Terrorism negative
Uniqueness
AT: Losing war on terror
Even if they’re right – current counter-terrorism is still successful in preventing
catastrophic directed attacks
Poplin, 15 - Cody Poplin is a research assistant at the Brookings Institution where he focuses on national
security law and policy (“Safe Havens Still Matter” 1/28, http://www.lawfareblog.com/safe-havens-stillmatter
In a recent post over at War on the Rocks, Clint Watts addresses the new threats Zenko and Wolf
outline, but with the nuance they lack. While lone wolves do present a new and heretofore unaddressed
threat, their presence does not eliminate more traditional terrorist threats. Instead, terrorist attacks
now now comes in three forms: inspired, networked, and directed.
Directed attacks are those that most come to mind when one thinks of Al Qaeda: large, signature
attacks on major financial, defense, or transportation infrastructure. Safe havens provide the greatest
opportunity for terror groups like AQAP or Khorasan in Syria to plan and execute these attacks.
However, over the last thirteen years, these attacks have proven rare as Western counterterrorism
operations have placed groups under sustained pressure while law enforcement improved at
disrupting plots already in motion.
Networked attacks, such as the Charlie Hebdo attack, are those where veteran fighters will return home,
mix together, and create their own communities of jihadi sympathizers. While they will share ties with
major terrorist organizations, their attacks may not come at the specific direction of the group. Here,
and in the future, law enforcement will be key at disrupting networks that have formed in the wake of
failed attempts to root out safe havens.
The final type of potential attack is an inspired attack, where lone wolves who seek fame in a highly
individualized age of digital media execute attacks on behalf of, but without any connection to, a known
terrorist organization. These attacks are the least dangerous, but will still be deadly, and may occur
more often than others. And, while unconnected directly to a large terrorist organization, much of the
inspiration they receive to radicalize will come from jihadist propaganda created in safe havens around
the world. The effect of these actions will be magnified by the group in hiding that issues justifications
and calls for homegrown jihad.
In the end, Zenko and Wolf’s piece is long on criticisms, but short on solutions. It is possible to argue
that the United States has pursued a militarized response to terrorist safe havens that has cost precious
lives while achieving little. But, while US intervention hasn't solved the problem, it still remains unclear
how retreat will. There are responses other than a forever war accompanied by drone strikes and covert
operations, including boosting our aid to civil societies and ramping up our agenda on development and
political reform. A recent study by Rand Corporation suggests that fragile states, such as Yemen, are
unable to process military assistance in a meaningful way, but that nonmaterial aid in the way of
education, law enforcement, and counter-narcotics yields much better results. The US may need to
consider alternatives for drying up the safe havens. But turning away from the sanctuaries where
terrorists plot will only give space for extremism to succeed.
Domestic law enforcement and overseas military and counterterrorism operations will continue to
prove key to disrupting attacks before they occur. At times, this will require a more robust military
response to destroy safe havens, particularly where the threat is acute and the organization well
networked and growing. At other times, success will require strong domestic law enforcement
capabilities to disrupt plots gathering in the hotel in Hoboken. A comprehensive approach will be one
that weds these critical capabilities together while boosting the ability of our allies on the ground to
prevent the conditions that lead to safe havens in the first place. Yet, no matter what the approach, safe
havens will continue to matter, and their threat is no myth.
Err neg – classified data means the government can’t publish the details of foiled
attacks, but independent reviews confirm them
Dahl, 13 - Erik J. Dahl is an assistant professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate
School in Monterey, California, where he teaches in the National Security Affairs Department and the
Center for Homeland Defense and Security (“Discussion Point: It’s not Big Data, but Little Data, that
Prevents Terrorist Attacks” 7/25,
http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/35903/Discussion%20Point_%20It%E2%80%99s%20no
t%20Big%20Data,%20but%20Little%20Data,%20that%20Prevents%20Terroris.pdf?sequence=1
Our government hasn’t been able to do a very good job of explaining to the public what it has been
doing, partly because intelligence agencies are often unable to talk about their successes for fear of
revealing their sources and methods. That’s why officials have said that a number of plots and attacks
have been foiled, but they haven’t provided much specific information about those cases that wasn’t
already in the public record.
Research I am currently conducting for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and
Responses to Terrorism (START), together with my colleagues Martha Crenshaw and Margaret Wilson,
can shed some light on how this NSA data may be used. We are studying unsuccessful terrorist plots, in
hopes of finding out what tools and techniques are the most useful in preventing attacks.
One finding supports the NSA’s argument that the data they are collecting can be useful in preventing
future attacks. Opponents have suggested that the NSA data might only be useful in tracking down
terrorists after the fact; because those haystacks of information are not apparently being looked at in
real time, they are unlikely to help prevent future attacks. But the history of terrorist plots and attacks
within the United States since 9/11 shows that most plots take a long time to develop. Even terrorist
actions involving only one or two people typically take months or even years to plan and attempt. This is
good news, because it gives law enforcement time to discover what’s going on, and it also gives the NSA
time to search those haystacks it’s been collecting.
Deterrence by denial solves
Deterrence by denial works—empirics.
Guthe 14. (Kurt, Director of Strategic Studies at the National Institute for Public Policy. “The Global Nuclear Detection
Architecture and the Deterrence of Nuclear Terrorism,” Comparatative Strategy. 18 Nov 2014. Taylor & Francis Online.)//CB
Like retaliatory threats, then, defenses can deter. As with current counterterrorism strategy, deterrent
strategies may combine punishment and denial. The combination can be stronger than either approach
alone. A deterrent based solely on a retaliatory threat provides no protection if that threat proves
insufficient to prevent an attack; defenses that support a denial deterrent by making an attack
unattractive also offer some insurance if the attack takes place nonetheless. Defenses present an
obstacle to attack success, but there can be cases where the prospect of failure alone is not enough to
discourage a potential attacker; with a retaliatory threat added, the adversary faces a steeper price for
attempting an attack, including one that ends in failure.
For deterring a terrorist attack, deterrence by denial may be at least as important as deterrence by
threat of punishment. The clandestine nature, decentralized or distributed organization, and relative
autonomy of terrorist groups can make them hard to deter through punitive threats; the task of
determining to whom and against what such a threat should be directed might be quite difficult. The
ability of certain groups, like al-Qa’ida and its affiliates, to withstand considerable punishment over an
extended period also can undercut the deterrent effect of retaliatory threats. The options for retaliation,
moreover, can be significantly limited by political, moral, legal, and operational considerations.
Deterrence by denial, in contrast, depends not on threatening to kill, capture, or otherwise harm the
plotters, but on frustrating the plot. The onus is on terrorists to design an attack that can overcome
known—and unforeseen—obstacles, including opposing defenses, and do so within available resources
or abandon their plan.
Deterrence by denial prevents terror attacks—terrorists won’t attack if they don’t
think they can succeed.
Wilner 15. (Alex, Senior Research Affiliate and Visiting Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of
Toronto. Deterring Terrorism: Contemporary Debates. 2015. Project Muse.)//CB
First, defensive denial functions by restricting and constraining the terrorism processes. By augmenting
structural defenses around potential targets, for instance, a state effectively tightens the security
environment and reduces the ease with which terrorists can carry out attacks. This is intuitively
understood: By impeding access, structural defenses force terrorists to reassess the costs and benefits
of a particular action.86 Other scholars have gone further. They suggest that restricting terrorist
financing (by un- covering, foiling, and blocking monetary transactions between terrorists and their
supporters) and eliminating an organization’s domestic or foreign sanctuaries (by better policing
territory or by more effectively cooperating with neighboring states) might also have a coercive effect
on an organization, effectively denying it easy access to the things it needs.87 In theory, the more
difficult a target is to attack, the less likely it will be. And, related to this, the higher the level of
protection around a target, the more complex the attacks against it will have to be, further augmenting
the risk of operational failure. In practice, defensive deterrence requires first assessing what targets
terrorists most want to attack and building specific defenses that challenge the utility of attacking. If
perpetrators come to believe that attacks are go- ing to be difficult to mount or that they are likely to
fail, they may be less willing to try.
Defensive denial in counterterrorism is not particularly new. During the 1970s (and especially following
the well-coordinated attack at the Munich Olympics) the United States was concerned that foreign
militants might manage to steal an American nuclear bomb stored in one of NATO’s Euro- pean bases. In
response, U.S. scientists developed new parameter-control mechanisms that could detect and stop
intruders. Eric Schlosser recounts that one such mechanism involved mounting nozzles on the walls of
bomb storage facilities that could quickly fill rooms with sticky foam, immobiliz- ing intruders and
safeguarding the nuclear bombs.88 More recently, during the al Aqsa Intifada, Hamas, Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and other militant groups began by first attacking Israelis
within Israel with suicide bombers dispatched against soft targets. Transportation hubs, cafés, bars,
restaurants, shopping malls, and public markets were re- peatedly targeted in the first half of the
conflict. In response, Israel began defending public access points to bus and train depots, universities,
and hos- pitals; restaurants and bars began placing guards outside their doors; blast- proof entrances
were added to buildings; checkpoints and security barriers were established in major cities and on
highways; and privately owned shuttles—like Sherut, a minivan, taxi-sharing service that ferries
passengers between cities—began offering alternative transportation to public buses and trains. The
cumulative effect was the eventual restriction of easily accessible soft targets. We like to think that a
guard outside a restaurant serves the diners inside; they are protected from harm because the guard is
likely to stop a would-be bomber at the door. But there is more to it: In limiting access to a target,
defenses go beyond simply protecting that target to manipulating an adversary’s willingness to attack
that target. The first process is defense; the second is coercion. In Israel, over time, suicide bombers
were forced to target military and police checkpoints over civilian targets, and many deto- nations
occurred outside and off target. The result was a diminishment in the utility of suicide attacks in Israel
and an eventual reduction in their use.
Deterrence by denial need not rest on structural defenses alone. Behav- ioral defenses work by
introducing environmental uncertainty into terrorist planning. The U.S. Department of Homeland
Security suggests that “vari- ability and unpredictability must be consciously injected into flexible prevention measures.”89 The deterrent target in question here is the terrorism process itself;
unpredictability impedes terrorist planning by introducing greater levels of uncertainty. And uncertainty
translates into a denial mech- anism in the planning and orchestration of terrorism. As a 2011 report
pub- lished by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START)
at the University of Maryland suggests, “If [terror- ists] cannot understand and game security systems,
they cannot have confi- dence that an attack will succeed.”90 In practice, applying behavioral denial
involves conducting spot checks at public transportation hubs, establishing a police presence at
randomly selected city intersections, and instructing security vehicles to leave their emergency lights
on—as they do in Washing- ton, D.C., for instance—to give the impression of an overwhelming security
presence. Most of these tactics rely on what is often referred to as random an- titerrorism measures
(RAM), which “change the overall security/force protec- tion appearance” around potential civilian and
military target sites, as seen “through the eyes of a terrorists.”91 An effective RAM program presents
mil- itants with an unscheduled and even “unorthodox situation” that will compli- cate planning attacks
and potentially deter behavior as a result. RAM defenses influence behavior because terrorists are
generally risk-averse while preparing for attacks—they obey the law; are less likely to steal, speed, or do
drugs; and generally try to avoid undue attention—and are usually sensitive to operational risk—which
they try to diminish by casing a target in advance, uncovering defensive patterns, and exploiting security
gaps.92 Behavioral denial muddles this surveillance process, negating preparation and potentially
unnerving planners.
Deterrence by denial solves - Cyberterrorism
Deterrence by denial prevents cyberterrorism—other methods are out-of-date.
Jasper 15. (Scott, lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School in the Center for Civil-Military Relations and the National
Security Affairs department. “Deterring Malicious Behavior in Cyberspace,” Strategic Studies Quarterly. Spring
2015. http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/digital/pdf/Spring_2015/jasper.pdf)//CB
Deterrence by denial of benefit denies an adversary’s objectives by increasing the security and resilience
of networks and systems. Traditional passive reactive methods, like antivirus software and blacklists,
have grown ineffective as the volume and complexity of threats increase.52 A defense-in-depth
approach emphasizes the continual deployment of reactive solutions to protect multiple threat points,
including network, endpoint, web, and e-mail security.53 The spectrum of cybersecurity tools and
techniques ranges from next-generation firewalls, applica- tion whitelisting, intrusion prevention
systems and sandboxes to access control, data encryption, patch management, and data loss
prevention. Layering multiple technologies combined with best practice endpoint management can
decrease the risk of customized malware payloads, be- cause each layer blocks a different aspect of
multipronged cyberattacks. For example, at the delivery phase, device control can block infected
Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices. At the exploitation phase, patch and configuration management can
eliminate known vulnerabilities. At the installation phase, application control can prevent unapproved
execut- ables.54 Cybersecurity frameworks suggest technical measures that can monitor networks and
systems, detect attack attempts, identify com- promised machines, and interrupt infiltration. The
Council on Cyber Security’s Critical Security Controls offers a prioritized program for computer security
based on the combined knowledge of actual attacks and effective defenses.55 These controls cover a
range of best practices, including vulnerability assessment, malware defenses, and access control. The
controls identify commercial tools to detect, track, control, prevent, and correct weaknesses or misuse
at threat points. The top three drivers for adopting these controls are increasing visibility of attacks,
improving response, and reducing risk.56 When the Congress failed to enact the necessary legislation,
Pres. Barack Obama signed an executive order for the development of a Cybersecurity Framework that
incor- porates voluntary consensus standards and industry best practices. The inaugural Cybersecurity
Framework is built around the core functions of identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover.57 The
Critical Security Controls are part of the Framework’s informative references that illus- trate methods to
accomplish activities under these functions.
NSA links
1nc – NSA
Restrictions that add time or process to the NSA undermine the entire foundation of
US intelligence gathering – collapses counterterrorism
McLaughlin, 14 - teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (John, “NSA
intelligence-gathering programs keep us safe” Washington Post, 1/2,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/nsa-intelligence-gathering-programs-keep-ussafe/2014/01/02/0fd51b22-7173-11e3-8b3f-b1666705ca3b_story.html
It’s time we all came to our senses about the National Security Agency (NSA). If it is true, as many allege,
that the United States went a little nuts in its all-out pursuit of al-Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, it is equally true that we are going a little nuts again in our dogged pursuit of the post-Snowden
NSA.
Those who advocate sharply limiting the agency’s activities ought to consider that its work is the very
foundation of U.S. intelligence.
I don’t mean to diminish the role of other intelligence agencies, and I say this as a 30-year veteran of the
Central Intelligence Agency who is “CIA” through and through. But in most cases, the NSA is the starting
point for determining what holes need to be filled through other means of intelligence-collection. That’s
because its information on foreign developments is so comprehensive and generally so reliable. It is the
core of intelligence support to U.S. troops in battle . Any efforts to “rein in” the agency must allow for
the possibility that change risks serious damage to U.S. security and the country’s ability to navigate in
an increasingly uncertain world.
The presumption that the NSA “spies” on Americans should also be challenged. In my experience, NSA
analysts err on the side of caution before touching any data having to do with U.S. citizens. In 2010, at
the request of then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, I chaired a panel investigating the
intelligence community’s failure to be aware of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “underwear bomber”
who tried to blow up a commercial plane over Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009.
The overall report remains classified, but I can say that the government lost vital time because of the
extraordinary care the NSA and others took in handling any data involving a “U.S. person.”
(Abdulmutallab, a Ni-ger-ian, was recruited and trained by the late Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen based
in Yemen.)
Regarding outrage over the NSA’s collection of telephone calling records, or metadata, I don’t know why
anyone would have greater confidence in this information being held by private companies. And given
the perceived threat to privacy, it’s astonishing how little attention has been paid to the Senate
commerce committee’s recent report on companies that gather personal information on hundreds of
millions of Americans and sell it to marketers, often highlighting people with financial vulnerability.
Some companies group the data into categories including “rural and barely making it,” “retiring on
empty” and “credit crunched: city families.” The aim is often to sell financially risky products to transient
consumers with low incomes, the report found.
That’s a real scandal — and a universe away from the NSA’s ethical standards and congressional
oversight.
The NSA, of course, is not perfect. But it is less a victim of its actions — the independent commission
appointed by President Obama found no illegality or abuses — than of the broad distrust of government
that has taken root in the United States in recent decades. Studies by Pew and others show distrust of
government around 80 percent, an all-time high.
This distrust is the only logical explanation I see for fear of data being held by “the government” — and
it’s not a circumstance the NSA created.
Although our society lauds, in almost “Stepford Wives”-like fashion, the merits of “transparency,” it
lacks a collective, mature understanding of how intelligence works, how it integrates with foreign policy
and how it contributes to the national welfare. Meanwhile, prurient interest in the details of leaked
intelligence skyrockets, and people devour material that is not evidence of abuse but merely fascinating
— and even more fascinating to U.S. adversaries.
So what makes sense going forward? Clearly, the widespread perception that there is at least the
“potential for abuse” when the government holds information even as limited as telephone call
metadata must be addressed. The recent presidential commission recommended adding a public privacy
advocate to the deliberation process of courts that approve warrants — one proposal that would do no
harm. But as the administration contemplates reform, it must reject any ideas that add time and
process between the moment the NSA picks up a lead overseas and the time it can cross-check records
to determine whether there is a domestic dimension to overseas plotting.
As our debate continues, the terrorist threat is not receding but transforming. The core leadership of alQaeda has been degraded and remains under pressure, but robust al-Qaeda affiliates have multiplied.
With the decline of central government authority in the Middle East and North Africa in the wake of the
Arab Spring and the war in Syria, terrorists have the largest havens and areas for operational planning in
a decade.
If anything, the atomization of the movement has made the job of intelligence more labor-intensive,
more detail-oriented and more demanding. Now is not the time to give up any tool in the
counterterrorism arsenal.
Data localization
Data localization is vital to NSA collection
Byman and Wittes, 14 - *professor in the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of
Foreign Service with a concurrent appointment with the Georgetown Department of Government AND
**senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings (Daniel and Benjamin, “Reforming the NSA” Foreign
Affairs, May/June, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-04-17/reforming-nsa
Meanwhile, foreign countries have toyed with the idea of requiring Internet companies to provide local
data-storage services to their citizens. Some foreign governments and companies may turn to domestic
firms for their technological needs; such firms will be sure to emphasize that their U.S. competitors will
not keep foreign data secure. But these efforts may ironically make the NSA’s job easier, since the
agency is less constrained by laws or oversight in accessing data stored abroad.
AT: Doesn’t stop attacks
Their argument misunderstands the role of intelligence – it can’t be measured casually
in preventing specific incidents – instead it’s part of a whole-of-government approach
that boosts the effectiveness of counterterrorism generally
Byman and Wittes, 14 - *professor in the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of
Foreign Service with a concurrent appointment with the Georgetown Department of Government AND
**senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings (Daniel and Benjamin, “Reforming the NSA” Foreign
Affairs, May/June, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-04-17/reforming-nsa
The NSA claims that its activities have helped prevent numerous terrorist attacks at home and abroad
since 9/11. Such claims are difficult to verify without access to classified data. More important, they rely
on an inappropriate measure of success. The agency’s true remit goes beyond just stopping attacks: the
NSA seeks to identify terrorists, understand their organizations, and anticipate and disrupt their
activities. On that broader set of tasks, the agency has accomplished a great deal in recent years. But
however important, the NSA’s data collection is rarely the only factor in effective counterterrorism. Such
operations are the result of coordination and cooperation among many different intelligence
organizations.
OCO links
1nc – OCOs
OCO’s are vital to target ISIS use of the internet – prevents cyber attacks and disrupts
command and control
Van de Velde, 15 - adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the
National Intelligence University (James, “Crash Their Comms” The American Interest, http://www.theamerican-interest.com/2015/06/10/crash-their-comms/
Going on Cyber Offense
At the moment, the web presence of Islamist extremists is a sort of “gateway drug” into the cyber
world. If the United States and its allies do not address it now, they may have to accept extremist cyber
activity of increasing breadth and sophistication, with greater cyberspace consequences. Terrorist use of
cyberspace also works to internationalize the Islamist fight. In a sense, the “cyber jihad” world is flat,
connecting individuals worldwide who might not otherwise have been connected.
If Islamist extremists turn their attention to disruption and destruction through the web, they are likely
to conduct distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks and threaten the controls for electric power
grids, oil pipelines, and water systems. Should social media accounts become useful for disseminating
cyber weapons, Islamists would gain additional capacity.
Threat is a function of expertise and access. Fortunately, the Islamic State’s cyber expertise overall is
low, as is its access to high-quality advice or tutelage. But unlike with the development of WMD, both
expertise in and access to cyber capabilities can change overnight, particularly should a capable
revisionist state or individual decide to assist the Islamic State. With WMD, a research-and-development
phase exists during which U.S. and other intelligence services can discern, evaluate, and plan
accordingly. With cyber weapons, space, time, and geography offer up no comparable advantages.
Delivery methods for cyber weapons are much easier to devise and disseminate, and have little to no
lead-time (no lengthy research and development phase). In short, the targets would likely not see it
coming.
There is reason for concern. A 2013 edition of Inspire called upon jihadists to burn parked cars, make oil
slicks to cause car accidents, and puncture tires with nails hammered into blocks of wood. It used to be
that al-Qaeda wanted a spectacular follow-on attack to 9/11 and desired to take on the West as a
whole. It did not want just any attack; it wanted a good one. Today, al-Qaeda affiliates seem to be
calling for any attack, even those as comparatively minor as an individual picking up an AK-47 or using a
private vehicle to run over people. The Islamic State’s online magazine, Dabiq, has called for its
supporters living in Western countries to rise up individually and attack law enforcement and
government officials. It seems to have abandoned the long-sought “spectacular” follow-up to 9/11. It is
reasonable to think al-Qaeda’s attitude toward cyber weapons may change too.
Should just the right expert hacker join the Islamic State or al-Qaeda, whether for money or out of
sympathy, either group could move overnight from a cyber nuisance to a serious cyber power. It is not
inconceivable that rivals to the United States, Israel, or the cultural West in general such as Iran might
provide such cyber weapons to al-Qaeda, or even to its enemy the Islamic State. Tehran might do so as a
means to fight the United States asymmetrically, divert U.S. attention from its nuclear weapons program
or its support for Shi‘a terrorists worldwide, or simply create a deeply distracting economic drain for the
United States.
Further, the forensic attribution problem for the United States and its allies, should a cyber weapon be
used against it, would be horrendous. The cyber weapon might appear to be Russian- or Chinese- or
Iranian-made if its code were originally written in one of those countries, but that will not mean the
weapon was delivered by that state. Regardless of whether al-Qaeda or the Islamic State took credit for
the attack, the United States might be confused as to who created such a cyber weapon, who sent it and
why, and how to defend against a repeat attack.
So far, the Islamic State has not been too interested in cyber weapons for three probable reasons: cyber
weapons are not spectacular enough in their destruction (messing with websites and infrastructure is
not as powerful an image as a beheading video); it lacks the technical ability to create such weapons;
and “cyber jihad 2.0” has served it well thus far. Despite some setbacks, the Islamic State is currently
flushed with success—why change anything?
One of those successes is of a particularly unusual and alarming nature. Most Islamic State supporters
today were teenagers when 9/11 occurred and are children of the internet and social media. Their
radicalization is very recent; it is a post-bin Laden phenomenon. Their motivation for joining the Islamic
State has more to do with the dynamics of a social network that provides direction, identity, and
excitement than it does with religious understanding. The Islamic State dangles the opportunity to join
something new and exciting in front of bored and disaffected teens.19 This social media strategy is
aimed purposefully at youth worldwide. How does this work?
Islamic State videos take the traditional Western narrative, that Islamist extremists kill Muslims and are
wanton, heretical murderers, and stand it on its head. It has made images of murder the centerpiece of
its new message. Its production quality is so good that it has spawned the term “jihadi cool.” Whereas
al-Qaeda produced rather flat websites that merely posted radical content (“cyber jihad 1.0”), the
Islamic State produces videos and online magazines that are on par in quality, editing, and message
delivery with current Western media. It practices “cyber jihad 2.0” at the least through its production
quality and cutting-edge use of social media. It keeps pace with advances in Western media production,
aided, no doubt, by the many Western supporters it has managed to attract. Its video production, in
particular, is constantly uploaded, taken down but then uploaded again to numerous video sites so that
it ultimately reaches its intended audience.20 Islamic State videos proclaim righteous victory over the
Shi‘a and other so-called non-believers, about which there is nothing unusual or unexpected. But it
showcases acts of brutality, a new phenomenon that Western analysts ignore at all our peril. ISIS
professionals have managed to frame brutality in such a way that it engenders pride and a sense of
inclusion, rather than revulsion.
It does not occur to most normal adults in Western countries how this can work. We do not readily
understand why a first- or second-generation Muslim living in London, or Amsterdam, or Marseilles, or
Toronto would want to leave a typical middle-class life to go wallow in blood in the middle of the Syrian
desert. Until we do come to understand this, and understand why some such people are attracted by
the opportunity to do unspeakably brutal things to total strangers, we will never defeat the Islamic
State.
What to Do
To repeat, the strategic goal of the U.S. government is to defeat al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. To do
so, the United States must shut down the insidious messages of its jihadi enemies and contest their
presence on the internet. Counter-Islamist efforts, therefore, must make it a priority to shut down its
militant websites and social media.
Well-meaning professionals argue that these websites and social media outlets serve as the means to
identify, monitor, and assess jihadi groups and their sympathizers. But the argument that the
intelligence loss would outweigh the gain of contesting these sites misunderstands the end goal:
denying the enemy’s ability to recruit, support operations, pass weapons information and formulae, and
promote extremist ideology that encourages terrorism. The point is to end the threat, not write reports
about it.
2nc – internet key to ISIS
The internet is the most important venue for terrorist communication Van de Velde, 15 - adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the
National Intelligence University (James, “Crash Their Comms” The American Interest, http://www.theamerican-interest.com/2015/06/10/crash-their-comms/
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) would not exist today were it not for its prolific and shrewd
use of the internet and social media. Al-Qaeda would have likely died years ago, too, had its appeal not
been kept alive by the same means. Without contesting extremist use of the internet, the United States
and its allies will fail to defeat the Islamic State and to eliminate al-Qaeda, both of which are, let us
remember, the stated goals of U.S. policy. Certainly, bombing ISIS without a broad and complementary
political strategy will not work, and may even prove counterproductive in the long run by strengthening
evidence for the radical Salafi narrative that all means of defense are justifiable since the West started a
war with Islam.
Lacking infrastructure and the resources of a state, Islamist extremists use the web to redress strategic
disadvantages in planning attacks, maintaining and financing their organizations, and recruiting and
inspiring new affiliates. ISIS leaders and workers will likely rely on the web to maintain a global presence
and reach, but also use it in creatively offensive ways that al-Qaeda never did.
There are three types of Salafi websites: official Islamic State and al-Qaeda websites; “wanna-be sites”
(by groups that want to be recognized as aligned); and mirror sites (groups or individuals who merely repost extremist content). Through the internet, these groups also maintain a somewhat organized
command-and-control structure.
Given the heavy physical stress the United States and its allies have placed on al-Qaeda in particular
since 2001, some argue that al-Qaeda leadership has since devolved into “only” a media organization
that now practices terrorism only when it can get its depleted ways and means together. It is a
“terrorism studio” today and not much else; it no longer attempts much strategic planning and plotting,
or deploys facilitators, logisticians, operators, and execution managers. Once al-Qaeda lost its physical
safe havens where it hid from U.S. harassment, it established virtual safe havens.
The Islamic State’s internet presence, however, is not residual and defensive in nature; it is increasingly
sophisticated and effective. The Islamic State has established an internet sanctuary, perhaps learning
from al-Qaeda’s experience. But it has added much more savvy operational security (OPSEC) to its
communications, especially through social media. It has rejected al-Qaeda’s squeamishness about the
murder of Muslims (not that al-Qaeda has not murdered a great many Muslims anyway) and made such
murder the centerpiece of its online message. It seems to work for recruitment purposes; murder has
become a form of performance art by which the Islamic State advances its brand.
Given that al-Qaeda and the Islamic State use cyberspace to attack us in the real world, it follows that
cyberspace should constitute no special sanctuary for them. Yet for all practical purposes it does. Their
presence in cyberspace is more or less uncontested, enabling the internet to serve well as a “drive-thru”
radicalization asset. Anyone from anywhere can read the radical ideology of al-Qaeda and the Islamic
State unmolested, getting their fill of pseudo-intellectual ideology and bomb-making instructions. The
internet thus serves as a kind of on-ramp for those who then travel abroad for specific training or to
make personal connections. Once in theater, the clever use of social media allows the Islamic State to
use temporary email accounts, Twitter accounts, and hashtag re-postings to communicate crude
operational commands.
The internet has become a key means for the Islamic State leadership to bring the ideological seeker and
mentor together, and thus operationalize its forces via an infrastructure that the United States and its
Western allies developed, financed, installed, and still maintain. It provides that sense of identity and
belonging required for the disaffected and psychologically vulnerable to move to the stage of violence.
In other words, the internet has become not just a jihadi mentor—a “virtual spiritual sanctioner” as it
has been called—but also a virtual, globe-spanning minbar, the podium from which sermons in the
mosque are delivered.1 The internet provides jihadi support groups with a source of religious
justification that characterizes and is required of all jihadi cells.2 As a result, given that radicalization via
online mentoring can move faster than mentoring in person, the use of the internet shortens the
timeframe between the beginning of radicalization and the onset of terrorist activity.3
The internet gives ISIS a global recruiting presence and ability to keep communications
secret
Van de Velde, 15 - adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the
National Intelligence University (James, “Crash Their Comms” The American Interest, http://www.theamerican-interest.com/2015/06/10/crash-their-comms/
Online and OPSEC Savvy
The leadership of the Islamic State uses the internet, dedicated websites, and social media such as
YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to propagate its ideology, history, impressive recruitment record, and
claims of battlefield success. It can do this because there is an audience. There are almost three million
Facebook members in Iraq, more than one million in Syria; 10,000 Twitter users in Iraq, 8,000 in Syria.
The Islamic State has more than 50,000 Twitter followers.4 Many of these consumers knew how to read
al-Qaeda online, and now have transferred over to the “strong horse”, the radical organization that now
leads the pack. Through social media the Islamic State leadership proclaims to the world explicitly that it
is the successor to Osama bin Laden’s legacy and is fulfilling the original goal of establishing a caliphate.5
According to the cybersecurity company Zerofox, not only has the Islamic State built an online
propaganda strategy using many social media networks; it also employs experts in marketing, public
relations, and visual-content production with a sophistication far surpassing al-Qaeda.6 For example,
ISIS activists will use a trending hashtag as a means of infiltrating conversations by adding that hashtag
to one of their unrelated tweets. They also mass-tweet using their own designated hashtags, which gets
them to trend. In addition, ISIS has created its own app, an Arabic-language Twitter app called “The
Dawn of Glad Tidings” (or just “Dawn”). When users sign up, they give ISIS permission to send tweets
through their own personal accounts. This allows ISIS tweets to reach hundreds or thousands more
accounts, giving the perception that its content is bigger and more popular than it is. The Dawn app is
used as an education tool, distributing news and information about ISIS to its users.
ISIS also uses networks of computers it has infiltrated (“bots”) to carry out its campaigns via remote
control, rendering the individuals behind the activities unidentifiable. Because these bot armies are so
widespread and continually regenerate accounts, the group is always one step ahead of governments
and social media networks attempting to thwart its maneuvers. ISIS also distributes propaganda
specifically designed to target a Western audience, for instance by using hashtags they know the
Western world is searching for—like #worldcup2014 #fifaworldcup—for the purposes of recruitment or
inciting fear. In addition to promoting information about itself, ISIS also educates its social media
followers on how to access information blocked by governments and social media sites through
TOR/anonymizer tutorials.
Quite aside from their technical prowess, those who labor for the Islamic State also produce attractive
and effective content. They produce high-quality video, which chronicles the group’s alleged historical
success and records its violence, including executions, beheadings, and attacks, to intimidate opponents
and the regimes it aspires to topple. It blends recent history, such as its supposed success against U.S.
occupation forces in post-Ba‘athi Iraq, with historical allusions to the great apocalyptic Sunni struggles
against opponents of Islam, implying to would-be recruits that now is the time to join the great,
successful Islamic State struggle. ISIS workers have also reportedly created recruitment propaganda
using video game formats.
So much for the internet being an ineffective base of operations for offensive maneuvers. As for
defense, the Islamic State leadership practices online operational security to stay anonymous and
advises online readers on how to enhance their anonymity as well. It also uses temporary accounts,
changes accounts periodically, and uses TOR to mask IPs, making the Islamic State’s communications
largely dark, hard to track or target, and resilient.
The State’s self-proclaimed leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his followers have proven exceptionally
difficult to track because they reportedly encrypt their communications and take steps to avoid being
detected by enemy surveillance. Islamic State leaders also likely use FireChat, a commercially available
service that permanently deletes messages sent via the internet, making them nearly impossible to
intercept.7 Finally in this regard, Islamic State operators study Western media carefully, including the
history of successful Western counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda. They do this to learn how
to protect their work and their masters from similar attacks in the future.
By maintaining multiple official and non-official accounts, Islamic State cyber-operators promote the ISIS
brand and message, solicit funds, recruit followers, and maintain a crude organizational structure.
Although such use is contrary to Twitter policy, the geometric propagation of messages via use of
hashtags with links to advance perishable messages and images has allowed the Islamic State to
maintain a resilient and disposable communications structure to connect with supporters even if
accounts are subsequently shut down by Western or local internet service providers. Through
decentralization, it has largely secured its communications from the traditional warfare techniques of
jamming or interception. In a sense, it has crowd-sourced its communications.
The internet is vital to ISIS command and control
Van de Velde, 15 - adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the
National Intelligence University (James, “Crash Their Comms” The American Interest, http://www.theamerican-interest.com/2015/06/10/crash-their-comms/
All Islamic State web media productions fall under the umbrella of Al-Furqan Media, while another
media organization associated with ISIS, Fursan Al-Balagh Media, works on video transcriptions, giving
viewers the chance to both read and watch all productions.8 And whether by accident or design, Islamic
State operators have created a new form of operational command and control: C2 via app.
Thousands of Twitter followers have downloaded a Twitter app—the aforementioned Dawn of Glad
Tidings—through which users give permission to receive Islamic State messages, images of military
success, and video feeds, affording the Islamic State a Hollywood-quality feel.9 The application, flagged
by Twitter as “potentially harmful”, requests user data and personal information.10 After downloading
it, the app sends news and updates on ISIS operations in Syria and Iraq. Islamic State cadres include
selected individuals who are expert at Adobe and video production. Each Islamic State region has its
own dedicated social media accounts and supporters worldwide provide further channels through which
to get its message to Western media.11
In addition to official Islamic State social media accounts, hundreds of Islamic State sympathizers use
private accounts to connect to thousands of internet followers. Islamic State media products are thus
tweeted and then its hashtags re-tweeted by “private” supporters, enablers, and voyeurs, using the
power of social media to project an image beyond its true capability, creating what is now-known as a
“Twitter storm.”12 Imagery, slogans, and would-be success stories are all crowd-sourced, allowing
quality production to rise to the top through the power of social media. It is equivalent to allowing
individual experts in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and beyond to advance a positive image of America
independently of any government oversight or direction.
Examples of these tactics illustrate the cleverness of ISIS media operations, which have propelled the
Islamic State far beyond al-Qaeda-afffiliated groups in the effectiveness of their information operations:
One Islamic State supporter tweeted during the 2014 World Cup, ‘This is our ball,’ along with a photo of
a decapitated head and the #WorldCup hashtag, which ensured that it would pop up on news feeds on
the World Cup.13
On July 4, 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appeared unexpectedly on social media to give a sermon that was
pre-posted via Twitter (before his video was uploaded onto YouTube) to guarantee its dissemination.14
A video series named ‘Mujatweets’ shows the life of Muslims in the Islamic State and testimonials from
Western militants reporting their alleged commitment to the new Islamic State.15
The ISN (Islamic State News), a new, online Islamic State publication in English, provides news,
information, and inspirational stories to readers worldwide (including, of course, the Western media).
Launched in May 2014, a new Islamic State media branch, Al-Hayat Media, distributes materials in
several languages, including video with subtitles, as well as articles, news reports, and translated jihadi
materials. Its main Twitter account is in German, but it also publishes in English and French, as well as
Turkish, Dutch, Indonesian, and Russian. Al-Hayat Media’s videos and materials are also distributed via
Archive.org and other free web-hosting services; they are also regularly listed on justepaste.it, a web
service for sharing free user-created contents, as well as on lesser-known social media such as Quitter
and diaspora.16
On July 8, 2014, The ISR (Islamic State Report), also known as “An Insight Into the Islamic State”, which
contains articles on Islamic State events, first began to release its showcase online magazine, Dabiq,
consisting of detailed, well-written stories in fluent English. It resembles the well-known but cruder
English-language magazine, Inspire, published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, famous for
providing bombing-making instructions (in slightly broken English) to aspiring terrorists worldwide.17
Dabiq is named after the area Halab (Aleppo) in Sham (Syria), mentioned in the hadith as the place for
Malahim (“Armageddon”)—an allusion to the site of a major 16th-century battle where the Ottomans
defeated their enemies and established their first caliphate.18
In short, the Islamic State’s information operations are slick, de-centralized, and resilient, designed to
withstand private-sector account cancellations for violations of terms of service. They have propelled
the Islamic State to the forefront of terrorist information-operations success. Today, the Islamic State,
al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda affiliates use media services to upload pleas for readers to conduct local and
worldwide terrorism, manuals on how to create improvised explosive devices, invitations to join the
fight in the Middle East, and claims of success and ideological purity. Someday they may also
disseminate cyber weapons via the web, should they acquire or devise them. The odds they will are high
unless they are stopped beforehand.
2nc – OCOs solve
OCO’s are key to stop ISIS
Van de Velde, 15 - adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the
National Intelligence University (James, “Crash Their Comms” The American Interest, http://www.theamerican-interest.com/2015/06/10/crash-their-comms/
The Fifth Domain of Warfare, so called by the Department of Defense, is here, like it or not. Cyber
attacks can amount in their significance to armed attacks, subject to international humanitarian law and
the rules of war, according to the U.S. State Department’s Legal Advisor. What is unique about this
domain is the fact that Islamist extremist activity on the web takes place every day. It is a war without
timeouts or truces.
What is also unique about this domain is that the private sector more or less owns most of this
infrastructure. The Islamic State exists in the cyber domain and specifically in social media. Unless we
demand that social media companies cleanse themselves of violent extremist content, we will need to
get used to the fact that our own counterterrorism cyber forces will be forced to fight in this media as
well. Few of us want to go there, given the hornet’s nest of constitutional issues that will arise from it.
But we may have no choice.
No counter-Islamic State strategy that ignores its use of the internet and social media will succeed. No
military strategy or comprehensive whole-of-government approach can really be whole without
addressing the Islamic State’s use of the internet. All warfare today includes the new Fifth Domain, and
the sooner we recognize its importance to our adversaries, the sooner we will begin to address the
threat seriously.
Interfering with the ISIS internet generates greater intelligence gathering and
moderates extremism
Van de Velde, 15 - adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the
National Intelligence University (James, “Crash Their Comms” The American Interest, http://www.theamerican-interest.com/2015/06/10/crash-their-comms/
There are several other secondary, but important, aspects to contesting the extremist message on the
internet. Interfering with extremist websites and social media stimulates communications and useful
chatter (‘hey, what’s going on?’) for intelligence collection. As suggested above, curtailing the aggregate
number of extremist websites allows more moderate Muslim voices to be heard among the discussion
groups and above the din of the militant ones. Contesting such websites forces extremist groups to
expend valuable time, resources, infrastructure, and technical expertise to compete with these other
sources. Challenging the al-Qaeda/Islamic State internet presence is not technically difficult for host
nations, allies, and the United States. (We simply choose not to do so for political reasons or because of
the myth that such actions would be futile.)
AT: Whac-A-Mole
It’s technically feasible to shut down ISIS internet – even if it devolves to Whac-AMole
Van de Velde, 15 - adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the
National Intelligence University (James, “Crash Their Comms” The American Interest, http://www.theamerican-interest.com/2015/06/10/crash-their-comms/
Shutting down these resources is technically feasible for internet service providers, host nations, allies,
and all those who oppose al-Qaeda’s and the Islamic State’s message of violence on the internet. The
assumption among much of the media, punditry, intelligence, and defense communities that contesting
al-Qaeda and the Islamic State online is somehow technically challenging is wrong. Although jihadi web
administrators can pop up new sites quickly, the U.S. Department of Defense, other U.S. government,
allied, and host-nation elements can just as quickly shut them down. And should the competition
between al-Qaeda or the Islamic State on the one side and the United States and its allies on the other
devolve into a “Whac-A-Mole” game, such a result would be overwhelmingly to our advantage, given
how viewership would drop precipitously if forum members had to try to re-acquire al-Qaeda or Islamic
State sites day in and day out. The vast majority of viewers and members would quickly give up.
Further, it is a myth that extremist websites come back quickly, if contested. In the past, when ISPs or
host countries contested some websites, many never came back at all. And those that do come back
often return in a diminished manner, with far fewer members and more limited exposure. And since
most militant sites merely post content from the top extremist sites, should the top sites go down the
smaller sites will be starved of content (and non-militant content may enjoy greater readership). AlQaeda and the Islamic State are increasingly dependent on a coherent and clear message conveyed
through the internet. If they are perceived as weak or inept at delivering that message (or can’t deliver it
at all), their appeal will falter.
AT: Kills internet freedom
Doesn’t undermine internet freedom
Van de Velde, 15 - adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the
National Intelligence University (James, “Crash Their Comms” The American Interest, http://www.theamerican-interest.com/2015/06/10/crash-their-comms/
Some will cry “censorship” at the suggestion that Western governments shut down the jihadi web
presence, but confronting websites that advocate violence does not undermine internet freedom. We
can and do distinguish between speech that advocates violence and protected speech. Furthermore,
confronting ISPs that host content that violates their own terms of use does not undermine any right or
law.
TSA links
TSA Effective
Recent revelations ensure TSA security is effective- high spending and increased
surveillance
SCHOLTES 7/15— Transportation Reporter. (Jennifer, “TSA's response to criticism: Longer airport
lines,” Politico, 7/15/15, http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/longer-airport-lines-likely-as-tsa-triesto-plug-security-holes-120117.html). WM
The Transportation Security Administration has a new strategy for improving its woeful performance in catching
airport security threats — and it will likely mean longer lines and more government bucks . A month after
the TSA was embarrassed by its almost-total failure in a covert security audit, Homeland Security
Secretary Jeh Johnson has ordered the agency to pursue an improvement plan that will require more hand-wanding of
passengers, more use of bomb-sniffing dogs and more random testing of luggage and travelers for traces of explosives.
It will also consider reducing travelers’ chances of being sent through the expedited PreCheck lines at airports. Increased reliance on PreCheck
is just one strategy TSA has used to become slimmer and swifter in the past few years, drawing buckets of praise from a Congress that’s
otherwise largely criticized the agency. It has also relied more on technology like body-scanners and analyses of specific travelers’ risks while
leaning less on labor-intensive methods like pat-downs, allowing the TSA to save manpower costs and shrink its workforce. But then came the
leak of a still-classified inspector general report in June, which found that TSA agents had failed to find fake
explosives and weapons 67 out of 70 times during covert testing — and that the screening technology often just doesn’t work.
The 96-percent failure rate drew sharp rebukes from Capitol Hill, led to the immediate ouster of then-acting Administrator Melvin Carraway
and caused much shuttle diplomacy between lawmakers and the agency’s top brass. Now the response threatens to gum up airport
checkpoints. “In light of the 96 percent failure, they’re probably going to slow things down,” House Homeland Security
Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) acknowledged in an interview. He added that “the technology failure was a big part of the problem” and that
the DHS inspector general pointed to the agency’s policy of funneling travelers from regular security lines through the less-intensive PreCheck
queues as one of the “big weaknesses.” Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, agreed that air passengers will probably feel
the impact of the latest changes. “Things are going to slow down, and consumers are going to get increasingly frustrated,” he
said. Johnson said this month that he had ordered TSA to start doing more manual screening, such as using handheld metal detectors and doing
more random tests for trace explosives, and to take a second look at the agency’s policy of selectively diverting non-vetted travelers into the
PreCheck lanes. “Some of those things he’s talking about are going to slow the lines down,” the House Homeland Security Committee’s ranking
Democrat, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, told POLITICO. “So the question is: What’s this going to do to throughput?” While Thompson
says he supports adding more manual screening and being more selective about which travelers get expedited treatment, he’s concerned about
how this shift reflects on all the work the agency has done to move away from slower procedures. “If walking
back allows us to
identify more vulnerabilities, then that’s good. But what does that say for all the tens of millions of dollars that we’ve spent on
technology that was supposed to move us forward?” Thompson said. “It’s clear that our technology that’s being deployed — either because of
the machines or the operators — failed us.” Johnson also said this month that he has directed the TSA to rethink performance standards for the
screening equipment implicated in the inspector general’s report. He noted that the CEO of the company that manufactures the machines has
said he will help make the technology more effective. Although Johnson didn’t directly pin the blame on the scanning machines, McCaul and
Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) say the IG’s report noted that the body imaging technology has an unacceptable failure rate and that the
manufacturer guarantees threat detection accuracy at well under 100 percent. Because the report is still classified, the agency hasn’t disclosed
exactly which types of equipment were involved or how they failed. But McCaul and Rice identified them as the millimeter-wave body scanners,
made by L-3 Communications Corp., that force passengers to pose inside a booth with their arms raised. The machines are supposed to find
both “metallic and nonmetallic” objects hidden under passengers’ clothing, including guns and explosives, and “can detect a wide range of
threats to transportation security in a matter of seconds,” TSA boasts on its website. McCaul said his panel is looking into how much of the
failure rate can be attributed to technology issues versus human error. He plans a hearing on the issue this month with testimony from new TSA
Administrator Peter Neffenger, who assumed his post July 6 after being confirmed by the Senate. The
current plan, McCaul said, is for
DHS to update the imaging machines’ software. “Jeh Johnson’s a smart guy,” the chairman said. “He and I talk a
lot. And he knows that updating that software is probably going to reduce the failure rate.” What’s less clear is
how the department is going to handle vulnerabilities in its PreCheck program, which allows travelers to pass through security checkpoints with
their shoes and belts on, and without removing laptops and liquids from bags. The main problem, many lawmakers say, is TSA’s “managed
inclusion” policy of giving that special treatment to travelers who haven’t gone through the program’s vetting process. To enroll in PreCheck,
passengers must provide fingerprints, undergo a background check and pay an $85 fee. One purpose of steering non-enrolled passengers into
the PreCheck lanes has been to give travelers a taste of what life could be like if they signed up for the expedited screening program, said David
Inserra, a homeland security policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. It also makes more efficient use of TSA’s screeners when the speedier
lines are drastically shorter than the regular queues. “You’ve got these people working these lines, and sometimes they’re going to be doing
nothing, or we can use them for something,” Inserra said. “But that’s not really a good security mindset. That’s really an efficiency mindset.”
Patricia Rojas Ungár, vice president of government relations at the U.S. Travel Association, says the “managed inclusion” program “really has
run its course.” Now, she said, it’s important for TSA “to double down in getting people enrolled in the actual program.” The agency’s standard
security policies were born of credible threats and real terrorism plots, such as Richard Reid’s attempt to detonate explosives packed in his
shoes on a flight from Paris to Miami just three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Lawmakers first started to challenge the
“managed inclusion” policy after learning this spring that TSA screeners had allowed a known former domestic terrorist through a PreCheck line
last year. And the issue has only gotten more attention since the IG’s report was leaked. “The inspector general highlighted that one of the big
weaknesses was managed inclusion,” said McCaul, whose committee approved a bill last month that would bar the agency from allowing most
non-vetted travelers into PreCheck lines. “Do we want to be kicking in people who may be a threat? I don’t know. Obviously we’re not going to
target the grandmother and the baby. … It has to be risk-based, but with security in mind, because the
terrorists — unfortunately — they
still want to blow up airplanes.” In his 10-point plan for the TSA, Johnson has also directed the agency to
reassess whether it should allow non-vetted travelers into PreCheck. But Thompson, who wrote the bill that would
prohibit the policy, says there’s no doubt the practice is weakening security and should already be changed. “If
you know a system you have deployed creates a vulnerability, you fix it,” Thompson said. “If throughput is one of the objectives, it should not
be the sole objective.” Homeland Security officials often reiterate that individual
aspects of physical security screening, or
even the whole checkpoint process, are only layers of a vast aviation security system that includes
behavior detection officers, bomb-sniffing canine teams, federal air marshals and reinforced cockpit
doors. And it’s the strength of those layers in combination that will ultimately thwart terrorist attacks,
says Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). The Senate chairman
said he views the new steps the TSA is taking as “kind of Band-Aids” to try to provide some interim security improvements while Congress and
the department consider bigger changes, such as expanding the role of air marshals to give them more law enforcement and investigative
power. “We’re obviously far from 100 percent secure. I mean, far from 100 percent secure. So we really need to look at a layered approach,
think outside the box,” he told POLITICO. “There’s so many different facets of this problem that we need to look at, but I think security’s got to
be multi-layered — some visible, some invisible.”
The TSA “Playbook” Strategy is backed up by decades of crime prevention practices
Lum et. Al. 11— Ph.D., Criminology and Criminal Justice, (Cynthia Lum; Charlotte Gill, Ph.D. in
Criminology; Breanne Cave Ph.D. Criminology, Law, and Society; Julie Hibdon, Ph.D., Criminology, Law
and Society; David Weisburd, Ph.D, Criminality, Law, and Society; “Translational Criminology: Using
Existing Evidence for Assessing TSA’s Comprehensive Security Strategy at Airports,” Evidence-Based
Counterterrorism Policy,
19 Aug 2011, Springer: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-0953-3_10). WM
Conclusion
This chapter describes the fi rst systematic, evidence-based review and assessment
of TSA’s Playbook strategy to prevent and deter crime and terrorist activity at our nation’s airports using a translational
criminological approach. As we have seen, there are very few evaluations of counterterrorism measures or airport security compared to other
law enforcement sectors. Given the massive amount of money spent on such measures since 9/11, evaluation of the effi ciency and outcome
effectiveness of such measures is imperative. However, many of the crime-prevention measures
at airports mirror a broader
criminological literature on situational crime-prevention, deterrence, and interagency cooperation. Here,
we have used these parallels in our preliminary assessment and evaluation of the TSA Playbook. In classifying the Playbook using an “Airport
Security Matrix,” we found that most plays are immediate and tactical in nature, and few are strategic. Further, the vast majority of plays do
not require cooperative deployment. Thus, much of our analysis focuses on immediate and tactical plays that are primarily carried out by TSA
personnel. For these plays, we discovered four general tendencies. The first is that these plays
more often involve mechanisms
of prevention that aim to harden targets, deter and prevent offenders by increasing their perceived
effort, rather than increase guardianship, or reduce vulnerabilities of passengers or other targets. Second, most of these plays focus on the
public and employee screening areas; there is defi nitely a focus in the Playbook on employees rather than passengers. Third, plays occurring in
public areas outside or directly inside of the airport entrance tend to be guardianshiporiented rather than specifi cally focused on deterring
offenders. Finally,n the Playbook tends to focus on reducing passenger and target vulnerability largely at the fi nal “layer of security” located at
gates and airplanes. When we examined the immediate/tactical plays within each of the sub-books, we found additional concentrations of
plays in both mechanism type and location of play. For instance, FSD plays primarily occur in screening and secure areas (both passenger and
employee) and mainly involve approaches designed to increase offender efforts. HQ plays are also designed to deter offenders, but unlike the
FSD plays, they are typically designed for public areas. The HQ Playbook also contains a signifi cant majority of the plays that require
cooperation between TSA and other non-TSA agencies. NR plays typically occur at secure passenger areas and gate locations and tend to use
increased guardianship as their main mechanism of prevention. A small minority of the plays was strategic in nature, and most focus on longterm management activities that incorporate the use of general watchfulness and increased guardianship. It is expectedly in the strategic plays
where requirements for cooperation are found. When comparing more general descriptions of plays at intersecting Matrix dimensions, we
found that the
Playbook generally and loosely incorporates many evidence-based practices for prevention
and deterrence, although this evidence base varies across studies by design rigor as well as applicability to airport security and
counterterrorism. Of course, how and which plays are implemented at any given time ultimately tempers the Playbook’s effectiveness. The
majority of plays within the Playbook use situational crime-prevention mechanisms (e.g., blocking offender
access and target hardening), which have been supported in other crime-prevention evaluations . Additionally,
studies confirm and support the use of tailored, placespecifi c interventions for crime prevention and
deterrence. The Playbook illustrates some compliance with this evidence-based mechanism through the location focus of many of the
plays. However, how places are chosen for play implementation is not clear. More importantly, exactly how such studies translate to the
context of terroristic violence within a confi ned location (airports) is still unknown. With regard to the notion of randomization as a deterrence
mechanism, the research
indicates that randomly allocating patrol at selected high-risk places can increase
crime-prevention effects. However, whether the locations in which the plays are implemented are indeed the highest-risk locations in
the airport is unknown. Further, although the Playbook has a built-in randomization component with regard to selection of the set of plays used
at any particular time, this element of the Playbook may be manipulated in such a way that reduces randomization. However, whether this is a
negative or positive change with regards to increasing security is also unknown in the absence of evaluation. Reducing random deployment of
plays may not be problematic depending on whether such randomization increases or decreases deterrence. This is not clearly understood in
criminological research and is not researched at all in counterterrorism studies. Further, although there is research supporting some of the
prevention mechanisms that are found in both situational crime-prevention measures and airport security (which itself needs to be more
closely scrutinized for comparison), there are some types of airport security measures for which we could not easily identify parallel evidence in
the crime-prevention literature. Ultimately, the determination of effectiveness must be supported by evaluations, through experimentation
and simulation, of the actual interventions within airports. Finally, we think the
Playbook, which uses plays that involve
interagency cooperation, can actually serve as a means of facilitating and fostering working relationships between
the TSA and other agencies that operate in and around the airport. It might be worthwhile to explore how these
interagency relationships and efforts could benefi t from involvement in additional plays beyond public
airport areas and areas external to the airport. The Playbook attempts a broad range of prevention and
deterrence tactics across multiple contexts. Understanding the prospects and challenges of implementing
such a strategy and identifying ways in which measures of success might be derived
are imperative in accurately judging this method of airport security
TSA behavioral monitoring solves- Israeli Airline empirics prove
Adams, NORDHAUS and SHELLENBERGE 11— leading global thinkers on energy, environment,
climate, human development, and politics. All work for the Breakthrough Institute. Norhaus is chairman,
Shellenberg is cofounder (NICK ADAMS, TED NORDHAUS AND MICHAEL SHELLENBERGE,
“COUNTERTERRORISM SINCE 9/11 Evaluating the Efficacy of
Controversial Tactics,” THE SCIENCE OF SECURITY- a project of the Breakthrough Institute, SPRING 2011,
http://thebreakthrough.org/images/pdfs/CCT_Report_revised-3-31-11a.pdf). WM
The TSA also employs behavioral profiling, whereby agents seek to discover passenger nervousness,
irritability, or other suspicious signs that might indicate their intentions to commit terrorism. The
methods are reputed to be highly effective in Israel , where the national airline, El Al, despite receiving
almost daily terror threats, has not experienced a major attack in over three decades. TSA’s use of
behavioral profiling is much less intensive than El Al’s. The latter approach submits every passenger to a
battery of open-ended questions and psychological evaluations. By contrast, TSA’s Screening Passengers
by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program only closely questions the rare passengers that agents deem
suspicious. In practice, probably owing to the human tendency to interpret the behaviors of poorly
understood out-group members as 'exotic' (Tajfel 1982), TSA agents, according to multiple anecdotal
accounts, have been prone to apply greater scrutiny to Muslim, Arab, Sikh, and SouthAsian air
passengers
TSA Screening methods effectively combat terrorism
Adams, NORDHAUS and SHELLENBERGE 11— leading global thinkers on energy, environment,
climate, human development, and politics. All work for the Breakthrough Institute. Norhaus is chairman,
Shellenberg is cofounder (NICK ADAMS, TED NORDHAUS AND MICHAEL SHELLENBERGE,
“COUNTERTERRORISM SINCE 9/11 Evaluating the Efficacy of
Controversial Tactics,” THE SCIENCE OF SECURITY- a project of the Breakthrough Institute, SPRING 2011,
http://thebreakthrough.org/images/pdfs/CCT_Report_revised-3-31-11a.pdf). WM
MORE UNIVERSAL SCREENING METHODS SHOULD BE IMPLEMENTED IN AIRPORTS, GIVEN THEIR
EFFECTIVENESS SINCE 9/11 IN PREVENTING ATTACKS. Given that terrorist groups have avoided
heightened airport screening by recruiting new members who do not fit CAPPS (or ‘Secure
Flight’) profiles, DHS and the TSA need to universally apply the highest available levels of
screening to all passengers. Universal screening for liquids and metal have already made it more
difficult for terrorists to either bring, or effectively detonate, bombs on planes , as the botched
bombing attempts of the shoe bomber and the Christmas Day bomber demonstrate. Minimally invasive
full body scanners can pose an even more effective barrier. TSA should install these scanners as quickly
as possible and also consider greater implementation of randomized and unseen screening methods –
which cannot be reverse-engineered by terrorists – if they continue to distinguish passengers for
secondary screening
The TSA has 20 checks against terrorism, making threats very unlikely
Dillon and Thomas 15— Ph.D., Professor of Computer Information Systems,
and Professorship of Business Administration, both at James Madison University (Thomas W. Dillon,
Daphyne S. Thomas, “Exploring the acceptance of body searches, body scans and TSA trust,” Journal of
Transportation Security, May 2015, Springer: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12198-0150157-7). WM
In response to this heightened level of concern, the Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) has established a system of “20 Layers of Security.”
Strengthening security through a layered approach is designed to provide defense-in-depth
protection of the traveling public and the United States transportation system. Of
these 20 layers, 14 are pre-boarding security designed to deter and apprehend terrorists
prior to boarding aircraft (Stewart and Mueller 2008). Both pat-down body searches
and full-body scanning fall under “pre-screening” measures found within the
Pre-Boarding Security category. There are important issues surrounding the need
for a better and more effective screening process, and a higher level of acceptance
by flyer. These include designing more agile screening operations, balancing
technology and human approaches to security, and focusing the appropriate levels
of security resource on both stopping terrorist and meeting privacy concerns
(Jacobson et al. 2009).
TSA machinery deters terrorists
Frimpong 11— PhD in public affairs (Agyemang, “Introduction of full body image scanners at the
airports: a delicate balance of protecting privacy and ensuring national security,” Texas Southern
University, Houston, TX, USA, 1 April 2011, Springer: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12198011-0068-1/fulltext.html). WM
There has been a challenge for governments around the world balancing the security of aviation travel
while protecting civil liberties and privacy of the people. In America any form of encroachment on civil
liberties and personal privacy is highly resisted no matter where it comes from. The introduction of the
new full body image scanners at some of the nation’s airports have stoked high passions from private
citizens alleging that TSA officials would be spying on their naked bodies. The federal government
counteracts these complaints by saying that the new machines could go a long way to deter potential
terrorists from sneaking contrabands and weapons through the old security system. So far scholars and
experts have not been able to come up with a possible solution as to how to avoid invasion of privacy
while ensuring security of air travel.
Airplane security is effective- Multiple checks and deterrence
Abend 15— captain for a major airline and aviation analyst(Les, “Pilot: Is TSA security a complete
failure?,” CNN, June 4, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/03/opinions/abend-tsa-screening-failure/).
WM
The process we all have come to know and love involves technology like magnetometers and full body
scanners. But while it seems that the process starts with the smashing of your roller bag onto the
security belt, trained personnel are observing behaviors. Profiling is politically incorrect, but all aspects
of passenger dress and demeanor are considered part of threat assessment. If a nervous twentysomething male is wearing a winter coat in Miami rather than carrying it, an alert TSA agent will most
likely apply extra scrutiny. During boarding, flight attendants perform their own screening . Over my 31
years with the airline, I have found no better people watchers than flight attendants. Passengers are
their captive audience. All flight attendants are trained in defensive tactics , too, with the ability to use
creative resources you could never imagine. And finally, the buck stops in the cockpit . Pilots are also
trained in defensive tactics. In some cases, an unknowing terrorist who breaks into the flight deck may
find himself facing the business end of a very loud and lethal semiautomatic weapon. So what's up
with the Grandma screening or the child-in-the-stroller wanding? A lot of security procedures involve
deterrent logic. In other words, an individual with nefarious intentions might conclude that his evil plot
carries a high risk of detection, especially if everyone is a suspect. And don't underestimate the evil
sickness of terrorists. It is indeed possible that Grandma or a toddler could be used to transport
something threatening. Another aspect of deterrence is randomness: not maintaining a routine during
the security process, or not having the same routine at every airport. That said, my experiences at
various airports around the world make me question the rationale behind procedures. At one very
civilized and busy international destination, crew members are corralled through specifically designated
screening areas away from passenger traffic. Almost every other crew member sets off the
magnetometer alarm and then receives a thorough wanding and pat-down. In other countries, it's the
opposite -- screeners are just going through the motions. Although crew members pass through the
same magnetometers as passengers, everyone appears to receive the same indifferent treatment,
uniform or not.
Terrorism may be increasing but the TSA has accounted for it
Herridge 14— award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent (Catherine Herridge, “TSA head: Threat
from terrorism worse now but US better able to combat it,” Fox News, December 17, 2014,
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/17/tsa-head-threat-from-terrorism-worse-now-but-usbetter-able-to-combat-it/). WM
The outgoing and longest-serving head of the Transportation Security Administration says the threat
from terrorism is worse now than when he took the job four years ago, but the U.S. is better
positioned to combat foreign plots. "The threat today is unfortunately more expansive than what it
was four-and-a-half years ago," John Pistole told Fox News during an interview before he leaves at the
end of the month, concluding 31 years of government service -- including 27 at the FBI, where he rose to
the rank of deputy director. "With that being said, we also have better insights into who the potential
bombers are," he added. From Pistole’s unique position at the TSA and FBI, he watched Al Qaeda's
strategy evolve from the 9/11 attacks that murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, to the failed underwear
bomb plot to bring down a jet on Christmas Day 2009 and the non-metallic explosive devices buried in
cargo a year later. Although Al Qaeda experimented in 2012 with surgically implanted bombs before
apparently abandoning the idea as impractical, Pistole suggested they are now focused on devices held
close or strapped to the body. "That is one of things that concerns us, how well do they design,
construct and then conceal," he said. Pistole will become president of his alma mater, Anderson
University in Anderson, Ind., this spring. Fox News asked Pistole whether the threat to American aviation
had diminished since August, when the U.S. launched a bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq,
and the Al Qaeda-led "Khorasan" group. Khorasan contains long-time associates of Usama bin Laden,
including Sanafi al-Nasr and Muhsin al-Fadhli, as well as a handful of operatives trained by the Yemeni
bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri, who specializes in non-metallic bombs that traditional airport screening
can miss. "Without going into details about what that may look like from a classified intelligence
perspective, we do remain concerned that there is active plotting going on," Pistole said. And with new
information that the French bomb maker David Drugeon likely survived a U.S. air strike last month,
Pistole added, "there is concern that there are still individuals out there who have not only the ability to
do that, but also the intent to use that on a flight to Europe or the US." The TSA administrator also
described classified procedures that track foreign fighters, based on their travel history, before they
check in at overseas airports for U.S.-bound flights. "There are individuals we are concerned about and
we are again looking at if they make travel reservations, then they of course receive proper scrutiny,"
Pistole said.
Empirics and other countries prove the TSA is the best option
Maxa 7/14— travel expert(Rudy, host and executive producer of “Rudy Maxa’s World,” the Emmy
Award-winning, travel series, “Travel Minute — A Word In Defense of the TSA,” Rudy Maxa’s World, JUL
14TH, 2015, http://rudymaxa.com/2015/07/travel-minute-a-word-in-defense-of-the-tsa/). WM
I and others often take the TSA to task for sloppy work, rudeness, or plain, old lack of common sense. I
thought it might be nice to note that since 9/11, not a single US airline has been a victim of terrorism .
Oh, folks have tried. Remember the failed effort of the so-called “Christmas underwear bomber” who
tried to blow up a Northwest Airline flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in 2009? And let us keep in mind
that terrorism targeting airliners is older than most know. Way back in 1933, a bomb blew up a United
Airlines Boeing 247—a Chicago gangland murder was suspected–but the case was never solved. The first
in-flight bombing of a jet liner was in 1962 when a Continental Airlines flight was blown up over Iowa
while flying from Chicago to Kansas City, MO. An investigation determined a passenger had brought a
bomb aboard in order to commit suicide as part of an insurance fraud scheme. And while Islamist
terrorists have attacked Russian aircrafts—two in 2004—and a Chinese carrier was brought down in
2002 in another insurance scam, US carriers have been blessedly free of a successful terrorist action in
the last 14 years. I don’t know that the TSA can take full credit, but I am certain that security curtain has
caused some terrorists to re-think strategies.
Airline attacks coming
Security expert indicates airline attack coming now
Page 15— Washington Bureau chief of USA TODAY (Susan, “CIA veteran Morell: ISIS' next test could be
a 9/11-style attack,” USA Today, May 11, 2015,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/05/10/michael-morell-cia-the-greatwar/27063655/). WM
WASHINGTON – The Islamic State simply inspired the deadly assault by two men on an exhibit of
cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed near Dallas last week, CIA veteran Michael Morell says. But
it's only a matter of time before the jihadist group is likely to be in a position to direct more elaborate
attacks on American soil that could result in mass casualties. "If we don't get ISIS under control, we're
going to see that kind of attack," the kind of attack al-Qaeda launched on 9/11 , Morell told USA
TODAY. So far, U.S. efforts haven't been effective in countering the Islamic State's success in recruiting
hundreds of American converts, he says, "and we're not effective at it because it's very hard to do."
Morell was by President George W. Bush's side at a Florida elementary school in 2001 when the
president was told hijacked airliners had crashed into the World Trade Center, and he was in the White
House Situation Room with President Obama nearly a decade later when the first word was relayed that
Navy Seal Team Six had killed Osama bin Laden. After 33 years in the CIA, including two stints as acting
director, Morell has written an account of his experiences, published Tuesday by Twelve, titled The
Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism From Al Qa'ida to ISIS. His central point: This
"great war," which already has tested the nation's national security and its politics, is likely to stretch for
decades more. "For as far as I can see," he says. Just last Friday, the threat level at U.S. military bases
was raised to the highest level since the 10th anniversary of 9/11, in part because of concern about the
Texas attack that left the two assailants dead. "We're very definitely in a new phase in the global
terrorist threat," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson warned Sunday on ABC's This Week. On Fox
News Sunday, House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, said the groups' sophisticated
use of the Internet means that "really, terrorism has gone viral." "It was a mistake to think that al-Qaeda
died along with bin Laden in Abbottabad," Morell says, an assumption made by some relieved
Americans that he says wasn't shared by intelligence agencies. While al-Qaeda's leadership in
Afghanistan and Pakistan has been decimated, other branches of the group have thrived, including alQaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen. " They today have the ability to bring down an
airliner in the United States ," Morell says. "If that happened tomorrow, I would not be surprised."
ISIS will attempt 9/11 style attacks soon- masterminds currently on their side and
experts see the most dangerous combination of events
Kaplan 14—political reporter (Rebecca, “Will ISIS plan a 9/11-style terror plot against the U.S.?,” CBS
News, June 16, 2014, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/will-isis-plan-a-911-style-terror-plot-against-theu-s/). WM
Republicans are sounding the warning that
the next 9/11-like terror plot
could emerge from
the regions of Iraq and Syria that are currently dominated by an extremist group bearing down on
Baghdad. As the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) - which has already captured the cities of Tikrit and
Mosul and is threatening to take the capital city as well - grows in strength and numbers, will it pose an
immediate threat to the United States homeland as well? Experts say the group's increasing power and
reach is concerning, though it's not entirely clear when they might be able to threaten the U.S. "You've
got motivation mixed with opportunity, ideology and foreign fighters and all of that looks like a very
extreme version of Afghanistan in the '90s, plus what was happening in Iraq after the Iraq war," said CBS
News National Security Analyst Juan Zarate. "This is a cauldron of future terrorist threats to the west."
The bigger danger, Zarate said, is that the U.S. does not yet know exactly what the group will look like
once it evolves. While ISIS might not launch an attack on U.S. soil tomorrow, he said, "I think the grave
threat here is that you have the seeds of a new terrorist movement emerging very aggressively." Sen.
Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday that U.S. officials have warned the next
major attack on U.S. soil could emanate from the region. " The
seeds of 9/11s are being
planted all over Iraq and Syria," Graham said. "They want an Islamic caliphate that runs through
Syria and Iraq...and they plan to drive us out of the Mideast by attacking us here at home ." Graham's
concerns were echoed on ABC's "This Week" by Ret. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who said that "all Americans
should be concerned" by ISIS' quick rise and success in Iraq. And on "Fox News Sunday," House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said, "I guarantee you: this is a problem that we
will have to face and we're either going to face it in New York City or we're going to face it here." "These
are not monkey bar terrorists out in the desert somewhere planning some very low-level attack. These
are sophisticated, command and controlled, seasoned combat veterans who understand the value of
terrorism operations external to the region, meaning Europe and the United States. That is about as
dangerous a recipe as you can put together," he said. There have been some indications this might be
the group's intent. Army Col. Kenneth King, who was the commanding officer of a U.S. detention camp
in Iraq, told the Daily Beast recently that when current ISIS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was released in
2009, he said, "I'll see you guys in New York." But Michael Morell, the former acting CIA director and a
CBS News analyst on intelligence, national security and counterterrorism issues, predicted it's at least a
year before ISIS might pose more of a serious threat to the U.S. The current major threats to the
homeland still come from al Qaeda groups in Pakistan and Yemen, he said. But, Morell added, if it looks
like the U.S. influence in Iraq is increasing once again, the threat from ISIS could also rise. "That's one of
the downsides of U.S. involvement," he told CBS News. "The more we visibly get involved in helping the
[Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] government fight these guys, the more we become a target."
Terrorists ultimate targets are airlines- first strike and experience
Flintoff 12— (Corey, “Why Do Terrorists So Often Go For Planes?,” NPR, MAY 15, 2012,
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/15/152750767/why-do-terrorists-so-often-go-for-planes). WM
Ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, airports have probably been the most heavily guarded sites when it
comes to preventing terrorist attacks. And yet the most recent terrorism plot in Yemen involved an
attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner with a bomber wearing a difficult-to-detect explosive bomb in his
underwear, according to U.S. officials. Why do terrorist groups keep trying to defeat the multiple layers
of security at airports when there are so many soft targets? For one, a plane heading into the U.S.
represents the first available target to strike against a large number of Americans. It doesn't require
reaching the U.S. first, and then acquiring a weapon and launching an attack from U.S. soil. Also,
terrorist groups have learned from previous attacks on planes. "Terrorists like to do what they know
how to do," says terrorism analyst Jessica Stern. But the difficulty of breaching airport security does
appear to be generating other approaches. Two Different Types Of Plots Stern says she sees two trends.
One involves developing new and more sophisticated techniques for evading security measures and
attacking airplanes. The other involves "looking for low-tech ways to attack softer targets," she says.
This is a way of encouraging "leaderless resistance," says Stern, the author of Terror in the Name of God.
For example, the latest issue of Inspire, the jihadi magazine produced by the Yemen-based group alQaida in the Arabian Peninsula, includes an eight-page feature that encourages readers to start wildfires
in Australia and the United States. It recommends that would-be saboteurs in the U.S. study weather
patterns in order to determine when vegetation will be dry and winds favorable for a wildfire. It
specifically suggests Montana as a good site for practicing pyro-terrorism, because of the residential
housing that is in wooded areas. Stern says the aim of terrorism is to frighten the public and push
governments into over-reacting — so spectacular, random-seeming attacks like airplane bombings work
well. "Terrorists do really aim for what we call symbolic targets," she says. "Terrorism is a form of
theater, so they're going to hit targets that will make us maximally afraid, and inflict the maximum
amount of humiliation."
The structure and goals of terrorism make airplanes the best and only target
Kydd and Walter 10— associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin and
professor of political science at UC San Diego's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific
Studies (Andrew H. and Barbara F., “By focusing on planes, terrorists take a calculated risk,” Los Angeles
Times, January 24, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/24/opinion/la-oe-walter24-2010jan24).
WM
Targeting civilian aircraft still makes sense, from the terrorists' point of view, for at least five reasons.
First, nature is working with them. People don't naturally fly 30,000 feet above the ground at 300 mph;
it takes a very special machine. These machines are much more vulnerable than trains or ships. One
person can easily carry enough explosives to blow a hole in the side of a pressurized aircraft, which may
be enough to bring it down and kill everyone aboard. The same explosive on a train or ship would likely
only cause minor damage. Second, the costs of reduced air travel, or slower air travel, are borne by
business travelers and those with money -- exactly those people who are most likely to influence
policymakers and government decisions. Terrorists aren't attacking for the fun of it; they want to have
an impact on government policy, and the way to do that is to target those who have clout. Third, it is
difficult for these travelers to switch to another mode of transportation, given the distances involved.
Much as the folks at Cunard might wish otherwise, almost no amount of terrorism is going to persuade
most people to take a passenger ship across the Atlantic for seven days rather than fly in seven hours.
This means that demand for air travel is inelastic; travelers have little option but to bear the costs of
increasing security, lost time and risks. Fourth, people are already afraid of flying. Despite statistics
showing that flying is safer than driving, people are still more afraid of hurtling through the air in a large
aluminum tube than sliding behind the wheel for a trip to the grocery store. It's easy to play on these
fears, even with incompetent attacks that fail. Finally, our political system is structured to overreact to
attacks on aircraft and to underreact to other kinds of attacks, particularly shooting sprees. In reaction
to the "shoe bomber," we now all take off our shoes at security checkpoints. Because of the "underwear
bomber," we now may be subject to thorough body scans before boarding a flight. The 2006 plot to
blow up seven transatlantic flights out of London cursed us with the inability to bring a bottle of water
on board. Security agencies feel duty-bound to do something, and politicians wring their hands about
whether they are doing enough. In comparison, there appears to be no limit to the number of fatalities
that can be inflicted by automatic weapons fire in the United States without generating a political
reaction. Politicians limit themselves to expressions of sorrow for the victims and the families, and then
the matter is quietly dropped. One might think this provides an opportunity for Al Qaeda to easily kill
large numbers of Americans, but that misses the point of terrorism. Killing large numbers in a way that is
quickly forgotten is much less useful than killing a few or even none in a way that causes profound
ripples of fear and costly overreactions on the part of the target group. Al Qaeda has no need to
organize gun rampages against Americans if the occasional low-budget aircraft attack does the trick.
9/11 style attacks lead to war
The psychology of 9/11 attacks makes a public overreact and leads to war
Gander 15— (KASHMIRA GANDER, “US overreacted to 9/11 attacks says terror expert and next vicechancellor of the University of Oxford, Louise Richardson,” The Independent, 03 June 2015,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/us-overreacted-over-911-says-terror-expert-andnext-vicechancellor-of-the-university-of-oxford-louise-richardson-10295014.html). WM
The United States overreacted to the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, according to the incoming vice–chancellor of the
University of Oxford. The panic that ensued following the September 11 attacks played a part in the US launching the socalled War on Terror. Louise Richardson, an expert in terrorism, said the US’ response was a symptom of the fact that such
attacks are a “new experience” for the country. Speaking at a higher education conference in London, the principal of the University of St
Andrews went on to argue
that the UK is more resilient when it comes to terrorist attacks, due to the troubles in Northern Ireland.
Exploring the psychological impact of terrorism, she went on to argue that random attacks have such an
impact on the public because “if nobody is chosen, nobody is safe”, the Daily Mail reported. Professor Richardson went
on to tell the audience, according to The Times: “Central to any terrorism campaign should be a resilient population
and, I have to say, the British population in the course of the Troubles and violence in Northern Ireland proved really quite resilient. “Far more
so than the United States. And the scale of the reaction - I would say over-reaction - in the
United States to the 9/11 atrocity
was reflective of the fact that it was such a new experience for the United States," she added. An internationally respected scholar and
author of the study 'What Terrorist Want: Understanding the Enemy Containing the Threat', Professor Richardson often advises
policy makers on the topics of terrorism and security. Professor Richardson will become Oxford’s first female vicechancellor when she adopts the position in January, after she was put forward by a nominating committee led by Oxford’s chancellor, Lord
Patten of Barnes.
9/11 attacks eliminate party lines and make the population permit, an even support,
invasions
Fournier 14— Senior Political Columnist at NJ (Ron, “Would We Rally Behind Obama After the Next
9/11?,” National Journal, August 11, 2014, http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/would-werally-behind-obama-after-the-next-9-11-20140811). WM
But I can't shake another, darker, question. What if we get hit again with a 9/11-sized attack? More to
the point, hypothetically, would a crisis pull us together or drive us apart? It's a morbid question worth
asking before the worst happens, because there's reason to worry about the durability of what Lincoln
called "the better angels of our nature." What can we learn from the Bush era? Well, th e nation
immediately rallied behind the fledgling president (Bush had been in office only about seven months).
Members of Congress famously locked arms on the East Front steps of the Capitol and sang "God
Bless America ." Bush's approval ratings soared to 90 percent, as he ordered U.S. troops into
Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban and hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Symbolic 9/11 style attacks reinforce the war on terror mindset that we need to
invade any country that harbors terrorists, making interventions inevitable
Giannella 12– University of Kent, Political Strategy and Communication (Margherita, “US: did 9/11
attacks provide a moral and legal justification to enter the war against Afghanistan?,” Acadmia, 2012,
http://www.academia.edu/2626532/US_did_9_11_attacks_provide_a_moral_and_legal_justification_to
_enter_the_war_against_Afghanistan). WM
INTRODUCTION The morning of 11 th September 2001, the American soil was subjected to a series of air
attacks destined to remain stamped in world people’s memory. Four planes were hijacked to strike the
economic and military nerve centers. The first two, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight
175, crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City; the third one,
American Airlines Flight 77, into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. while the last one, United Airlines
Flight 93, missed the expected target falling into Pennsylvania. Nearly 3 thousand people died in the
attacks. The official governmental version ascribed the attacks to 19 terrorists. In fact, in the first
presidential speech released to the Nation on the evening of 9/11, Bush did not clarify who were
responsible for the attacks since he mostly centred his speech on the bravery and altruism of 4
American citizens and on the government solidity and strength. Only 9 days after, President Bush, by
addressing to a Joint Session of Congress and the American people, would link the 19 hijackers to Al
Qaeda and in particular to its leader, Osama bin Laden. Thus, he condemned the Taliban regime accused
of sponsoring shelter and supply to terrorists. However, Bush said “ Our war on terror begins with al
Qaeda , but it does not end there . It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been
found, stopped and defeated” . So the logic apparently relies on the assumption that the US could
destroy the terrorism and all of Al-Qaeda, which has hundreds of cells throughout the world, by finding
and eliminating bin Laden, who resided in Afghanistan even if terrorists appeared to have had their
headquarters, funding and religious roots in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, President Bush declared a global
war on terror which, by starting from Afghanistan, would have stricken all those countries linked to
terrorist cells 1 . However Bush and his government would not ask questions about why the attack
occurred, what the terrorists might have wanted or even the ideology which inspired them to kill
themselves. Instead, the President simply stated they “hate us because we are free”. Thus , according to
Bush, terrorists had struck America because the nation represented freedom.
Legitimacy/heg
US hubris and inability to execute strategies in an intervention mean the world
ignores US regardless of [military/tech/manufacturing] capabilities
Cole 13—American academic on the modern Middle East and South Asia. Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate
Professor of History at the University of Michigan (Juan, “What we Lost: Top Ten Ways the Iraq War
Harmed the US,” Informed Comment, Mar. 18, 2013 http://www.juancole.com/2013/03/what-iraqharmed.html). WM
1. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq harmed the US in bringing into question its basic competency
as a world leader. Almost everything the US did in Iraq was a disaster. It could not even get the stated
reason for the invasion right, as it turned out there was no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons
program. It looked dishonest, bumbling. It went into the war having no plans, and the plans the Bush
administration made on the fly were mostly poorly thought-out and doomed to fail. It fell into search
and destroy as a tactic for counter-insurgency, with the same results as it had had in Vietnam– it caused
resistance to swell . Billions were wasted on reconstruction projects that assumed Iraqi know-how and
equipment that they did not have, and which could not therefore be maintained even if they were
completed. The US tried to run in English an Arabic-speaking country that had been deliberately isolated
and cut off from the world by sanctions, without any basic understanding of Iraqi culture, customs,
beliefs or ways of life. The pro-Israel Neoconservatives high in the administration blackballed (as
insufficiently pro-Israel) Arabists who volunteered to go help and left the Coalition Provisional Authority
blind.
Basically, the world is always looking around for a team leader and a consulting group that is known for
competence and for getting good results. After World War II, the US was for the most part that country.
Being the world’s team leader turns into respect, cooperation and, ultimately, confidence and
investment. If the US came to most of the world today with a group project, it likely couldn’t get the
time of day from them. The United States is deeply diminished in world counsels.
US response to 9/11 attacks undermines all legitimacy and influence regardless of
military power
Stiglitz 11— Nobel Laureate, Economics professor at Columbia (Joseph Stiglitz, “The U.S. Response to
9/11 Cost Us Far More Than the Attacks Themselves,” Al Jazeera English on alternet, September 6, 2011,
http://www.alternet.org/story/152309/the_u.s._response_to_9_11_cost_us_far_more_than_the_attac
ks_themselves). WM
Ironically, the wars have undermined the United States’ (and the world’s) security, again in ways that
Bin Laden could not have imagined. An unpopular war would have made military recruitment difficult in
any circumstances. But, as Bush tried to deceive the US about the wars’ costs, he underfunded the
troops, refusing even basic expenditures - say, for armoured and mine-resistant vehicles needed to
protect American lives, or for adequate health care for returning veterans. A US court recently ruled that
veterans’ rights have been violated. (Remarkably, the Obama administration claims that veterans’ right
to appeal to the courts should be restricted!) Military overreach has predictably led to nervousness
about using military power, and others’ knowledge of this threatens to weaken US security as well. But
the United States’ real strength, more than its military and economic power , is its “soft power,” its
moral authority . And this , too, was weakened : as the US violated basic human rights like habeas
corpus and the right not to be tortured, its longstanding commitment to international law was called
into question. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US and its allies knew that long-term victory required winning
hearts and minds. But mistakes in the early years of those wars complicated that already-difficult battle.
The wars’ collateral damage has been massive: by some accounts, more than a million Iraqis have died,
directly or indirectly, because of the war. According to some studies, at least 137,000 civilians have died
violently in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last ten years; among Iraqis alone, there are 1.8m refugees and
1.7m internally displaced people.
US interventions lose all legitimacy because they violate international law
Cole 13—American academic on the modern Middle East and South Asia. Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate
Professor of History at the University of Michigan (Juan, “What we Lost: Top Ten Ways the Iraq War
Harmed the US,” Informed Comment, Mar. 18, 2013 http://www.juancole.com/2013/03/what-iraqharmed.html). WM
2. The post-World War II generation wanted to erect an international order that would forever forestall
Nazi-like aggression against neighbors on the part of world powers. The Greatest Generation therefore
forged a UN charter that forbade aggressive war, allowing hostilities only if a country had been attacked
or if the UN Security Council designated a country a danger to world order. Iraq did not attack the US in
2002 or early 2003. The UN Security Council declined to pass a resolution calling for war on Iraq,
especially after the ridiculous circus act of then Secretary of State Colin Powell before the UN laying out
a self-evidently false and propagandistic case (which provoked gales of laughter in the room). The
United States has irrevocably undermined that structure of international law , and any aggressor can
now appeal to Bush of 2003 as a precedent. Indian politicians of the right wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata
Party instanced the Bush doctrine when they wanted to go to war with Pakistan. (Wiser heads prevailed,
given that Pakistan has nuclear warheads). The US has loosed a demon into the world, of the war of
choice.
Us interventions lead other countries to more aggressively pursue hegemony and
challenge US leadership
Cole 13—American academic on the modern Middle East and South Asia. Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate
Professor of History at the University of Michigan (Juan, “What we Lost: Top Ten Ways the Iraq War
Harmed the US,” Informed Comment, Mar. 18, 2013 http://www.juancole.com/2013/03/what-iraqharmed.html). WM
6. The motives of the US in attacking Iraq were presumed by the rest of the world to be getting that
country’s petroleum on the world market. That the most powerful country in the world might just fall
upon any victim it chose alarmed other nations and provoked their suspicions . China all of a sudden
wanted an aircraft carrier group. Those already inclined to see the US as imperialist, like Venezuela’s
Hugo Chavez, were were given proof they were right . Iran’s insistence on maintaining a nuclear
enrichment program, even a non-military one, certainly has to do with the deterrent effect of nuclear
latency (knowing how to quickly throw together a warhead). The Brazilian nuclear submarine program is
aimed in part at protecting its natural resources from being summarily looted by Washington.
Economy
9/11 induced war lead to trillions of dollars of debt- disproves economic decline
theory and proves terror attack turns case
Stiglitz 11— Nobel Laureate, Economics professor at Columbia (Joseph Stiglitz, “The U.S. Response to
9/11 Cost Us Far More Than the Attacks Themselves,” Al Jazeera English on alternet, September 6, 2011,
http://www.alternet.org/story/152309/the_u.s._response_to_9_11_cost_us_far_more_than_the_attac
ks_themselves). WM
The September 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but
in ways that Osama bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W Bush’s response to the
attacks compromised the United States’ basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its
security. The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the
subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to al-Qaeda - as much as Bush tried to establish a
link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive - orders of magnitude beyond the $60bn claimed
at the beginning - as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation. Indeed, when Linda
Bilmes and I calculated the United States' war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3- 5tn .
Since then, the costs have mounted further . With almost 50 per cent of returning troops eligible to
receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans’ medical
facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health-care costs will total $600900bn. But the social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years)
and family breakups, are incalculable. Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking the United States, and
much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the
venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for
entirely on credit. As the US went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush
decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax “relief” for the wealthy. Today, the US is focused
on unemployment and the deficit. Both threats to America’s future can, in no small measure, be traced
to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Increased defense spending, together with the Bush tax cuts, is a
key reason why the US went from a fiscal surplus of 2 per cent of GDP when Bush was elected to its
parlous deficit and debt position today. Direct government spending on those wars so far amounts to
roughly $2tn - $17,000 for every US household - with bills yet to be received increasing this amount by
more than 50 per cent. Moreover, as Bilmes and I argued in our book The Three Trillion Dollar War, the
wars contributed to the United States’ macroeconomic weaknesses, which exacerbated its deficits and
debt burden. Then, as now, disruption in the Middle East led to higher oil prices, forcing Americans to
spend money on oil imports that they otherwise could have spent buying goods produced in the US. But
then the US Federal Reserve hid these weaknesses by engineering a housing bubble that led to a
consumption boom. It will take years to overcome the excessive indebtedness and real-estate overhang
that resulted.
Interventions create costs that increase over time as wounded veterans return
Cole 13—American academic on the modern Middle East and South Asia. Richard P. Mitchell
Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan (Juan, “What we Lost: Top Ten Ways the
Iraq War Harmed the US,” Informed Comment, Mar. 18, 2013 http://www.juancole.com/2013/03/whatiraq-harmed.html). WM
9. The financial cost of the Iraq War to the US will rise over time into the trillions . This cost derives in
large part from the need to treat the thousands of Iraq War veterans who were injured by roadside
bombs, and who have damaged limbs, spines and/or brains. Some 33,000 vets were injured seriously
enough to go to hospital, a number seldom mentioned when the over 4,000 soldiers killed are eulogized.
(Dead and wounded contractors are also seldom mentioned).
Terrorists are intent on targeting planes, which devastates the economy
Phillips 14— (Judson, “PHILLIPS: The next 9/11 is coming,” The Washington Times, May 28, 2014,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/28/phillips-next-911/?page=all). WM
What is going to happen next is perfectly predictable. It sounds like the plot of a Tom Clancy novel. In fact, it was the plot of a Tom Clancy
novel. Al
Qaeda is going to strike at American airliners again because those planes are a symbol of
America . Since the mid-90s, airlines have been a coveted terrorist target. In the mid-90s, one of al Qaeda’s first
plots was something called “Bojinka” plan. This was to be a coordinated attack on 10 American airliners over the
Pacific Ocean. On 9/11, the terrorists used four American passenger jets as their weapons. Since 9/11,
there have been multiple other attempts to destroy American aircraft, including the shoe bomber and the underwear
bomber. In 2006, there was an attempt to destroy 10 planes over the Atlantic and there was the 2010 attempt to bring down cargo jets. The
missiles that are missing are older missiles. While they may be a limited threat to modern combat aircraft, passenger
jets are totally
vulnerable. Jihadist groups have always looked at targets for their symbolic value as well as their
economic value . All terrorists have to do is get half a dozen missiles into the U.S. through the open southern border and launch them at
airliners that are either taking off or landing.
Even bringing down a single airliner would devastate the American
economy. Instantly, air travel would drop to almost zero. Hundreds of thousands of people would be
thrown out of work . Boeing would not sell another new airliner for a very long time. The missiles are coming.
Because America’s border is not secured and because the Obama regime went into Libya without thinking, it is now only a question when and
where. When Americans die in this next spectacular terrorist attack, some will wring their hands and ask, how could this happen? The answer
is: Barack Obama is how something like that could happen
Anthro
Fear of bioterror after symbolic attacks like 9/11 justifies abuses of non-human
animals
Walker 15— reporter covering technology, national security and foreign affairs (Lauren, “Thousands of
Monkeys Made to Suffer Post-9/11: Report,” Newsweek, 7/7/15,
http://www.newsweek.com/thousands-monkeys-made-suffer-post-911-351067). WM
The boom in biodefense research following 9/11 has caused many monkeys to suffer, BuzzFeed News reports.
The research primates—composed primarily of rhesus macaques, long-tailed macaques and African green monkeys—have been
exposed to a slew of deadly bacteria and viruses, sometimes without pain relief, in a quest to develop
drugs that could combat biological, chemical and radiological terrorist attacks. A week following the
September 11, 2001, attacks, two senators and several news media offices received letters containing deadly anthrax spores, which
killed five people and caused 17 to become ill. The event led the U.S. government to dedicate billions of dollars to
developing drugs and vaccines in the event of mass exposure to harmful agents. Part of the development
has included exposing monkeys to plague, anthrax, Ebola, smallpox, nerve agents and lethal amounts of
radiation. Some of the experiments, deemed “Column E” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, include experiments in which animals
experience pain or distress, but it’s not fully alleviated by drugs such as painkillers or tranquilizers. In one experiment, long-tailed macaques
were made to inhale a lethal amount of anthrax. They were later recorded as having difficulty breathing and were vomiting and losing control
of their bowels. Many
of the monkeys in the untreated control group were left to die. Other experiments
have caused monkeys to collapse, have seizures or be put down to severe illness. These types of
experiments have nearly doubled since 2002 and have averaged more than 1,400 a year since 2009 , the
BuzzFeed News analysis found. Column E experiments are regulated to keep them rare. To conduct one, an institution must have the
experiment reviewed by its animal care committee and must also provide a justification to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in its annual
report, as dictated by federal regulations. The nearly
100 justification reports reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that the
increase in pain-involved monkey experiments has been driven by biodefense research . In fact, three
institutions have led the charge in these types of experiments: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, the Lovelace
Respiratory Research Institute and the Battelle Memorial Institute. Collectively, these institutes
have used more than 6,400
Column E monkeys since 2002. While some argue that this type of testing is needed to ensure that humans have the necessary drugs to
combat a biological attack, others are not convinced testing on monkeys is appropriate or reliable. “We should use a bare minimum of
primates,” Chandan Guha, a radiation oncologist at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York who sees the merits of some monkey
experiments, told Buzzfeed News. Monkeys do not always show the full range of symptoms in humans. But when it comes to Ebola, for
instance, they do—monkeys have the same deadly internal and external bleeding after exposure. A vaccine that had been monkey tested was
one of two rushed to human clinical trials after the virus spread in West Africa earlier this year. But Thomas Hartung, head of the
Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing at Johns Hopkins University, said that 95 percent of the drugs used
on humans after promising results in animal testing fail. Until there is a viable alternative, monkeys will remain
entangled in the ongoing war on terror .
Endless war/K military impacts
9/11 style attacks justify increased human rights abuses and unlimited power to
attack any entity in the world
Larivé 14— (Maxime H.A., “The making of American foreign policy in the post-9/11 world,”
Foreign Policy Association, May 6th, 2014, http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2014/05/06/the-making-ofamerican-foreign-policy-in-the-post-911-world/) . WM
Let’s be honest, foreign policy making has never been democratic. The label of national security has
offered governments around the world the power to hide information from their citizens. Aside from
this statement, the making of American foreign policy has completely shifted since 9/11. Not only this
shift was abrupt and made under intense emotional stress, but it has also created a precedent in the
way the U.S. engages in the world. Additionally, American foreign policy has become much more
militarized than in the past. A series of recent articles (here and here), documentaries (here and here),
and radio show (here) have been produced looking back at the way the U.S. has conducted itself these
last 13 years on the international stage. Since 9/11, the U.S. has been fighting “evil” – to adopt a very
Bushian expression – with evil. The U.S. has used a wide array of instruments considered by
international law as illegal such as: rendition, torture — known as an “enhanced interrogation
technique” — use of force against countries without legal jurisdiction, drone strikes in countries wherein
the U.S. is not at war, mass snooping on American and world citizens, cover-up operations, and so forth.
The “Global War on Terror” has been the longest war in American history. Since 2001, the U.S. has
invaded two countries – Iraq and Afghanistan – launched an undisclosed numbers of drone strikes in
countries with which the U.S. is not at war – Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia (here are the numbers of
drones strikes as of April 2014) – and all this in complete impunity. The real question is: Has it made
America safer? It is a very difficult subject to answer in all impartiality. Members of American
intelligence community and other departments of the U.S. government would most likely say yes. Not
only, I would tend to answer, not really, but I would also argue that American democracy has
progressively been the main collateral damage of this endless war. The starting point in the shifting in
decision-making in American foreign policy was the approval of the Authorization for Use of Military
Force, of what is known as the AUMF. The famous sentence, as reported by Gregory E. Johnsen and
which inspired the Radiolab podcast posted below, that changed it all were these 60 words from the
AUMF drafted on Sept. 12, 2001: That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate
force against those nations, organization, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed,
or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2011, or harbored such organizations or
persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by
such nations, organizations or person. In French, we would say that the president has now carte
blanche, meaning unlimited power . This sentence taken from AUMF pretty much gives unlimited
power to the executive branch without any supervision by the Congress, as it gave it up soon after 9/11.
Such legal piece was approved by Congress on Sept. 13, 2001 at the exception of only one elected
official, the California Representative Barbara Lee, opposing it. In the excellent podcast of Radiolad,
Barbara Lee takes us throughout her reflection process about taking such decision. At the time she was
under intense pressure, and was even called unpatriotic, a terrorist, and so forth. Today, she seems like
a visionary as she not only understood the consequences of taking swift decisions under stress and
emotions, but also foresaw the legal implications embedded in these words. For instance, during a 2013
Senate Armed Service committee hearing chaired by Carl Levin – as reported in the Radiolab podcast –
about the use of military force, DOD officials argued in favor of the continued use of the AUMF.
Throughout the hearing the officials never named one enemy, but only referred to “associated forces.”
Senator Angus King responded to these statements by DOD officials, saying: “you guys have essentially
rewritten the Constitution here today.” King’s argument is that the DOD is using the concept of
associated forces, not present in the AUMF, in order to justify the use of force against pretty much
anyone . The AUMF has in fact changed the entire institutional design of use of force. “The Declaration
of War is kind of a dead instrument of national law,” argued Ben Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution in the Radiolab podcast. “But the modern incarnation of the Declaration of War is the
Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).” Such comments fall under the fact that the list of
American enemies and the people that the U.S. is in war against is secret. American citizens do not have
and cannot have the information about the enemies. The absolute lack of supervision by one branch of
the government over the other will undeniably lead to extreme decisions and situations. The Gulf of
Tonkin Resolution is the perfect example, as it led the U.S. to a lengthy and costly war in Vietnam.
Additionally, without a clear enemy, it implies that the U.S. could be at war indefinitely . At the
distinction with Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, this war seems foreign, remote, distant, and impersonal,
making it even more dangerous to American democracy and political system.
Other Links
Materiality requirement
A materiality requirement for a connection to a foreign power wrecks counterterrorism investigations
Cordero, 13 – professor of law at Georgetown (Carrie, “Continued Oversight of U.S. Government
Surveillance Authorities : Hearing Before the S. Committee on the Judiciary, 113th Cong., December 11,
2013 (Statement by Professor Carrie F. Cordero, Geo. U. L. Center)”
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cong/118
I would next like to highlight four components of S.1599. The first three would, in my view, significantly
limit the effectiveness of the U.S. Government to conduct foreign intelligence activities to protect the
nation from the national security threats of today, and, tomorrow. The fourth is a brief comment on
competing proposals to add an adversarial component to the FISA process.
First, sections 101 and 201 would change the legal standards to obtain business records and implement
pen register/trap and trace devices by requiring a connection to an agent of a foreign power. The
sections also add a “materiality” requirement in addition to relevance. The likely intended effect of
these provisions is to eliminate the utility of these provisions for large scale collection, such as the 215
telephony metadata program. But the proposed changes would likely have far more dramatic, and
harmful, consequences to more traditional, day-to-day, national security investigations. The standards
are currently aligned with investigative authorities in the criminal investigative context, such as
subpoenas and pen register/trap and trace surveillance conducted under Title 18. Both of those criminal
authorities operate on a relevance standard. By raising the standard to requiring a connection to an
agent of a foreign power, these sections would render these investigative techniques nearly useless in
the early stages of an investigation, which is precisely when they are most useful. Investigators may
never get to determine whether a target rises to the agent of a foreign power standard, if they cannot
conduct the less intrusive records request or pen register/trap and trace surveillance as part of an
investigation. These changes, if made law, would return us to the days prior to September 11, 2001,
when it was harder for an investigator to request records or conduct pen register/trap and trace
surveillance in an international terrorism case than it was in an everyday drug or fraud case.
Third Party Doctrine: FISA
Third Party Doctrine justifies warrantless searches and is key to clarify legal
application issues
Peikoff, philosophy prof. @ Texas , 14 (Amy L., St. John’s Law Review, “Of Third-Party
Bathwater: How to Throw out the Third-Party Doctrine While Preserving Government's
Ability to Use Secret Agents,” HeinOnline, p. 355-7)//ES
Without the doctrine, criminals could use third-party agents to fully enshroud their criminal
enterprises in Fourth Amendment protection. A criminal could plot and execute his entire crime
from home knowing that the police could not send in undercover agents, record the fact of his
phone calls, or watch any aspect of his Internet usage without first obtaining a warrant. He could
use third parties to create a bubble of Fourth Amendment protection around the entirety of his
criminal activity.34
With no third-party doctrine, Kerr argues, it would be nearly impossible for the police to gain enough
evidence to support a search warrant, particularly when a criminal is clever at substituting private, thirdparty-assisted actions and transactions for those that were once, of necessity, amenable to public
viewing.35 The doctrine, therefore, in Kerr's terms, avoids the "substitution effect" and thereby
preserves the "technological neutrality" intended by the Court in Katz.36 "Just as the new technologies
can bring 'intimate occurrences of the home' out in the open, so can technological change and the use
of third parties take transactions that were out in the open and bring them inside."37
If it is right to understand the Fourth Amendment from this perspective of technological neutrality, Kerr
argues, then "it must be a two-way street."" So, just as the "reasonable expectation of privacy" test of
Katz addresses the problem of technology exposing intimate details of one's life, the third-party doctrine
addresses the problem of criminals substituting private, third-party transactions for actions conducted
out in the open. Kerr notes that the doctrine thus provides another type of neutrality, in that a criminal
enjoys "roughly the same degree of privacy protection regardless of whether [the] criminal commits
crimes on his own or uses third parties."39
Kerr's second argument in defense of the third-party doctrine is that it helps to ensure the clarity of
Fourth Amendment rules.4 ° The need for clarity, says Kerr, comes from the exclusionary rule's
evidence-suppression remedy:
The severe costs of the exclusionary rule require ex ante clarity in the rules for when a reasonable
expectation of privacy exists. The police need to know when their conduct triggers Fourth
Amendment protection. Uncertainty can both overdeter police from acting when no protection
exists and can lead them to inadvertently trample on Fourth Amendment rights. 41
The third-party doctrine achieves the necessary clarity, says Kerr, by "guarantee [ing] that once
information is present in a location it is treated just like everything else located there."42 So, for
example:
[A] letter that arrives in the mail, is opened, and sits on the recipient's desk at home ....[It] is treated
just like all the other papers on the desk .... [T]he Fourth Amendment rules [that the police] must
follow will be set by the usual rules of home searches rather than special rules for each piece of
paper defined by the history of each page.43
Third Party Doctrine is used by FISC to justify it’s activities
Ombres 15 (Devon, JD from Stetson, “NSA Domestic Surveillance from the Patriot Act to
the Freedom Act: The Underlying History, Constitutional Basis, and the Efforts at
Reform,” Seton Hall Legislative Journal, HeinOnline, p. 33-4)//ES
There is little doubt that the collection of content data, absent probable cause, violates the Fourth
Amendment as an unreasonable search.2' However, whether the mass collection of domestic metadata
violates the Fourth Amendment is a question that is still being wrestled with due to the historical
approval of the Third Party Doctrine ("TPD") arising from the seminal opinion of Smith v. Maryland2
In Smith, a PR was used to assist in a conviction of a burglary. 30 The Supreme Court held that using a PR
did not constitute an unreasonable search because individuals are aware that phone companies
maintain permanent records of dialed phone numbers, thereby abrogating any expectation of privacy."
As Smith has not been overruled, it maintains its standing as a guiding principle under stare decisis and
is being utilized, at least in part, as a basis for conducting domestic surveillance as discussed below.
The FISC cites directly to the Smith reasoning, in a heavily redacted opinion/order, in noting that there is
no reasonable expectation of privacy in the collection of metadata.32 The FISC notes that Congress
relaxed requirements to collect "non-content addressing information through [PR] and [TT] devices"
through the PATRIOT Act and FISA Amendments and that "such information is not protected by the
Fourth Amendment."33 Like phone calls under Smith, the FISC held that email users, due to the same
reasoning, also do not have an expectation of privacy. 34 The FISC recognized the need for only a
relevance standard, rather than reasonable suspicion, in approving the government's requests for
widespread surveillance.
Third Party Doctrine: Undercover Informant
The third party doctrine allows government use of Undercover Informants
Thompson, Legislative Attorney, 14 (Richard M., written for the Congressional Research
Service, June 5 2014, “The Fourth Amendment Third-Party Doctrine,” p. 7-8)//ES
In a series of five cases throughout the 2 0th century, the Supreme Court assessed the constitutionality
of the use of undercover agents or informants under the Fourth Amendment. In On Lee v. United States,
the government wired an "undercover agent" with a microphone and sent him into On Lee's laundromat
to engage him in incriminating conversation. 49 An agent of the Bureau of Narcotics sat outside with a
receiving set to hear the conversation. In the course of these conversations, On Lee made incriminating
statements, which the agent later testified to at On Lee's trial. On Lee argued that this evidence was
obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. In an opinion authored by Justice Jackson, the Court
disagreed, noting that On Lee was "talking confidentially and indiscreetly with one he trusted" and that
the agent was let into his shop "with the consent, if not implied invitation" of On Lee.5
In a similar case, Lopez v. United States, the defendant attempted to bribe an internal revenue agent,
who during some of these conversations was wearing a recording device." At trial, Lopez moved to
suppress evidence of the wire recordings as fruits of an unlawful search. Relying on the On Lee decision,
the Court rejected this argument on the grounds that the defendant consented to the agent being in his
office and "knew full well" that the statements he made to the agent could be used against him.5 2
Further, the Court noted that the listening device was not used to intercept conversations the agent
could not have otherwise heard, but "instead, the device was used only to obtain the most reliable
evidence possible of a conversation in which the Government's own agent was a participant and which
that agent was fully entitled to disclose.,53
In Lewis v. United States, the government sent an undercover federal narcotics agent to the defendant's
home several times to purchase marijuana.54 Over the defendant's objections, the agent was permitted
to recount the conversations at trial. Upon review, the Supreme Court held that the conversations were
not protected under the Fourth Amendment as the defendant had invited the federal agent into his
home and that the statements were "willingly" made to the agent. 55
Finally, in Hoffa v. United States, a government informant relayed to federal law enforcement agents the
many conversations he had with Jimmy Hoffa about Hoffa's attempt to tamper with a jury.56 Because
the informant did not enter Hoffa's hotel room by force, was invited to participate in the conversations
by Hoffa, and was not a "surreptitious eavesdropper," the Court concluded that the Fourth Amendment
had not been violated.
Katz didn’t change the precedent, White said this is still permissible, but overturning
the third party doctrine would cause a shift in justified action
Thompson, Legislative Attorney, 14 (Richard M., written for the Congressional Research
Service, June 5 2014, “The Fourth Amendment Third-Party Doctrine,” p. 9)//ES
Note that these cases came before Katz shifted the Fourth Amendment focus from property to privacy.
Whether Katz would disturb this line of cases was a matter of "considerable speculation" 62 until the
Court decided United States v. White four years later. In White, an undercover informant wearing a
radio transmitter engaged the defendant in several incriminating conversations, four of which took
place at the informant's house, and several other conversations took place in the defendant's home, a
restaurant, and in the informant's car.6 1 The court of appeals in White interpreted Katz as implicitly
overruling this line of cases as it was based on a trespass doctrine that was "squarely discarded" in
Katz.64 The Supreme Court disagreed, however, and upheld the surreptitious surveillance. The opinion
accepted that the trespass rationale could not survive after Katz, but that the undercover informant
cases were also supported by a "second and independent ground"-that the informant was not an
uninvited eavesdropper, but a party to the conversation who was free to report what he heard to the
authorities. 65 For the Court, White had assumed the risk that information he shared with the informant
could be shared with the police 66
Third Party Doctrine: Bank Records
Third Party doctrine justifies tracking of financial records – Miller decision proves
Thompson, Legislative Attorney, 14 (Richard M., written for the Congressional Research
Service, June 5 2014, “The Fourth Amendment Third-Party Doctrine,” p. 9-10)//ES
In 1976, the Court took up its first maj or third-party doctrine case to deal with transactional documents
in Miller v. United States. In that case, agents of the Treasury Department's Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms Bureau were investigating Mitch Miller for his participation in an illegal whiskey distillery.69
The agents subpoenaed the presidents of several banks in which Miller had an account to produce all
records of accounts including savings, checking accounts, and any loans he may have had. The banks
never informed Miller that the subpoenas had been served, but ordered their employees to comply with
the subpoenas. At one bank, an agent was shown microfilm of Miller's account and provided copies of
"one deposit slip and one or two checks."7 ° At the other bank, the agent was shown similar records and
was given copies of "all checks, deposit slips, two financial statements, and three monthly
statements.",71 Copies of the checks were later introduced into evidence at Miller's trial.
The lower court held that the government had unlawfully circumvented the Fourth Amendment by first
requiring the banks to maintain the customer's records for a certain period of time and second by using
insufficient legal process to obtain those records from the bank. In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court
reversed and held that subpoenaing the bank records without a warrant did not violate the Fourth
Amendment. The opinion by Justice Powell discarded the first argument by noting that previous case
law held that merely requiring the bank to retain its customers' records did not constitute a Fourth
Amendment search.72 That previous case, however, did not resolve whether a subpoena was sufficient
to access those documents.73 Miller argued that the bank kept copies of personal records that he gave
to the bank for a limited purpose and in which he retained a reasonable expectation of privacy under
Katz. The Court, applying language from Katz, noted that "[w]hat a person knowingly exposes to the
public ..i.s not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.' 7 The Court concluded that banking
documents were not "confidential communications," but rather negotiable instruments that were
required to transact business between the customer and the bank. All of the documents contained
information "voluntarily conveyed to the banks and exposed to their employees in the ordinary course
of business., 75 As with the undercover agent cases, once documents were shared with the bank, they
could then be given to the government without requiring a search warrant. Citing to White, Justice
Powell instructed that a bank customer "takes the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that the
information will be conveyed by that person to the government., 76 Looking to both this assumption of
the risk theory and the secrecy model, the Court then included the following sentence which would
come to encapsulate the third-party doctrine:
This Court has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of
information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the
information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the
confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed.7
Third Party Doctrine: Telephone Calls
Wiretaps are justified by the third party doctrine – latest precedent
Thompson, Legislative Attorney, 14 (Richard M., written for the Congressional Research
Service, June 5 2014, “The Fourth Amendment Third-Party Doctrine,” p. 11-2)//ES
Several years later, the Court took up the second major third-party doctrine case, Smith v. Maryland, 7
which would have maj or implications for government collection of transactional records, especially
those held by third-party companies.
In Smith, the police were investigating the robbery of a young woman, who gave the police a description
of her assailant and the vehicle seen near the scene of the crime. 79 The police later spotted a man
matching the victim's description driving an identical vehicle in her neighborhood, which they traced
back to Michael Smith. Upon police request, the telephone company installed a pen register at its
central office to record the telephone numbers dialed from Smith's home. The device was installed
without a warrant or court order. Through the pen register, the police learned that a call was placed
from Smith's home to the victim's phone, which would eventually connect Smith to the robbery. At trial,
Smith claimed that any evidence obtained from the pen register violated his Fourth Amendment rights
as the police failed to obtain a warrant before installing it. This motion was denied, Smith was later
convicted of robbery, and the appeals court affirmed his conviction, holding that the installation of the
pen register was not a Fourth Amendment search.80
In line with Justice Harlan's formulation of the Katz privacy test, the Supreme Court asked the following
questions: first, whether Smith had a subjective expectation of privacy in the numbers he dialed, and
second, whether that expectation was reasonable.8 ' As to the former, the Court "doubt[ed] that people
in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial . 82 The Court assumed
that people, in the main, know and understand that they must convey the dialed numbers to the
company to complete the call; that the company has a process of recording those numbers; and that the
company actually does record those numbers for various business reasons. It deduced this partially from
the fact that phone books inform consumers that the telephone companies "can frequently help in
identifying to authorities the origin of unwelcome and untroublesome calls" and that customers see a
list of their calls recorded on their monthly phone bills.83
Even if Smith did harbor a subjective expectation of privacy, the Court found that "this expectation is not
'one society is prepared to recognize as 'reasonable.' 84 Justice Blackmun cited to Miller, White, Hoffa,
and Lopez for the proposition that "a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information that
he voluntarily turns over to third parties. 85 Because Smith "voluntarily conveyed" the telephone
numbers to the company in the process of making the call, he had "exposed" that information to the
company's equipment in the "ordinary course of business" and thus could not reasonably expect privacy
in that information. 6 Moreover, the Court found that Smith "assumed the risk" that the telephone
company would reveal to the police the numbers he dialed.87
Although Smith was the Court's last significant pronouncement on the parameters of the thirdparty
doctrine, the lower federal courts have applied it in various contexts, with a significant number of these
cases dealing with the transfer of electronic information.
Third Party Doctrine: Metadata
The Third Party Doctrine justifies metadata collection through the Smith decision
Yoo 14 (John, UC Berkeley law prof, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, “The
Legality of the National Security Agency's Bulk Data Surveillance Programs,” HeinOnline,
37(3), p. 916)//ES
The NSA's first program, which collects metadata on domestic phone calls, poses the fewest
constitutional difficulties. Under existing judicial doctrine, individuals have Fourth Amendment rights in
the content of communications, but not in their addressing information.6' Privacy does not extend to
the writing on the outside of envelopes deposited in the mail because the sender has voluntarily
revealed the addresses to the post office for delivery. 62 An identical principle applies to
telecommunications. In Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court found calling information, such as the
phone number dialed, beyond Fourth Amendment protection because the consumer had voluntarily
turned over the information to a third party namely, the phone company-for connection and billing
purposes. 63 Under the rubric of Katz v. United States, no one can have an expectation of privacy in
records that they have handed over to someone else."
Administrative Search Doctrine: FISA
Administrative Search Doctrine key to justify FISA surveillance
Birkenstock 92 (Gregory E., “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Standards of Probable
Cause: An Alternative Analysis,” Georgetown Law Journal, 80(3), p. 858-60)//ES
Based on the administrative search doctrine, the essential constitutional argument for accepting the
diminished probable cause standards of FISA is that the primary purpose of the search is not to gather
evidence for criminal prosecutions. 1 4 When the government has a special need for the information,
the Fourth Amendment should allow the government more latitude in justifying its need to conduct a
search. This is especially true for foreign intelligence, where the emphasis of the FISA search is on
gathering information needed to defend against a threat to national security. The use of that
information as criminal evidence is merely a legitimate byproduct of the search for foreign intelligence
information, much as uncovering of evidence of criminal activity during an administrative search is
allowable under Burger.
In Camara and See, the Court acknowledged that the Fourth Amendment does protect the individual's
privacy even in the context of civil searches.115 According to the Camara Court, administrative searches
are reasonable when the government's need for regulatory enforcement outweighs the limited
intrusiveness of the noncriminal search.116 As in the "special governmental needs" cases discussed
below," 7 the Court attached great significance to the fact that administrative searches are not
conducted primarily for penal law enforcement. While FISA searches may often be expected to discover
incriminating evidence, FISA's main purpose of gathering information for protection of national security
interests,"I rather than prosecuting criminals, supports the analogies suggested in this note.
As a preliminary matter, the focus on administrative searches' noncriminal purpose in Camara requires
further clarification. That portion of the Camara opinion that relied on the "limited" invasion of privacy
resulting from the administrative inspection" 19 is sufficiently ambiguous to obscure the Court's
reasoning. The reference may be interpreted in at least two ways: (1) a lesser quantum of evidence is
constitutionally required when the goal of the search is not furtherance of criminal prosecution; or (2) a
lesser quantum of evidence is constitutionally required when the search is less intensive than that
generally permitted in a criminal investigation. Although the Court has never resolved this debate, the
former interpretation is a more logical one. In Abel v. United States,' 20 a pre-Camarad ecision, an
administrative search was upheld because its purpose was not to search for evidence of crime, even
though "a more exhaustive search is hardly to be found in the records of the Supreme Court.' 21 Thus,
while FISA searches are necessarily more intrusive than administrative searches, the proposed analogy
can still be instructive. Furthermore, while the applicability of Camara's other factors-the history of
judicial and popular acceptance and the requirement that the search be the most effective means-are
also problematic, the proposed analogy would still provide a superior model of judicial decisionmaking
in the national security area than the present deferential approach.
Analyzing FISA searches under the administrative search doctrine can illuminate the potential utility of a
similar national security jurisprudence. The usefulness of this approach is underscored by the fact that
the Senate Judiciary Committee, in considering the wisdom of a lower standard of probable cause,
referred to the administrative search doctrine in coming to its conclusion that the FISA probable cause
standard was constitutionally acceptable.' 22 By using principles from an analogous area of the law,
rather than creating a separate sphere of jurisprudence for foreign intelligence, progress can be made in
assessing the wisdom of relaxing the probable cause standards for national security searches.
The administrative search doctrine is key to justify FISA activities
Birkenstock 92 (Gregory E., “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Standards of Probable
Cause: An Alternative Analysis,” Georgetown Law Journal, 80(3), p. 865-6)//ES
Although the analogy is not a perfect one, the tests developed in the administrative search context are
instructive in exploring the legitimacy of FISA searches. For this analysis, the relevant test is that
articulated in Camara: to weigh the interests served by the search against the intrusion into privacy that
the search entails. 161
The government has a strong interest in gaining the information that FISA surveillance gathers. 162 It is
an "elementary truth" that "unless the Government safeguards its own capacity to function and to
preserve the security of its people, society itself could become so disordered that all rights and liberties
would be endangered."' 63 FISA limits the "foreign intelligence information" that may be sought to
information relevant to the nation's ability to protect against an act of war, international terrorism, or
clandestine intelligence activities. 164 FISA searches may also seek information that relates to or is
necessary to "the national defense or the security of the United States; or... the conduct of the foreign
affairs of the United States."' 165 While it is possible to overstate and thus manipulate these interests,
they are nonetheless at the very core of the government's constitutional mandate to "provide for the
common defense."' 166
The intrusion authorized under a FISA search order is intensive, but in most cases not sufficiently
intensive to outweigh the interest supporting the search. Generally, wiretapping is a highly intrusive
investigatory technique. 167 But FISA includes several provisions designed to ensure that the intrusion
will be no greater than is absolutely necessary. 168 FISA's web of definitions helps to ensure that the
search will not be overly intrusive by limiting searches to the most important national security
information.169 When intelligence gathering and criminal investigation overlap, however, the courts
must ensure that FISA searches are not abused. When this is accomplished, FISA searches represent a
legitimate tool to promote national security. While certainly not perfect, the administrative search
analogy helps to place FISA searches in their proper constitutional context.
The Supreme Court has taken the view that the evidentiary requirement of the Fourth Amendment is
not a rigid standard that requires precisely the same quantum of evidence in all cases.170 It is instead a
flexible standard, permitting consideration of the public and individual interests as they are reflected in
the facts of a particular case.'71 This is an important and meaningful concept, which has proved useful
in defining Fourth Amendment limits upon certain "special" enforcement procedures that are unlike the
usual arrest and search. Viewed as a part of this framework, FISA surveillance is constitutionally
permissible, and courts need not invoke the catch phrase "national security" to uphold such searches.
Administrative Search Doctrine necessary to avoid a warrant – allows quick and
flexible responses
Birkenstock 92 (Gregory E., “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Standards of Probable
Cause: An Alternative Analysis,” Georgetown Law Journal, 80(3), p. 868)//ES
The administrative search doctrine symbolizes the Supreme Court's turn away from the proscriptions of
the Fourth Amendment's Warrant Clause toward a more flexible reasonableness analysis.1 87 This note
demonstrates that the doctrine serves as an appropriate jurisprudential model for FISA searches. In a
variety of contexts, the Court has used a balancing approach to justify even full-scale searches without a
warrant, probable cause, or even individualized suspicion, when the governmental need is especially
acute. This Part of the note briefly examines the "special governmental needs" cases and further
demonstrates how FISA surveillance can be assimilated into modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.
Administrative search doctrine allows investigations without warrants
Birkenstock 92 (Gregory E., “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Standards of Probable
Cause: An Alternative Analysis,” Georgetown Law Journal, 80(3), p. 869)//ES
Thus, where the governmental interest is particularly acute, the Court shuns the specific commands of
the Warrant Clause and uses a balancing test under a general reasonableness standard. Significantly,
none of these searches involved attempts by the police to locate evidence of crime. In each, the Court
referred to the government's special needs as those beyond the normal need for law enforcement. 197
In both the administrative search and special governmental needs cases, then, the Court has been
persuaded that probable cause and individualized suspicion are not always Fourth Amendment
requirements. In an expanding line of cases, the Court has held that certain governmental interests
outweigh individual privacy interests. In each case, the Court has been careful to stress the difference
between the search at issue and the traditional criminal search.
Administrative Search justifies FISA – Supreme Court precedent
Birkenstock 92 (Gregory E., “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Standards of Probable
Cause: An Alternative Analysis,” Georgetown Law Journal, 80(3), p. 870)//ES
In sum, while some have questioned FISA's diminished probable cause standard over the years, an
examination of Supreme Court precedent demonstrates that the standard is less problematic than it
may first appear. While the courts have uniformly upheld FISA under Fourth Amendment challenges,
they have been reluctant to assimilate FISA surveillance into Fourth Amendment doctrine. The
administrative search and special governmental needs doctrines provide constitutional justification for
the diminished probable cause standard in FISA. By analyzing FISA surveillance in this manner, courts
can avoid the pitfall of assigning national security matters to a separate sphere of the law.
Administrative Search Doctrine: TSA
Administrative search doctrine justifies to TSA security checks
Sanford 93 (Don L., Summer 1993, “Airport Security, Terrorism, and the Fourth
Amendment: A Look Back and a Step Forward,” Journal of Air Law and Commerce, 58(4),
p. 1176-7)//ES
A second approach taken to justify airport searches is the administrative search. The Supreme Court has
addressed searches conducted for purposes other than criminal law enforcement that might invade
areas protected by the Fourth Amendment. In 1967, the Supreme Court enunciated the administrative
search doctrine in a pair of companion cases: Camara v. Municipal Court 329 and See v. City of
Seattle.130 In Camara, the Court reasoned that an administrative search was permissible under the
Fourth Amendment "by balancing the need to search against the invasion which the search entails."1 3 1
In articulating the new administrative search doctrine, the Court redefined the traditional probable
cause standard. Individualized suspicion was replaced with a more expansive concept of reasonableness,
cast in the form of a balancing test.13 2 This reasonableness "must be as limited in its intrusiveness as is
consistent with satisfaction of the administrative need that justifies it.' 33 Administrative searches
generally satisfy the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness requirements because the searches are not
personal in nature, are not directed toward discovering evidence of a crime, t 34 and thus involve a
relatively limited invasion of privacy. '3 5
Airport security screenings have consistently been upheld as a consensual regulatory search to further
an administratively directed program whose goal is to ensure air safety. 3 6 In the seminal case of
United States v. Davis '3 7 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals approved warrantless airport security
checks of all passengers and their carry-on luggage as administrative searches. 38 According to the
court, administrative searches are constitutionally permissible without a warrant if the intrusion is
consistent with satisfying the administrative need. 3 9 A warrantless administrative search is also
legitimate when requiring a search warrant would frustrate the governmental purpose behind the
search.140
Administrative Search Doctrine is used to justify TSA screenings – case law
Israelson 13 (Gregory R., Summer 2013, “Applying the Fourth Amendment’s NationalSecurity Exception to Airport Security and the TSA,” Journal of Air Law and Commerce,
78(3), p. 512-3)//ES
As courts turned away from the earlier frameworks, they began to apply the administrative-search
exception. In recent years, the administrative-search framework has been the doctrine of choice for
courts analyzing Fourth Amendment concerns related to airport security."
At the core of the administrative-search exception is a balancing of the government's legitimate
interests and the individual's right to be free from government intrusion. Beyond this basic test,
however, courts have differed in their application of the administrative-search exception to airport
security cases.
Most circuits view airport security screening as an "administrative search,"7 which allows for a balancing
of "the individual's privacy expectations against the [g]overnment's interests to determine whether it is
impractical to require a warrant or some level of individualized suspicion in the particular context."75 In
the context of "blanket suspicionless searches," the Supreme Court explained that a reasonable search
must be "calibrated to the risk" and referred to airport security as it existed in 1997 as one example of
such a search.7' But the Court added the caveat that "where . . . public safety is not genuinely in
jeopardy, the Fourth Amendment precludes the suspicionless search, no matter how conveniently
arranged."7 7 In sum, determining the constitutionality of a suspicionless checkpoint search requires
balancing the "'gravity of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure
advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty.' "78
AT: Turns
AT: Overload turn
No risk of info overload – NSA is using graph analysis and has a massive storage
center. Large data records are key to investigations.
Harris 13 (Derrick Harris, Senior writer about technology at Gigaom and Senior Research
Analyst at Mesosphere, with a J.D. from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas School of
Law, “Here’s how the NSA analyzes all that call data,” Gigaom, 6 June 2013,
https://gigaom.com/2013/06/06/heres-how-the-nsa-analyzes-all-that-call-data/, *fc)
There are numerous methods the NSA could use to extract some insights from what must be a mindblowing number of phone calls and text messages, but graph analysis is likely the king. As we’ve
explained numerous times over the past few months, graph analysis is ideal for identifying connections
among pieces of data. It’s what powers social graphs, product recommendations and even some fairly
complex medical research.
But now it has really come to the fore as a tool for fighting crime (or intruding on civil liberties,
however you want to look at it). The NSA is storing all those Verizon (and, presumably, other carrier
records) in a massive database system called Accumulo, which it built itself (on top of Hadoop) a few
years ago because there weren’t any other options suitable for its scale and requirements around
stability or security. The NSA is currently storing tens of petabytes of data in Accumulo.
In graph parlance, vertices are the individual data points (e.g., phone numbers or social network users)
and edges are the connections among them. In late May, the NSA released a slide presentation detailing
how fast fast Accumulo is able to process a 4.4-trillion-node, 70-trillion-edge graph. By way of
comparison, the graph behind Facebook’s Graph Search feature contains billions of nodes and trillions of
edges. (In the low trillions, from what I understand.)
So, yes, the NSA is able to easily analyze the call and text-message records of hundreds of million of
mobile subscribers. It’s also building out some massive data center real estate to support all the data
it’s collecting.
How might a graph analysis work within the NSA? The easy answer, which the government has
acknowledged, is to figure out who else is in contact with suspected terrorists. If there’s a strong
connection between you and Public Enemy No. 1, the NSA will find out and get to work figuring out who
you are. That could be via a search warrant or wiretap authorization, or it could conceivably figure out
who someone likely is by using location data.
Having such a big database of call records also provides the NSA with an easy way to go back and find
out information about someone should their number pop up in a future investigation. Assuming the
number is somewhere in their index, agents can track it down and get to work figuring out who it’s
related to and from where it has been making calls.
AT: HUMINT turn
HUMINT can’t fill in – it’s slow, limited to small-ball intelligence and terrorists will
adapt. Big data is vital to mapping the entire network with enough warning to
prevent attacks
Mudd, 13 - Mr. Mudd was deputy director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, 2003-05, and senior
intelligence adviser at the FBI, 2009-10. He is now director of Global Risk at SouthernSun Asset
Management (Philip, “Mapping Terror Networks: Why Metadata Matters” Wall Street Journal, 12/29,
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304367204579270472690053740
We met every afternoon in the CIA director's conference room at 5. At the FBI director's conference
room, we met every morning shortly after 7.
At both agencies, the questions were similar: How best can we clarify the blurry picture of an emerging
terror conspiracy overseas or in the United States? How can we identify the key players and the broader
network of fundraisers, radicalizers, travel facilitators and others quickly enough so they can't succeed?
And how do we ensure that we've mapped the network enough to dismantle—and not merely disrupt—
it?
The only way to understand why the NSA collects and needs access to vast amounts of telephone
metadata is to keep these questions in mind, especially the last. In ruling on Friday that the data
collection is lawful, U.S. District Court Judge William H. Pauley III expressed it well: "The government
needs a wide net that could find and isolate gossamer contacts among suspected terrorists in an ocean
of seemingly disconnected data."
Mapping a network of people is simple in concept but complex in practice: find the key operators, and
then find the support group. The challenge isn't limited to counterterrorism. Any group—from
organized-crime enterprises to gangs, drug cartels, or human traffickers—consists of a team of people
who interact and are organized for a particular purpose. If an analyst maps that network well enough,
then a series of arrests or lethal operations can destroy it.
Map a network poorly, however, and you may miss peripheral players who will recreate a conspiracy
after the core conspirators are arrested. The goal is to eliminate the entire spiderweb of a conspiracy;
cutting off a piece, like the arm of a starfish, is a poor second choice. The starfish's arm regenerates.
Think of the range of linkages you might find among individuals in these networks. Money, phone calls,
email exchanges, travel, social media, chat rooms—the modes constantly expand. How many linkages
could a security service monitor electronically even two decades ago? Very few: Many of today's means
of communication and interaction didn't exist.
A security service can also use human surveillance teams on the ground to map a network. This is more
familiar and comforting, and it might sound less intrusive than the digital mapping programs run by NSA
computers. But human surveillance operations are slow, inefficient and costly. And they have a higher
risk of missing members of the network. The fastest, most efficient solution to mapping a network of
conspirators lies in following digital connections among people. And as digital trails expand, digital
network mapping will increase in value.
There is a healthy debate about how far U.S. security services should delve into our digital trails, but
emotions too often overcome common sense. Every week I hear someone comment on whether the
government is listening to their conversations—as if there's some huge complex of government
employees in a mythical Area 51, listening to other Americans. The debates about government
intelligence collection should be clearer about distinguishing between what the government collects and
what it does with it. They may be collecting my phone number; what I'd worry more about is what they
do with what they collect.
For an ongoing investigation, the data might seem relatively straightforward: link cellphones, email
contacts, financial transactions, travel and visa information, add in whatever else you can find, and sort
through the data using modern network analysis tools. Bingo! Within a day, you can have the beginnings
of an understanding of a complex network that might take old-school investigators weeks or more to
piece together.
Even so, an analyst has to ask other questions. Where did the conspirators travel a year ago? Five years
ago? Who did they live with? Who did they sit next to on an airplane? Who gave them money? And a
thousand other questions.
Investigators need an historical pool of data, in other words, that they can access only when they have
information that starts with a known or suspected conspirator in the middle of a spiderweb they don't
fully understand. Meanwhile, time pressures lurk: If you're late by a day, you lose.
In the post-9/11 world, the harder debate and more difficult questions center on pre-emptive
intelligence—potentially lethal unknowns. Consider Minnesota, with its significant Somali expatriate
population. Should analysts look for youths who buy one-way cash tickets to a country neighboring
Somalia? What if they've accessed extremist websites? Would that combination of digital signals—none
of which is an illegal act—be sufficient to initiate an investigation? And if there are circumstances that
would result in preventive investigations, how can we conduct them if we don't have access to historical
data in real time?
There are few certainties in this debate. But we do know that our digital trails will grow as more of our
lives appear in bits and bytes, in records held by tomorrow's Amazons and Facebooks. And we know that
to piece together networks, law enforcement and intelligence will use these data streams and need
historical data to do so.
Intelligence analysts will look for more clarity on how policy makers and the public want to balance the
ability to discern troubling patterns in private citizens' data and the national interest in ensuring that
America remains a land of personal freedom where privacy is respected. But given the threats the
country faces, mapping digital interactions among people will become ever more critical to
understanding terrorists, criminals and foreign spies.
These tools and access to historical data are essential to mapping how bad guys operate. The trick won't
be choosing privacy over security but in balancing the two.
Risk-averse politics mean a HUMINT shift won’t solve
Harman, 15 - Director, President and CEO, Wilson Center, member of the Defense Policy Board, the
State Department Foreign Policy Board, and the Homeland Security Advisory Committee. (Jane,
“Disrupting the Intelligence Community” Foreign Affairs, March/April,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2015-03-01/disrupting-intelligence-community
Another factor making human intelligence gathering a harder game to play is the broader American
political culture. Developing informants (let alone embedding assets) within terrorist groups is a dicey
proposition. And regardless of their personal courage or willingness to serve, intelligence officers must
now operate in a political climate that discourages risk taking, because the American public reacts so
strongly to U.S. casualties—something the fallout from the 2012 attack on the U.S. compound in
Benghazi, Libya, which killed two Foreign Service officers and two security personnel, made clear. Of
course, such political constraints and risk aversion affect the U.S. military, too. This is partly why many
U.S. policymakers are cool to the idea of putting boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS. The irony
is that an effective air war relies on precise targeting, which requires good intelligence collected on the
ground, which itself exposes U.S. personnel to the sorts of risks an air war is supposed to avoid.
A combined approach to intelligence is best – neglecting any one component increases
the risk of systemwide failure
Sims, 7 - Professorial Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies;
former intelligence analyst for the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency (Jennifer Sims
(2007) Intelligence to counter terror: The importance of all-source fusion, Intelligence and National
Security, 22:1, 38-56, DOI: 10.1080/02684520701200772
Traditionally, US intelligence has used three types of collection to target opponents: technical
intelligence (TECHINT), human intelligence (HUMINT) and open source or unclassified intelligence
(OSINT). Technical intelligence includes the collection of imagery, intercepted communications,
electronic signals emitted by equipment, engineering data from captured electronics or weapons
systems, and data from equipment or materials in the environment that leave signatures of their
presence, such as radiation, effluent plumes and noise, that trained analysts can discern using existing
data as reference.8 The productivity of any of these collectors against a particular target will depend on
that collector’s access to the target’s most vulnerable point. For example, if a network of spies uses
wireless radios, picking up their electronic emissions (TECHINT) will be an effective way to find them; if
they use couriers, human agents secretly opening the letters and packages (HUMINT) is likely to work
best; if the adversary believes he is unobserved, collecting the names of those he visits from a phone
book or the sites he visits while traveling as an ostensible tourist (OSINT) would be useful.
In any case, the best intelligence is obtained when the capabilities of all these collectors are quickly
combined. Just as newspaper editors like to see multiple sources corroborating articles even from their
best reporters, directors of national intelligence have greater confidence in intelligence that comes from
multiple collectors. Better than simply hearing that Osama Bin Laden has been sighted on a road in
Pakistan would be seeing imagery of his convoy and receiving intercepts from his communications that
each independently confirm the initial report.9 As long as an opponent runs reasonably complex
operations, some collectors will work best against certain aspects of those operations, while others will
work best against the rest. Thus ‘all source’ collection can yield many pieces of a puzzle that analysts can
then assemble, jumble up, and reassemble as the adversary moves, reacts to countermoves, and moves
again.
Beyond corroboration, however, is the concept of collection ‘boosting’ in which the productivity of one
collector depends on input from others.10 The most obvious example of boosting within a single
discipline is ‘direction finding’ (DFing), which may involve the use of multiple antennae to triangulate on
a signal so that it can not only be identified, but also geo-located with some degree of precision.11
During World War II, the SS paired up with the Gestapo and used direction-finding to locate the wireless
radios used by a network of Stalin’s spies in Europe. To their great chagrin, these radios were found in
Berlin – some next to the most sensitive government ministries.12 Of course, boosting also works
among collection disciplines, such as the use of spies (HUMINT) to steal the codes of adversaries so that
analysts working on intercepted communications (TECHINT) can overcome the encryption methods and
read the content of the messages.13 In fact, the more tightly integrated collectors are into the decisionmaking process the more likely an adversary’s spoofing of a collector will work to deflect or deceive
one’s own decision-makers. Since securing collectors can be a costly and seemingly never-ending
endeavor, one good way to compensate for inevitable vulnerabilities is to ensure collection is
‘constructively redundant’ – that is, sufficiently all-source that one collector’s vulnerability to spoofing
will not lead to misperception or miscalculation.
This kind of constructively redundant all-source collection was a lynchpin of the allied strategy to defeat
Hitler during World War II; it was employed, for example, to determine whether covert and clandestine
collection operations had been compromised and, specifically, in the running of the famous British
counterintelligence operation known as Double Cross.14 But the history of Double Cross also alerts us to
the inherent dangers of redundant collection systems: since collectors improve the reliability of each
other’s products by offering independent corroboration, they depend on good systemwide
counterintelligence so an adversary cannot defeat or spoof one of them and thus sow ambiguity,
uncertainty and confusion throughout an interlaced collection system. If systemic counterintelligence is
weak, collectors have good reason not to share their ‘take’ lest it become tainted. Poor
counterintelligence can lead to system-wide failure even when the majority of collection endeavors
are robust and productive.15
In some respects, then, the business of all-source data fusion for countering terrorism follows what has
been done in a traditional sense against other intelligence targets. What makes the counterterrorism a
particularly challenging endeavor is the terrorists’ objective of committing stealthy crime – often on the
victim’s home soil. This means that law enforcement information, including information on US residents
or citizens living in close proximity to the terrorists, may be important intelligence information that
needs to be shared with decision-makers at the federal level working to thwart terrorist activities on a
nationwide scale. Law enforcement agents, dedicated to preserving the information for the purposes of
arrest and prosecution, realize the need to pass the information over to these officials but do not always
know the best and most secure ways to do so. At times, in fact, the most important decisions must be
made very quickly by state and local officials if they are to prevent an impending attack. In these cases,
circulating information to Washington for recycling into intelligence products could delay action rather
than assist it. The problem thus becomes the very nontraditional one of fusing all-source intelligence for
a cop on the beat.
AT: Allied cooperation turn
Intelligence cooperation remains high regardless of relations
Butler, 14 - Vice President of Government Strategies, IO, a privately-held data center, builder and
provider. And he's also an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for New America Security, previously the First
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy at the Pentagon (Bob, “THE INTERNATIONAL
IMPLICATIONS OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY LEAKS” 6/4)
MR. BUTLER: Sure. I'm going to talk briefly about defense and then I'm going to spend most of my time,
based on where I sit today, talking about tech; an industry from a global datacenter perspective. Within
defense, though, I think in light of the Snowden revelations I think Cam's explanation of a kind of a
aircraft accident or a car accident, kind of, proceeding slowly, holds true. There is a sense -- there was a
sense of awkwardness, and a lot -- I think a lot of folks just watching to see how the United States was
going to deal with it.
At the same time, in these -- when these unfortunate situations happen, National Security and Defense
dialogue trumps, so with coalition partners close allies, the conversation continues and it continues to
grow. I think the other dimension is, you have two sides of a discussion, is above-the-table political
discussion that’s going on, and then there's a discussion within the defense and intelligence community.
And again, from the substance of national interest, not only U.S. national interest, but foreign national
interest, there is -- you know, we built alliances, coalitions and relationships based on dialogue.
Mutual self interest means those relationships are resilient
Jones, 14 - Senior Fellow and Director, Project on International Strategy and Order
The Brookings Institution (Bruce, “THE INTERNATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY
AGENCY LEAKS” 6/4)
MR. JONES: Well, having been fairly response, let me be slightly more upbeat in this, because if I look
out over several years, I'm -- and even a shorter term that I'm more inclined to -- your last point about,
there's an old news phenomenal now, or at least there can be. It's well-timed, there's about to be
Brazilian elections, and there just been Indian elections, when you look at the swing states and some of
the other actors who are in this, they are not U.S. allies, but they are not adversaries so kind of friend -neither friend nor foe country.
I think you’ve seen relatively quickly now, a sense of, look, it's just too costly to sustain tension with the
United States, so let's find ways to move past this. And elections are helpful, either brining in new actors
or by sort of demarcating we can say, well that was that phase, and now we'll move on. Harold talked
about that in the Brazilian context, I think we'll see that in the Indian context, a sense of, okay, that was
that, let's move, let's move onwards.
And I think the kind of, used phrase, mutual self-interests, but when you look at these actors and what
they are looking at in big-picture terms with China, with Russia, with the frame of different regimes, and
they look at the United States, the mutual self-interest is pretty rapidly putting this one back in a box at
a very strategic level at least.
Overall US-EU cooperation is high
Archick, 14 - Specialist in European Affairs at the Congressional Research Service (Kristin, “U.S.-EU
Cooperation Against Terrorism” 12/1, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22030.pdf
U.S.-EU cooperation against terrorism has led to a new dynamic in U.S.-EU relations by fostering
dialogue on law enforcement and homeland security issues previously reserved for bilateral discussions
with individual EU member states. Despite some frictions, most U.S. policy makers and analysts view
the developing partnership with the EU in these areas as positive. Like its predecessor, the Obama
Administration has supported U.S. cooperation with the EU in the fields of counterterrorism, border
controls, and transport security.
At the November 2009 U.S.-EU Summit in Washington, DC, the two sides reaffirmed their commitment
to work together to combat terrorism and enhance cooperation in the broader JHA field. In June 2010,
the United States and the EU adopted a “Declaration on Counterterrorism” aimed at deepening the
already close U.S.-EU relationship and highlighting the commitment of both sides to combat terrorism
within the rule of law. In June 2011, President Obama’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism asserted
that in addition to working with European allies bilaterally, “the United States will continue to partner
with the European Parliament and European Union to maintain and advance CT efforts that provide
mutual security and protection to citizens of all nations while also upholding individual rights.” The EU
has also been a key U.S. partner in the 30-member Global Counterterrorism Forum, founded in
September 2011 as a multilateral body aimed at mobilizing resources and expertise to counter violent
extremism, strengthen criminal justice and rule of law capacities, and enhance international
counterterrorism cooperation.12
Recently, U.S. and EU officials have been discussing ways to combat the foreign fighter phenomenon
given increasing concerns that both European and American Muslims are being recruited to fight with
Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq. U.S. policy makers, including some Members of Congress, have
expressed worries in particular about such foreign fighters in light of short-term visa-free travel
arrangements between the United States and most EU countries. In early July 2014, U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder asserted, “We have a mutual and compelling interest in developing shared
strategies for confronting the influx of U.S. and European-born violent extremists in Syria. And because
our citizens can freely travel, visa-free ... the problem of fighters in Syria returning to any of our
countries is a problem for all of our countries.”13 In September 2014, the White House noted that U.S.
officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security are “working closely”
with EU counterparts to “address a wide range of measures focused on enhancing counterradicalization, border security, aviation security, and information sharing” to address potential threats
posed by foreign fighters.14
Allied cooperation is inevitable – US surveillance diplomacy
Keiber 15 (Jason, PhD in Political Science, subfield of International Relations from Ohio State
University, “Surveillance Hegemony,” http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-andsociety/article/viewFile/snowden_hegemony/snowden_hege, Surveillance and Society, Volume 13,
Number 2, 2015, silbs)
<< Surveillance Hegemony: Power, Norms and Institutions
The extraordinary material surveillance capabilities of the US is perhaps most easily “measured” by its
exorbitant funding. Nearly a third of the US’s $52.6 billion intelligence budget is dedicated to fighting
terrorism (Gellman and Miller 2013). 4 The NSA in particular gets one fifth of the overall budget. This
money sustains a talented workforce and produces cutting edge surveillance techniques. These
capabilities are often put to use covertly and unilaterally. The US, however, can also influence others to
participate in its broader, strategic surveillance efforts. One of the more striking examples of secret
cooperation is the recently disclosed RAMPART-A program in which over a dozen countries allow the US
to install equipment to “congested” cables so that the US can intercept phone and internet traffic
(Gallagher 2014).
With some caveats, both the US and the host country reportedly get access to the fruits of that
surveillance. In general there are 37 states that are “approved SIGINT partners” (Greenwald 2014). This
highlights the fact that other states accept (to varying degrees) core premises of how surveillance should
work on an international scale. This acceptance, in turn, rests on a broader set of norms that emphasize
the threat of terrorism and the necessity of counterterrorism measures. On the normative side of the
ledger, a modicum of international surveillance in the form of information sharing has become not just
tolerated, but held up as a responsibility states owe each other. Finally there is an array of international
institutions that support surveillance activities. The US has been able to use its influential position within
these institutions—the UN in particular—to establish an array of information sharing practices, all of
which benefit US surveillance goals.
Anti-terrorism norms existed prior to 9/11, but the attacks on that day in 2001 vaulted anti-terrorism
business to the top of the agenda. Terrorism moved from a threat to the predominant threat. Pre-9/11
norms began emerging as early as the end of the 19th century as a response to anarchism (Jensen
2013), but developed more thoroughly in the 1970s (see Rapoport 2002 for more on the international
dimensions of terrorism over time). The general emphasis was that states should refrain from
supporting international terrorism. After 9/11 this changed into a norm urging states to actively
intervene to stop international terrorism. This requires shoring up their own surveillance capacity at
home and sharing information with others abroad. >>
Surveillance diplomacy and assistance to other states proves it’s inevitable
Keiber 15 (Jason, PhD in Political Science, subfield of International Relations from Ohio State
University, “Surveillance Hegemony,” http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-andsociety/article/viewFile/snowden_hegemony/snowden_hege, Surveillance and Society, Volume 13,
Number 2, 2015, silbs)
The hegemonic position of the US is evident in its CT strategies. First, the US offers carrots to “weak”
states, promising to “strengthen the capacity of such War on Terror partners to reclaim full control of
their territory through effective police, border, and other security forces as well as functioning systems
of justice” (The White House 2006: 16). Only a powerful state could offer (and sometimes foist upon
other states) such assistance.
Second, over time the US shifts from unilateral bluster (which is implicitly backed by direct coercion) to a
more international approach (which relies on US diplomatic strengths and advantages in international
fora). In the 2006 CT strategy, the language of “willing and able” states persists, but the stark language
from 2003 is absent. Instead, for those states “reluctant to fulfill their sovereign responsibilities to
combat terrorist-related activities within their borders” the US would lean on diplomacy and the rest of
“the international community to persuade [these] states to meet their obligations to combat terrorism
and deny safe haven under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373” (The White House 2006: 16). This is
the approach of a hegemon relying on less coercive modes of influence.
There are two watchwords throughout these documents—capacity and partnership. Both reflect US
hegemony, and both find increasing use in the subsequent CT national strategies. State “capacity” is
used twice in 2003, nine times in 2006, and 17 times in 2011 (The White House 2011). References to
“partnerships” occurred 25, 41, and 59 times in the respective years. The US sees its CT relationship with
other “willing” states as that of a partnership. Partnerships with “able” states are exercised through
more joint efforts. In its partnerships with weaker states the US would help build their capacity to fight
terrorism—a capacity that includes surveillance. The expectation is that the US approach to surveillance
would be dominated by cooperative efforts with more capable states and assistance for weaker states
to shore up their domestic surveillance capability.
AT: Going dark / encryption
NSA will circumvent encryption – they’ll use Network Exploitation
Corera July 15th
(Gordon Corera is Security Correspondent for BBC News, major documentaries for the BBC on the NSA,
He is the author of the THE ART OF BETRAYAL: LIFE AND DEATH IN THE BRITISH SECRET SERVICE and
SHOPPING FOR BOMBS: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE AQ KHAN NETWORK. In 2014 he was named
Information Security Journalist of the Year at the BT INFORMATION SECURITY AND JOURNALISM
AWARDS, “GCHQ WILL CIRCUMVENT ENCRYPTION NO MATTER WHAT. HERE'S HOW”, Wired,
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/15/how-spies-will-circumvent-encryption-anyway,
TMP)
On both sides of the Atlantic the battle over encryption is hotting up , with the FBI continuing to press
its case for access and the British government making noises about its fears of what an encrypted future
might mean. The talk is of how ubiquitous encryption will lead to spies and law enforcement "going
dark". ¶ In recent years, the state could compel national telecoms providers to give them access to data
traffic, which the spies could then read. But those companies are seeing more and more of what passes
through their pipes encrypted by service providers. And since Edward Snowden revealed the extent of
government surveillance, those providers and other tech companies have come to see offering privacy
as a selling point to their customers. But if end-to-end encryption becomes increasingly ubiquitous, is it
the end of the line for the spies? History suggests not. ¶ When encryption first became available to the
public in the 70s, thanks to the development of public key cryptography, one of its inventors Whit Diffie
had a conversation with Arthur Levenson, a senior figure at US spy agency, the NSA. Diffie told Levenson
he thought signals intelligence was finished. Levenson was less sure. "Whit, we've heard these
arguments before," Levenson (whose experience stretched back to Bletchley Park) replied. Forty years
on, as Diffie recalled the conversation with me, he shook his head with a rueful smile. "I was clearly
mistaken," he says. When it comes to signals intelligence, "the sources are fragile, but the phenomenon
is robust" as Diffie remembers one official telling him.¶ One of the things that became clear to me while
writing a book on the history of computers and spies, is that the talk of going dark is not new and the
smartest spies know they can adapt. Signals intelligence is an inherently insecure business in which
the tiniest change can instantly dry up a valuable stream of intelligence.¶ When Nazi Germany upgraded
its Enigma machine as the second world war started, the head of the Government Code and Cypher
School (soon to become GCHQ) said it would be "a waste of time and public money" to even try to crack
the new codes. But Alan Turing and others took up the challenge, and proved them wrong. As the Cold
War started, Soviet codes proved near impossible to break. But the spies instead carried out massive
traffic analysis on the externals of communications to extract useful intelligence. By establishing what
normal patterns of Soviet military communications were, GCHQ and NSA would look for any change -this might be an indicator of troops on the move, and potentially war. This was the real -- and secret -birth of today's buzz word of "big data". Finally, when fibre-optic cables spread in the 90s, the spies
again thought their satellite-based collection model was over, but they adapted (as Edward Snowden
soon revealed). The point about end-to-end encryption is that there is still an endpoint where the
message is clear and readable. And so the spies at GCHQ and NSA will likely shift towards greater
exploiting of target endpoints by what they call Computer Network Exploitation -- what everyone
else calls hacking . This may also be done on a much larger scale than in the past , with references in
some recent reports to something called "bulk" computer network exploitation. There are indications
from the Snowden leaks that the US may be able to pre-install large numbers of implants in computers,
ready to be activated. Spies will also do what they have done in the past by looking for weaknesses in
encryption protocols (as they discovered with Enigma machines) and for any human failings in
implementation. These may offer the chink in the armour which clever mathematicians and machines
can together work on , as happened again at Bletchley. ¶ Other forms of surveillance may also play a role
-- after all, a covertly placed camera above your PC can catch you type in your password and outwit the
very best forms of encryption. This kind of activity needs to be authorised if the state wants to do it,
however, and new laws planned for the UK are expected to overhaul the entire surveillance system to
make it clearer what can and cannot be done ,and who should sign it off (perhaps soon a judge, rather
than a minister).¶ One of Whit Diffie's reflections about why he was mistaken back in the 70s is that,
while much of the emphasis is on what proportion of traffic the state can read, there is another part of
the equation for signals intelligence. And that is the overall volume of communications that are out
there. The trend over the years has been for almost exponential growth and all the signs are that this
will continue as we connect up more and more internet of things devices. And not everything will be
properly encrypted . In other words, even if a smaller proportion of the communications is readable,
there is still more out there overall .¶ The connected devices in our household, like our fridges and
those that we wear and carry, like our watches, are likely to be potentially highly revealing sources of
intelligence. The shift towards encryption may also increase the pressure to carry out traffic analysis
and extract meaning from metadata rather than the unreadable content. More will also be made of
open source forms of intelligence (information searchable from the web and social media like Twitter
which might reveal connections, links or locations) -- this is already proving increasingly valuable.¶ The
smartest spies know encryption is coming -- and that they risk being on the wrong side of the
argument if they oppose it, as the public increasingly understands its value in protecting their data from
a range of malevolent actors like criminals and foreign hackers. The spread may mean spies have a lean
period as existing intelligence flows do, in fact, go dark. But history suggests that if they are as smart in
the future as they have been in the past, then they will find new ways to do their job.
We can crack encryptions now, “Going Dark” not an issue – local information, metadata,
and new databases are happening now
Swire July 15th
(Peter Swire is the Huang professor of law and ethics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, senior
counsel with Alston & Bird LLP, and a cyber-fellow with New America, Slate Magazine, “The Golden Age
of Surveillance”,
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/07/encryption_back_doors_aren_t_nece
ssary_we_re_already_in_a_golden_age_of.html, TMP)
In recent months, law enforcement, led by FBI Director James Comey, has waged war against the “going
dark” problem—criminals using secure communications technologies, particularly encryption , to
evade justice. Its solution to this problem is to encourage or require technology companies to build in
back doors to allow the government to circumvent, say, encryption on your iPhone. But in reality, we
are currently in a golden age of surveillance . The “going dark” argument should not be used as a
reason to support back doors or other special access by law enforcement to encrypted
communications.¶ Last Wednesday I had the privilege of testifying before the Senate Judiciary
Committee on the balance between public safety and encryption. I have been researching and writing
on encryption for two decades, including serving on President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence
and Communications Technology. My testimony stressed three arguments¶ First, I agree that law there
are indeed specific ways that enforcement and national security agencies lose specific previous
capabilities due to changing encryption technology. These specific losses, however, are more than
offset by massive gains , including: (1) location information; (2) information about contacts and
confederates; and (3) an array of new databases that create digital dossiers about individuals’ lives.¶
The adoption in the past 20 years of text messaging, an area highlighted by law enforcement as an
example of “going dark,” specifically shows enormous gains to law enforcement. Although relatively
few text messages were sent 20 years ago, by 2010 the number exceeded 6 trillion texts per year. For
the predominant share of those messages, the content is available from the provider. Even for the
subset where the content is encrypted , law enforcement can gain access to the metadata.¶ Being able
to access texts and other metadata is enormously helpful in mapping the social graphs of suspects.
Before we all communicated online, most of our social interactions (except our phone calls) left no
records, and the content of communications left no trace unless law enforcement happened to have an
active wiretap on a phone call. Today, however, metadata leaves traces of every electronic
communication a suspect has , showing whom they speak to, how often, how long, and from where.
Identifying these other confederates gives law enforcement the opportunity to use a number of other
tools to access encrypted content, ranging from confidential informants, to surveillance on the coconspirators, to offering immunity to one participant to gain access to the content of communications
with the others.¶ Law enforcement has expressed particular concern about encrypted text messaging
services, such as WhatsApp. For text messages, it might be tempting to say that law enforcement could
call the glass half empty (some texts are encrypted) or half full (some texts are in the clear). With more
than 6 trillion messages filling the cup, though, it takes chutzpah to say the glass is empty. Text
messages are a prime example of a golden age of surveillance, and not of going dark.¶ Second ,
government-mandated vulnerabilities would threaten severe harm to cybersecurity, privacy, human
rights, and U.S. technological leadership while not preventing effective encryption by adversaries . As
occurred in the 1990s, a diverse coalition of cybersecurity experts, technology companies, privacy
experts, human rights activists, and others has expressed vociferous and united opposition to
government-mandated encryption vulnerabilities. These concerns include:¶ Technology companies, even
before Edward Snowden, had multiple reasons to deploy strong encryption to enhance cybersecurity
and customer trust . The ongoing development of encryption should thus not be seen primarily as a
short-term response to Snowden’s revelations.¶ Overwhelming technical problems and costs result from
mandates to create vulnerabilities in encryption.¶ U.S. government support for encryption vulnerabilities
increases cybersecurity problems in the “least trusted countries” and globally, and undermines U.S.
human rights policies. The United States should be a strong example for cybersecurity and human
rights , rather than an excuse used by repressive regimes to surveil U.S.-based businesses and
individuals and clamp down on political dissent.¶ Mandated vulnerabilities are bad industrial policy —
they threaten U.S. technological leadership without preventing bad actors from using strong
encryption.¶ An impressive new technical study by a group of experts was released on July 6 just before
the hearing, titled “Keys Under Doormats: Mandating Insecurity by Requiring Government Access to All
Data and Communications.” The new study highlights three general problems. Providing mandated
access “would force a U-turn from the best practices now being deployed to make the Internet more
secure.” Furthermore, building in exceptional access would substantially increase system complexity,
“making security testing difficult and less effective.” Finally, exceptional access would create
concentrated targets for bad actors: “Recent attacks on the United States Government Office of
Personnel Management show how much harm can arise when many organizations rely on a single
institution that itself has security vulnerabilities.Ӧ One might perhaps wonder whether the technical
experts are stretching a point by making such definitive statements. Based on my two decades of work
on these issues, the technical experts say the same things in private as are written in blue ribbon
reports. The passion that the most eminent technical experts show here is due to their conviction based
on hard-fought experience, and not a lobbying ploy.¶ Third , the Review Group on I ntelligence and
C ommunications T echnology report, released in December 2013, unanimously and clearly
recommended that the U.S. government vigorously encourage the use of strong encryption, stating:¶ We
recommend that, regarding encryption, the US Government should:¶ (1) fully support and not
undermine efforts to create encryption standards;¶ (2) not in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or
make vulnerable generally available commercial software; and¶ (3) increase the use of encryption and
urge US companies to do so, in order to better protect data in transit, at rest, in the cloud, and in other
storage.¶ With full awareness of the “going dark” concerns, we sharply criticized any attempt to
introduce vulnerabilities into commercially available products and services, and found that even
temporary vulnerabilities should be authorized only after administrationwide scrutiny. Based on the topsecret briefings and our experience, we found these policies would best fight cybercrime, improve
cybersecurity, build trust in the global communications infrastructure, and promote national security.¶
At heart, providing access exceptions for U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies will be harmful,
rather than helpful, to national security. The inability to directly access the content of a small fraction of
these communications does not warrant the subsequent damage that would result to privacy and to
U.S. economic, diplomatic, and security interests.¶ Special thanks to Justin Hemmings for assistance with
this project.¶ This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New
America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and
culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow
us on Twitter.
Impacts
1nc – domestic hate groups
Radical right lone wolf terrorism increasing now – surveillance is key to thwart
attacks.
SPLC 2/12 (Nonprofit legal advocacy and civil rights organization, “SPLC Report: ‘Lone
Wolf’ Domestic Terrorism on the Rise,” Southern Poverty Law Center, 12 February 2015,
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/splc-report-lone-wolf-domestic-terrorism-on-the-rise,
*fc)
As the White House prepares to host a major summit examining the threat of violent extremism next
week, a Southern Poverty Law Center study of domestic terrorism released today finds that the vast
majority of this violence is coming from “lone wolves” or “leaderless resistance” groups composed of no
more than two people.
The report – Age of the Wolf: A Study of the Rise of Lone Wolf and Leaderless Resistance Terrorism
(download a PDF of the report)– examines more than 60 domestic terror incidents. Almost threequarters of the incidents were carried out, or planned, by a lone wolf, a single person acting without
accomplices. Ninety percent of the incidents were the work of no more than two persons.
The study, which included violence from both the radical right and homegrown jihadists, also found that
a domestic terrorist attack or foiled attack occurred, on average, every 34 days. It covered a period
between April 1, 2009 and Feb. 1, 2015, and was based on records maintained by Indiana State
University and the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, along with the SPLC’s own roster
of apparent domestic terror incidents.
“ Our study clearly shows the urgent need for federal agencies to reinvigorate their work studying and
analyzing the radical right ,” said Mark Potok, SPLC senior fellow and editor of the report. “And it’s
important to recognize the trend away from organized groups committing acts of domestic terror. As
Timothy McVeigh demonstrated with the Oklahoma City bombing, lone wolves and small cells of
domestic terrorists can create massive carnage. ”
The White House will hold a summit on Feb. 18 to examine the cycle of radicalization that spawns such
extremists, but there is a danger, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France, that Islamist terror
will become the focus. While jihadism is a deadly serious concern, the report shows that authorities
should not focus on it to the exclusion of other threats.
A timeline included with the report details a lengthy list of deadly attacks and plots across the country.
They include a 2014 rampage in Nevada by a husband and wife with anti-government views that left two
police officers and another man dead, a 2012 attack on a Wisconsin Sikh temple by a long-time neo-Nazi
that killed six victims, and a 2010 attack that left an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) manager dead after a
man who had attended radical anti-tax group meetings crashed his single-engine plane into an IRS office
in Austin, Texas.
“The lone wolf’s chief asset is that no one else knows of his violent plans, which makes them
exceedingly difficult to disrupt,” Potok said. “It is imperative that authorities, including those gathering
at the White House next week, take this threat seriously. Anything less would be an invitation to
disaster.”
They’ll use WMD
Blair 14 (Charles P. Blair, Senior Fellow on State and Non-State Threats for the
Federation of American Scientists who teaches classes on terrorism and WMD
technology at John Hopkins University and George Mason University, “Looking clearly at
right-wing terrorism,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 9 June 2014,
http://thebulletin.org/looking-clearly-right-wing-terrorism7232, *fc)
Five years ago the US Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Environment Threat Analysis
Division released an assessment of US far-right extremism. Initially intended for law enforcement and
intelligence agencies only, the report—“Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate
Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment”—was almost immediately leaked. The report
warned that small cells practicing “leaderless resistance” and “white supremacist lone wolves [posed]
the most significant domestic terrorist threat.” Significantly, it highlighted the likelihood of expanded
attempts by far-right extremists “to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their
violent capabilities.” Overall, the report warned of trends similar to “the 1990s when rightwing
extremism experienced a resurgence.” That far-right extremist rally reached a violent crescendo with
the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
Reflecting on the past five years, a leading far-right extremism expert I recently interviewed described
the homeland security report as “prophetic.” Mark Pitcavage, the Anti-Defamation League’s director of
investigative research, explained that most of the warnings in the 2009 report have become realities.
Yet at the time of its release, the document was derided by many inside and outside of government as
“ridiculous [and] deeply offensive,” an “inconceivable” assault on US veterans, and, in general, “a piece
of crap.” Buckling under political pressure from conservatives, homeland security rapidly repressed the
report. Promptly removed from department's website, the tabooed document also disappeared from
the computer systems of state and local law enforcement divisions as well as federal intelligence
agencies. The homeland security unit responsible for the report was virtually muzzled. The report
essentially fell into obscurity.
The report’s demise was an unfortunate loss for all levels of law enforcement. Since its release,
credible plots and attacks by violent extremists have surged. As the report forewarned, responsibility
for the vast majority of these events lies with far-right individual extremists and extreme groups.
Moreover, veteran and active-duty military personnel, when compared to the general population, were
disproportionally involved in far-right extremist incidents. In just the first two months following the
report, significant attacks occurred via the hands of major components of far-right extremism. For
example, in May 2009, a “soldier” in the Christian terrorist anti-abortion network Army of God
assassinated Kansas late-term abortion provider George Tiller. One day earlier, members of an antiimmigrant vigilante group—the Minutemen American Defense—invaded the home of an Arizona Latino
and his 9-year-old daughter. Both were killed as part of a plan aimed at securing money to fund the
group’s anti-immigrant terrorist operations. Less than two weeks later an octogenarian white
supremacist shot and killed a security guard at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Reflecting the
conspiracy theories adhered to by many white supremacists, hand-written notes found in his car read,
“The Holocaust is a lie… Obama was created by Jews… Jews captured America’s money. Jews control the
mass media.”
In the five years following the report’s release, far-right extremists have also plotted against and, at
times, successfully attacked a wide-range of additional targets, including government buildings and
leaders, law enforcement personnel, polling stations, courthouses and judges, a Martin Luther King Jr.
Day parade, anti-racist gatherings, a Mexican consulate, synagogues and other Jewish institutions,
mosques, a Sikh temple, African-Americans and other minorities, and interracial couples and families.
Despite this grim record—amid a political environment that often discounts warnings of far-right
extremist threats and terrorism—the Department of Homeland Security remains reluctant to address
the growing threat. One of the 2009 report’s primary authors noted that since “our report was leaked,
DHS has not released a single report of its own on this topic. Not anything dealing with non-Islamic
domestic extremism—whether it's anti-abortion extremists, white supremacists … the whole gamut.”
Only very recently have reports been released by the unit in question; the few that address far-right
extremism do so parsimoniously and with clear caution.
Far-right terrorism in the US is more common than other types of violent radicalism. A recent study by
the New America Foundation found that since 9/11, far-right extremists “have killed more people in the
United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology.” And perhaps most important,
far-right terrorists are more prone to seek unconventional weapons—that is, weapons that might
generate mass casualties or mass disruption . The study found that while no “jihadists indicted or
convicted in the United States” had obtained or employed chemical or biological warfare agents, 13
individuals motivated by far-right extremist ideology, “acquired or used chemical or biological
weapons or their precursor materials.” In the recent past, far-right extremists have also plotted the
use of radiological weapons.
The threat of major acts of far-right terrorism—perhaps aided by people with military training—is real. It
should not be exaggerated, but neither should it be suppressed for political or ideological reasons.
Hate group terrorism increasing
Right-wing terrorism on the rise – DHS report
Perez and Bruer 15 (Evan Perez and Wes Bruer are staff writers for CNN. "DHS intelligence report warns
of domestic right-wing terror threat," Feb 20, 2015. www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/politics/terror-threathomeland-security/) jsk
Washington (CNN) They're carrying out sporadic terror attacks on police, have threatened attacks on
government buildings and reject government authority.
A new intelligence assessment, circulated by the Department of Homeland Security this month and
reviewed by CNN, focuses on the domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists
and comes as the Obama administration holds a White House conference to focus efforts to fight violent
extremism.
Some federal and local law enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen
groups as equal to -- and in some cases greater than -- the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups,
such as ISIS, that garner more public attention.
The Homeland Security report, produced in coordination with the FBI, counts 24 violent sovereign
citizen-related attacks across the U.S. since 2010.
The government says these are extremists who believe that they can ignore laws and that their
individual rights are under attack in routine daily instances such as a traffic stop or being required to
obey a court order.
They've lashed out against authority in incidents such as one in 2012, in which a father and son were
accused of engaging in a shootout with police in Louisiana, in a confrontation that began with an officer
pulling them over for a traffic violation. Two officers were killed and several others wounded in the
confrontation. The men were sovereign citizen extremists who claimed police had no authority over
them.
Among the findings from the Homeland Security intelligence assessment: "(Sovereign citizen) violence
during 2015 will occur most frequently during routine law enforcement encounters at a suspect's home,
during enforcement stops and at government offices."
DHS has documented examples of violence by sovereign citizen extremists since 2010. They range from
incidents that occurred in the home and at traffic stops to attacks on government buildings.
The report adds that "law enforcement officers will remain the primary target of (sovereign citizen)
violence over the next year due to their role in physically enforcing laws and regulations."
The White House has fended off criticism in recent days for its reluctance to say the words "Islamist
extremism," even as the conference this week almost entirely focused on helping imams and community
groups to counteract the lure of groups like ISIS.
Absent from the White House conference is any focus on the domestic terror threat posed by sovereign
citizens, militias and other anti-government terrorists that have carried out multiple attacks in recent
years.
An administration official says the White House is focused on the threat from all terrorists, including
from sovereign citizen and other domestic groups.
"I don't think it's fair to say the (White House) conference didn't address this at all," the official said,
adding that President Barack Obama addressed the need to combat "violent ideologies" of all types.
An official at the Justice Department, which is leading the administration's counter-radicalization effort,
says many of the tactics aimed at thwarting radical Islamic recruitment of young people can also be used
to fight anti-government extremist groups.
While groups like ISIS and al Qaeda garner the most attention, for many local cops, the danger is closer
to home.
A survey last year of state and local law enforcement officers listed sovereign citizen terrorists, ahead of
foreign Islamists, and domestic militia groups as the top domestic terror threat.
The survey was part of a study produced by the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the
Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
In 2013, a man who held anti-government views carried out a shooting attack on three Transportation
Security Administration employees at Los Angeles International Airport, killing one TSA officer. Last year,
a couple killed two police officers and a bystander at a Las Vegas Walmart store.
Officers inspect a car outside Los Angeles International Airport in 2013 after three TSA employees were
shot.
Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that by some estimates, there are as
many as 300,000 people involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism. Perhaps 100,000
people form a core of the movement, he said.
The federal government's focus on the domestic groups waxes and wanes, Potok said, in part because
the threat from foreign groups like al Qaeda and its affiliates.
Potok says sovereign citizen groups have attracted support because of poor economic conditions. Some
groups travel the country pitching their ideology as a way to help homeowners escape foreclosure or get
out of debt, by simply ignoring the courts and bankruptcy law.
Right-wing extremism increasing – military veterans are expanding movements.
Blair 14 (Charles P. Blair, Senior Fellow on State and Non-State Threats for the
Federation of American Scientists who teaches classes on terrorism and WMD
technology at John Hopkins University and George Mason University, “Looking clearly at
right-wing terrorism,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 9 June 2014,
http://thebulletin.org/looking-clearly-right-wing-terrorism7232, *fc)
The military and the far right. Throughout the history of US far-right extremism, many of its most
influential and infamous members have had ties to the military. A small sampling includes the former
Confederate soldiers who founded the Ku Klux Klan in 1866; its first leader was a former Confederate
general, Nathan Bedford Forest. The highly influential Willis Carto served in World War II before a 50
year career with far-right extremism that encompassed, according to the Anti-Defamation League,
“nearly every significant far-right movement in the country, from neo-Nazism to militias, segregationism
to Holocaust denial.” An aide to General McArthur, William Potter Gale, oversaw guerilla resistance in
the Philippines during World War II before helping establish the racist, anti-Semitic, and apocalyptic
Christian Identity movement and the virulently anti-federal government umbrella organization Posse
Comitatus. The North Dakota Posse leader Gordon Kahl, who died in a 1983 shootout with federal
agents, and whom many far-right extremists consider to be the Posse's greatest martyr, earned two
purple hearts as an aircraft gunner in World War II. Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler served in
World War II.
The trend has continued in more recent years: Neo-Nazi Louis Beam was a Vietnam veteran. The
founder of one of the leading racist groups of its time, White Aryan Resistance, Tom Metzger, spent the
early 1960s in the US Army. Metzger is often credited with being the “godfather” of the racist skinhead
scene. Timothy McVeigh, whose actions during Operation Desert Storm merited him the Bronze Star,
later killed 168 people, including 19 children in the 1995 Oklahoma City truck bombing; his accomplice,
Terry Nichols, was also a veteran. Army of God adherent and Centennial Olympic Park and abortion
clinic bomber Eric Rudolf was an Army veteran. In August 2012, Army veteran Wade Michael Page killed
six people in a racially motived shooting rampage at a Wisconsin Sikh temple. Radicalized during his time
at Ft. Bragg, Page told an interviewer, “If you don’t go in the military a racist, you’re sure to leave as
one.”
To be clear, the homeland security department's 2009 report on far-right extremism did not denigrate
US military personnel or exaggerate their past or potential for terrorism. Many studies and reports
demonstrate that veteran and active-duty US military personnel account for only a miniscule part of farright extremist plots and attacks. But the percentage of individuals and members in far-right groups with
military experience is larger than the corresponding percentage of those with military experience in the
population at large. And in a 2008 study, the FBI reported that veteran and active duty military
personnel “frequently occupy leadership roles within extremist groups …[T]he military training veterans
bring to the movement and their potential to pass this training on to others can increase the ability of
lone offenders to carry out violence from the movement’s fringes.”
The veterans issue precipitated a political backlash against the 2009 report on far-right extremists’
potential for terrorist acts. In one of many examples of the backlash, US Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas)
argued that in contrast to the 2009 report, an earlier homeland security report had identified “actual”
extremists and terrorists, “like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front.”
Congressional leaders would be wise to exclude politics from their assessments of Department of
Homeland Security reports. As a matter of documented fact, far-right extremists appear to pose the
greatest existing terrorist threat to the United States. The danger manifest by extremist terrorism is
not a linear one; as Potok observed, it ebbs and flows. But one thing is certain: Events can catapult a
red-hot movement into a white-hot violent crisis. Far-right extremist leaders literally declared war on
the federal government after the horribly botched events at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992 and, a year later,
the disastrous siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Two years to the day after the
latter incident, Timothy McVeigh unleashed his bomb in Oklahoma City.
The recent Nevada standoff between rancher Cliven Bundy and federal authorities is in one sense just a
continuation of Sagebrush Rebellion behavior that has come and gone in the Mountain West for
decades. It also offers a window into the thinking of a group of far-right “patriots,” and an opportunity
to ponder how governmental miscalculation might inflame others, at distant times and places. The
nation faces many threats; one of them is far-right extremism and its propensity for violence.
Suppressing discussion of that threat will not lessen it.
White supremacist terrorist plots are rising – they’re backlashing against changing
racial demographics.
Nevins 1/16 (Sean Nevins, Staff writer for MintPress with an M.A. from Lund University,
“White Supremacy And Homegrown Terrorism Pose A Growing Threat In The US,”
MintPress, 16 January 2015, http://www.mintpressnews.com/white-supremacy-homegrownterrorism-pose-growing-threat-us/201258/, *fc)
Colorado is currently home to 17 hate groups, according to the SPLC’s Hate Map. These include the
Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and The Creativity Movement — both white supremacist
organizations.
However, Beirich told MintPress, “There’s nothing off the top of my head that says, ‘Oh, Colorado would
be a logical place for something like this.’”
“That said, NAACP offices have been targeted in various parts of the country, so why not Colorado?”
Since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, in which 168 people were killed in a plot engineered by rightwing extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, there have been 110 terrorist plots and raciallymotivated rampages in the United States by the radical right, usually white supremacists.
One of the most recent manifestations of extreme violence motivated by white supremacy and antiSemitism was last year’s shooting at the Overland Park Jewish Community Center in Kansas, which
claimed the lives of three people. The alleged killer was Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., 74, who had spent time
in prison in the 1980s for planning to kill Morris Dees, the founder of the SPLC. Miller is the founder of
the White Patriot Party and the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
There are currently 939 active hate groups in the U.S. In 2000, there were 602. The numbers are rising
and “over 50 percent of them are white supremacist ,” said Beirich.
The number of hate groups generally correlates with the population, according to Mark Potok, a senior
fellow at the SPLC. Potok told Business Insider last year that two groups people should watch are the
American Freedom Party, which is anti-immigrant and has moulded itself into a political party contesting
elections, and Crew 41, a skinhead gang. A couple that reportedly belongs to Crew 41 were sentenced to
life imprisonment in March for plotting and carrying out the murder of a registered sex offender and his
wife.
Vice News recently published a documentary, “The Ku Klux Klan Is Boosting Its Numbers by Recruiting
Veterans,” in which reporter Rocco Castoro goes to Mississippi and speaks with KKK members.
In one conversation, Steve Howard, the former Imperial Wizard of the North Mississippi White Knights,
says, “I believe that white people need to have their own country, just like I believe that blacks need to
have their own country here in America, but it’s going to take all out war to obtain it.”
The 2000 U.S. Census has been one of the most important factors in the rise of hateful extremists,
Beirich explained. It showed that by the year 2042 white people would be a minority in the U.S.
Those figures sparked a growth in hate groups, she said, noting that white supremacists likely became
nervous about the country becoming less white and more diverse.
“Obviously, the rise in the number of hate groups is a reflection of a backlash in this country against
changing demographics ,” she said.
She concluded that racism and the rise of white supremacist groups in the country should be a cause
for concern among citizens and law enforcement.
“This white supremacy is an ideology that should have been put to bed with the Civil Rights Act, or the
Civil War for God’s sake, right!” she said.
“The fact that this country’s been white supremacist for most of its existence, until the mid-60s, means
that we don’t want to go back to that where people are oppressed because of the color of their skin.”
Police consensus that right-wing threat is growing – more likely than other terrorism
Kurzman and Schanzer 15 (Charles Kurzman teaches sociology at University of North Carolina Chapel
Hill. David Schanzer is director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke. "The
Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat," June 16, 2015. www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/opinion/the-otherterror-threat.html?_r=0) jsk
But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim
extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.
In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement
agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in
their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist
organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared
with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.
The self-proclaimed Islamic State's efforts to radicalize American Muslims, which began just after the
survey ended, may have increased threat perceptions somewhat, but not by much, as we found in
follow-up interviews over the past year with counterterrorism specialists at 19 law enforcement
agencies. These officers, selected from urban and rural areas around the country, said that radicalization
from the Middle East was a concern, but not as dangerous as radicalization among right-wing
extremists.
An officer from a large metropolitan area said that "militias, neo-Nazis and sovereign citizens" are the
biggest threat we face in regard to extremism. One officer explained that he ranked the right-wing
threat higher because "it is an emerging threat that we don't have as good of a grip on, even with our
intelligence unit, as we do with the Al Shabab/Al Qaeda issue, which we have been dealing with for
some time." An officer on the West Coast explained that the "sovereign citizen" anti-government threat
has "really taken off," whereas terrorism by American Muslim is something "we just haven't experienced
yet."
Last year, for example, a man who identified with the sovereign citizen movement — which claims not
to recognize the authority of federal or local government — attacked a courthouse in Forsyth County,
Ga., firing an assault rifle at police officers and trying to cover his approach with tear gas and smoke
grenades. The suspect was killed by the police, who returned fire. In Nevada, anti-government militants
reportedly walked up to and shot two police officers at a restaurant, then placed a "Don't tread on me"
flag on their bodies. An anti-government extremist in Pennsylvania was arrested on suspicion of slut gin
two state troopers, killing one of them, before leading authorities on a 48-day manhunt. A right-wing
militant in Texas declared a "revolution" and was arrested on suspicion of attempting to rob an armored
car in order to buy weapons and explosives and attack law enforcement. These individuals on the fringes
of right-wing politics increasingly worry law enforcement officials.
Law enforcement agencies around the country are training their officers to recognize signs of antigovernment extremism and to exercise caution during routine traffic stops, criminal investigations and
other interactions with potential extremists. "The threat is real," says the handout from one training
program sponsored by the Department of Justice. Since 2000, the handout notes, 25 law enforcement
officers have been killed by right-wing extremists, who share a "fear that government will confiscate
firearms" and a "belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy."
Despite public anxiety about extremists inspired by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, the number of
violent plots by such individuals has remained very low. Since 9/11, an average of nine American
Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the
United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that were carried out accounted for co fatalities
over the past 13 and a half years.
In contrast, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total
of 254 fatalities, according to a study by Arie Perliger, a professor at the United States Military
Academy's Combating Terrorism Center. The toll has increased since the study was released in 2012.
Other data sets, using different definitions of political violence, tell comparable stories. The Global
Terrorism Database maintained by the Start Center at the University of Maryland includes 65 attacks in
the United States associated with right-wing ideologies and 24 by Muslim extremists since 9/11. The
International Security Program at the New America Foundation identifies 39 fatalities from "non
jihadist" homegrown extremists and 26 fatalities from "jihadist" extremists.
Meanwhile, terrorism of all forms has accounted for a tiny proportion of violence in America. There
have been more than 21S.000 murders in the United States since 9/11. For every person killed by
Muslim extremists, there have been 4,300 homicides from other threats.
Public debates on terrorism focus intensely on Muslims. But this focus does not square with the low
number of plots in the United States by Muslims, and it does a disservice to a minority group that suffers
from increasingly hostile public opinion. As state and local police agencies remind us, right-wing, antigovernment extremism is the leading source of ideological violence in America.
Lone wolves uniquely likely – military radicalization
Kennard 15 (Matt Kennard is a fellow at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. "American ISIS: The Domestic Terrorist Fallout
of the Iraq War," Feb 13, 2015. www.vice.com/read/american-isis-the-domestic-terrorist-fallout-of-the-iraq-war-213) jsk
Just weeks before the hardcover edition of Irregular Army came out in September 2012, a neo-Nazi US
Army veteran walked into a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and shot dead six worshippers. A topic
that had never managed to hold the interest of the American media during the War on Terror—the
extremists being trained by the country's military—suddenly moved front and center.
Many Americans wondered how this white supremacist could have survived in the military for so long;
surely something must have gone wrong. But the Wisconsin shooter, Wade Michael Page, was merely
one of many far-right radicals who have used the US military over the past two decades to gain access to
the highest-grade weaponry in the world, alongside attendant training. The Springfield semiautomatic
9mm handgun used by Page in Oak Creek was, for instance, very similar to the Beretta M9, the civilian
version of the pistol issued by the US military. And neo-Nazi veterans, like Page, were explicit about
wanting to use their new military skills in the coming race war they hoped would ignite in the US. Page's
heavy-metal white-power band, called End Apathy, was itself a call to arms. According to a 2010
interview he gave to a white supremacist website, he wanted to "figure out how to end people's
apathetic ways"; the band was meant to "be the start towards moving forward."
As details emerged, they seemed to confirm what I had written in this book. The most shocking part of
Page's story was that he was completely open about his neo-Nazi views while serving in the army during
the 1990s, a decade before the War on Terror. Page was no army private either—he was assigned to the
esteemed psychological operations ("psyops") branch. But despite this senior status, the independent
American military newspaper Stars and Stripes wrote in the aftermath of the shooting that Page was
"steeped in white supremacy during his army days and spouted his racist views on the job as a soldier."
Page served from 1992 to 1998. The latter part of this period putatively witnessed the US military taking
a strong stand against white supremacism within the ranks after neo-Nazi active-duty paratrooper
James Burmeister murdered an African American couple near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1995.
Page's story actually bore an uncanny resemblance to that of one of the main characters in Irregular
Army: Forrest Fogarty, the War on Terror veteran I spent time with in Tampa, Florida. Like Page, Fogarty
was a neo-Nazi; like Page, he was a member of the Hammerskins, the most violent skinhead group in the
US; like Page, he served in the US military (in Fogarty's case in Iraq from 2004 to 2005); and like Page,
Fogarty was the lead singer in a neo-Nazi rock band. Fogarty had in fact signed up to the US army,
complete with racist tattoos, in 1997, around the same time Page was denied reenlistment for
alcoholism (not neo-Nazism). In fact, as I looked into the history of Page I even came across images of
him playing his racist rock with Fogarty himself: they performed in the same band at neo-Nazi concerts.
The US military, it would seem, has a penchant for Nazi rockers.
The media ate up the Pentagon's reflexive lies during the fallout from the massacre. When Al Jazeera
interviewed me, they asked the Pentagon for clarification of their policy on extremists. A spokesman
told them that "participation in extremist activities has never been tolerated." The media interest
endured for a couple of weeks, then the silence returned. But over the subsequent two years, the
threats I warned about in the book played out with frightening regularity. Many of the predictions of
"blowback" from a decade (and more) of unchecked extremist and criminal infiltration were coming
true. Not long after the Sikh Temple massacre, an anti-government militia of active-duty soldiers at Fort
Stewart—where Fogarty had been based—was discovered. This heavily armed group had already
murdered an active-duty soldier and his wife and was planning to assassinate President Barack Obama.
According to prosecutors, the soldiers had spent nearly $90,000 on guns and bomb components.
Not long after this cell was discovered, a Missouri National Guardsman admitted to helping train a white
supremacist group, American Front, whose members were preparing for a domestic race war. These
extremists, court documents detailed, were alleged to have committed hate crimes alongside
paramilitary training in "furtherance of a civil disorder."
The steady beat of tragedies kept coming. In April 2014, an Army veteran and "grand dragon" of the
Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Frazier Glenn Miller, killed three people at two Jewish centers in a
suburb of Kansas City. Miller had retired from the Army in the 1990s as a master sergeant after 20 years
of active duty, including two tours in Vietnam and 13 years as a member of the elite Green Berets. These
cases were particularly scary because they showed the long lineage of this problem. In the book I had
focused on the War on Terror years because in that period even the light regulations that were in place
were lit up in flames, but Page and Miller demonstrated the long incubation period allowed for these
errant extremist veterans to turn into cold-blooded murderers. Over the next two decades, US society
will doubtless endure other versions of these massacres—involving veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan
this time round. The scars from these wars are long, deep and may be impossible to salve. The US
military has refused to take seriously the dangers posed by the radicals in its service—and its own
soldiers, alongside the population they are meant to defend, are paying a heavy price. Many more
ticking time bombs—unlike Miller and Page, not yet detonated—are now settling back home after a
decade of hard combat training.
But it was not just white supremacist soldiers and veterans who were proving dangerous. Many of the
other problems outlined in the book—from the US military's failure to deal with post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) or the economic hardship of the veteran community—were coming back to bite the US
populace. In Wade Page's case, for example, it was a confluence of factors that turned him into a
murderer. Like many veterans, his house had been foreclosed on in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
This toxic mix involving PTSD, extremism, the financial crisis and its tragic aftermath was a recurrent
theme. In May 2014, Marine Corps Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, who had served in Afghanistan and was
being treated for PTSD in a VA hospital, was arrested in Mexico with a huge cache of heavy weaponry. If
Mexican police hadn't picked him up, who knows what carnage he could have caused south of the
border with his training, weapons skills and troubled psyche—all courtesy of the US military.
Domestic terrorism is increasing – people are influenced by jihadism – law
enforcement is key to stop attacks.
Smith and Beall 1/17 (Carrie Blackmore Smith, Reporter at the Cincinnati Enquirer with
a B.A. in Journalism from Bowling Green State University, Joel Beall, Writer at the
Cincinnati Enquirer, “Number of homegrown terrorists is rising,” USA Today, 17 January
2015, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/17/number-of-homegrown-terrorists-isrising/21940159/, *fc)
CINCINNATI — We are far from knowing the outcome of the case against Christopher Cornell, the young
local man accused of plotting an attack on the U.S. Capitol, but if he is convicted, he would be added to
a growing list of homegrown jihadist terrorists.
From Sept. 11, 2001, to January 2014, there were 74 known terrorist plots perpetrated by Americans,
lawful U.S. residents or visitors largely radicalized here in the United States, according to the most
recent data reported by the Congressional Research Service.
Five of those plots were carried out before law enforcement was able to intervene.
Fifty-three of the cases – almost 72 percent – happened after April 2009.
That's a 152 percent increase over that time period – and constitutes a spike, according to the report
by the service, an agency that works exclusively for the U.S. Congress, providing policy and legal analysis
to committees and members of the House and Senate.
"It may be too early to tell how sustained this uptick is," the report reads. "Regardless, the apparent
spike in such activity after April 2009 suggests that ideologies supporting violent jihad continue to
influence some Americans – even if a tiny minority."
Right-wing extremists are rising threats towards racial and religious minorities –
dangers are underestimated and higher than those posed by jihadists.
Shane 6/24 (Scott Shane, Journalist reporting about the U.S. intelligence community at
the New York Times with a B.A. in English from Williams, “Homegrown Extremists Tied
to Deadlier Toll Than Jihadists in U.S. Since 9/11,” New York Times, 24 June 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us-challenges-perceptions-of-top-terrorthreat.html?_r=0, *fc)
WASHINGTON — In the 14 years since Al Qaeda carried out attacks on New York and the Pentagon,
extremists have regularly executed smaller lethal assaults in the United States, explaining their motives
in online manifestoes or social media rants.
But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come as a surprise. Since Sept. 11,
2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and
other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not
Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C., compared with 26 by self-proclaimed
jihadists, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center.
The slaying of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church last week, with an avowed white
supremacist charged with their murders, was a particularly savage case.
But it is only the latest in a string of lethal attacks by people espousing racial hatred , hostility to
government and theories such as those of the “sovereign citizen” movement, which denies the
legitimacy of most statutory law. The assaults have taken the lives of police officers, members of racial
or religious minorities and random civilians.
Non-Muslim extremists have carried out 19 such attacks since Sept. 11, according to the latest count,
compiled by David Sterman, a New America program associate, and overseen by Peter Bergen, a
terrorism expert. By comparison, seven lethal attacks by Islamic militants have taken place in the same
period.
If such numbers are new to the public, they are familiar to police officers. A survey to be published this
week asked 382 police and sheriff’s departments nationwide to rank the three biggest threats from
violent extremism in their jurisdiction. About 74 percent listed antigovernment violence, while 39
percent listed “Al Qaeda-inspired” violence, according to the researchers, Charles Kurzman of the
University of North Carolina and David Schanzer of Duke University.
“Law enforcement agencies around the country have told us the threat from Muslim extremists is not as
great as the threat from right-wing extremists,” said Dr. Kurzman, whose study is to be published by the
Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security and the Police Executive Research Forum.
John G. Horgan, who studies terrorism at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, said the mismatch
between public perceptions and actual cases had become steadily more obvious to scholars.
“There’s an acceptance now of the idea that the threat from jihadi terrorism in the United States has
been overblown,” Dr. Horgan said. “And there’s a belief that the threat of right-wing, antigovernment
violence has been underestimated. ”
Hate groups - WMD impact
Domestic terrorists have a high risk of using dirty bombs – there are thousands of
nuclear sites in the U.S.
Barrie 13 (Allison Barrie, Defense academic and front page columnist for Fox News and
Military, “Dirty bomb material secured at site in Philadelphia, thousands of sites remain
in U.S.,” Fox, 15 March 2013, http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/03/15/dirty-bomb-materialsecured-at-site-in-philadelphia/, *fc)
Raw, radiological material that terrorists could use to build a dirty bomb was secured in a Philadelphia
school this week.
On March 11, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (a semiautonomous branch of the
Energy Department) and Philadelphia’s Temple University announced they had secured a device
containing cesium 137 -- one of more than two dozen such elements used in medicine and industry that
could be turned into a dirty bomb.
“This operation is part of NNSA’s broad strategy to keep dangerous nuclear and radiological material
safe and secure by enhancing our nation’s security,” NNSA deputy administrator Anne Harrington said.
A terrorist dirty bomb attack using domestic radioactive sources bomb may seem preposterous, yet the
NNSA has identified more than 2,700 vulnerable buildings with high-priority radiological material in the
United States alone.
As of Feb. 28, 2011, only 251 of these buildings had completed NNSA security enhancements. The
agency hopes the rest will do so by 2025 -- leaving another 12 years of vulnerability to theft and misuse.
Dirty bombs are far easier to construct than nuclear bombs and do not use fissile material such as
enriched uranium or plutonium. Extracting plutonium requires a reactor and enriching uranium is no
easy task. Dirty bombs (security forces all them “radiation dispersal devices”) use conventional
explosives such as car bombs to scatter radioactive materials through a densely populated area.
The physical damage is limited and the threat of dying from radiation exposure very small with such a
device. But a dirty bomb would cause extensive economic damage and social upheaval while instilling
panic and fear in civilians.
Philadelphia, New York City, and around the country
In this case, the material came from a medical research irradiator that was removed from Temple
University’s Old Medical School Building and transported to a secure location, where it will be prepared
for disposal at a federal facility.
The device had been used in medical research for two decades. The cesium-137 left within it would have
been an attractive target.
Prior to this decommissioning, Temple University had worked with the NNSA to install security
enhancements in all their facilities with high-activity radiological materials. The city of Philadelphia has
collaborated with the agency as well to secure 28 buildings with high-activity radiological materials since
2005.
Just over two years ago, another terrorist treasure trove was recovered from a warehouse a mere 25
miles outside of Manhattan. On January 2010, the NNSA secured of high-activity radioactive devices
containing enough cesium-137 to make a bomb.
"Properly disposing of more than 3,000 curies of Cesium eliminates the threat this material poses if lost
or stolen and used in a dirty bomb," NNSA administrator Thomas P. D'Agostino said at the time.
The agency has recovered and secured more than 31,000 disused and surplus radioactive sealed sources
within the United States, eliminating more than a million curies of what is essentially radiological catnip
for terrorists.
Each year, thousands of sources become disused and unwanted in the United States. There are
regulatory requirements for in-place secure storage, and the Global Threat Reduction Initiative also
helps to remove these sources for permanent and safe disposal.
Yet thousands more civilian sites use radiological materials for commercial, medical and research
applications.
Domestic extremists use WMD’s to express political beliefs – they already have CBRN
materials.
GSN 12 (Global Security Newswire, International group dedicated to eliminating nuclear
weapons, “Data Points to Home-Grown WMD Terror Threats in U.S.: Experts,” 8 August
2012, http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/data-points-home-grown-wmd-terror-threats-experts/, *fc)
Two national security experts said in a Wednesday analysis on the CNN website that information
collected since Sept. 11, 2011, suggests that home-grown U.S. militants pose a greater threat to acquire
and use WMD materials than foreign terrorists (see GSN, June 22).
"After 9/11, there was great concern that al-Qaida or an allied group would launch a terrorist attack
involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapons. But in the past decade, there is
no evidence that jihadist extremists in the United States have acquired or attempted to acquire material
to construct CBRN weapons," according to Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland, both of the Washingtonbased New America Foundation.
"By contrast, 11 right-wing and left-wing extremists have managed to acquire CBRN material that
they planned to use against the public, government employees or both ," they added in the piece that
cited figures from database established by their organization.
Those figures do not account for a late 2011 case in which four Georgia militia members -- three of them
senior citizens -- allegedly planned to manufacture ricin toxin as part of a plot against the government.
A table posted on the organization's website lists 15 identified individuals and one unknown person -- all
cited as "non-jihadist" who have obtained or sought to acquire anthrax, ricin, cyanide or the nerve agent
sarin. The most famous case is that of Bruce Ivins, the military researcher identified by the Justice
Department as the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks (see GSN, Oct. 17, 2011).
The analysis was posted in the wake of a Sunday incident in which a man connected to the U.S. white
supremacist movement killed six Sikhs in Wisconsin before reportedly fatally shooting himself during a
confrontation with police.
"Right-wing extremist individuals over the past decade in the United States were as likely to use violence
as a means to express their political or social beliefs as those motivated by Osama bin Laden's ideology,"
according to Bergen and Rowland. "Even more worryingly, during the same time period, right-wing and
left-wing extremist groups and individuals have been far more likely to acquire toxins and to assemble
the makings of radiological weapons than al-Qaida sympathizers" (Bergen/Rowland, CNN, Aug. 7).
Right-wing extremists have chemical and biological weapons. Government
surveillance is key to prevent attacks.
Muwakkil 4 (Salim Muwakkil, Senior editor at In These Times and op-ed columnist for
the Chicago Tribune with a focus on African American issues, Middle East politics, and
U.S. foreign policy, “Homegrown Terrorists,” In These Times, 17 February 2004,
http://inthesetimes.com/article/513/homegrown_terrorists, *fc)
Experts also believe that an individual or a domestic terrorist group was responsible for the anthrax
attack of 2001 that killed five and injured 17. But in the wake of 9/11, we have tended to discount the
danger of domestic terror. That may be a deadly mistake.
Right-wing extremists long have shown an interest in using chemical and biological weapons . Jessica
Stern, formerly with the National Security Council, said in 2002 that they are “obsessed” with biological
agents and have been trying to perfect their use for years.
The literature of the racist right is rife with references to biological agents, and authorities have
evidence that many groups are actively trying to procure or produce these agents. The Feds were first
put on notice about these efforts in 1972, when a Chicago-based white-supremacist group called the
Order of the Rising Sun created as much as 40 kilograms of typhoid bacteria culture with the intent to
contaminate water supplies in large Midwestern cities. The group’s goal was to eliminate “inferior”
populations.
Since that time, investigators have uncovered a number of right-wing bioweapons plots. Among the
most prominent cases was the 1995 conviction of Douglas Baker and Leroy Wheeler, members of the
Minnesota Patriots Council, for planning to assassinate government officials with ricin. These two were
the first people convicted under the Biological Weapons and Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
In 1998 the Feds arrested Larry Wayne Harris in Ohio for threatening to use biological weapons on U.S.
officials. Harris, an activist with ties to the Christian Identity Church and Aryan Nations, was
apprehended with three vials of the bacterium that causes plague. Identity teaches that Jews are the
literal children of Satan, and people of color are subhuman “mud people.”
The Army of God, a shadowy band of Christian terrorists, has a long history of terrorizing women’s
health clinics, claiming responsibility for several bombings and praising individuals who have killed
abortion providers. Shortly after 9/11, more than 250 health clinics and more than 200 abortion rights
groups received letters signed by the Army of God containing a white, powdery substance falsely
claimed to be anthrax.
The latest example of this right-wing obsession was the arrest and conviction in November of three
people involved in a plot to explode a cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands of people. The
conspirators, William Krar and Judith Bruey, both of Tyler, Texas, and Edward Feltus, a member of a
right-wing paramilitary group called the New Jersey Militia, were caught last May with forged identity
passes to the United Nations and the Pentagon and a variety of racist and anti-government pamphlets—
including The Turner Diaries, the book that reportedly inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy
McVeigh.
When investigators searched a storeroom rented by Krar and Bruey, they seized a cyanide bomb,
chemicals and components for additional biological weapons, half a million rounds of ammunition, 65
pipe bombs and briefcases that could be detonated by remote control.
According to the CBS affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth, the station that broke the story, the case sparked
one of the most extensive probes of domestic terrorism since the Oklahoma City bombing.
“It was clearly one of the most lethal arsenals associated with the U.S. paramilitary right in the past 20
years,” Daniel Levitas told the U.K.-based Guardian. Levitas is author of The Terrorist Next Door: The
Militia Movement and the Radical Right and is one the nation’s foremost experts on right-wing
extremism.
In a December 13, 2003, column in the New York Times, Levitas wrote: “Americans should question
whether the Justice Department is making America’s far-right fanatics a serious priority. … It is also
worrisome that the discovery of lethal chemicals in President Bush’s home state was not deemed
occasion for a high-profile announcement by Attorney General John Ashcroft … trumpeting the arrest of
Mr. Krar and his compatriots.”
Unless you live in East Texas, you’ve probably heard nothing about this investigation. The growing
presence and deadly intentions of these homegrown hate groups remind us that our own faith-based
terrorists may be more lethal a threat than color-coded Islamists.
Coop between domestic gangs and foreign groups makes dirty bombs likely
Dones et al 13 (Darell Dones, PhD, Christian Bolden, PhD, Michael Buerger, PhD, Futures Working Group
White Paper Series. Nov 2013: "Terrorism, Gangs, and Weapons of Mass Destruction."
futuresworkinggroup.cos.ucf.edu/Terrorism.pdf) jsk
Weapons of Mass Destruction
The category of WMDs, while often associated with nuclear weapons, also includes “dirty bombs,”
defined as conventional explosives that spread radioactive material over a wide area; biological and
chemical weapons; and any destructive device, such as a bomb, grenade, missile, rocket, mine, etc.
Though law enforcement still considers the possibility of a “dirty bomb” attack viable, stringent controls
are in place over most existing stocks of weapons-grade radioactive material, and the difficulties of
moving vulnerable stocks over long distances without 11 detection are considerable. However,
biological and chemical stocks exist naturally and have legitimate uses in the U.S., and conventional
destructive devices can be obtained with relative ease. For those reasons, the WMD portion of this
discussion focuses primarily on the most accessible, and thus most likely, weapons to be deployed.
These weapons may be either improvised destructive devices that utilize conventional explosive
materials or other chemical or biological agents that are repurposed for use as a weapon.
For instance, in August 2011, The New York Times reported on efforts by Yemen-based al Qaeda cells to
acquire castor beans to manufacture and deploy the nerve agent ricin. The article quoted a State
Department official reporting the effort “continues to demonstrate [al Qaeda’s] growing ambitions and
strong desire to carry out attacks outside its region” (Schmidt & Shanker, 2011). Similar plans were
thwarted by British and French operatives in London in 2003. Furthermore, the unrelated Aum Shinrikyo
sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 serves as a vivid reminder of what is possible if these
agents are utilized as weapons. Each of these examples illustrates reported cases involving the
attempted use of weapons of mass destruction. Other scenarios are, of course, possible, some
potentially involving gangs or gang members. The likelihood of such events occurring, however, is
subject to on-going debate.
The Terrorists–Gangs Nexus
The question of whether or not terrorists might reach out to U.S. street gangs to perform acts in
facilitation of a WMD attack on U.S. soil is an exercise in futures thinking. Sufficient data will be
presented to consider such a possible future event, but whether it is likely to occur depends on the
interpretation of ambiguous evidence. For example, prior to the events of September 11, 2001, few
would have given credence to the possibility that a small group of terrorists would successfully skyjack
four jetliners in American air space for suicide missions 12 against symbolic American targets. Consider
also a claim in 2005 made by El Salvador President Antonio Saca and Honduran Security Minister Oscar
Alvarez that al Qaeda and MS-13 members were meeting to form an alliance. While these claims were
later determined to be trumped up for political advantage rather than having any actual truth, the
possibility and implications of such an alliance in the future began to be considered (see Barnes, 2007).
At present, no solid evidence documenting a terrorist-gangs nexus exists. The expert panelists clearly
agreed on the possibility of the inter-related connections emerging but were less clear on the plausibility
of it happening. The following section is an examination of the potential scenarios, possible reasons the
scenarios have not taken place to date, and steps that can forestall or prevent these situations from
happening. The questions focus specifically on the Crips, Gangster Disciples, and MS-13 street gangs, but
it is not too far of a stretch to extrapolate the data to include other street gangs as well.
The fact that a WMD incident involving a terrorists-gangs collaboration has not been reported to have
occurred does not mean that it cannot. Nor does the fact such an incident could happen mean it will.
However, the possibility demands some attention from both law enforcement and other national
security and public safety agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS). The terrorists-gangs nexus is not entirely speculative, as some anecdotal
evidence exists. There have been several antecedent attempts at creating exactly such a relationship,
though each one has qualifying or mitigating circumstances. The research data and the limited existing
examples reveal that the possibilities may not be straightforward, but rather complex in nature. As such,
a number of general and specific questions arise when examining this complex relationship. The next
section will present these questions and provide some general evidence pointing toward some potential
answers.
Empirics prove right wing terrorists are willing and capable to carry out largescale attacks
de Armond 99 (Paul de Armond is a scholar for the Public Good Project. "Right Wing Terrorism and Weapons of Mass
Destruction," Public Good Project 1999. www.publicgood.org/reports/wmdbrief.pdf) jsk
Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have been a constant theme in right-wing terrorist rhetoric for
decades. The Turner Diaries, a novel which has repeatedly served as a strategy manual of domestic
terrorists, was published in May, 1978. It is now in its seventh printing and there are roughly 200,000
copies in circulation.
Domestic right-wing terrorists are and have been the most active, violent and deadly terrorist threat to
American lives and property. Mortality due to domestic terrorist actions in the previous decade
numbered in the hundreds. That figure roughly doubled this decade. The next decade may see casualties
measured in thousands.
The seizure of a 30-gallon drum of sodium cyanide at The Covenant, The Sword and The Arm of the Lord
in April 1985 provided clear evidence of WMD intentions and capabilities by domestic right-wing groups.
Since that time, there have been incidents involving most of the categories of WMD: large-scale
explosives, chemical, biological and nuclear materials. Right-wing terrorists are innovators and early
adopters of new techniques and tactics. They are quite skilled at low-tech operations and have been
constrained by lack of resources. The Oklahoma City bombing was done for the price of two used cars. If
Timothy McVeigh and his collaborators had been able to obtain more resources, the bomb would have
been bigger. The goal of the most violent domestic terrorists is to bring about the battle of Armageddon
-- in the most literal and concrete sense.
Right-wing groups are likely to use biological weapons – ideology
Stern 99 (Jessica Stern, Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., USA. Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The Prospect of
Domestic Bioterrorism, Emerging Infectious Diseases.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/jstern/Stern_EID_The%20Prospect%20of%20Domestic%20Bioterrorism.doc) jsk
A small but growing number of domestic terrorists could attempt to use biological weapons in the belief
that doing so would advance their goals. The most likely are religious and extreme right-wing groups and
groups seeking revenge who view secular rulers and the law they uphold as illegitimate. They are
unconstrained by fear of government or public backlash, since their actions are carried out to please
God and themselves, not to impress a secular constituency. Frequently, they do not claim credit for their
attacks since their ultimate objective is to create so much fear and chaos that the government's
legitimacy is destroyed. Their victims are often viewed as subhuman since they are outside the group's
religion or race.
Religiously motivated groups are increasing. Of 11 international terrorist groups identified by the Rand
Corporation in 1968, none were classified as religiously motivated. By 1994, a third of the 49
international groups recorded in the Rand-St. Andrews Chronology were classified as religious.22
Religious groups are not only becoming more common; they are also more violent than secular groups.
In 1995, religious groups committed only 25% of the international incidents but caused 58% of the
deaths.23
Identity Christians believe that the Book of Revelation is to be taken literally as a description of future
events. Many evangelical Protestants believe in a doctrine of rapture: that the saved will be lifted off the
earth to escape the apocalypse that will precede the Second Coming of Christ. Followers of Christian
Identity (and some other millenarian sects), however, expect to be present during the apocalypse.24
Because of this belief, some followers of Christian Identity believe they need to be prepared with every
available weapon to ensure their survival.
Organizational pressures could induce some groups to commit extreme acts of violence. Followers tend
to be more interested in violence for its own sake than in the group's purported goals, making them less
inhibited by moral or political constraints than the leaders. Leaders may have difficulty designing
command and control procedures that work. Offshoots of established groups may be particularly
dangerous. Groups may also become most violent when the state is closing in on them, potentially
posing difficulties for those fighting terrorism. Another factor is the nature of the leader. Charismatic
leaders who isolate their followers from the rest of society often instill extreme paranoia among their
followers. Such groups can be susceptible to extreme acts of violence.
Asked who he thought the most likely domestic perpetrators of biological terrorism were, John
Trochman, a leader of the Montana Militia, said that extremist offshoots of Identity Christian groups are
possible candidates, as are disaffected military officers.25 Some antigovernment groups are attempting
to recruit inside the U.S. military.26 William Pierce also foresees the use of biological weapons by
antigovernment groups. "People disaffected by the government include not only the kind of people
capable of making pipe bombs. Bioweapons are more accessible than are nuclear weapons."27
Turns Islamophobia
Extremists plot attacks to blame Muslims.
Obeidallah 3/26 (Dean Obeidallah, Columnist for The Daily Beast and graduate from the
Fordham University School of Law, “‘Patriot’ Terrorist Frames Muslims With Quran
Bomb,” The Daily Beast, 26 March 2015,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/26/patriot-terrorist-frames-muslims-with-quranbomb.html, *fc)
But these people all pale in comparison to Michael Sibley. You see, Sibley wasn’t content to just giving
us the same old right-wing crap like Muslims wants to impose Islamic law so say goodbye to bacon
cheeseburgers and whiskey and say hello to lamb kebobs and strong coffee served in small cups.
Nope, this self-described “patriot” planted a bomb at a national park in Georgia in the hopes that the
public would think a Muslim did it. And yes, I know most haven’t heard about this incident. There’s not
even a need to mention how different the media coverage would be have been if the bomber had
actually been Muslim. I already detailed that scenario earlier this week in my article about a non-Muslim
man that attacked federal officers at a U.S. airport with poison spray and a machete while carrying six
homemade bombs in a duffel bag.
Sibley, who is 67 years old and lives in Roswell, Georgia, told FBI officers that he planted this bomb
because in his view, “no one was paying attention to what was going on the world.” Apparently as a
“patriot” he was going to maim or even kill his fellow Americans to wake them up to the threat facing
America.
And what is this “threat” Sibley speaks of? Well, it’s pretty clear he’s talking Muslims. You see, according
to the federal complaint, Sibley put some Muslim memorabilia in the backpack along with two
“improvised explosive devices” (IEDs) he crafted.
First, he placed a copy of the Quran in the backpack. (Apparently in Sibley’s mind a radical Muslim would
blow up the faith’s holy book.) Plus he included a book titled “The Rape of Kuwait, which consists of the
stories of people who suffered at the hands of Saddam Hussein when his forces invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Sibley also wrote the name “Mina Khodari” in the backpack as the owner. Why? Well, he told the FBI
agents that the name sounded “foreign.” That’s “foreign,” the same code word used by Republican
legislators when they mean “sharia law” in their legislation to ban Islamic law from being imposed in
America. (They learned that if they try to ban “Islamic law” it will be struck down by the courts as being
unconstitutional because it favors one religion over another, so they use “foreign” to mean Islamic law.)
I’m almost certain Sibley knew that “Mina Khodari” was a Middle Eastern-sounding name. A quick
Google search would tell you that “Mina” is a common Arabic first name and “Khodari” is a well-known
name in Saudi Arabia. Considering Sibley told the FBI that he learned how to make the bomb from the
Internet, it’s not a stretch to think that he had the capacity to look up these names too.
Finally, Sibley added a map circling the Jewish Community Center of Atlanta and info for other “soft
targets” like the Atlanta commuter train system. Apparently he believed these places would be likely
targets of Muslim extremists.
Surveil hate groups CP
Current counterterrorism efforts aren’t enough – more surveillance is key to confront
right-wing extremists.
Potok 4/17 (Mark Potok, Senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center and editorin-chief of the Intelligence Report with a B.A. in Political Science from the University of
Chicago, Don’t Ignore The Homegrown Terror Threat, Politico, 17 April 2015,
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/oklahoma-city-bombing-20th-anniversary117059.html#.VawTGPlViko, *fc)
On Wednesday night, a man named Dylann Storm Roof allegedly entered a black church in Charleston,
South Carolina, during a prayer meeting. There he reportedly sat quietly for almost an hour, before
opening fire with a pistol and killing nine people. He has since been captured.
When a mass shooting happens, people naturally wonder about the motivation. What we know so far is
that Roof made overtly racist remarks to his friends; boasted a Facebook profile picture that showed
him wearing the flags of white supremacist African states; and allegedly told one of the victims, "You
rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go." It seems a safe bet that
racism was a likely motive in the Charleston shooting.
Until we know more about the gunman, it's impossible to get more specific than that. What can be said,
however, is that the attack is congruous with America's history of white supremacy and right-wing
extremism, a real domestic threat that far outstrips that of Islamist terrorism. If terror is the mortal
threat it has long been trumped up to be, then we must conclude that our whole political and law
enforcement apparatus has been pointed in the wrong direction.
First, this should be emphasized: Random murders of black civilians are not some historical aberration.
On the contrary, they were the very foundation of the political system in the American South for
something like 90 years. Segregation and Jim Crow did not just mean separate drinking fountains, but a
system of racial subordination in which blacks were controlled through fear of psychotic violence. This
shooting spree is the worst single incident in many years — but it doesn't hold a candle to the Colfax
Massacre. If he had done it in 1890, the Charleston gunman probably wouldn't have even been arrested.
That ugly history has not been confronted in a remotely honest way. Right now, the flag of treason,
chattel slavery, and apartheid flies over a Civil War memorial on the grounds of the South Carolina
statehouse. In 2014, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley defended this placement, noting that she had
heard no complaints from local CEOs.
That brings me to right-wing militant activity , which also has not been confronted. In 2009, the
Department of Homeland Security finished a report on right-wing extremism, started during the Bush
years. It argued that the election of the first black president, the Great Recession, and veterans having
trouble adjusting to civilian life (Timothy McVeigh was a veteran of Desert Storm), and other factors
might lead to a spate of terrorist attacks, similar to what happened in the 1990s. It was mainly a
cautionary note, proposing little aside from increased watchfulness and naming no specific threats.
Nevertheless, the backlash from conservatives was immediate and fierce. Pundits like Rush Limbaugh
and Michelle Malkin spun it as indicting all veterans and conservatives. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano
eventually withdrew the report, and apologized repeatedly.
Six years later, how have things turned out?
Since 9/11, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six
terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that
were carried out accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.
In contrast, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total
of 254 fatalities, according to a study by Arie Perliger, a professor at the United States Military
Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. The toll has increased since the study was released in 2012.
[The New York Times]
Those few Islamist plots — a great many of which were basically created wholesale by the FBI — are
presented as justification for tremendous effort on the part of law enforcement and the military. They
assassinate American Muslims overseas. They deluge American mosques with infiltrators and spies.
They keep innocent people in Guantanamo Bay for year after year.
Since 9/11, right-wing terrorists have killed more than five times as many people as Islamist ones. Yet a
short study warning to keep a watchful attitude towards the former is met with enraged hostility. It
reveals both the small actual danger of Islamist terrorism, and the utterly ridiculous and hypocritical way
in which anti-terrorism resources are allocated.
Domestic terrorism threats are high and current government surveillance isn’t
sufficient.
Perez and Bruer 2/20 (Evan Perez, CNN Justice Reporter, Wes Bruer, Criminal Justice
Producer at CNN with a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Georgia, “DHS
intelligence report warns of domestic right-wing terror threat, CNN, 20 February 2015,
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/politics/terror-threat-homeland-security/, *fc)
Washington (CNN) They're carrying out sporadic terror attacks on police, have threatened attacks on
government buildings and reject government authority.
A new intelligence assessment, circulated by the Department of Homeland Security this month and
reviewed by CNN, focuses on the domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists
and comes as the Obama administration holds a White House conference to focus efforts to fight violent
extremism.
Some federal and local law enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen
groups as equal to -- and in some cases greater than -- the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups,
such as ISIS, that garner more public attention.
The Homeland Security report, produced in coordination with the FBI, counts 24 violent sovereign
citizen-related attacks across the U.S. since 2010.
ISIS burned up to 40 people alive in Iraq, official says
The government says these are extremists who believe that they can ignore laws and that their
individual rights are under attack in routine daily instances such as a traffic stop or being required to
obey a court order.
They've lashed out against authority in incidents such as one in 2012, in which a father and son were
accused of engaging in a shootout with police in Louisiana, in a confrontation that began with an officer
pulling them over for a traffic violation. Two officers were killed and several others wounded in the
confrontation. The men were sovereign citizen extremists who claimed police had no authority over
them.
Among the findings from the Homeland Security intelligence assessment: "(Sovereign citizen) violence
during 2015 will occur most frequently during routine law enforcement encounters at a suspect's home,
during enforcement stops and at government offices."
The report adds that "law enforcement officers will remain the primary target of (sovereign citizen)
violence over the next year due to their role in physically enforcing laws and regulations."
The White House has fended off criticism in recent days for its reluctance to say the words "Islamist
extremism," even as the conference this week almost entirely focused on helping imams and community
groups to counteract the lure of groups like ISIS.
Absent from the White House conference is any focus on the domestic terror threat posed by sovereign
citizens, militias and other anti-government terrorists that have carried out multiple attacks in recent
years.
An administration official says the White House is focused on the threat from all terrorists, including
from sovereign citizen and other domestic groups.
"I don't think it's fair to say the (White House) conference didn't address this at all," the official said,
adding that President Barack Obama addressed the need to combat "violent ideologies" of all types.
An official at the Justice Department, which is leading the administration's counter-radicalization effort,
says many of the tactics aimed at thwarting radical Islamic recruitment of young people can also be used
to fight anti-government extremist groups.
While groups like ISIS and al Qaeda garner the most attention, for many local cops, the danger is closer
to home.
Lone wolves are getting CBRN weapons because surveillance experts aren’t paying
attention to them.
Akbar 11 (Malik Siraj Akbar, Journalist, Vice President at the Harvard Kennedy School of
Government, and Web Editor of Harvard’s student magazine, “Lone wolves and homegrown terrorists: Experts warn of a growing threat from unusual sources,” Center for
Public Integrity, 16 September 2011, Updated 19 May 2014,
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/09/16/6539/lone-wolves-and-home-grown-terrorists-expertswarn-growing-threat-unusual-sources, *fc)
As the United States commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, terrorism experts
stepped up warnings that authorities must look beyond the usual sources of terror, to the lone wolves
stirring with anger and seeking out big-impact weapons.
Isolated and underestimated, lone wolves might go unnoticed even as they try to get chemical,
biological, radiological and nuclear weapons – collectively known as CBRN – that can spread terror
and spark psychological chaos.
Anders Breivik is the latest of the lone wolves and a point of concern among terrorism experts. His
devastating attack in Norway in July spurred researchers to mine his 1,500-page treatise in search of
evidence that unconventional, free-agent terrorists may now have greater potential to inflict damage
and ignite panic.
Breivik’s manifesto was more than just the ramblings of a lone nut.
“Dismissing Breivik’s “[weapons of mass destruction] idea” as unrealistic is dangerous and overlooks
important nuances that give his warnings about greater weapons added validity. Moreover, his writings
might spur other extremists, according to a little-noticed report from the Washington, D.C.-based
Federation of American Scientists.
Acknowledging the threat
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, in an interview on ABC News last week, said one of
the biggest challenges she had seen as DHS secretary, “is movement toward the home-grown violent
extremist. The person who, for whatever reason, decides to attack his fellow citizens,
She warned citizens to be vigilant of “the lone actor that we may not know about, who may already be
in the United States and so it requires us to be vigilant and the public be vigilant.”
Adding to that official urgency is a sense among terrorism experts that the path to destructive weapons
is easier.
“ It is not that difficult to acquire radiological materials. There are different ways people would
disseminate them. The most likely way is to mixing them into conventional explosive devices to cause
further damage,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Bale, of the Graduate School of International Policy and
Management at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS).
Right wing terror uniquely likely – decreased surveillance
Smith 11 (R. Jeffrey Smith is a reporter at the Washington Post and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2006.
Washington Post: "Homeland Security Department curtails home-grown terror analysis," June 7 2011.
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/homeland-security-department-curtails-home-grown-terror-analysis/2011/06/02/AGQEaDLH_story.html)
jsk
The Department of Homeland Security has stepped back for the past two years from conducting its own
intelligence and analysis of home-grown extremism, according to current and former department
officials, even though law enforcement and civil rights experts have warned of rising extremist threats.
The department has cut the number of personnel studying domestic terrorism unrelated to Islam,
canceled numerous state and local law enforcement briefings, and held up dissemination of nearly a
dozen reports on extremist groups, the officials and others said.
The decision to reduce the department’s role was provoked by conservative criticism of an intelligence
report on “Rightwing Extremism” issued four months into the Obama administration, the officials said.
The report warned that the poor economy and Obama’s election could stir “violent radicalization,” but it
was pilloried as an attack on conservative ideologies, including opponents of abortion and immigration.
In the two years since, the officials said, the analytical unit that produced that report has been
effectively eviscerated. Much of its work — including a digest of domestic terror incidents and the
distribution of definitions for terms such as “white supremacist” and “Christian Identity” — has been
blocked.
Multiple current and former law enforcement officials who have regularly viewed DHS analyses said the
department had not reported in depth on any domestic extremist groups since 2009.
“Strategic bulletins have been minimal, since that incident,” said Mike Sena, an intelligence official in
California who presides over the National Fusion Center Association, a group of 72 federally chartered
institutions in which state, local and federal officials share sensitive information. “Having analytical staff,
to educate line officers on the extremists, is critical.…This is definitely one area” where more effort is
warranted by DHS.
Similar frustration was expressed in interviews with current and former officials at fusion centers in
Missouri, Virginia and Tennessee. Daryl Johnson, formerly the senior domestic terrorism analyst at DHS
and a principal author of the disputed report, confirmed in an interview that he left in frustration last
year after his office was “gutted” in response to complaints.
“Other reports written by DHS about Muslim extremists … got through without any major problems,”
Johnson said. “Ours went through endless reviews and edits, and nothing came out.”
The threat of Islamic-related terrorism in the United States has by all accounts captured the most
attention and resources at DHS since it was formed in 2002. But a study conducted for the department
last October concluded that a majority of the 86 major foiled and executed terrorist plots in the United
States from 1999 to 2009 were unrelated to al-Qaeda and allied movements.
“Do not overlook other types of terrorist groups,” the report warned, noting that five purely domestic
groups had considered using weapons of mass destruction in that period. Similar warnings have been
issued by the two principal non-government groups that track domestic terrorism: the New York-based
Anti-Defamation League and the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.
An annual tally by the latter group of what it calls “Terror From the Right” listed 13 major incidents and
arrests last year, nearly double the annual number in previous years; the group also reported the
number of hate groups had topped 1,000 in 2010, for the first time in at least two decades.
Data analytics CP
1nc – data analytics CP
The United States federal government should substantially increase the resources
devoted to data analytics technology and personnel at the National Security Agency.
Big Data analytics makes existing data collection more effective – enhances its
predictive power, decreases group-think and boosts international cooperation for
global security
Lim, 15 – independent researcher focusing on foreign policy and security in the wider Middle East. He is
also senior analyst with the UK-based Open Briefing: The Civil Society Intelligence Agency, and analyst
with IHS Jane’s (Kevjn, “Big Data and Strategic Intelligence” Intelligence and National
Security, DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2015.1062321
This article began with a description of the Big Data phenomenon, which, characterized by massive
volume, variety and velocity, and combined with appropriate analytics capabilities, creates the
conditions for a vastly novel epistemic mode concerned with simple correlations rather than deep
causation. The article then examined the fit between Big Data analytics and the intelligence cycle,
specifically the collection and analysis components, as it relates to strategic events of far-reaching
implications. Presupposing the operationalization of Karl Popper’s method, it argues that Big Data
eminently suit the existing intelligence methodology in at least three ways: discerning general long-term
trends and anomalies; generating hypotheses; and adducing data to refute these same hypotheses. Big
Data likewise vastly increase the time spent on analysis and sense-making, whereas at the moment the
bulk of the intelligence effort and its resources go towards collection, much of which at any rate is
squandered for lack of matching processing and analytical capacity. Real-time parallel processing
furthermore collapses the interval required for key intelligence to turn into impactful decisions. The
article then provided an example of one area, social media, in which Big Data analytics can complement
strategic intelligence. Before concluding, the article proposed conceptually situating Big Data as subtext
within a tripartite analytical framework that incorporates traditional subject-matter expertise as
context, and game theory as the overarching strategic metatext.
The implications of the Big Data-strategic intelligence intersection reach still deeper and further. From a
sociological perspective, the emergence of the Big Data phenomenon is a direct correlate of the
information supersociety and the crowdcentric century.57 In the intelligence context, Big Data analytics
goes hand-in-hand with, and is in some ways contingent upon, the rising importance of open source
intelligence (Osint) given that the latter constitutes as much as 95 per cent of all useful intelligence;58
indeed, the primary Big Data tasks sketched out in the chapter on methodological issues are particularly
well suited to Osint environments. By the same stroke, the relative importance of secrets to the overall
intelligence endeavor has decreased in proportion to the propagation and normalization of information
technologies. From the organizational bureaucratic viewpoint, Big Data prompt and necessitate a shift
away from the secretive, highly compartmentalized and rigidly hierarchical mold typifying the realm of
intelligence and national security, and towards relatively more open modes of intelligence management.
These latter may approximate translateral and highly networked structures not entirely unlike social
media,59 expanding the space for dissent and minority opinions to be expressed , even while a
plurality of intelligence agencies may still be retained to improve overall effectiveness and
‘competitiveness’. Importantly, this encourages greater levels of disclosure and by implication, criticism.
For only in the presence of critical feedback can intelligence analysis, like its scientific counterpart,
transform into an epistemological edifice capable of adjustment, self-reflexivity and, it follows,
progress in the broad sense of the term.
Ultimately, the proper trajectory of all that has been discussed hitherto is likely to lead a step closer
towards an open society,60 one which increasingly engages with decision-making processes behind
matters of national security import, and the debates these give rise to. Dare one look further, even the
notion of national security under such conditions may conceivably shift from one based on state-centric
insularity to one that strives towards a consensual, participatory, decentralized and, eventually, more
sustainable form of global security.
2nc- CP solves
The CP matches analytics capability to current data collection – optimizes the use of
intelligence
Lim, 15 – independent researcher focusing on foreign policy and security in the wider Middle East. He is
also senior analyst with the UK-based Open Briefing: The Civil Society Intelligence Agency, and analyst
with IHS Jane’s (Kevjn, “Big Data and Strategic Intelligence” Intelligence and National
Security, DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2015.1062321
The NSA, for example, which processes no more than five per cent of the Big Data it collects, excels in
‘precision interception for specific purposes . . . [but] is largely worthless when it comes to global
situational awareness, anomaly detection, real-time warning, and pattern analysis across all mission
areas’. The system, he continues, ‘is designed to throw money at technology for collection, and is not
held accountable for failing to process what it collects’.52 This account appears to gel with others
regarding the massive ‘firehose’ of data, especially from Imint (satellite, U-2 and UAV imagery) and
Sigint (especially foreign language) sources.53 Collection capabilities far outpace analytical capacity.
Michael Handel, a pioneer in intelligence studies, argued that strategic surprises, or intelligence failures,
are often linked to inefficiencies in analysis and acceptance (of intelligence by policymakers), rather than
to collection.54 The Big Data phenomenon has clearly given rise to an unprecedented glut in collection.
Nevertheless, as this author contended earlier, an appropriate response exists in a matching analytics
capability , again, provided the analyst knows what to focus on.
Data analytics are possible – existing NSA collection stopped 300 attacks and the
method is replicable in separate experiments
Pham 14 (Cassidy, San Jose State University graduate of the School of Library and Information Science,
“Effectiveness of Metadata Information and Tools Applied to National Security,” February 27, 2014,
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Library Philosophy and Practice,
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2608&context=libphilprac, silbs)
<< With this wealth of metadata, and the tools to organize and graphically visualize the information, the
IC can apply sophisticated analytics techniques to identify persons of interests and associates. The first
experiment is applicable as a national security tool since it efficiently connects contacts, and isolates
social groups. This is particularly useful in disassociating contacts that are unaware or uninvolved with
the person interest. It is also valuable in finding unknown associates of targets he or she already knows
about. The second experiments provide additional contextual information. Naturally, metadata explains
the who, what, where and when. It does not explain the why and how. These questions are left for
analysts to fill in by using contextual information, such world cloud experiment, to develop a so-called
picture. Though the experiments were innately limited in scope, the relative success in the application of
metadata shows its effectiveness as a national security tool.
As noted in the literature review, metadata tools, such as the XKeyscore are truly invaluable as
intelligence gathering tools. According to leaked documents, over 300 terrorists were captured using the
XKeyscore (The Guardian, 2013). Also, examples from various case studies, such as the killing of Osama
Bid Laden indicate successful use and application of metadata. With the added benefit of the
interoperability of these various tools, the IC can lighten the burden and share information. Rather than
having one agency find a needle in a haystack—a haystack of infinite size, it is far more efficient and
effective to divide the hay into multiple stacks among multiple players.
Much of the information and sources are conjecture since they are based on leaked documents. And of
course, the government has yet to fully disclose the information on the tools, which exasperates the
problem. Nonetheless, declassified documents, journal articles, and metadata tools that are relatively
similar to the ones used by the IC, insure legitimacy to the evidence. Overall, the results from the
experiments indicate a high success rate since untrained observers were able to analyze the metadata
diagrams, and accurately determine social groups and personal backgrounds for most of the
participants. Evidence from various sources, such as case studies, journal articles, and leaked
government documents further support the effectiveness of metadata as part of a national security
platform. As the country, and the rest of the world becomes more dependent on smart devices, social
media sites, the internet, and other 21st century necessities, metadata and the associated tools are
equally necessary for the IC to effectively face the threats of national security. >>
Commercial mining of Big Data proves the CP is possible
Crovitz, 15 - former publisher of The Wall Street Journal who also served as executive vice-president of
Dow Jones and launched the company's Consumer Media Group (L. Gordon, “The Dumbing Down of U.S.
Intelligence” Wall Street Journal, 5/10,
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dumbing-down-of-u-s-intelligence-1431300323
Lawmakers will decide this month whether to extend the Patriot Act or to water it down. Instead they
should update it to maximize both privacy and intelligence. Technology now has the answer, if only
politicians will get out of the way.
Recent innovations in big data allow staggering amounts of information to be collected and mined.
These data deliver correlations based on an individually anonymous basis. This work was originally done
to support the chief revenue engine of the Internet, advertising. The technology generates increasingly
targeted marketing messages based on individuals’ online activities.
The techniques have other applications. Google used them to become better than the Centers for
Disease Control at predicting flu outbreaks by monitoring search terms like “flu medicine” by location.
Canadian researchers studied thousands of premature babies and identified symptoms that precede
fevers. Cities apply predictive policing by mining online data to assign cops where they’re needed.
The fast shift to self-driving cars is possible because of data transmitted among vehicles. Small drones
share data that keep them from crashing into one another. A Brown University researcher discovered
how banks could use metadata about people’s cell phone usage to determine their creditworthiness.
The Patriot Act was written in 2001, before any of these advances. It lets the NSA keep anonymous data
about who is calling whom for five years, but it isn’t able to apply algorithms to find suspicious patterns.
Analysts may examine call logs for suspicious links only if there is a pre-existing “reasonable, articulable
suspicion” of terrorism or another threat to national security. There were 170 such searches last year.
Big Data analytics can better predict trends than other forms of intelligence
Lim, 15 – independent researcher focusing on foreign policy and security in the wider Middle East. He is
also senior analyst with the UK-based Open Briefing: The Civil Society Intelligence Agency, and analyst
with IHS Jane’s (Kevjn, “Big Data and Strategic Intelligence” Intelligence and National
Security, DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2015.1062321
These new forms of value depend on the analyst’s ability to interrogate these datasets, via algorithms,
to derive insights informing decision-making.8 Whereas small, representative and hence presumably
precise samples once lay at the heart of statistical analysis, Big Data speak to a different methodology
and approach altogether; one in which sheer sample size, variety and messiness, backed up by
unprecedented storage capabilities, compensate for what they lack in measurement precision.9 The
massive sample size creates something of a normalizing effect and enables higher confidence levels in
the inferring of trends, anomalies and patterns which might normally escape notice with small datasets,
with implications for future predictions. Ultimately, Big Data analytics shift the focus of inquiry from
causation to correlations: that is the mere knowledge that something is happening, rather than why it is
happening, suffices for the formulation of an adequate response.
Big Data analytics substantially increase the predictive value of intelligence
Lim, 15 – independent researcher focusing on foreign policy and security in the wider Middle East. He is
also senior analyst with the UK-based Open Briefing: The Civil Society Intelligence Agency, and analyst
with IHS Jane’s (Kevjn, “Big Data and Strategic Intelligence” Intelligence and National
Security, DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2015.1062321
When integrated into the Popperian method, Big Data analytics serves three apposite and crucial tasks
(see Figure 3). The first involves the inductive collection of data with the aim of discerning general
trends and anomalies. In a sense, this is a variant of applied grounded theory given the emphasis on
data ‘speaking for themselves’ as it were, and facilitates the defining of intelligence problems. Indeed,
the discernment of general trends and longer-term developments in itself often constitutes a specific
type of intelligence estimate.28 Intimately tied in with this aspect is, in some ways, the second and
perhaps more important function related to the formulation of intelligence hypotheses, a stage
requiring as little inhibition from cognitive bias, and as much imagination and (informed) speculation as
possible. That the tragedy of Pearl Harbor occurred, Thomas Schelling noted, exemplified a ‘great
national failure to anticipate’ and a ‘poverty of expectations’.29 In another context, he also perceptively
identified the ‘tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable’.30
The third, following on from the generation of hypotheses, is that Big Data allow the intelligence analyst
to cut through the overwhelming morass of supporting facts in order to adduce those with refutative
value – the search for that one black swan also being naturally far more defined than for the thousandth
white one – and this possibly in real-time , an invaluable advantage in intelligence work. This specific
task is ideally complemented by the analytical rigor of ‘devil’s advocates’, whose singular task is to
challenge baseline or ‘conventional wisdom’ intelligence estimates with logical, if often far less probable
alternatives that require explicit refutal. Woodrow Kuhns has raised the obvious question concerning
the situation in which Popperian refutation still fails to eliminate two or more hypotheses.31 Under such
cases of ambiguity, greater weight ought to be shifted towards probability and impact assessments as
arbiters (see below). The product, even if imperfect, would be the strengthening of hypothetical
approximations in the absence of the true intelligence ‘picture’.32
In addition, Big Data can increase, by several orders of magnitude, the time spent on analysis and sensemaking in relation to collection, provided analysts first possess the tools to make effective sense of the
data. A report by the Royal United Services Institute noted that the ‘intelligence world already collects
more raw data than it can analyse, with perhaps as much as 95 percent of imagery never being viewed
by analysts’.33 According to the same report, senior Ministry of Defense officials believe that the UK
‘has reached an inflection point in data deluge.We are now in danger of data asphyxiation and decision
paralysis’.34 Such is also certainly the case with the US’ National Security Agency, where Sigint
technology far outpaces the organization’s human analytical capabilities.35 Elsewhere, in order to track
the movement of seagoing vessels worldwide, the US navy alone collects 200 terabytes of data
approximately every 48 hours.36 That more than a small proportion of all that collected data is
processed is equally questionable. Finally, used correctly, Big Data analytics, with the aid of effective
visualization and presentation tools, can shorten the time required for key intelligence to reach
decision-makers.
AT: Can’t solve HUMINT
Integrating tech into HUMINT solves – even under diminished HUMINT resources
Nygaard, 14 – US Army Major; Master’s Thesis for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
(Richard, “How can Human Intelligence Enhance Collection in an Era of Un-manned Technology and
Reduced Personnel?” http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA613494
Human Intelligence can increase its relevancy as a collection discipline by integrating with other
collection disciplines, including analysis. Having trained HUMINT collection teams integrated with
analysts can help interpret technology-based collection information. By simply having a human element
involved with the analysis of technology-based collection, we may be able to offer even more insight, or
make that picture worth one thousand and two hundred words.
Furthermore, by making reporting more accessible to analysts, commanders, and decision makers, we
can increase the chances of painting the clearest picture possible. Decision makers and commanders
may not have time to sift through the multitude of intelligence reports available to them, but if we as
intelligence professionals give them the ability to access intelligence reporting as easily as accessing a
live UAV or drone feed, then we can at least put the information in the right hands. Overreliance on
classifications to protect sources and methodology has made HUMINT reporting and techniques difficult
to understand. Protection of clandestine sources is vital to ensuring that the flow of information can
remain, but not at the expense of restricting the information itself.
Reductions in both HUMINT personnel and resources may be inevitable, but are not likely to affect
HUMINT’s role in future intelligence collection. A better merging of HUMINT and technology, both in
collection and in analysis and dissemination, will produce a clearer picture for commanders and decision
makers, offering near immediate feedback, detailed, insightful analysis, and decreased risk to human
life.
Affirmative
Losing war on terror
Losing the war on terror now
Zenko, 15 - Douglas Dillon fellow with the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign
Relations (Micah, “America’s Virulent, Extremist Counterterrorism Ideology” Foreign Policy, 5/21,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/21/americas-virulent-extremist-counterterrorism-ideologyperpetual-war-islamic-state/
With little awareness of the consequences of this shift in discourse, U.S. counterterrorism ideology has
become far more nebulous, less concrete, and gradually more open-ended. The war on terrorism is
going poorly: The number, estimated strength, lethality (within countries they operate in, not against
Americans), and social media influence of jihadi terrorist groups is growing. Yet, the same toughsounding clichés and wholly implausible objectives are repeated over and over, with no indication of any
strategic learning or policy adjustments. If this virulent and extremist — virulent in that it’s poisonous
and harmful and that repeatedly espousing it ensures continued strategic failure, and extremist in that it
proclaims the most extreme objectives that will never be achieved — U.S. counterterrorism ideology
goes unchecked, it will further delude government officials and U.S. citizens into the false belief that the
current courses of action are normal and acceptable and require no modification.
This latest ideological change is most conspicuous in descriptions of who the United States is at war
with. The enemy has always been overly classified and somewhat hidden, but at least there was once a
recognized list of discrete groups. Now, the adversary is an undefined and contested category of groups
or people allegedly connected with the act of terrorism. If the U.S. government were as imprecise with
its bombs as with its descriptions of its terrorist enemies, it would be a war crime. This matters: If you
cannot name your opponents, you certainly cannot know them, much less measure progress in
defeating them.
Consider the nebulous jumble of abstract enemies that officials have pronounced. In February, President
Barack Obama said, “We are at war with people who have perverted Islam” and said that the
international community must “eradicate this scourge of violent extremism.” Similarly, when attempting
to describe the enemy, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, claimed that the
United States is in a fight “against the group that has perverted Islam.” In February, National Security
Advisor Susan Rice contextualized the U.S. mission as “to cut off violent extremism at the knees.” Earlier
that month, she attempted to describe the undefined enemy: “As al Qaeda core has been decimated,
we have seen the diffusion of the threat to al Qaeda affiliates, ISIL, local militia[s], and homegrown
violent extremists.” Eric Holder, then the attorney general, claimed, also in February, that the United
States is simply “combating the threat of violent extremism.” Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S.
Central Command, said the enemy is “ISIL and other violent extremist groups.”
Some policymakers have been even vaguer. When asked to define the enemy, Secretary of State John
Kerry said, “I call them the enemy of Islam.” Let’s set aside the fact that Kerry is now presuming to
interpret what is legitimate faith for 1 billion Muslims. Just who is this enemy precisely?
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates are outdoing one another in blurring the enemy and
exponentially expanding the number of individuals whom the United States must defeat. Sen. Marco
Rubio (R-Fl.) coined the Taken doctrine: “On our strategy on global jihadists and terrorists, I refer them
to the movie Taken … Liam Neeson. He had a line, and this is what our strategy should be: ‘We will look
for you, we will find you, and we will kill you.’” Less theatrically, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) merely pledged,
“We will stand up and defeat radical Islamic terrorism.” Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said, “We are in
the early years of a struggle with violent Islamic extremists that will last many decades.” Meanwhile,
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), while touting his alleged willingness to name the enemy, called them “radical
Islam” and “haters of mankind.” Again, it’s fine, though meaningless, to talk tough, but whom are these
threats being made against?
The other threatening recent shift in U.S. counterterrorism ideology relates to the end state in the war
on terrorism and when this might come about. Although Obama once claimed that this war, “like all
wars, must end,” officials and policymakers no longer pretend that the war on terrorism will ever end;
nor do they offer any narrative for how this war would end. Rather, they are attempting to normalize
the war on terrorism as something all Americans should accept and get used to. As Defense Secretary
Ashton Carter admitted, “We need to be thinking about terrorism more generally as a more enduring
part of our national security mission.”
This shift was crystallized in a remarkable recent observation by CIA Director John Brennan. Three years
ago, Brennan, then Obama’s closest counterterrorism advisor, pledged, “We’re not going to rest until al
Qaeda the organization is destroyed and is eliminated from areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen,
Africa, and other areas. We’re determined to do that.” Yet, last month, when asked at Harvard
University when the war on terrorism will end, he responded philosophically: “It’s a long war,
unfortunately. But it’s been a war that has been in existence for millennia.… So this is going to be
something, I think, that we’re always going to have to be vigilant about.” In other words, defeating
terrorism is eschatological and eternal.
Similarly, Obama and his senior aides have come to repeatedly reframe the war in decades. The new
National Security Strategy describes it as “a generational struggle in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq war
and 2011 Arab uprisings, which will redefine the region as well as relationships among communities and
between citizens and their governments.” Meanwhile, Dempsey, the most senior uniformed military
official, warned of Islamic terrorism: “I think this threat is probably a 30-year issue.”
Likewise, on Capitol Hill, this view has become standardized. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said it is a
“multigenerational struggle” with “no cheap way to win this fight.” Similarly, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
called it “a generational fight for civilization against brutal enemies.” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) went
even further than Brennan, noting, “We’ve been fighting this radical Islamist ideology for 1,400 years.”
In other words, long before the United States was even established. Forget who the enemy is; who is
this “we”?
What is most disheartening about this radicalized counterterrorism discourse is that these same officials
and policymakers still pretend that these diffuse terrorist threats will be “destroyed,” “defeated,” or
“eliminated.” This quite simply will not happen because the United States and its partners keep applying
the same strategies and policies while foolishly hoping for a different result. Officials claim that
terrorists’ ideology is their “center of gravity,” a term the Pentagon defines as: “The source of power
that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act.” Yet, again, because nothing
has succeeded at countering that ideology, we are supposed to become accustomed to an endless war
against a nondescript concept.
The only ideology that the United States can influence or control is its own. Instead, Washington has
busied itself conflating local militancy with threats to the homeland, refusing to identify the enemy,
proclaiming tough-sounding and implausible strategic objectives, and demonstrating no meaningful
learning or adjustments over 13 years. The lack of precision employed when defining America’s
adversaries in the war on terrorism and the absence of any end state (combined with those
unachievable objectives) comprise a dangerous and extremist set of beliefs for U.S. officials and
policymakers to hold. If the war on terrorism is really all about ideology and ideas, then the United
States should spend as much time analyzing its own ideology as it does its enemies’. The emerging
counterterrorism ideology that Washington is expressing is hazardous, illusory, and sadly unchallenged.
Losing the war on terrorism
Zenko, 15 - Douglas Dillon fellow with the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign
Relations (Micah, “Terrorism Is Booming Almost Everywhere But in the United States” Foreign Policy,
6/19, https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/19/terrorism-is-booming-almost-everywhere-but-in-theunited-states-state-department-report/
On June 19, the U.S. State Department published its Country Reports on Terrorism: 2014 — the
department’s annual, congressionally mandated analytical and statistical review of global terrorism.
Since the concept of terrorism is open to subjective interpretation and politically motivated
misrepresentation, it is important to note that, since 1983, the U.S. government has used the same
definition for statistical analytical purposes, which is based in Title 22 of the U.S. Code, Section 2656f(d):
(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against
noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents…
“non-combatant,” which is referred to but not defined in 22 USC 2656f(d)(2), is interpreted to mean, in
addition to civilians, military personnel (whether or not armed or on duty) who are not deployed in a
war zone or a war-like setting.
With that relatively limited definition of terrorism in mind, there are five significant findings that stand
out from the latest report.
First, the phenomenon of terrorism has significantly worsened, in terms of the number of attacks, their
lethality, as well as the size of terrorist organizations. The number of attacks increased 39 percent from
9,707 in 2013 to 13,463 last year. There were 17,891 fatalities in 2013, growing 83 percent to 32,727 in
2014. To give you a fuller sense of how vastly contemporary terrorism has grown, just a little over a
dozen years ago, in 2002, only 725 people were killed worldwide. During President Barack Obama’s first
full year in office, in 2010, it was 13,186. In other words, terrorist-related deaths grew by more than
4,000 percent from 2002 and by 148 percent from 2010 to 2014.
The size of several groups grew in strength, in particular the self-declared Islamic State, which was
estimated to include both between 1,000 and 2,000 members in Iraq and a “significant portion” of the
26,000 extremist fighters in Syria in 2013, and grew in strength to between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in
2014. Boko Haram also expanded from “hundreds to a few thousand” to “several thousand” fighters. In
addition, there were 33 new organizations identified as perpetrators of terrorist attacks in 2014,
indicating that more groups are forming to employ this deadly tactic.
CT fails now
Brooks, 15 - law professor at Georgetown University and a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America
Foundation (Rosa, “U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy Is the Definition of Insanity” Foreign Policy, 6/24,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/24/u-s-counterterrorism-strategy-is-the-definition-of-insanity/
Show me someone who publicly insists that the United States has an effective counterterrorism
strategy, and I’ll show you someone who draws a paycheck from the U.S. government.
“This week we have seen success across a broad spectrum,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren
told reporters on June 16, commenting on the death of Yemeni al Qaeda leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi,
reportedly killed as a result of a U.S. drone strike. “Any time a terrorist is removed from the battlefield,
is killed or captured, I think the net gain outweighs any potential loss.”
Loyalty to your employer is a fine thing, especially in a press spokesman, but outside the ranks of
officials in President Barack Obama’s administration, experts are far more dubious about the heavy U.S.
reliance on air power and targeted strikes. “The tactical, whack-a-mole approach is not having the
desired effect,” my Foreign Policy colleague Micah Zenko told the New York Times. “Not having the
desired effect” was a polite circumlocution: As Zenko recently noted for FP, State Department figures
show a substantial recent uptick in global terrorism. In 2014, terrorist attacks increased 39 percent over
the previous year, while the number of fatalities caused by terrorist attacks went up 83 percent.
In Yemen, which the administration inexplicably continues to tout as a counterterrorism “success,” U.S.
policy in in shambles. “If you’re looking for logic here, you’re not going to find much,” Stephen Seche, a
former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, told the New York Times. In mid-June, the Washington Post reported
that “[al]-Qaeda affiliates are significantly expanding their footholds” in both Yemen and Syria. And the
Islamic State also continues to gain ground in both countries. Meanwhile, in Libya, it’s “utter chaos,”
former U.N. advisor Dirk Vandewalle told the Times: The Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked groups are
vying for power, and a recent U.S. drone strike against al Qaeda operative Mokhtar Belmokhtar “shows
that we’re still relying on ad hoc measures.” In Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan, it’s the same story. The
United States continues to rely heavily on airstrikes and targeted killings, while terrorist groups continue
to cause mayhem and gain adherents.
Even some of those who do get paid by Uncle Sam have grown more openly skeptical of U.S.
counterterrorism policy. Capt. Robert Newson, a Navy SEAL who served as director of the Joint
Interagency Task Force-Counter Terrorism, told an interviewer at West Point’s Combating Terrorism
Center that “drone strikes, manned airstrikes, and special operations raids … buy space and time. But by
themselves they are only a delaying action, and everywhere I have been, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen,
every military person up and down the chain of command acknowledges this. This ‘CT concept’ — the
solution that some people champion where the main or whole effort is drone strikes and special
operations raids — is a fantasy.”
Like Newson, I haven’t encountered many defenders of U.S. counterterrorism strikes. Last year, I cochaired a Stimson Center commission on U.S. drone policy with retired Gen. John Abizaid. The
commission, which included former senior military and intelligence officials from both Obama’s and
George W. Bush’s administrations, concluded in June 2014 that “the Obama administration’s heavy
reliance on targeted killings as a pillar of US counterterrorism strategy rests on questionable
assumptions, and risks increasing instability and escalating conflicts. While tactical strikes may have
helped keep the homeland free of major terrorist attacks, existing evidence indicates that both Sunni
and Shia Islamic extremist groups have grown in scope, lethality and influence in the broader area of
operations in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.” In dozens of interviews and conversations with
national security experts since June 2014, I have yet to find anyone who won’t admit, off the record,
that U.S. counterterrorism policy is flailing badly.
AT: Empirically NSA stopped attacks
NSA isn’t key to stopping terrorist attacks – their empirical examples are wrong and
other programs check threats.
Cahall et al 14 (Bailey Cahall, Policy Analyst at New America Foundation, David Sterman,
Program Associate at New America with an M.A. from Georgetown’s Center for Security
Studies, “DO NSA'S BULK SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS STOP TERRORISTS?,” International
Security, 13 January 2014, https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/do-nsas-bulksurveillance-programs-stop-terrorists/, *fc)
June 5, 2013, the Guardian broke the first story in what would become a flood of revelations regarding
the extent and nature of the NSA’s surveillance programs. Facing an uproar over the threat such
programs posed to privacy, the Obama administration scrambled to defend them as legal and essential
to U.S. national security and counterterrorism. Two weeks after the first leaks by former NSA contractor
Edward Snowden were published, President Obama defended the NSA surveillance programs during a
visit to Berlin, saying: “We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this
information not just in the United States, but, in some cases, threats here in Germany. So lives have
been saved.” Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, testified before Congress that: “the
information gathered from these programs provided the U.S. government with critical leads to help
prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world.” Rep. Mike
Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said on the
House floor in July that “54 times [the NSA programs] stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here
and in Europe – saving real lives.”
However, our review of the government’s claims about the role that NSA “bulk” surveillance of phone
and email communications records has had in keeping the United States safe from terrorism shows that
these claims are overblown and even misleading . An in-depth analysis of 225 individuals recruited by
al-Qaeda or a like-minded group or inspired by al-Qaeda’s ideology, and charged in the United States
with an act of terrorism since 9/11, demonstrates that traditional investigative methods, such as the use
of informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence operations, provided the initial
impetus for investigations in the majority of cases, while the contribution of NSA’s bulk surveillance
programs to these cases was minimal. Indeed, the controversial bulk collection of American telephone
metadata, which includes the telephone numbers that originate and receive calls, as well as the time
and date of those calls but not their content, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, appears to
have played an identifiable role in initiating, at most, 1.8 percent of these cases. NSA programs involving
the surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States under Section 702 of the FISA
Amendments Act played a role in 4.4 percent of the terrorism cases we examined, and NSA surveillance
under an unidentified authority played a role in 1.3 percent of the cases we examined.
Regular FISA warrants not issued in connection with Section 215 or Section 702, which are the
traditional means for investigating foreign persons, were used in at least 48 (21 percent) of the cases we
looked at, although it’s unclear whether these warrants played an initiating role or were used at a later
point in the investigation. (Click on the link to go to a database of all 225 individuals, complete with
additional details about them and the government’s investigations of these cases:
http://natsec.newamerica.net/nsa/analysis).
Surveillance of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism
and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a
terrorist group. Furthermore, our examination of the role of the database of U.S. citizens’ telephone
metadata in the single plot the government uses to justify the importance of the program – that of
Basaaly Moalin, a San Diego cabdriver who in 2007 and 2008 provided $8,500 to al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda’s
affiliate in Somalia – calls into question the necessity of the Section 215 bulk collection program.
According to the government, the database of American phone metadata allows intelligence authorities
to quickly circumvent the traditional burden of proof associated with criminal warrants, thus allowing
them to “connect the dots” faster and prevent future 9/11-scale attacks. Yet in the Moalin case, after
using the NSA’s phone database to link a number in Somalia to Moalin, the FBI waited two months to
begin an investigation and wiretap his phone. Although it’s unclear why there was a delay between the
NSA tip and the FBI wiretapping, court documents show there was a two-month period in which the FBI
was not monitoring Moalin’s calls, despite official statements that the bureau had Moalin’s phone
number and had identified him. , This undercuts the government’s theory that the database of
Americans’ telephone metadata is necessary to expedite the investigative process, since it clearly didn’t
expedite the process in the single case the government uses to extol its virtues.
Additionally, a careful review of three of the key terrorism cases the government has cited to defend
NSA bulk surveillance programs reveals that government officials have exaggerated the role of the NSA
in the cases against David Coleman Headley and Najibullah Zazi, and the significance of the threat posed
by a notional plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.
In 28 percent of the cases we reviewed, court records and public reporting do not identify which specific
methods initiated the investigation. These cases, involving 62 individuals, may have been initiated by an
undercover informant, an undercover officer, a family member tip, other traditional law enforcement
methods, CIA- or FBI-generated intelligence, NSA surveillance of some kind, or any number of other
methods. In 23 of these 62 cases (37 percent), an informant was used. However, we were unable to
determine whether the informant initiated the investigation or was used after the investigation was
initiated as a result of the use of some other investigative means. Some of these cases may also be too
recent to have developed a public record large enough to identify which investigative tools were used.
We have also identified three additional plots that the government has not publicly claimed as NSA
successes, but in which court records and public reporting suggest the NSA had a role. However, it is not
clear whether any of those three cases involved bulk surveillance programs.
Finally, the overall problem for U.S. counterterrorism officials is not that they need vaster amounts of
information from the bulk surveillance programs, but that they don’t sufficiently understand or
widely share the information they already possess that was derived from conventional law
enforcement and intelligence techniques. This was true for two of the 9/11 hijackers who were known
to be in the United States before the attacks on New York and Washington, as well as with the case of
Chicago resident David Coleman Headley, who helped plan the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and it
is the unfortunate pattern we have also seen in several other significant terrorism cases.
Overload turn
NSA insiders recognize information overload as a serious problem- it undermines
counterterror efforts
Maass 5/28 (Peter, national security author, fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard and the
American Academy in Berlin, “INSIDE NSA, OFFICIALS PRIVATELY CRITICIZE "COLLECT IT ALL"
SURVEILLANCE,” https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/28/nsa-officials-privately-criticize-collect-itall-surveillance/, May 28, 2015, The Intercept, silbs)
<< AS MEMBERS OF CONGRESS struggle to agree on which surveillance programs to re-authorize before
the Patriot Act expires, they might consider the unusual advice of an intelligence analyst at the National
Security Agency who warned about the danger of collecting too much data. Imagine, the analyst wrote
in a leaked document, that you are standing in a shopping aisle trying to decide between jam, jelly or
fruit spread, which size, sugar-free or not, generic or Smucker’s. It can be paralyzing.
“We in the agency are at risk of a similar, collective paralysis in the face of a dizzying array of choices
every single day,” the analyst wrote in 2011. “’Analysis paralysis’ isn’t only a cute rhyme. It’s the term
for what happens when you spend so much time analyzing a situation that you ultimately stymie any
outcome …. It’s what happens in SIGINT [signals intelligence] when we have access to endless
possibilities, but we struggle to prioritize, narrow, and exploit the best ones.”
The document is one of about a dozen in which NSA intelligence experts express concerns usually heard
from the agency’s critics: that the U.S. government’s “collect it all” strategy can undermine the effort to
fight terrorism. The documents, provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden,
appear to contradict years of statements from senior officials who have claimed that pervasive
surveillance of global communications helps the government identify terrorists before they strike or
quickly find them after an attack.
The Patriot Act, portions of which expire on Sunday, has been used since 2001 to conduct a number of
dragnet surveillance programs, including the bulk collection of phone metadata from American
companies. But the documents suggest that analysts at the NSA have drowned in data since 9/11,
making it more difficult for them to find the real threats. The titles of the documents capture their
overall message: “Data Is Not Intelligence,” “The Fallacies Behind the Scenes,” “Cognitive Overflow?”
“Summit Fever” and “In Praise of Not Knowing.” Other titles include “Dealing With a ‘Tsunami’ of
Intercept” and “Overcome by Overload?”
The documents are not uniform in their positions. Some acknowledge the overload problem but say the
agency is adjusting well. They do not specifically mention the Patriot Act, just the larger dilemma of
cutting through a flood of incoming data. But in an apparent sign of the scale of the problem, the
documents confirm that the NSA even has a special category of programs that is called “Coping With
Information Overload.”
The jam vs. jelly document, titled “Too Many Choices,” started off in a colorful way but ended with a
fairly stark warning: “The SIGINT mission is far too vital to unnecessarily expand the haystacks while we
search for the needles. Prioritization is key.” >>
NSA insiders cite academic literature about the human attention economy and
decision making- bulk data harms both
Maass 5/28 (Peter, national security author, fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard and the
American Academy in Berlin, “INSIDE NSA, OFFICIALS PRIVATELY CRITICIZE "COLLECT IT ALL"
SURVEILLANCE,” https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/28/nsa-officials-privately-criticize-collect-itall-surveillance/, May 28, 2015, The Intercept, silbs)
“We are drowning in information. And yet we know nothing. For sure.”
–NSA Intelligence Analyst
Many of these documents were written by intelligence analysts who had regular columns distributed on
NSANet, the agency’s intranet. One of the columns was called “Signal v. Noise,” another was called “The
SIGINT Philosopher.” Two of the documents cite the academic work of Herbert Simon, who won a Nobel
Prize for his pioneering research on what’s become known as the attention economy. Simon wrote that
consumers and managers have trouble making smart choices because their exposure to more
information decreases their ability to understand the information. Both documents mention the same
passage from Simon’s essay, Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World:
“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of
whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes
the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need
to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might
consume it.”
In addition to consulting Nobel-prize winning work, NSA analysts have turned to easier literature, such
as Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. The author of a 2011
document referenced Blink and stated, “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is
understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” The author
added, “Gladwell has captured one of the biggest challenges facing SID today. Our costs associated with
this information overload are not only financial, such as the need to build data warehouses large enough
to store the mountain of data that arrives at our doorstep each day, but also include the more intangible
costs of too much data to review, process, translate and report.”
Alexander, the NSA director from 2005 to 2014 and chief proponent of the agency’s “collect it all”
strategy, vigorously defended the bulk collection programs. “What we have, from my perspective, is a
reasonable approach on how we can defend our nation and protect our civil liberties and privacy,” he
said at a security conference in Aspen in 2013. He added, “You need the haystack to find the needle.”
The same point has been made by other officials, including James Cole, the former deputy attorney
general who told a congressional committee in 2013, “If you’re looking for the needle in the haystack,
you have to have the entire haystack to look through.”
The opposing viewpoint was voiced earlier this month by Snowden, who noted in an interview with the
Guardian that the men who committed recent terrorist attacks in France, Canada and Australia were
under surveillance—their data was in the haystack yet they weren’t singled out. “It wasn’t the fact that
we weren’t watching people or not,” Snowden said. “It was the fact that we were watching people so
much that we did not understand what we had. The problem is that when you collect it all, when you
monitor everyone, you understand nothing.”
In a 2011 interview with SIDtoday, a deputy director in the Signals Intelligence Directorate was asked
about “analytic modernization” at the agency. His response, while positive on the NSA’s ability to
surmount obstacles, noted that it faced difficulties, including the fact that some targets use encryption
and switch phone numbers to avoid detection. He pointed to volume as a particular problem. >>
We’re already past the limits on human intelligence- data doesn’t do anything if it
can’t be analyzed or used effectively
Maass 5/28 (Peter, national security author, fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard and the
American Academy in Berlin, “INSIDE NSA, OFFICIALS PRIVATELY CRITICIZE "COLLECT IT ALL"
SURVEILLANCE,” https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/28/nsa-officials-privately-criticize-collect-itall-surveillance/, May 28, 2015, The Intercept, silbs)
<< “We live in an Information Age when we have massive reserves of information and don’t have the
capability to exploit it,” he stated. “I was told that there are 2 petabytes of data in the SIGINT System at
any given time. How much is that? That’s equal to 20 million 4-drawer filing cabinets. How many
cabinets per analyst is that? By the end of this year, we’ll have 1 terabyte of data per second coming in.
You can’t crank that through the existing processes and be effective.”
The documents noted the difficulty of sifting through the ever-growing haystack of data. For instance, a
2011 document titled “ELINT Analysts – Overcome by Overload? Help is Here with IM&S” outlined a half
dozen computer tools that “are designed to invert the paradigm where an analyst spends more time
searching for data than analyzing it.” Another document, written by an intelligence analyst in 2010,
bluntly stated that “we are drowning in information. And yet we know nothing. For sure.” The analyst
went on to ask, “Anyone know just how many tools are available at the Agency, alone? Would you know
where to go to find out? Anyone ever start a new target…without the first clue where to begin? Did you
ever start a project wondering if you were the sole person in the Intelligence Community to work this
project? How would you find out?” The analyst, trying to encourage more sharing of tips about the best
ways to find data in the haystack, concluded by writing, in boldface, “Don’t let those coming behind you
suffer the way you have.”
The agency appears to be spending significant sums of money to solve the haystack problem. The
document headlined “Dealing With a ‘Tsunami’ of Intercept,” written in 2006 by three NSA officials and
previously published by The Intercept, outlined a series of programs to prepare for a near future in
which the speed and volume of signals intelligence would explode “almost beyond imagination.” The
document referred to a mysterious NSA entity–the “Coping With Information Overload Office.” This
appears to be related to an item in the Intelligence Community’s 2013 Budget Justification to Congress,
known as the “black budget”—$48.6 million for projects related to “Coping with Information Overload.”
The data glut is felt in the NSA’s partner agency in Britain, too. A slideshow entitled “A Short
Introduction to SIGINT,” from GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, posed the following question: “How
are people supposed to keep on top of all their targets and the new ones when they have far more than
[they] could do in a day? How are they supposed to find the needle in the haystack and prioritise what is
most important to look at?” The slideshow continued, “Give an analyst three leads, one of which is
interesting: they may have time to follow that up. Give them three hundred leads, ten of which are
interesting: that’s probably not much use.”
These documents tend to shy away from confrontation—they express concern with the status quo but
do not blame senior officials or demand an abrupt change of course. They were written by agency
staffers who appear to believe in the general mission of the NSA. For instance, the author of a “SIGINT
Philosopher” column wrote that if the NSA was a corporation, it could have the following mission
statement: “building informed decision makers — so that targets do not suffer our nation’s wrath unless
they really deserve it — by exercising deity-like monitoring of the target.”
On occasion, however, the veil of bureaucratic deference is lowered. In another “SIGINT Philosopher”
column, “Cognitive Overflow?,” the author offered a forthright assessment of the haystack problem and
the weakness of proposed solutions:
“If an individual brain has finite ‘channel capacity,’ does the vast collective of SID, comprised of
thousands of brilliant, yet limited, brains also have a definite ‘channel capacity’? If so, what is it? How do
we know when we’ve reached it? What if we’ve already exceeded it? In essence, could SID’s reach
exceed its grasp? Can the combined cognitive power of SID connect all the necessary dots to avoid,
predict, or advise when the improbable, complex, or unthinkable happens?”
The column did not offer an optimistic view.
“Take for example the number of tools, clearances, systems, compliances, and administrative
requirements we encounter before we even begin to engage in the work of the mission itself,” the
column continued. “The mission then involves an ever-expanding set of complex issues, targets,
accesses, and capabilities. The ‘cognitive burden,’ so to speak, must at times feel overwhelming to some
of us.”
The analyst who wrote the column dismissed, politely but firmly, the typical response of senior officials
when they are asked in public about their ability to find needles in their expanding haystack.
“Surely someone will point out that the burgeoning amalgam of technological advances will aid us in
shouldering the burden,” he noted. “However, historically, this scenario doesn’t seem to completely
bear out. The onslaught of more computer power—often intended to automate some processes—has in
many respects demanded an expansion of our combined ‘channel capacity’ rather than curbing the flow
of the information.” >>
Information overload allowed for the Boston terror attacks- increasing efficiency is
key to stop future attacks
Spies 14 (Mike, journalist, “Did NSA-Style Snooping Blind the FBI to Boston’s Bombers? The FBI knew
about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, but information overload meant he was never singled out for
attention,” http://www.vocativ.com/usa/nat-sec/fbi-finally-admits-lost-track-boston-marathonbomber/, vocativ, April 13, 2014, silbs)
When the bureau received the tip from the Russians in 2011, it opened an investigation—or an
“assessment” in FBI parlance—that included at least one in-person interview with Tamerlan, as well as
additional interviews with members of his family. Three weeks later, the Boston bureau’s Joint
Terrorism Task Force, which brings representatives from the city’s police department and U.S. Customs
and Border Patrol into the fold, placed Tamerlan’s name into a database of people suspected of
extremism or ties to terrorists. Along with his name, there was also an alert, specifying that the Boston
JTTF must be notified should Tamerlan make international travel plans, which would trigger pings upon
his departure and return.
Later, when Tamerlan traveled to Russia and eventually returned to the United States, the JTTF was
notified on both occasions. But what remains so disquieting, a year after the bombings, is the FBI’s
decision to ignore the warnings. Recently, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson provided Vocativ with a rare
inside look at the agency’s investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and what went wrong.
On June 24, 2011, the bureau, after determining there was nothing suspicious, officially ended its
inquiry into Tamerlan. But according to the inspector general for U.S. intelligence agencies, which
briefed Congress last week on its latest report concerning the bombings, the FBI didn’t stop there—it
continued to pump the Russians for additional information but were apparently ignored. The Russians
dispute this claim, but if it is true, it means the FBI was still concerned about Tamerlan, even after the
case was officially closed.
So then why, only seven months later, on January 22, 2012, when the JTTF received word that Tamerlan
was leaving the country for Russia—where he would spend nearly six months in the volatile state of
Dagestan, now considered the heart of the Chechen insurgency—did the agency decide he was not
worth questioning? “You have to determine irregularities in travel,” says Bresson. “If he’s making
constant trips overseas, going to places like Afghanistan and Pakistan—that’s something we’d need to
look into. But this was just one time, and it wasn’t out of the ordinary. I mean, just in Boston alone, our
JTTF gets tips like this every day. Nothing about Tamerlan’s trip threw up any warning signs.”
Kade Crockford, the director of the Technology for Liberty Program at ACLU Massachusetts, believes it
should have. Crockford, perhaps the foremost authority on the lingering questions raised by the Boston
bombings, sees the FBI’s failure to look into Tamerlan’s journey as part of a larger institutional problem.
“Millions of people are listed in government databases as potential terrorist threats,” says Crockford.
“The FBI has the legal authority to approach anyone for an interview, at any time. Tamerlan’s case
confirms what we have long suspected: The databases are so large that they are practically useless.
When everyone is a suspect, no one is a suspect.”
“The FBI, originally, was an investigative agency,” says Mike German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for
Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. But since 9/11, the bureau, like many federal agencies,
has increasingly refocused its efforts on intelligence gathering as part of the overall counterterrorism
agenda. This, German believes, is where the central failing lies.
“Just like false alarms dull the response of firefighters, these ‘see something, say something’ leads
[result in] only cursory investigations, then they move to the next one,” says German. “The Boston FBI
JTTF conducted 1,000 assessments like this one in 2011 alone, which should be evidence of the
problem—if you’re doing 1,000 in a year, those are not going to be as thorough as you need them to be.
And you’re not going to be treating them as criminal investigations.” One of the allegations against
Tamerlan was that he was going to Russia to meet with underground groups. “This violates the laws of
the U.S.,” says German. “So it’s difficult to understand why that didn’t raise more alarms.”
The FBI’s failings went beyond the years before the bombings; they also extended into the days
immediately following the attack. On April 17, 2013, two days after pressure-cooker bombs exploded
near the marathon’s finish line, the FBI received an image of both Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarneav. But
the FBI was unable to identify the two suspects, despite the fact that the agency had photographs of
Tamerlan, who’d been arrested for domestic violence, in its database, and that the U.S. government had
spent billions of dollars on facial-recognition software meant for just such purposes.
“We attempted to use the facial-recognition technology, but it didn’t work,” admits Bresson. “I’m not
sure why.”
And what about the agents and police in the area—did they receive the images, too?
“It stands to reason that the images were shared with all agencies in the Boston community,” Bresson
says. “But we literally had no idea who these guys were.”
Hacking encryption turn
Encryption cracking opens access to unintended consequences, terrorism, loss of soft
power, and stops tech company innovation
Weitzner July 7th,
(Daniel Weitzner is the Director of the MIT CSAIL Decentralized Information Group and teaches Internet
public policy in MIT’s Computer Science Department. His research includes development of accountable
systems architectures to enable the Web to be more responsive to policy requirements, former US
Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy in the White House. led initiatives on privacy,
cybersecurity, Internet copyright, and trade policies promoting the free flow of information, “Encryption
'backdoors' will open for criminals as well as governments: experts”,
http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2015/07/07/Encryption-backdoors-will-open-for-criminals-as-wellas-governments-experts, TMP)
A research report published by the M assachusetts I nstitute of T echnology challenges claims from US
and British authorities that such access is the policy response needed to fight crime and terrorism.¶
Providing this kind of access "will open doors through which criminals and malicious nation-states can
attack the very individuals law enforcement seeks to defend," said the report by 13 scientists.¶ The
paper was released a day after FBI Director James Comey called for public debate on the use of
encrypted communications, saying Americans may not realize how radical groups and criminals are
using the technology.¶ Comey argued in a blog post that Islamic State militants are among those using
encryption to avoid detection.¶ The New York Times, which reported earlier on the study, said Comey
was expected to renew a call at a congressional hearing for better access to encrypted communications
to avoid "going dark."¶ The computer scientists said, however, that any effort to build in access for law
enforcement could be exceedingly complex and lead to "unintended consequences," such as stifling
innovation and creating hostility toward new tech products.¶ "The costs would be substantial, the
damage to innovation severe, and the consequences to economic growth difficult to predict ," the
report said.¶ " The costs to developed countries' soft power and to our moral authority would also be
considerable."¶ In the 1990s, there was a similar debate on the "clipper chip" proposal to allow "a
trusted third party" to have access to encrypted messages that could be granted under a legal process.¶
The clipper chip idea was abandoned, but the authors said that if it had been widely adopted , "it is
doubtful that companies like Facebook and Twitter would even exist."¶ The computer scientists said
the idea of special access would create numerous technical and legal challenges, leaving unclear who
would have access and who would set standards.¶ "The greatest impediment to exceptional access may
be jurisdiction," the report said.¶ "Building in exceptional access would be risky enough even if only one
law enforcement agency in the world had it."¶ The British government is considering legislation to
compel communications service providers, including US-based corporations, to grant access to British
law enforcement agencies.¶ "China has already intimated that it may require exceptional access," the
report said.¶ "If a British-based developer deploys a messaging application used by citizens of China,
must it provide exceptional access to Chinese law enforcement?"¶ Among the report's authors are Daniel
Weitzner, director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and well-known
MIT cryptographer Ronald Rivest.
AT: Deterrence by denial
Deterrence by denial fails—terrorists’ motives are too complex and will always
overcome government tactics.
Abrahms 14. (Max, assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University. “Deterring Terrorism: a New
Strategy,” New Perspectives on Terrorism. June 2014. Directory of Open Access Journals.)//CB
But just because terrorists rejoice from an operationally successful attack, this does not mean they can
be deterred with a denial strategy. Denying terrorists from carrying out operationally successful attacks
is a losing strategy for two main reasons. First, terrorists are manifestly motivated by numerous goals,
some of which do not even require attacks at all.[20] Second, a consensus exists within the policy
community that terrorists will always finds ways to mount operations, given sufficient resolve. As
Stephen Flynn remarks, terrorism “will be perennially in the offing” because “it is an ongoing hazard,
something we will never successfully eliminate.”[21] This is true for several reasons. For terrorists,
potential targets include anywhere people gather. As such, very little capability is required for carrying
out an attack. In the rare cases where targets are effectively hardened, terrorists simply move on to
softer targets. Governments may try to play cat and mouse, but are ultimately constrained in their
responses particularly within democracies.[22] In sum, the ease of perpetrating attacks virtually
guarantees some form of success though is hardly a requirement for it.
For the sake of prediction, scholars tend to model the behaviour of terrorists by attributing to them
simple, straightforward incentive structures. In their efforts to achieve parsimony, however, these
models are often too reductive. The evidence suggests that terrorists tend to harbour varied, complex,
even inconsistent strategic and personal aims. Given the complexity of their objectives, terrorists
seemingly derive utility from their actions regardless of how governments respond. The inability of
governments to reduce the utility of terrorism seemingly presents an insurmountable challenge for
deterring its practitioners.
Deterrence by denial fails—terrorists’ motivations are too complex and diverse.
Abrahms 14. (Max, assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University. “Deterring Terrorism: a New
Strategy,” New Perspectives on Terrorism. June 2014. Directory of Open Access Journals.)//CB
Traditional concepts of deterrence try to thwart unwanted behaviour by manipulating adversary
incentives. Deterrence-by-punishment threatens to impose costs on the adversary for an undesirable
course of action. Deterrence-by-denial seeks to deny him any benefits from it.[1] Clearly, both strategies
are based on influencing the adversary by reducing the utility of his actions. Unfortunately, neither
approach is likely to succeed since terrorists are generally motivated by such a wide variety of personal
and strategic aims that they are liable to derive utility from their actions regardless of how governments
respond.
Although traditional concepts of deterrence are unlikely to work against terrorists on any systematic
basis, the tactic itself may be deterred with an alternative counterterrorism approach. Deterrence-bydelegitimisation focuses less on deterring adversaries themselves than their support constituencies.[2]
This less well-known indirect form of deterrence offers superior counterterrorism promise because
terrorist supporters are more likely to be motivated by a relatively straightforward incentive structure.
Unlike the perpetrators themselves, their supporters are generally driven by one main goal—the desire
to coerce government concessions. In recent years, a growing body of academic research has found that
terrorism decreases rather than increases the odds of government compliance. In this fundamental
sense, the tactic of terrorism is politically counterproductive. The policy community’s primary
contribution to deterring terrorism should be to broadcast this finding in a targeted public diplomacy
campaign to terrorist supporters.
The argument of this article proceeds in three sections. In the first section, an explanation is offered why
classic concepts of deterrence are doomed to fail against terrorists. The strategies of deterrence-bypunishment and deterrence-by-denial are based on the unrealistic premise that governments can deter
terrorists by simply removing the utility of their violent behaviour. This assumption is faulty not because
terrorists are categorically irrational actors, but because they do not employ a uniform, consistent
metric of success. Indeed, many terrorists seem to regard their actions as fruitful regardless of how
governments choose to respond. The second section argues that most terrorism is deterrable, however,
even if its practitioners are not. This section details the burgeoning academic literature on terrorism’s
political ineffectiveness and explains how this finding can be exploited to deter terrorist supporters and,
by extension, the tactic itself. The conclusion issues an appeal to the policy community—work closer
with the academic community on counterterrorism. Only by sharing our knowledge can we hope to
deter the terrorism threat.
AT: Deterrence by denial - Cyberterror
Deterrence techniques fail—actors have diverse motives, and interagency cooperation
is a pre-requisite to implementation of effective strategies.
Jasper 15. (Scott, lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School in the Center for Civil-Military Relations and the National
Security Affairs department. “Deterring Malicious Behavior in Cyberspace,” Strategic Studies Quarterly. Spring 2015.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/digital/pdf/Spring_2015/jasper.pdf)//CB
Deterrence of the wide array of actors in cyberspace is difficult, since deterrence has to work in the
mind of the attacker. The point of deter- rence is to add another consideration to the attacker’s
calculus.6 Deter- rence instills a belief that a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction exists, that a
contemplated action cannot succeed, or that the cost of action outweighs the perceived benefits.
Complicated issues, like attribution, legality, liability, privacy, trust, and verification hamper
conventional strategies and beg for an alternative ability to influence malicious behavior. The
controversial concept of active cyberdefense (proactive actions), which relies on forensic intelligence
and automated counter- measures, offers such an alternative and could limit exposure to threats.
Before considering each of the four strategies mentioned above, it is instructive to first consider aspects
of cyberattack vectors along with current threat-actor strategies. The complexity and severity of acts of
cy- ber aggression indicate that implementation of any strategy will require cooperation among all
stakeholders in industry, government, and de- fense spheres. A proven method for national cooperation
is the compre- hensive approach used in international stabilization and reconstruction operations as
witnessed through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
DbD fails—the government can’t know cyberterrorists’ motives and it’s empirically
disproven.
Iasiello 13. (Emillio, chief threat analyst for a global cyber intelligence firm, supporting federal and commercial entities to
manage cyber risks, understand their threat environment, and help prioritize their investments against those threats impacting
their business or mission. "Is Cyber Deterrence an Illusory Course of Action?." Journal of Strategic Security 7, no. 1. 2013.
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1337&context=jss&seiredir=1&referer=https%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fq%3D%2522deterrence%2Bby%2Bdenial%2522%26btnG
%3D%26hl%3Den%26num%3D20%26as_sdt%3D0%252C23%26sciodt%3D0%252C23%26as_ylo%3D2014%26cites%3D2899554
789194611788%26scipsc%3D1#search=%22deterrence%20by%20denial%22)//CB
Another facet challenging a successful deterrence strategy is consistently influencing terrorist behavior.
In order to be successful, a direct response deterrent threat must be made conditional on an adversary’s
behavior; if individuals and political groups believe that they will be targeted as part of the U.S. war on
terror regardless of their actions, they have less incentive to show restraint.34 To date, there have been
no publicly observed incidents or evidence where cyber deterrence by denial or punishment has been
successfully used to mitigate hostile cyber activity, or influence the actors directing or conducting the
activity.
TSA ineffective
The TSA fails to stop terrorists 95% of the time
Costello and Johnson 15— News & Documentary Emmy Award and political and post-Sept. 11
security issues reporter (Tom and M. Alex, “TSA Chief Out After Agents Fail 95 Percent of Airport Breach
Tests,” NBC news, June 1, 2015, http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-usairports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851). WM
The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration was reassigned Monday after an internal
investigation by the Department of Homeland Security found security failures at dozens of the nation's
busiest airports. The breaches allowed undercover investigators to smuggle weapons, fake explosives
and other contraband through numerous checkpoints. Melvin Carraway, an 11-year veteran of the TSA
who became acting administrator in January, was immediately reassigned to a DHS program
coordinating with local law enforcement agencies, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said Monday night. Coast
Guard Vice Adm. Pete Neffenger's nomination to be permanent administrator is awaiting Senate
confirmation. Upon learning the initial findings of the Office of Inspector General's report, Johnson
immediately directed TSA to implement a series of other actions, several of which are now in place,
agency officials said. In one case, an alarm sounded, but even during a pat-down, the screening officer
failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to an undercover agent's back. In all, so-called "Red
Teams" of Homeland Security agents posing as passengers were able get weapons past TSA agents in 67
out of 70 tests — a 95 percent failure rate , according to agency officials. "The numbers in these reports
never look good out of context, but they are a critical element in the continual evolution of our aviation
security," Homeland Security officials said in a statement. This isn't the first time TSA officers have failed
to detect fake terrorists and their weapons. "Red Teams" have been probing TSA checkpoints for 13
years, oftentimes successfully getting weapons past airport screeners. However, this time, TSA agents
failed to detect almost every single test bomb and gun , aviation experts said. " It's disturbing news .
The question is how we can best mitigate that vulnerability in a way that doesn't prohibit the free
movement of people and goods," John Pistole, a former TSA administrator, told NBC News. "That's just
something that there's no perfect answer for." Meanwhile, terrorism experts stress that the threat
levels remain high. "There's a continuing drumbeat of interests by terrorist groups, whether al-Qaeda or
al-Qaeda affiliates, to try to bring down a Western — especially a U.S.-bound — aircraft," Pistole said.
TSA programs are scientifically proven infective
KONSTANTINIDES 15— reporter (Anetta, “How to spot a terrorist: TSA's checklist reveals the
behavior they look out for, including a 'strong body odor', 'whistling' and a 'cold penetrating stare',”
Daily Mail, 28 March 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3015970/TSA-s-SPOT-checklistreveals-behavioral-traits-agents-look-spot-terrorist.html). WM
A behavioral checklist that the Transportation Security Administration uses to help identify airport
travelers they believe could be potential terrorists has been revealed. The Screening of Passengers by
Observation Techniques system, nicknamed SPOT, breaks down body language and demeanor the TSA
believes indicates either 'stress' or 'deception'. Mannerisms are assigned points based on their severity
and are assessed by trained 'Behavior Detection Officers', who observe passengers as they go through
the security checkpoint. Behaviors are given points based on their perceived severity. If you walk
through security with a 'face pale from recent shaving of beard' or happen to be yawning or whistling,
you can be assigned one point. A strong body odor, sweaty palms and a bobbing Adam's apple can also
get you one point, according to the checklist obtained by The Intercept. Having 'widely open eyes' will
get you two points, as will showing 'unusual' interest in a security officer's work routine or having
'identical luggage or dress' to an individual who does not seem related to you. Appearing to be in
disguise will get you three points. But you can also get points shaved off. If you appear to be a member
of a family or part of a married couple, you get two points deducted from your score. Being a female
over 55, or a male over 65, gets you a one point reduction. The checklist includes a list of items and
behaviors to look out for if a passenger is pulled aside for inspection. 'Suspicious' items range from
blueprints to liquids 'in excess of 3.4oz'. Further signs of deception include excessive yawning or
perspiration and lacking details about the purpose of one's trip. The SPOT program, which has cost more
than $800million since its inception in 2007, was deemed ineffective by both the Department of
Homeland Security and the Government Accountability Office last year. The GAO found that there was
no scientific evidence to support the SPOT's claim that terrorists can be picked out via 'behavioral
indicators', and said the human's ability to 'accurately identify' suspicious behavior is 'slightly better
than chance'.
The Department of Homeland Security report said that the TSA had not assessed the effectiveness of the
SPOT program or designed a 'comprehensive training program' for it.
It concluded that the TSA could not 'ensure that passengers at United States airports are screened
objectively' with SPOT and did not believe the administration could 'justify the program's expansion'.
TSA measures cant identify people flagged as terrorists
Gass 15— degree in convergence journalism (Nick, “Report: TSA missed 73 terrorism-flagged airline
workers,” Politico, 6/8/15, http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/tsa-missed-73-terrorism-flaggedairline-workers-report-118738.html). WM
The T ransportation S ecurity A dministration failed to identify at least 73 people employed in the
airline industry flagged under terrorism-related activity codes , according to a recent report by its
inspector general . These people, including employees of major airlines, airport vendors and other
employers, were all cleared to access secure airport areas despite being watch-listed. The reason for
this, according to the TSA, is in part because the agency “is not authorized to receive all terrorismrelated information under current interagency watchlisting policy.” Rather than conducting criminalhistory and work-authorization checks itself, the TSA generally delegated individual airports to do these
tasks, though it had limited oversight. “Thus, TSA lacked assurance that it properly vetted all credential
applicants,” the report says. Additionally, thousands of records used to vet these workers had
incomplete or inaccurate data, the report says. The agency “risks credentialing and providing unescorted
access to secure airport areas for workers with potential to harm the nation’s air transportation
system,” it concludes. The latest news comes a week after interim TSA chief Melvin Carraway was
reassigned the same day a bombshell report surfaced , finding that officials failed to stop undercover
TSA agents from smuggling banned weapons or fake explosives through airport security .
No Nuclear Terror
No risk of terrorists using dirty bombs – it’s too difficult to get materials and build
weapons.
Mauroni 10 (Al Mauroni, Director at USAF Center for Unconventional Weapons Studies
with a BS in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon, “Homeland Insecurity: Thinking About
CBRN Terrorism,” Homeland Security Affairs, September 2010,
https://www.hsaj.org/articles/78, *fc)
**Modified for ableist language
Radiological terrorism gets people excited because, even though the nature of radiological hazards
hasn’t changed in more than six decades, there’s something about radiation that spooks us. The term
“dirty bombs” has a sinister sound. But of all the terrorist CBRN hazards, radiological devices (RDD) are
certainly not WMD. We have never had an RDD incident to date , and yet so many people like to worry
about the loose or available radiological isotopes that could be grabbed up by terrorists.
I’m very critical about the approach to addressing radiological terrorism. It’s no surprise that the easiest
way to reduce our risk in this area is to secure all the radiological material that industry uses and to
place it in one location that could be guarded. Instead, because of NIMBY politics, the decision was
made to close down a $9 billion nuclear material repository and to maintain the status quo of storing
nuclear material in “temporary” storage near more than 120 nuclear facilities across the nation.
The idea of placing radiological monitors at every airport, sea port, and border crossing is, again, a
concept that DHS adopted from the DOD. There’s no question that the radiological dosimeters and
monitors work when presented with an isotope. It’s just that using these detectors at the thousands of
possible entry points, considering the huge and constant flow of personnel and cargo, is a really stressful
and expensive operation. We do not have reliable, cheap detectors that can be integrated into the
process of screening people and cargo without negatively impacting our economy.
Getting past the actual implementation of such a vast network of detectors, let’s look at the real 800pound gorilla in the room. Some people fear that al Qaeda is going to somehow obtain a nuke from
Pakistan, disable the safety mechanisms, and transport it to a U.S. city. Some fear that al Qaeda will
build a crude nuclear bomb, using technical expertise and material through the global economy. The
scenario of a 10-kiloton nuclear blast is what causes people to “lose sleep,” allegedly. And yet, if you
examine the facts, it’s not likely at all that this is a credible scenario.
I strongly recommend Brian Jenkins’ book Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? 10 and Michael Levi’s book On
Nuclear Terrorism 11 for anyone who’s interested in an objective discussion on this topic. In short,
nations with nuclear technology or materials need to consider whether the bomb will be traced back to
them, and where the bomb might be used. It might not be in the United States, it might be in a
neighboring country. The number of people who would need to be engaged to get/build a bomb and
move it to the United States, let alone engineer a successful detonation, would make this a complex
operation that would be visible [noticeable] to law enforcement and the intelligence community. We
have no compelling evidence that any nation has provided a terrorist group with chemical or biological
weapons – why on earth would they provide a terrorist group with nuclear weapons? It doesn’t make
sense.
The “high-altitude EMP blast” scenario is particularly outlandish, suggesting that a terrorist organization
would be able to move a ballistic missile to the coast of the United States and set off a megaton nuke
200 miles over the country just to collapse the electronic infrastructure and turn America into a preindustrial society. There are better odds that an asteroid the size of Texas might collide with a major city
within the United States. Resiliency is the answer – it would be simple to harden critical infrastructure
points and maintain spares to stop this scenario from occurring. The argument here actually masks a
separate debate over the continued development of a comprehensive (and very expensive) national
missile defense effort.
No Bioterror
No risk of bioterror – weapons are weak and difficult to build, and other agencies
check risks.
Mauroni 10 (Al Mauroni, Director at USAF Center for Unconventional Weapons Studies
with a BS in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon, “Homeland Insecurity: Thinking About
CBRN Terrorism,” Homeland Security Affairs, September 2010,
https://www.hsaj.org/articles/78, *fc)
Bioterrorism is the flavor of the year, thanks to a recently-released government report titled “World At
Risk” by former senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent. 7 Hollywood and fiction novels have done their
best to ensure we all believe that a contagious virus without any cure is being secretly developed in a
government lab and will wipe out civilization as we know it. We have a very long history on the
treatment of natural diseases, and with the rise of biological warfare the difference between addressing
deliberate and natural disease outbreaks gets very blurry. Some people say that, merely because there
is greater access to information and technology related to natural biological diseases, there is a
corresponding increasing chance of a bioterrorist incident. This isn’t necessarily so.
One requires a large amount of biological warfare (BW) agent to successfully cause mass casualties,
and these agents can’t be made in a bathtub. You can’t go to Wal-Mart stores to obtain dangerous
biological assays or to Home Depot for equipment to grow biological material. Bruce Ivins was successful
because he had a full laboratory suite and starter material available to him, plus decades of experience
in handling anthrax. 8 But while the dangerous agents are hard to make, the diversity of the biological
threat complicates the development of particular solutions. That isn’t to say that we haven’t made a
good faith effort.
There are at least a dozen top BW threats, but under Project Bioshield, we have vaccines for only two of
them. Maybe in another ten years, we’ll have a few more vaccines, but certainly not twelve. For the 270
cities in the United States with a population of more than 100,000, only thirty-odd cities have Project
Biowatch detectors. It’s a very expensive project to sustain against a wide variety of potential threats.
But this isn’t just a medical issue, although the medics have assumed the spokesperson role.
Let’s look at the “whole of government” approach to public health. DHS coordinates the Biowatch effort
and the National Biosurveillance Integration Center effort. It’s not a lot of money. DHHS has more than
$80 billion a year invested into public health (not including nondiscretionary spending). This includes the
work at CDC. The DOD has its Defense Health Program funded at $40 billion a year. This includes all the
military hospitals and TRICARE program, in addition to medical surveillance and treatment on the
battlefield. The Department of Veterans Affairs department handles the health care of former military
and is slightly bigger than the active duty health affairs efforts at $41 billion a year, but that’s not a big
surprise.
Then there’s the DoD combating WMD community. While two-thirds of its $15 billion annual budget is
spent on missile defense and special operations efforts, there are some funds spent on medical
countermeasures and responses to biological warfare agent use. And finally, the international
community plays a role through numerous non-governmental agencies as well as international health
organizations. There are lots of players addressing different aspects of this huge area we call “public
health.”
By the estimates of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh, there is roughly $5-6
billion a year spent on “biological defense,” depending on how one defines that project. The FY2011
budget calls for about $6.5 billion. The “whole of government” challenge is managing all these efforts
without disrupting anyone’s rice bowl and still keeping cognizant of the bioterrorism threat, in addition
to other public health concerns of infectious diseases, drug safety, and other health concerns.
CVE fails
CVE reinforces Islamaphobia – can’t solve terror
Ackerman 2/13 --- Spencer Ackerman is national security editor for Guardian US. A former senior
writer for Wired, he won the 2012 National Magazine Award for Digital Reporting (Spencer Ackerman, 213-2015, "Anti-terrorism summit reinforces 'fear and hate' towards Muslims, critics warn," Guardian,
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/13/muslim-anti-terrorism-summit-white-housecritics)//A-Sharma
As Barack Obama prepares to host a summit on preventing homegrown terrorism, he faces a backlash from those he says he wants to
empower: American Muslim community leaders, who warn that the summit risks stigmatizing and even endangering them. Hanging over the
“countering violent extremism” (CVE) summit, to be held Tuesday through Thursday at the White House and State Department, is Wednesday’s
brutal murder of three Muslim students in North Carolina. In the wake of the killings, Muslim leaders, some of whom met with Obama recently,
say that whatever the summit’s intentions, it will reinforce
a message that American Muslims are to be hated and
feared, a spark in what they consider to be a powder-keg of Islamophobia in the media and online. The
killing of Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, “really
underscores how dangerous it is for the US government, including the White House, to focus its
countering violent extremism initiatives primarily on American Muslims”, said Farhana Khera, the
executive director of civil rights law firm Muslim Advocates. “We’ve long said to the administration, to those in
government, that directing the bulk of CVE resources to US Muslims undermines the safety of all of us and
endangers US Muslims, because it sends the message our community is to be viewed with fear,
suspicion and even hate.” Without community support, the CVE initiative, a favorite of the Obama
administration, is in critical danger. The idea behind CVE is to forge closer ties between communities deemed to be at risk of
incubating terrorism – though the White House prefers the term “violent extremism” – and law enforcement. First unveiled by the
administration in 2010, CVE
has attempted to avoid stating that it singles out Muslim communities, but the
emphasis in practice from US attorneys and Department of Homeland Security officials, has
disproportionately been on them. Similarly, while the administration talks about CVE meaning “comprehensive” government
interlocution, to include greater social services, American Muslims see the face of their government to be police, prosecutors and other
elements of the security services. “There is a very
real concern in American Muslim community that even one of our
community members being pulled into violent extremism is too many, but there’s a significant distrust
of government-led CVE efforts,” said Corey Saylor of the Council on American Islamic Relations. “That’s because too often in
the past you’ve had this hand reached out in friendship while the other is behind their back with
handcuffs in it.” The timing of recent government CVE efforts has struck some as suspect as well. In September, the attorney general, Eric
Holder, announced new CVE pilot programs in Boston, Los Angeles and Minneapolis to “develop
comprehensive local strategies” – shortly after the Islamic State beheadings of American journalists
Steven Sotloff and James Foley. The forthcoming summit was delayed last fall without explanation, only to reappear on the White
House agenda after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. A US official, speaking on background ahead of the summit, said next week’s CVE summit
will also unveil some new initiatives, though the official declined to specify. Obama will speak personally, but the full agenda, including invitees,
has yet to be announced. Foreign delegations will attend at the ministerial level, the official confirmed, which has raised concerns from some in
civil-rights circles that the US is “asking other governments to do what is, at the least, constitutionally suspect domestically”, said Hina Shamsi
of the ACLU, to include greater intelligence gathering on US Muslims outside the bounds of US law. “This is not an intelligence gathering
summit, this is not an Interpol summit,” the US official said. Last week, several Muslim community leaders gathered at the White House ahead
of the summit, meeting with senior aides Valerie Jarrett and Ben Rhodes, as well as Obama himself. Khera, the director of Muslim Advocates,
was in attendance. While ground rules forbade her from discussing what Obama said, she told the Guardian that she called
on Obama to
address “an uptick in ferocity of anti-Muslim vitriol from everyday Americans”, including “public officials
who should know better”, like a state representative in Oklahoma, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, who
called Islam a “cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out”, Muslim leaders fear tensions, accelerating
after the release of the film American Sniper and the Paris attacks, have reached a bloody crescendo
with the North Carolina shooting. Though local police have said they believe Craig Steven Hicks killed the
three over a parking dispute, the family has rejected that explanation, suspecting an Islamophobic motive.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council has launched a campaign for Obama, Holder and congressional leaders to address the killings. The FBI has
opened a federal inquiry into the shooting deaths. In a statement on Friday, Obama welcomed the FBI inquiry into the “brutal and outrageous
murders” in North Carolina. “No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or
how they worship,” the president said, offering his condolences to the families of the slain. Though community
leaders have noted
that CVE programs do not target white supremacists or call atheist organizations in for dialogue, Ned
Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said next week’s summit will not single out
Muslims. “While the summit will address contemporary challenges, it will not focus on any particular religion, ideology,
or political movement and will, instead, seek to draw lessons that are applicable to the full spectrum of
violent extremists,” Price said.
CVE doesn’t solve for terror – flawed theories of radicalization
German 2/19 --- Michael German is a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, which seeks to
ensure that our government respects human rights and fundamental freedoms in conducting the fight against terrorism. (Michael German, 219-2015, "Counterterrorism Efforts Should Be Based on Facts, Not Flawed Theories," Brennan Center,
https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/counterterrorism-efforts-should-be-based-facts-not-flawed-theories)//A-Sharma
This week, the White House held a three-day summit to discuss a recently announced domestic counterterrorism program, dubbed “Countering
Violent Extremism” (CVE). These programs, which are slated to launch in Boston, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles in the months ahead, aim to
help communities identify violent extremists in the United States. The summit is part of the Administration’s renewed effort to position its
outreach programs to Muslim American communities as part of a larger anti-terrorism campaign. But if these programs are anything like past
iterations, they are likely to create more problems than they solve. One
major problem is that although the 2011 White
House CVE strategy recognizes that violent extremists come from many ideological backgrounds, which
we saw last year in Las Vegas and Kansas City, the actual programs tend to target only Muslim
Americans. This solitary focus tends to stigmatize, rather than empower Muslim communities. I spoke with
NYU professor Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror, who has
studied CVE programs in both Britain and the U.S. He explains how tying outreach programs to an antiterrorism purpose tends to reinforce the perception that the government views Muslim communities
primarily as a potential security threat, rather than a constituency government is obligated to serve in a
fair and equal manner: The Brennan Center and the American Civil Liberties Union have uncovered ample evidence
that the government has previously viewed its community outreach programs to Muslim groups as an
opportunity to secretly gather intelligence. A 2014 National Counterterrorism Center document published by The Intercept
suggests it plans to use CVE programs to evaluate communities, families, and individuals for their potential to become terrorists. The document,
a CVE guide for practitioners and analysts, includes a five-page checklist for police officers, public health workers, educators, and social service
departments to rate “risk and resilience factors” of the public they serve on a five-point scale. The risk
factors NCTC suggests
include whether there was empathic parent-child bonding and whether family members trust each
other, experienced loss, or perceive being treated unjustly. Communities are to be rated on whether they face
discrimination by or show trust in law enforcement. There’s little evidentiary basis to believe these factors are relevant
to whether a person becomes violent, let alone that lay persons could accurately rate them on a fivepoint scale. But it is also ironic that individuals and communities that already face discrimination are
considered a higher risk, which could potentially lead to their further targeting for disparate treatment
from law enforcement and intelligence agencies. There’s no question that innocent American Muslims have suffered from
over-aggressive surveillance, unjustified interference with their religious and political activities, and unnecessary impediments to their travel.
Hina Shamsi, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, talked to me about the impact this misplaced scrutiny has on Muslim
communities: This highlights one glaring disconnect in the government’s CVE strategy. The flawed theories of terrorist
radicalization the CVE programs rely on tend to identify individual or community grievances as a primary indicators or drivers of violence. A
recent White House CVE strategy memo, however, recognizes that government activities themselves can generate grievances: … We must
remember that just as our words and deeds can either fuel or counter violent ideologies abroad, so too can they here at home. Actions and
statements that cast suspicion toward entire communities, promote hatred and division, and send messages to certain Americans that they are
somehow less American because of their faith or how they look, reinforce violent extremist propaganda and feed the sense of disenchantment
and disenfranchisement that may spur violent extremist radicalization. But rather
than implement a strategy that evaluates
the relative legitimacy of these grievances so the government can take action to mitigate them as
appropriate, the government’s CVE programs attempt to suppress this debate by recruiting community
leaders willing to promote pro-government messaging. Identifying past discrimination against these communities as one
more reason to continue discriminating against them isn’t the answer. Treating terrorism as the spread of an ideological
infection within a vulnerable community also allows the government to put aside difficult questions
about the role US foreign and national security policies play in generating anti-American grievances, which
the Defense Department raised in a 2004 report. Studies supporting government-favored radicalization theories rarely mention U.S. military
actions in Muslim countries, lethal drone strikes, torture, or the Guantanamo Bay prison as radicalizing influences, though many terrorists
reference them in attempting to justify their actions. The intelligence
agencies should be leading the government in
fact-based research on national security issues. Peddling debunked radicalization theories that spread
unnecessary fear and confusion will only lead to more discrimination and distrust of government. This
would be an unfortunate outcome, whether you believe it leads to more terrorism or not.
AT: Circumvention
No circumvention
Goldsmith, 13 - Jack Goldsmith is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor at Harvard Law School, a Senior Fellow
at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and co-founder of Lawfareblog.com (“Reflections on
NSA Oversight, and a Prediction That NSA Authorities (and Oversight, and Transparency) Will Expand”
8/9, http://www.lawfareblog.com/reflections-nsa-oversight-and-prediction-nsa-authorities-andoversight-and-transparency-will-expand
These descriptions seem plausible in light of Snowden’s extraordinary leaks, but they raise the question
why NSA would do better at preventing abuses of its wiretapping tools than at preventing theft of
classified data. Stewart’s answer:
Bureaucracies do more of what they’re rewarded for and less of what they’re punished for. So if NSA
has been punished more severely for privacy violations than for security violations, it will put a priority
on avoiding privacy violations. And that’s exactly what’s happened. The deluge of overlapping and
politically charged oversight triggered by a misuse of NSA’s wiretapping tools is far more painful to NSA
than a counterintelligence investigation of leaked secrets.
Which brings me around to a point I’ve made in testimony (here and here). Contrary to the critics,
existing oversight mechanisms — from the FISA court to the Justice Department and the inspectors
general — are having a big impact on NSA’s behavior . Arguably, existing oversight mechanisms have
already led NSA to protect privacy better than it protects national security. Adding more oversight, as
Congress seems inclined to do, will shift NSA’s priorities further in the same direction. At some point, I
fear, that will lead to a serious national security failure.