is morally obligatory independently of the law (e.g. prohibiting murder, Rule of Law The rule of is necessary to limit abuses of the majority. Michael Meyer-Resende is a director of Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin-based group promoting political participation. 09 Democracy Reporting International http://www.democracy-reporting.org/files/essential_elements_of_democracy_2.pdf date accessed 7/20/13 Democracy Reporting International There are few definitions of the rule of law in the context of international instruments related to ensuring democratic practices within states.30 Nonetheless, its core meaning is clear. That is, the rule of law commits all public authorities to comply with independently and impartially administered legal and justice systems, such that states make continuous efforts ¶ ‘[g]uaranteeing that no individual or public or private institution is above the law’.31 Sometimes the rule of law is narrowly construed as an efficient and effective system of justice and law enforcement. Beyond that, it is also interpreted to imply certain standards for ¶ the legislative process, namely that this should be an open and transparent process that reflects the will of the people and the outcomes of which are public and freely available. Increasingly, the rule of law is seen through a broader conceptual framework ¶ that links it to human rights and democratic order; e.g., UN Human Rights Commission resolution on democracy and the rule of law (resolution 2005/32), the OSCE Copenhagen 1990 commitments and the Charter of Paris for a New Europe. ¶ As an inherent element of democracy, the rule of law therefore indicates that the will of the majority has clear and certain limits, not only in the form of universal human rights, but also in relation to the constitutional framework of a state. Consequently, for example, public referenda should not be used to overrule constitutional provisions. Rule of law ensures security and democracy Gabriel Marcella, teaches strategy in the Department of National Security and Strategy of the United States Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Imperative of the Rule of Law in the Democratic State.¶ DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE AND THE RULE ¶ OF LAW:¶ LESSONS FROM COLOMBIA. December 2009 date accessed 7/20/13 http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/ ¶ Any discussion of democratic governance in conflicted societies must begin with security and the ¶ rule of law. Although security, state presence, and social and economic progress are all important mutually ¶ reinforcing elements in establishing a government’s authority and legitimacy, it is the rule of law and its ¶ acceptance by the people that binds them all together. Democracy is not possible without security, and ¶ security without the rule of law is a Hobbesian hell. Achieving security and the rule of law requires political ¶ will, resources, and time to repair and build institutions and develop the rules of democratic community that ¶ are generally accepted by the populace. That is why the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration ¶ of Independence are such singular documents. They codified a long process of institutional and political ¶ development that began before the Magna Carta in 1215 and ultimately transformed 13 colonies into a ¶ democratic state that survived a great civil war and is still evolving in the 21st century. Indeed, the Magna ¶ Carta was itself the result of the security and enforcement of the King’s Law, established by English monarchs as early as Henry II (1154-89). Within the security provided by the Magna Carta, the barons took the first steps towards what eventually became widespread parliamentary democracy. The rule of law makes democracy work because law is the collective will of society, making possible the monopoly on the legitimate use of force, equal rights, and social order. Six elements comprise the rule of law: order and security, legitimacy, and checks.

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