Executive Order (XO) 12333 AFF
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1AC
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Inherency
XO 12333 violates many different laws and amendments and Obama has done nothing
to rectify these problems.
By Thor Benson Posted on Jul 23, 2014 [http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/president_obama_needs_to_cancel_executive_order_12333_20140723 Thor
Benson is a traveling writer who currently lives in Los Angeles. He has written for Slate, Vice, Fast Company and many others. TH]
There’s a chance you’re being watched right now. We’re all too familiar with the bulk collection of cellphone metadata—information on whom
you contact and when—that Edward Snowden revealed. However, Executive
Order 12333 from 1981 (thanks, President Reagan)
allows the NSA to collect the actual content from phone calls and Internet communications if they are
amassed from outside U.S. borders. John Napier Tye, former section chief for Internet freedom in the State Department’s Bureau
of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, recently wrote about this issue in The Washington Post. The problem with this executive
order is that it allows for a wide range of ways the NSA can gather the content of communications from
American citizens, as long as the “point of collection” is abroad. I spoke with Sharon Goldberg, an assistant professor in
the Computer Science Department at Boston University who recently wrote about Executive Order 12333, and she
pointed out that Internet traffic often leaves U.S. borders while you’re still in the United States. Many
websites store data abroad, and “traffic on the Internet will take the cheapest path,” she said. That
means that even if you’re using your computer in New York City, the data being transmitted could be
collected in Brazil and used by the NSA under Executive Order 12333. “We should have the same legal
framework [for communication inside and outside the U.S.], regardless of the point of collection,
because the flow of traffic on the Internet is not bound to geographic borders,” Goldberg said. Not only that, but
she said there are some methods that outsiders, without control of your router, can use to manipulate your
Internet traffic to force it to exit U.S. borders. There is no language in the executive order that seems to prevent this. Thus,
NSA staffers can wait for your traffic to go elsewhere—or they could conceivably make it happen themselves.
Advertisement Besides Internet traffic from inside the U.S., any calls you make while visiting another country could be recorded and stored.
Phone network connections for making calls are unlikely to be routed outside the country, but that doesn’t mean you won’t leave the country
some day and make a call. Unlike Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the law that allows metadata collection, Executive Order 12333 requires no
oversight from other government branches. So the NSA can record any call you make on your trip to Canada as long as it thinks you are a threat
of some kind. It does have to get a court order to “individually target” someone, Tye points out in his article, but there are ways of getting
around that requirement. As Tye notes:
If the contents of a U.S. person’s communications are ‘incidentally’
collected (an NSA term of art) in the course of a lawful overseas foreign intelligence investigation, then Section 2.3(c)
of the executive order explicitly authorizes their retention. It does not require that the affected U.S.
persons be suspected of wrongdoing and places no limits on the volume of communications by U.S.
persons that may be collected and retained. The loopholes in Executive Order 12333 are large enough to sail a ship through.
President Obama has the power to make and overturn executive orders unilaterally. He does not need to consult Congress, the NSA or any
other government body to end this practice. Obama has proposed several reforms to NSA practices, but he has
not mentioned
altering or canceling this executive order. He could end it today, and he should. Tracking and recording
communications made by American citizens is not only a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects
against unreasonable search and seizure, but it also violates the First Amendment. If Americans cannot make a
phone call abroad or use the Internet anywhere without considering their need to self-censor in case
they’re being watched, so much for freedom of speech. These are basic guiding principles of our country, and if Obama will
not overturn this executive order, then it is time for the Supreme Court to actually do its job and defend the Constitution (instead of spending
time defending corporations). Tye wrote in his Washington Post article that he filed a complaint with the House and Senate intelligence
committees and the inspector general of the NSA and nothing was changed. If our president really wants to show us what the “most
transparent administration in history” looks like, then he needs to put spying on Americans behind closed doors, and under confounding
pretenses, behind us.
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XO 12333 is used to justify NSA abusive programs. Reform to the NSA won’t occur
until XO 12333 is overturned.
Farivar, 2014
(Farivar Cyrus - Aug 27,2014, Cyrus is the Senior Business Editor at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His first book, The
Internet of Elsewhere, was published in April 2011(http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/a-twisted-history-how-a-reagan-era-executiveorder-led-to-mass-spying/1/)
One thing sits at the heart of what many consider a surveillance state within the US today. The problem does not begin with political systems
that discourage transparency or technologies that can intercept everyday communications without notice. Like everything else in Washington,
there’s a legal basis for what many believe is extreme government overreach—in this case, it's Executive Order 12333, issued in 1981.
“12333 is used to target foreigners abroad, and collection happens outside the US," whistleblower
John Tye, a former State Department official, told Ars recently. "My complaint is not that they’re
using it to target Americans, my complaint is that the volume of incidental collection on US persons is
unconstitutional.” The document, known in government circles as "twelve triple three," gives incredible leeway to
intelligence agencies sweeping up vast quantities of Americans' data. That data ranges from e-mail
content to Facebook messages, from Skype chats to practically anything that passes over the Internet
on an incidental basis. In other words, EO 12333 protects the tangential collection of Americans' data
even when Americans aren't specifically targeted—otherwise it would be forbidden under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. In a May 2014 interview with NBC, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden said
that he specifically asked his colleagues at the NSA whether an executive order could override existing statutes. (They said it could not.)
Snowden’s lawyer, Jesselyn Radack, told Ars that her client was specifically “referring to EO 12333. Thirty-year NSA veteran William Binney told
Ars that drastic measures such as the
NSA’s Fairview program—described by other intelligence whistleblowers
as the NSA’s project to “own the Internet”—are also authorized under EO 12333. “This program was
started at least back in 2001 and has expanded to between 80 and 100 tap points on the fiber optic
lines in the lower 48 states,” he said by e-mail. “Most of these fiber optic tap points are not on the East or
West coast. This means that the primary target of this collection is domestic... Most collection of US
domestic communications and data is done under EO 12333, section 2.3 paragraph C in the Upstream
program. They claim, near as I can tell, that all domestic collection is incidental. That’s, of course, the vast majority of data.” Specifically, that
subsection allows the intelligence community to "collect, retain, or disseminate information
concerning United States persons" if that information is "obtained in the course of a lawful foreign
intelligence, counterintelligence, international narcotics or international terrorism investigation."'
Executive orders vary widely. One of the most famous executive orders, the Emancipation Proclamation, freed slaves in the United States under
President Abraham Lincoln. A more infamous example came under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who issued an executive order to intern
Japanese-Americans in prison camps in 1942. President Ronald Reagan signed EO 12333 within his first year in office, 1981, largely as a
response to the perceived weakening of the American intelligence apparatus by his two immediate predecessors, Presidents Gerald Ford and
Jimmy Carter. Later, EO 12333 was amended three times by President George W. Bush between 2003 and 2008. “Reagan did this at every
opportunity: with military exercises, challenging the Soviets in their own airspace and waters, across the board. The gloves were coming off,”
Melvin Goodman told Ars. Goodman was the CIA's division chief and senior analyst at the Office of Soviet Affairs from 1976 to 1986. He’s now
the director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC. Bush's reasons for strengthening EO
12333 were similar. After the United States faced another existential threat in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Bush—
and later President Barack Obama—used EO 12333 to expand American surveillance power. But if EO 12333 is essentially a reaction, how was
mass surveillance handled beforehand? In the 1960s, the American intelligence community turned its spy gear and covert capabilities against its
own people by infiltrating and disrupting various civil rights groups (COINTELPRO), by capturing mail and telegrams (Project Shamrock),
monitoring the activities of Americans abroad (Operation Chaos), and by intercepting electronic communications of many high-profile
Americans (Project Minaret). Such targets included Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, and even antiwar activist and actress Jane Fonda.
By 1975, the US Senate’s Church Committee started exposing those programs, and many notable intelligence reforms soon took shape—
including FISA and the corresponding Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Following the intelligence abuses during the Nixon era, new
president Gerald Ford set about to change the way the NSA and other intelligence agencies did business. In 1976, President Ford issued
Executive Order 11905, which restricted much of this activity and put in rules like these: (b) Restrictions on Collection. Foreign intelligence
agencies shall not engage in any of the following activities: (1) Physical surveillance directed against a United States person, unless it is a lawful
surveillance conducted pursuant to procedures approved by the head of the foreign intelligence agency and directed against any of the
following: (i) A present or former employee of such agency, its present or former contractors or their present or former employees, for the
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purpose of protecting foreign, intelligence or counterintelligence sources or methods or national security information from unauthorized
disclosure; or (ii) a United States person, who is in contact with either such a present or former contractor or employee or with a non-United
States person who is the subject of a foreign intelligence or counterintelligence inquiry, but only to the extent necessary to identify such United
States person; or (iii) a United States person outside the United States who is reasonably believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign power or
engaging in international terrorist or narcotics activities or activities threatening the national security. (2) Electronic surveillance to intercept a
communication which is made from, or is intended by the sender to be received in, the United States, or directed against United States persons
abroad, except lawful electronic surveillance under procedures approved by the Attorney General; provided, that the Central Intelligence
Agency shall not perform electronic surveillance within the United States, except for the purpose of testing equipment under procedures
approved by the Attorney General consistent with law. Notably, Ford (and later Carter under Executive Order 12036) made it far more difficult
for the US government to monitor its own people. By contrast, today EO 12333 specifically allows for broad “incidental collection” that may
include US citizens. More specifically, EO 12333 allows for "information obtained in the course of a lawful foreign intelligence,
counterintelligence, international narcotics, or international terrorism investigation.” The push toward this reality started in the early '80s. "It is
not so much that new powers were given to the NSA as it was a matter of showing that the NSA would not be addressed as explicitly in 12333,
thereby signaling that the NSA would have more elbow room to use its own discretion in moving forward," Loch Johnson, a professor of
international affairs at the University of Georgia, told Ars. "This signaling was achieved by removing Carter's more detailed language about that
agency. This removal of language indicates a lifting of close attention to the specifics of NSA activities—a subtle grant of permissiveness, not so
much in explicit language as in the absence of as many explicit prohibitions." Within months of Reagan’s January 1981 inauguration, his national
security team set out to expand the intelligence community’s capabilities. They were well aware of the pushback that may follow. In fact, a
March 1981 letter from William Casey, the director of Central Intelligence and the head of the CIA to one of Reagan’s national security advisors,
suggests that the Reagan administration was also well aware of the abuses conducted under its predecessors. (Ars obtained this document
from Kenneth Mayer, who obtained it from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.) Despite this, Reagan advisors ultimately seemed more
concerned with the perception of wrongdoing rather than actual wrongdoing. “The absence of clear-cut, Presidentially directed restrictions will,
in my judgment, create enormous uncertainty among the operators; it will reopen the wounds of the 1970s in which many intelligence officers
thought of themselves as potential Felts and Millers,” Casey wrote. (Mark Felt was the number two at the FBI under Nixon, and more than 20
years later he admitted that he was the famous “Deep Throat” leaker. Miller refers to a top Justice Department lawyer, Herbert Miller, a
longtime Nixon ally.) Casey continued: Furthermore, the inevitable media campaign which would ensure under an Order devoid of any
guidelines or restrictions, with likely charges that the Intelligence Community or the Administration intends to expand collection concerning the
domestic activities of United States persons, will necessarily have an impact on the attitudes of our operators. … Of greater significance,
however, is the impact that accusations of CIA intrusive domestic activity, no matter how irrational, will have on the effectiveness of our
operators. It seems clear to me that an environment in which the Intelligence Community is under drumfire political attack is not conducive to
gaining the cooperation of Americans at home and abroad. He concluded, "I do heartily agree with you, however, that the most significant goal
to be accomplished by the promulgation of a new Executive Order is to send a clear signal to the Intelligence Community and to the National
that the Reagan Administration supports an aggressive and effective intelligence effort." In another memo from Casey to Edwin Meese, then a
presidential advisor (who later became attorney general during Reagan’s second term), Casey refers to the administration's desire to rebuild
the intelligence community. “What is not widely understood is that many of the most onerous impediments came from the sheer size and
complexity of implementing regulations imposed by the Justice Department during the Ford and Carter years,” Casey wrote. “These caused
operatives in the field to throw up their hands and quit trying. The Executive Order is needed as a road map to chart simply what they can and
can’t do.” Just two weeks after EO 12333 was signed, William French Smith, the first attorney general under Reagan, gave a speech in Los
Angeles making the public case for an expansion of intelligence and surveillance powers. Smith made little reference to the intelligence and
surveillance abuses under previous administrations, dismissing them as mere “excesses that could not be condoned.” Instead, the attorney
general explained that during the Carter era, Congress set up onerous “procedures governing virtually every aspect of intelligence gathering in
the US or affecting US citizens abroad.” These included the pesky House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence, FISA, and FISC. (In the
subsequent decades, of course, FISC has been so secretive that it did not release its first public docket until after the initial Snowden revelations
last year.) “In summary, President Reagan inherited an intelligence community that had been demoralized and debilitated by six years of public
disclosures, denunciation, and budgetary limitations,” Smith continued. What pushed this administration to reach for more surveillance power?
It was largely the threat of international terrorism and Soviet infiltration of the United States. Although Smith does not link the two explicitly in
that speech, earlier that year the CIA had been strongly concerned with Soviet support of terrorism based on a May 1981 book called The
Terror Network. Casey was so persuaded by this book that two months later he ordered a Special National Intelligence Estimate entitled "Soviet
Support for International Terrorism and Revolutionary Violence." But according to Goodman, the book and the government’s own rapid
acceptance of the Soviet terrorism theory was entirely fraudulent. In fact, he said, it was black propaganda that the CIA created within the
Soviet Union to stir up dissent. Goodman believes there was incidental collection on Americans happening left and right, and at the time it was
easy to determine who the government was monitoring even if the name was obscured. “12333 was designed to allow NSA to have greater
latitude when they pick up Americans [as part of] targets overseas,” Goodman said. For example, Goodman explained how the NSA targeted
foreigners abroad, often in Latin America, as part of the global Soviet threat. In doing so, the NSA would incidentally collect information about,
say, an American traveling in El Salvador in October 1981. One high-profile American who was traveling there at that time happened to be Sen.
Christopher Dodd (D-CT), now the head of the Motion Picture Association of America. “When I testified against Robert Gates [during
confirmation hearings] in 1991, I brought that up, seeing intercepts that referred to American congressmen [and senators],” Goodman
continued. “When those details arrived [to the CIA] in a brown manila envelope, they would scratch out the name, but you knew who was
traveling at a particular time.” Binney is a more recent NSA veteran, retiring in 2001. He said that such practices continued even during his
tenure. “There was a procedure called a ‘series check’ as to what to do with the name, should you redact it, and that depended on who it was
and what they were doing and who you were going to tell,” he told Ars. “Those things were done because of incidental mentioning of
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someone’s name; that was pretty much set up and there was a process to go through. We were well aware of it at the time. I wasn’t in an area
where I was too involved in any of that. But the techniques we used to fight the Soviet Union apply today.” Despite using the same legal
justification for this incidental collection today, the massive expansion of technological prowess since means that other intelligence veterans
like Goodman are more concerned than ever about surveillance overreach. “There would be no comparison to the capabilities of NSA now
compared to three decades ago,” he said. “It’s proliferating all the time with their technology as to what they’re able to do.” Ed Loomis, a
cryptologist at the NSA from 1964 to October 2001 who later became a whistleblower, told Ars that every year, everyone working in the signals
intelligence (SIGINT) division had to read EO 12333, FISA, and US SIGINT Directive 18 (July 1993) as a way to keep refreshed on the laws. Prior to
the September 11 attacks, Loomis said the NSA's internal policy was to stay much more in line with FISA and not collect information—incidental
or otherwise—on Americans. In fact, Loomis initially wanted to use that same provision of EO 12333 (Section 2.3 paragraph C) on a temporary
basis to conduct US-to-foreign and foreign-to-US collection. On September 14, 2001, he was brought into a meeting with NSA lawyers and other
lawyers who were never identified—he thinks that one of them may have been David Addington, then-Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer who
crafted and controlled the legal documents drafted in the days after the attacks. "It was the NSA lawyers that responded to that suggestion,
and they said that that's not in conformance with FISA," Loomis told Ars. "I wasn't going to argue with them at that point, this was three days
after 9/11, the whole world is shocked. Here I'm trying to get them to use something, to use a prevision that Reagan had put in place for
extenuating circumstances, and they ignored it." Loomis, Binney, and others were pushing a surveillance program known as ThinThread, which
was discontinued weeks before the September 11 attacks. ThinThread supporters claim it had the ability to encrypt US persons' data so that
analysts would not know who it was about. Prior
to September 11, according to Loomis, the NSA's policy was that
the FISA law trumped EO 12333, whereas after, it essentially became the other way around. (This is likely
what Snowden was referring to in his internal query regarding the hierarchy of laws.) "If I found a loophole, I wanted to exploit the loophole,
which is why I wanted to use 12333 to do US-to-foreign and foreign-to-US. I wanted to push the lawyers as far as they would go," he continued.
"My concern was the security of US persons as well as the privacy of US persons. I thought I had a means of protecting their identities through
the encryption." Loomis said that in general he does not support domestic surveillance and that he's bothered by how information was shared
with the Drug Enforcement Agency, FBI, and perhaps even state police organizations. But, he said, "I trust NSA analysts because I've worked
with them for 30 some-odd years and I know that with the exception of those that got fired over the LOVEINT thing that they have their hearts
in the right areas. They would not intentionally go in and read US communications for jollies, but they are really dedicated to track foreign
parties that are intent on doing us harm. So I trust them. The problem is that when the raw data gets shared with law enforcement
communities, I've seen too many situations where they abuse it." And this is where all the NSA veterans Ars spoke with agreed. No matter
Reagan’s intent when expanding intelligence abilities, it’s simply a different era these days. New threats combined with better technologies
have created an unfortunate situation. “You have these technical capabilities, and they become more expansive, and you do them because
you're capable,” Goodman said. “And when you have a threat perception, you usually can justify or rationalize anything you want to do.”
Thomas Drake, another well-known NSA veteran turned whistleblower, put it in simpler terms.
“12333 is now being used as the ‘legal justification.’" Drake spoke with Ars while on break from his job at the Apple Store
in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC. He's held this post since leaving the NSA in 2008 while facing 10 felony counts of illegally
taking classified information to his home, making false statements to investigators, and obstructing justice. In June 2011, after famously
refusing to take a plea deal, Drake finally gave in. He pled guilty to a single misdemeanor count of exceeding his authorized access to
government computers. “It’s not technically
law,” he continued. “An executive order is the equivalent of the law,
we have a constitutional process by which laws are created in this country. When the details started
coming out about the mass surveillance program, the government began to modify it under Bush, but
they are using it as the final backstop in their defense: ‘The Program.’ Don’t let 12333 distract you;
there’s a much larger authority that they’re desperate to protect." “The Program” that Drake is
referring to is the President’s Surveillance Program (PSP), which Ars has reported on previously. In the weeks after the
first Snowden documents, a leaked classified draft report by the NSA’s Inspector General was published by The Guardian and The Washington
Post. It explored the PSP's beginnings and evolution. “The NSA has carte blanche on foreign intelligence,” Drake said. “They’re hiding behind
12333 to continue the vast collection of metadata and content. I’m just telling you that what’s enabling that is there’s a rule, a thing to
understand, the government will never admit something that is still considered classified if it has not been fully disclosed in a way that they
have to acknowledge it. As long as there is reasonable doubt, they will hide behind what has been disclosed. What has been disclosed is
12333.” The
PSP's legal justification was provided by a still highly classified document that President
George W. Bush signed on October 4, 2001, entitled "Authorization for specified electronic
surveillance activities during a limited period to detect and prevent acts of terrorism within the
United States." The authorization has never been published, but the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence (ODNI) unexpectedly acknowledged it as part of a declassification review in December
2013. According to that NSA Inspector General draft leaked in 2013, the NSA itself wasn’t even
allowed to see the legal authorization for at least two years. On May 6, 2004, the Office of Legal
Counsel within the White House prepared a 74-page memo to the attorney general to outline the legality of
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“The Program.” The publicly released version has substantial redactions. It does, however, contain this noteworthy section: The
President has inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and sole organ for the nation
in foreign affairs to conduct warrantless surveillance of enemy forces for intelligence purposes to
detect and disrupt armed attacks on the United States. Congress does not have the power to restrict
the President's exercise of this authority. The memo also specifically mentions a legal analysis of EO
12333 in a page that is almost entirely redacted According to the December 2013 document from the ODNI, this program is
now governed under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which remains law. “That’s the problem,” Drake said. "That’s why you can’t have
secret laws and secret orders in a constitutional order; it’s anathema. All of this was avoidable. We had the technology and the laws in place.
We didn’t have to upend anything. No one has been charged for violating FISA. Those who have tried to expose it were charged with espionage,
like me. The government has unchained itself from the constitution.” Earlier
this month, the Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board said it would re-examine EO 12333 after all the fanfare. But based on history,
overturning an executive order simply isn't a common outcome. Unless done by a subsequent
executive order, it's extremely difficult and has rarely happened. So for now, American data remains
as accessible as it's ever been.
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Plan Text
The United States Federal Government will amended Executive Order 12333 by
removing Section 2.3 sub section i.
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Solvency
Current changes to NSA powers aren’t decreasing domestic spying. XO 12333 must be
amended.
Gaist, May 2015 (Thomas Gaist 25 May 2015, International Committee of the Fourth International, “NSA spying bill stalls in US
Senate” https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/25/surv-m25.html)
A second attempt to pass emergency legislation extending the spy powers is to proceed on May 31. The Obama administration announced last
week that the NSA has begun “winding down” operations associated with Section 215 in anticipation that such efforts will fail. Both the NSA
and the White House have refused to offer specifics about the surveillance programs they claim are being closed down. Like the USA Freedom
Act itself,
the failure of Congress thus far to renew the Patriot Act powers is being hailed, falsely, in some
quarters as a major victory for democracy and blow against the illegal mass spying. Wired magazine
enthused that expiration of Section 215 would represent an “end to bulk collection of telephone data,”
and proclaimed that “the government’s bulk collection of phone records from US telecoms is on hold.”
The Guardian announced last week that the failure of Congress thus far to renew Section 215 represents
a “wholesale rollback of a wide swath of post-9/11 domestic surveillance.” “The tides are shifting,” a spokesperson
for the American Civil Liberties Union said in response to the non-renewal of 215, praising the Senate for “taking a stand against simply rubberstamping provisions of the Patriot Act that have been used to spy on Americans.” A spokesman for Demand Progress hailed the vote as “a
victory for democracy over totalitarianism” and for “open government over secret law.” Republican Senator Rand Paul, who waged a muchpublicized 10-hour filibuster Wednesday against renewal of Section 215, tweeted over the weekend that ongoing moves in Congress have the
potential to “end illegal NSA spying once and for all.” One barely knows where to begin in countering such absurdities. First of all, the
provisions in the USA Freedom Act do not even address the bulk of the pseudo-legal framework that
underpins the criminal spying operations. Even if the Patriot Act were repealed completely, this would
amount to little more than the purely formal curtailment of one section of the legislative and executive
authorizations for mass surveillance programs that began long before the bill’s passage. Solely on the
basis of Executive Order 12333, a decree issued by the Reagan administration and updated during subsequent presidencies, US
government spies are empowered to collect any and all data from foreign sources that they deem
relevant for intelligence and national security purposes. In the age of global communications, when
virtually all forms of data are stored simultaneously on servers located on multiple continents, such
power to collect data overseas effectively empowers the NSA to collect all data worldwide. In an admission
that must raise doubts about the government’s claim that the mass spying is necessary to fight “terrorism,” the Justice Department’s Office of
Inspector General issued a report on the use of Internet activity logs, one of the activities authorized under Section 215, and concluded that it
was unable to “identify any major case developments that resulted from records obtained through Section 215 orders.” Rather than targeting
terrorists, the NSA and FBI are compiling ever-growing databases on the social, political and cultural affiliations of the American people, as part
of systematic preparations for mass repression against the population. Washington’s security agencies are collecting virtually every type of data
in existence, and analyzing and disseminating the latter throughout the state apparatus through the use of “fusion centers,” as well as direct
wholesale transfers of bulk data from the NSA to the FBI and other police agencies. Surveillance technologies are becoming increasingly
integrated into covert and paramilitary operations by federal, state and local police agencies. Police agencies down to the local level now
routinely deploy StingRays and other surveillance technologies to seize cell phone data in bulk from crowds and cell phone towers. Just last
week, new NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed that the spy agency developed malicious hacking and surveillance software
designed to download onto smartphones by piggybacking on apps sold by Google and Samsung. By deploying from leading corporate platforms,
the NSA’s IRRITANT HORN program can potentially infect tens of millions of devices with spyware that gives the agency unfettered control over
the devices and data stored in their memory. Such
is the behind-the-scenes reality of the “surveillance reform”
touted by promoters of the USA Freedom Act. As the stage-managed wrangling in Congress drags on,
the actual spying programs continue to grow in complexity and scale. The stubborn fact, laid bare for all
to see through the heroic actions of Snowden and other whistleblowers, is that the US ruling elite is
charging ahead as rapidly as possible with plans to expand and develop its mass surveillance programs,
as part of an agenda to prepare repression against impending political upheavals. While one cannot be certain of
the precise outcome of the theatrics on Capitol Hill, there is no doubt that one or another legal basis will be found or invented to suit the needs
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of the state. The military-intelligence apparatus now operates as a law unto itself, doing whatever is necessary to expand and defend its own
power and interests and those of its masters on Wall Street.
Amending XO 12333 to remove Incidental data collection is the only way to safe guard
Americans’ privacy.
LaChance,2014 (Naomi LaChance July 21, 2014. US News and World Report, “Should Executive Order 12333 Be Repealed?A former
State Dept. official believes a Reagan-era order gives intelligence agencies too much leeway.”
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/07/21/should-the-reagan-era-nsa-executive-order-12333-be-repealed)
A former State Department official has raised awareness about a Reagan-era practice that permits spying on U.S. citizens with little oversight. In
an op-ed for the Washington Post, John Napier Tye writes that Executive
Order 12333 should raise red flags for
Americans concerned about the boundaries of surveillance. "Even after all the reforms President Obama
has announced," Tye writes, "some intelligence practices remain so secret, even from members of
Congress, that there is no opportunity for our democracy to change them." Executive Order 12333 was approved in
1981. It permits government intelligence agencies to monitor certain content without a court order or warrant. Metadata, the digital trail that
reveals users' locations and certain actions, may also be monitored. Tye points to a loophole that permits extended reach. When
communications are "incidentally" collected, the information is allowed to be kept. This turn of phrase,
Tye writes, "places no limits on the volume of communications by U.S. persons that may be collected and
retained." Because this order does not demand consent from any party before surveillance, Tye argues that individual companies are
responsible for using their own security in order to keep their information private. Unlike fellow whistleblower Edward Snowden, who leaked
information about NSA surveillance, Tye has not disclosed classified information. Indeed, Tye's piece may not be a huge revelation to those who
closely follow the ins and outs of government monitoring. "Tye's op-ed, unfortunately, only confirms our fears," wrote Alex Abdo, a staff
attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. "We have yet to get a full and clear explanation from the NSA of its various surveillance
authorities, particularly as they impact U.S. citizens and residents. Instead, we have received half-answers and artfully crafted denials." Tye filed
a complaint with the State Department claiming that Executive Order 12333 violates the Fourth Amendment. He has also voiced concern to
both the House and Senate intelligence committees and the inspector general of the National Security Agency. "This act of conscience
illuminates yet another path a surveillance whistleblower can take. If more current and former federal officials believe the NSA is in flagrant
violation of the Fourth Amendment, they should consider declaring themselves too," wrote Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic. "I wonder what
he saw but isn't revealing." Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said last year
that the committee cannot "sufficiently" monitor Executive Order 12333. “I don’t think privacy
protections are built into it,” she said. “It’s an executive policy. The executive controls intelligence in the
country.”
NSA powers will only diminish after XO 12333 is amended.
SAVAGE, 2014 (Charlie Savage, August 13 , 2014. The New York Times, “Reagan-Era Order on Surveillance Violates Rights, Says
th
Departing Aide” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/us/politics/reagan-era-order-on-surveillance-violates-rights-says-departing-aide.html )
WASHINGTON — After President Obama delivered a speech in January endorsing changes to surveillance policies, including an end to the
National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ domestic calling records, John Napier Tye was disillusioned. A State Department
official, Mr. Tye worked on Internet freedom issues and had top secret clearance. He knew the Obama administration had also considered a
proposal to impose what an internal White House document, obtained by The New York Times, portrayed as “significant changes” to rules for
handling Americans’ data the N.S.A. collects from fiber optic networks abroad. But Mr. Obama said nothing about that in his speech. So in April,
as Mr. Tye was leaving the State Department, he filed a whistleblower complaint arguing that the N.S.A.'s practices abroad violated Americans’
Fourth Amendment rights. He also met with staff members for the House and Senate intelligence committees. Last month, he went public with
those concerns, which have attracted growing attention. When operating abroad, the N.S.A. can gather and use Americans’ phone calls, emails,
text messages and other communications under different — and sometimes more permissive — rules than when it collects them inside the
United States. Much about those rules remains murky. The executive branch establishes them behind closed doors and can change them at will,
with no involvement from Congress or the secret intelligence court that oversees surveillance on domestic networks. “It’s a problem if one
branch of government can collect and store most Americans’ communications, and write rules in secret on how to use them — all without
oversight from Congress or any court, and without the consent or even the knowledge of the American people,” Mr. Tye said. “Regardless of
the use rules in place today, this system could be abused in the future.” Mr. Tye, 38, is speaking out as Congress considers amending the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs how the N.S.A. operates domestically. The
legislation resulted from the uproar over
leaks by Edward J. Snowden, a former agency contractor. But the proposed changes would not touch the agency’s abilities
10
overseas, which are authorized by Executive Order 12333, a Reagan era presidential directive. The administration has
declassified some rules for handling Americans’ messages gathered under the order, but the scope of that collection and other details about
how the messages are used has remained unclear. “The debate over the last year has barely touched on the executive order,” said Jameel
Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer. “It’s a black box.” The Times interviewed nearly a dozen current and former officials about
12333 rules for handling American communications, bringing further details to light. The rules are detailed in an accompanying chart. By
law,
the N.S.A. cannot deliberately intercept an American’s messages without court permission. But it can
“incidentally” collect such private communications as a consequence of its foreign surveillance. The volume
of incidental collection overseas is uncertain. Officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the topic, said
the N.S.A. had never studied the matter and most likely could not come up with a representative sampling. Mr. Tye called that “willful
blindness.” Still, the number of Americans swept up under 12333 could be sizable. As the N.S.A. intercepts content in bulk from satellite
transmissions and from overseas fiber optic hubs, Americans’ messages in the mix can be vacuumed up. By
contrast, when operating
on domestic networks under FISA, the agency may engage only in targeted, not dragnet, collection and
storage of content. Congress left the executive branch with a freer hand abroad because it was once rare for Americans’
communications to go overseas. But in the Internet era, that is no longer true. Large email companies like Google and Yahoo have built data
centers abroad, where they store backups of their users’ data. Mr. Snowden disclosed that in 2012 the N.S.A., working with its British
counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, penetrated links connecting the companies’ overseas data centers and collected
181.3 million records in 30 days. Mr. Tye was a rebel within the system. Raised in a Boston suburb, he attended Duke University, Oxford as a
Rhodes scholar, and Yale Law School. But his elite résumé and conservative appearance belie a history of nonconformity and social mission. At
Duke, he avoided fraternities, wore his hair long, became a wilderness enthusiast and created his own major, fusing economics, computer
science and mathematics. “I thought I was going to be a scientist,” Mr. Tye said in an interview. “But when I was graduating, I decided I wanted
to do things that have more of an impact on real people.” After studying at Oxford, he researched hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law
Center before arriving at Yale just as legal issues raised by counterterrorism policies after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were crystallizing. He
joined a civil liberties litigation clinic. After Yale, he moved to New Orleans, where he represented poor people in housing related problems. In
early 2011, he landed a State Department job working on Internet issues. Then came Mr. Snowden’s disclosures. Mr. Tye had a vantage point
on administration deliberations about proposed changes. By February, he was planning to leave the government and file a whistleblower
complaint. It yielded little. The House Intelligence Committee sent a letter saying it had “reviewed your allegations and has taken the action it
deems appropriate in this matter.” The N.S.A. inspector general sent a similar letter, emphasizing that Mr. Tye had acknowledged that he did
not know the rules for handling Americans’ messages. Brian Fallon, a Justice Department spokesman, defended the N.S.A.'s practices under the
executive order as “respectful of the principles upon which the United States was founded and consistent with U.S. laws, including the Fourth
Amendment.” The
proposal to increase protections for American messages gathered incidentally under
Executive Order 12333 — the quiet rejection of which provoked Mr. Tye — came from a review group Mr. Obama appointed after Mr.
Snowden’s leaks. Its report recommended three changes for such messages. First, it said, analysts should purge them from the 12333
storehouse upon detection, unless they have foreign intelligence value or are necessary to prevent bodily harm. A similar rule already exists,
but has another major exception: Analysts must send any information about crimes to the Justice Department. The officials would not say how
often criminal referrals have resulted. Second, the review group said, prosecutors should not
use incidental 12333 intercepts of
Americans as direct evidence in criminal proceedings against them. In practice, officials said, the government already avoids doing so, so as
not to have to divulge the origins of the evidence in court. But the officials contend that defendants have no right to know if 12333 intercepts
provided a tip from which investigators derived other evidence. Third, the review group said, analysts should not search the storehouse for an
American’s messages unless a court finds probable involvement with terrorism. Officials said a current rule permits analysts to query for an
American’s messages if the attorney general says the person is probably an “agent of a foreign power,” a broader category. Usually, they
added, the N.S.A. also gets a court order for prospective surveillance. The only recent exception, one official said, involved a dead suspect. The
N.S.A. is also permitted to search the 12333 storehouse using keywords likely to bring up Americans’ messages. Such searches must have
“foreign intelligence” purposes, so analysts cannot hunt for ordinary criminal activity. For now, the N.S.A. does not share raw 12333 intercepts
with other agencies, like the F.B.I. or the C.I.A., to search for their own purposes. But the administration is drafting new internal guidelines that
could permit such sharing, officials said. The
administration secretly changed the rules in November 2010 to allow
the N.S.A. to analyze Americans’ metadata — information showing who communicates with whom, but
not content — gathered under 12333, Mr. Snowden’s leaks showed. The agency may do so without outside permission and for any
foreign intelligence purpose, not just counterterrorism. That means there are fewer restrictions on the agency’s use of Americans’ bulk
metadata when gathered abroad than when gathered on domestic soil under FISA and court oversight. The
N.S.A.'s 12333 power
would not diminish under the bill to replace the phone metadata program. Aware of leak prosecutions, Mr. Tye,
who now works for a civic activist network, estimates he has spent $13,000 on lawyers to make sure he stays within the lines. He drafted a
Washington Post opinion column about 12333 by hand to avoid introducing any classified information on an insecure computer, and submitted
it for prepublication government review. But he said he felt compelled to speak out. Because of Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, he said, there is
growing awareness that it is now possible for the government to collect a huge share of private communications. The public and Congress, he
argued, should decide what the rules for that growing power should be. “We are at an inflection point in human history,” he said.
11
12
Adv 1- Econ
A. U.S surveillance is costing American technology companies billions of dollars.
Massive changes to NSA powers is key to change perception and increase trust
in American Tech companies.
Miller 2014 (Claire Cain Miller, she is a writer for the New York Times, “Revelations of N.S.A. Spying Cost U.S. Tech Companies”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/business/fallout-from-snowden-hurting-bottom-line-of-tech-companies.html?_r=0)
Microsoft has lost customers, including the government of Brazil. IBM is spending more than a billion
dollars to build data centers overseas to reassure foreign customers that their information is safe
from prying eyes in the United States government. And tech companies abroad, from Europe to South
America, say they are gaining customers that are shunning United States providers, suspicious
because of the revelations by Edward J. Snowden that tied these providers to the National Security
Agency’s vast surveillance program. Even as Washington grapples with the diplomatic and political
fallout of Mr. Snowden’s leaks, the more urgent issue, companies and analysts say, is economic. Technology executives,
including Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, raised the issue when they went to the White House on Friday for a meeting with President Obama. It
is impossible to see now the full economic ramifications of the spying disclosures — in part because most companies are locked in multiyear
contracts — but the pieces are beginning to add up as businesses question the trustworthiness of American technology products. The
confirmation hearing last week for the new N.S.A. chief, the video appearance of Mr. Snowden at a technology conference in Texas and the drip
of new details about government spying have kept attention focused on an issue that many tech executives hoped would go away. Despite
the tech companies’ assertions that they provide information on their customers only when required
under law — and not knowingly through a back door — the perception that they enabled the spying
program has lingered. “It’s clear to every single tech company that this is affecting their bottom line,” said Daniel Castro, a
senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, who predicted that the
United States cloud computing industry could lose $35 billion by 2016. Forrester Research, a
technology research firm, said the losses could be as high as $180 billion, or 25 percent of industry
revenue, based on the size of the cloud computing, web hosting and outsourcing markets and the
worst case for damages. The business effect of the disclosures about the N.S.A. is felt most in the daily conversations between tech
companies with products to pitch and their wary customers. The topic of surveillance, which rarely came up before, is now “the new normal” in
these conversations, as one tech company executive described it. “We’re hearing from customers, especially global enterprise customers, that
they care more than ever about where their content is stored and how it is used and secured,” said John E. Frank, deputy general counsel at
Microsoft, which has been publicizing that it allows customers to store their data in Microsoft data centers in certain countries. At the same
time, Mr. Castro said, companies say
they believe the federal government is only making a bad situation
worse. “Most of the companies in this space are very frustrated because there hasn’t been any kind of
response that’s made it so they can go back to their customers and say, ‘See, this is what’s different
now, you can trust us again,’ ” he said. In some cases, that has meant forgoing potential revenue.
Though it is hard to quantify missed opportunities, American businesses are being left off some requests for
proposals from foreign customers that previously would have included them, said James Staten, a cloud
computing analyst at Forrester who has read clients’ requests for proposals. There are German companies, Mr. Staten said,
“explicitly not inviting certain American companies to join.” He added, “It’s like, ‘Well, the very best vendor to do this is
IBM, and you didn’t invite them.’ ” The result has been a boon for foreign companies. Runbox, a Norwegian
email service that markets itself as an alternative to American services like Gmail and says it does not comply with foreign court orders
seeking personal information, reported a 34 percent annual increase in customers after news of the N.S.A.
surveillance. Brazil and the European Union, which had used American undersea cables for intercontinental communication,
last month decided to build their own cables between Brazil and Portugal, and gave the contract to
Brazilian and Spanish companies. Brazil also announced plans to abandon Microsoft Outlook for its
13
own email system that uses Brazilian data centers. Mark J. Barrenechea, chief executive of OpenText, Canada’s largest
software company, said an antiAmerican attitude took root after the passage of the Patriot Act, the counterterrorism law passed after 9/11 that
expanded the government’s surveillance powers. But “the volume of the discussion has risen significantly post Snowden,” he said. For instance,
after the N.S.A. surveillance was revealed, one of OpenText’s clients, a
global steel manufacturer based in Britain,
demanded that its data not cross United States borders. “Issues like privacy are more important than
finding the cheapest price,” said Matthias Kunisch, a German software executive who spurned United States cloud computing
providers for Deutsche Telekom. “Because of Snowden, our customers have the perception that American
companies have connections to the N.S.A.” Security analysts say that ultimately the fallout from Mr. Snowden’s revelations
could mimic what happened to Huawei, the Chinese technology and telecommunications company, which was forced to abandon major
acquisitions and contracts when American lawmakers claimed that the company’s products contained a backdoor for the People’s Liberation
Army of China — even though this claim was never definitively verified. Silicon Valley companies have complained to government officials that
federal actions are hurting American technology businesses. But companies fall silent when it comes to specifics about economic harm,
whether to avoid frightening shareholders or because it is too early to produce concrete evidence. “The companies need to keep the priority on
the government to do something about it, but they don’t have the evidence to go to the government and say billions of dollars are not coming
to this country,” Mr. Staten said. Some American companies say the business hit has been minor at most. John T. Chambers, the chief executive
of Cisco Systems, said in an interview that the N.S.A. disclosures had not affected Cisco’s sales “in a major way.” Although deals in Europe and
Asia have been slower to close, he said, they are still being completed — an experience echoed by several other computing companies. Still, the
business blowback can be felt in other ways than lost customers. Security analysts say tech
companies have collectively spent
millions and possibly billions of dollars adding stateoftheart encryption features to consumer services,
like Google search and Microsoft Outlook, and to the cables that link data centers at Google, Yahoo and other companies. IBM said in
January that it would spend $1.2 billion to build 15 new data centers, including in London, Hong Kong and Sydney,
Australia, to lure foreign customers that are sensitive about the location of their data. Salesforce.com announced
similar plans this month. Germany and Brazil, where it was revealed that the N.S.A. spied on government leaders, have been
particularly adversarial toward American companies and the government. Lawmakers, including in Germany, are
considering legislation that would make it costly or even technically impossible for American tech companies to operate inside their borders.
Yet some government officials say laws like this could have a motive other than protecting privacy. Shutting out American companies “means
more business for local companies,” Richard A. Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism adviser, said last month.
And, If the perception of NSA joint efforts with US tech companies continues their
competitive edge will diminish.
Timm, 2013 (Trevor Timm, November 2013-Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom of the Press
Foundation. He is a journalist, activist, and lawyer who writes a twice weekly column for The Guardian on privacy, free speech, and national
security. He has contributed to The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy Review, PBS MediaShift, and Politico.Trevor
formerly worked as an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before that, he helped the longtime General Counsel of The New York
Times, James Goodale, write a book on the Pentagon Papers and the First Amendment. He received his J.D. from New York Law School. “How
NSA Mass Surveillance is Hurting the US Economy” https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/how-nsa-mass-surveillance-hurting-useconomy)
Privacy may not be the only casualty of the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program. Major
sectors of the US
economy are reporting financial damage as the recent revelations shake consumer confidence and US
trade partners distance themselves from companies that may have been compromised by the NSA or,
worse, are secretly collaborating with the spy agency. Member of Congress, especially those who champion America’s competitiveness in the
global marketplace, should take note and rein in the NSA now if they want to stem the damage. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that
AT&T’s desired acquisition of the European company Vodafone is in danger due to the company’s
well-documented involvement in the NSA’s data-collection programs. European officials said the
telecommunications giant would face “intense scrutiny” in its bid to purchase a major cell phone carrier. The Journal
went on to say: “Resistance to such a deal, voiced by officials in interviews across Europe, suggests the
impact of the NSA affair could extend beyond the diplomatic sphere and damage US economic
interests in key markets.” In September, analysts at Cisco Systems reported that the fallout “reached another level,” when the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) told companies not to use cryptographic standards that may have been undermined by
the NSA’s BULLRUN program. The Cisco analysts said that if cryptography was compromised “it would be a critical blow to trust required across
14
the Internet and the security community.” This forecast was proven true in mid-November, when Cisco
reported a 12 percent
slump in its sales in the developing world due to the NSA revelations. As the Financial Times reported, new
orders fell by 25 percent in Brazil and 30 percent in Russia and Cisco predicts its overall sales could
drop by as much 10 percent this quarter. Cisco executives were quoted saying the NSA’s activities
have created "a level of uncertainty or concern" that will have a deleterious impact on a wide-range
of tech companies. It is hard for civil libertarians to shed tears over AT&T losing business because of NSA spying, considering the
company allowed the NSA to directly tap into its fiber optic cables to copy vast amounts of innocent Americans’ Internet traffic. AT&T was also
recently revealed as having partnered with both the DEA and the CIA on separate mass surveillance programs. It is also hard to feel sorry for
Cisco, which stands accused of helping China spy on dissidents and religious minorities. But the fact that the spying
is hurting these
major companies is indicative of the size of the problem. This summer, European Parliament’s civil
liberties committee was presented with a proposal to require every American website to place
surveillance notices to EU citizens in order to force the US government to reverse course: “The users should
be made aware that the data may be subject to surveillance (under FISA 702) by the US government for any purpose which furthers US foreign
policy. A consent requirement will raise EU citizen awareness and favour growth of services solely within EU jurisdiction. This will thus have
economic impact on US business and increase pressure on the US government to reach a settlement.” [emphasis ours] Meanwhile, Telenor,
Norway’s largest telecom provider has reportedly halted its plans to move its customers to a US-based
cloud provider. Brazil seems to be moving ahead to create its own email service and require US
companies locate an office there if they wish to do business with Brazilian customers. Laws like this mean that
companies like Google “could be barred from doing business in one of the world’s most significant
markets,” according to Google’s director for law enforcement and information security at Google, Richard Selgado. Google has been
warning of this as far back as July, when in FISA court documents it argued that the continued secrecy surrounding government surveillance
demands would harm its business. Many commentators have been warning about the economic ramifications for months. Princeton
technologist Ed Felten, who previously at the Federal Trade Commission, best explained why the NSA revelations could end up
hurting US businesses: “This is going to put US companies at a competitive disadvantage, because people will
believe that U.S. companies lack the ability to protect their customers—and people will suspect that
U.S. companies may feel compelled to lie to their customers about security.” The fallout may worsen. One
study released shortly after the first Edward Snowden leaks said the economy would lose $22 to $35 billion in the
next three years. Another study by Forrester said the $35 billion estimate was too low and pegged the
real loss figure around $180 billion for the US tech industry by 2016. Much of the economic problem stems
for the US government’s view that it’s open season when it comes to spying on non-U.S. persons. As Mark Zuckerberg said
in September, the government’s position is“don’t worry, we’re not spying on any Americans. Wonderful, that’s really helpful for companies
trying to work with people around the world.” Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond echoed this sentiment last week, saying: “The
justification has been couched as 'Don't worry. We're only snooping on foreigners.' For a company like ours, where most of our business and
most of our users are non-American, that's not very helpful." Members of Congress who care about the US economy should take note: the
companies losing their competitive edge due to NSA surveillance are mainstream economic drivers.
Just as their constituents are paying attention, so are the customers who vote with their dollars . As Sen.
Ron Wyden remarked last month, “If a foreign enemy was doing this much damage to the economy, people would be in the streets with
pitchforks.”
And, Tech companies are becoming the backbone to the American Economy. Slumps
in these sectors create shocks to the entire economy.
Rausas Et al, 2011 (Matthieu Pelissie du Rausas, James Manyika, Eric Hazan, Jacques
Bughin, Micahel Chui, Remi Said, March 2011,
The Internet is big and continues to grow and reach everywhere. The
Internet is now used in every country, in every
sector, in most companies, and by more than 2bn people and it is still growing. Internet-related
consumption and expenditure is now bigger than agriculture or energy, and our research shows that the
15
Internet accounts for, on average, 3.4 percent of GDP in the 13 countries we studied. If Internet
consumption and expenditure were a sector, its weight in GDP would be bigger than energy, agriculture,
or several other critical industries. The Internet’s total contribution to the GDP is bigger than the GDP of
Spain or Canada, and it is growing faster than Brazil. The Internet is still in its infancy, and the weight of the Internet in GDP
varies drastically, even among, countries at the same stage of development. While the Internet accounts for around 6 percent of GDP in
advance countries such as Sweden and the United Kingdom, in 9 out of 13 countries its contribution is below 4 percent, leaving tremendous
room for further Internet development. The Internet is a critical element of growth. Both out
macroeconomic approach and
our statistical approach shows that, in the mature countries we studied, the Internet accounted for 10
percent of GDP growth over the past 15 years. And its influence is expanding. Over the past five years,
the Internet’s contribution to GDP growth in these countries doubled to 21 percent. If we look at all 13
countries in our analysis, the Internet contributed 7 percent of growth over the past 15 years and 11 percent over the past five. This is a
reflection of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) receiving a performance boost from the Internet. As part of our research, we surveyed
more than 4,800 SMEs in the countries we studied. We found that those with a strong Web presence grew more than twice as quickly as those
that had minimal or no presence, an outcome that holds across sectors. In addition, SMEs that took advantage of the Internet reported the
share of total revenues that they earned from exports was more than twice as large as that reported by others. They also created more than
twice the number of jobs as others. The maturity of the Internet correlates with rising living standards. Leveraging endogenous economic
growth theory, we have been able to show that Internet maturity correlates with growth in per capita GDP. Using the results of the correlation,
a simulation shows that an increase in Internet maturity similar to the one experienced in mature countries over the past 15 years creates an
increase in real GDP per capita of $500 on average during this period. It took the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century 50 years to achieve
same results. This shows both the magnitude of the positive impact of the Web at all levels of society and the speed at which it delivers
benefits. The Internet is a powerful catalyst for job creation. Some
jobs have been destroyed by the emergence of the
Internet. However, a detailed analysis of the French economy showed that while the Internet has
destroyed 500,000 jobs over the past 15 years, it has created 1.2 million others, a net addition of
700,000 jobs or 2.4 jobs created for every job destroyed. This conclusion is supported by McKinsey’s global SME survey,
which found 2.6 jobs were created for every one destroyed. The Internet drives economic modernization. The Internet’s main impact is through
the modernization of traditional activities. Although the Internet has resulted in significant value shifts between sectors in the global economy,
our research demonstrated that all industries have benefited from the Web. Indeed, in McKinsey’s global SME survey, we found that 75 percent
of the economic impact of the Internet arises from traditional companies that don’t define themselves as pure Internet players. The businesses
that have seen the greatest value creation have benefits from innovation leading to higher productivity triggered by the Internet. The impact of
the Internet goes beyond GDP, generation astonishing consumer surplus. Beyond
its impact on GDP, the Internet creates
substantial value for users, ranging form €13 ($18) a month per user in Germany to €20 ($28) in the
United Kingdom. In total, the consumer surplus generated by the Internet in 2009 ranged from €7 billion
($10 billion) in France to €46 billion ($64 billion) in the United States. The rapidly shifting supply side offers some
contrasts. Looking at “supply” of the Internet globally, we find that countries with a strong Internet ecosystem also have a high Internet
contribution to GDP. However, the global Internet landscape is shifting rapidly and offer some interesting contrasts: The
United States
leads the global Internet supply ecosystem. The United States captures more than 30 percent of global
Internet revenues and more than 40 percent of net income. Using a proprietary model, the McKinsey Internet Supply
Leadership Index, we show that the United States remains the largest player in the internet supply
ecosystem. It is the country with the most diverse structure within the global ecosystem among the 13
we analyzed in this research, garnering relatively equal contributions from hardware, software and
services and telecommunications.
B. Amending XO 12333 denies the NSA ability to subvert tech companies, which is
critical to reviving U.S. credibility
Schneier 14 Bruce, Chief Technology Officer at Resilient Systems, Fellow at the Berkman Center for
Internet & Society at Harvard University, and a board member at Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Saving
Privacy,” Boston Review. May 8, 2014 http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/saving-privacy/bruceschneier-response-saving-privacy
16
In addition to turning the Internet into a worldwide surveillance platform, the
NSA has surreptitiously weakened the
products, protocols, and standards we all use to protect ourselves. By doing so, it has destroyed the
trust that underlies the Internet. We need that trust back. Trust is inherently social. It is personal, relative, situational,
and fluid. It is not uniquely human, but it is the underpinning of everything we have accomplished as a species. We trust other people, but we
also trust organizations and processes. The psychology is complex, but when we trust a technology, we basically believe that it will work as
intended. This is how we technologists trusted the security of the Internet. We didn't have any illusions that the Internet was secure, or that
governments, criminals, hackers, and others couldn't break into systems and networks if they were sufficiently skilled and motivated. We didn't
trust that the programmers were perfect, that the code was bug-free, or even that our crypto math was unbreakable. We knew that Internet
security was an arms race, and the attackers had most of the advantages. What we trusted was that the technologies would stand or fall on
their own merits. We now know that trust was misplaced. Through cooperation, bribery, threats, and compulsion, the NSA—and the United
Kingdom's GCHQ—forced companies to weaken the security of their products and services, then lie about it to their customers. We know of a
few examples of this weakening. The NSA convinced Microsoft to make some unknown changes to Skype in order to make eavesdropping on
conversations easier. The NSA also inserted a degraded random number generator into a common standard, then worked to get that generator
used more widely. I have heard engineers working for the NSA, FBI, and other government agencies delicately talk around the topic of inserting
a "backdoor" into security products to allow for government access. One of them told me, "It's like going on a date. Sex is never explicitly
mentioned, but you know it's on the table." The NSA's SIGINT Enabling Project has a $250 million annual budget; presumably it has more to
show for itself than the fragments that have become public. Reed Hundt calls for the government to support a secure Internet, but given its
history of installing backdoors, why would we trust claims that it has turned the page? We also have to assume that other countries have been
doing the same things. We have long believed that networking products from the Chinese company Huawei have been backdoored by the
Chinese government. Do we trust hardware and software from Russia? France? Israel? Anywhere? This mistrust is poison. Because we don't
know, we can't trust any of them. Internet
governance was largely left to the benign dictatorship of the United
States because everyone more or less believed that we were working for the security of the Internet
instead of against it. But now that system is in turmoil. Foreign companies are fleeing US suppliers
because they don't trust American firms' security claims. Far worse governments are using these
revelations to push for a more isolationist Internet, giving them more control over what their citizens see and say. All so
we could eavesdrop better. There is a term in the NSA: "nobus," short for "nobody but us." The NSA believes it can subvert
security in such a way that only it can take advantage of that subversion. But that is hubris. There is
no way to determine if or when someone else will discover a vulnerability. These subverted systems become part
of our infrastructure; the harms to everyone, once the flaws are discovered, far outweigh the benefits to the NSA while they are secret. We
can't both weaken the enemy's networks and protect our own. Because we all use the same products,
technologies, protocols, and standards, we either allow everyone to spy on everyone, or prevent
anyone from spying on anyone. By weakening security, we are weakening it against all attackers. By inserting vulnerabilities, we
are making everyone vulnerable. The same vulnerabilities used by intelligence agencies to spy on each other are used by criminals to steal your
passwords. It is surveillance versus security, and we all rise and fall together. Security needs to win. The Internet is too important to the world—
and trust is too important to the Internet—to squander it like this. We'll
never get every power in the world to agree not
to subvert the parts of the Internet they control, but we can stop subverting the parts we control.
Most of the high-tech companies that make the Internet work are US companies, so our influence is
disproportionate. And once we stop subverting, we can credibly devote our resources to detecting
and preventing subversion by others.
C. Economic Renewal is key ensure a strong economy. American tech companies
must remain strong in a competitive market. Without renewal, slow recovery of
the economy will occur.
Muro Et al., 2015 (Mark Muro, Jonathan Rothwell, Scott Andes, Kenan Fikri, and Siddharth Kulkarni, February 2015, The Brookings
Institute, “America’s Advanced Industries, What they are and where they are, and why they matter”
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2015/02/03-advancedindustries/final/AdvancedIndustry_ESFinalFeb2lores.pdf?la=en)
The need for economic renewal in the United States remains urgent. Years of disappointing job growth
and stagnant incomes for the majority of workers have left the nation shaken and frustrated. At the same
time, astonishing new technologies—ranging from advanced robotics and “3-D printing” to the “digitization of everything”—are provoking
17
genuine excitement even as they make it hard to see where things are going. Hence this paper: At a critical moment, this report asserts the
special importance to America’s future of what the paper calls America’s “advanced industries” sector. Characterized by its deep
involvement with technology research and development (R&D) and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) workers, the sector
encompasses 50 industries ranging from manufacturing industries such as automaking and aerospace to energy industries such as oil and gas
extraction to high-tech services such as computer software and computer system design, including for health applications. These industries
encompass the nation’s “tech” sector at its broadest and most consequential. Their dynamism is
going to be a central component
of any future revitalized U.S. economy. As such, these industries encompass the country’s best shot at
supporting innovative, inclusive, and sustainable growth. For that reason, this report provides a wide-angle overview of
the advanced industry sector that reviews its role in American prosperity, assesses key trends, and maps its metropolitan and global
competitive standing before outlining high-level strategies to enhance that. The overview finds that: Advanced
industries represent
a sizable economic anchor for the U.S. economy and have led the post-recession employment recovery
Modest in size, the sector packs a massive economic punch: ● As an employer and source of economic
activity the advanced industry sector plays a major role in the U.S. economy. As of 2013, the nation’s 50
advanced industries (see nearby box for selection criteria) employed 12.3 million U.S. workers. That amounts to
about 9 percent of total U.S. employment. And yet, even with this modest employment base, U.S. advanced industries
produce $2.7 trillion in value added annually—17 percent of all U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). That
is more than any other sector, including healthcare, finance, or real estate. At the same time, the sector
employs 80 percent of the nation’s engineers; performs 90 percent of private-sector R&D; generates
approximately 85 percent of all U.S. patents; and accounts for 60 percent of U.S. exports. Advanced industries
also support unusually extensive supply chains and other forms of ancillary economic activity. On a per worker basis, advanced industries
purchase $236,000 in goods and services from other businesses annually, compared with $67,000 in purchasing by other industries. This
spending sustains and creates more jobs. In fact, 2.2
jobs are created domestically for every new advanced industry
job—0.8 locally and 1.4 outside of the region. This means that in addition to the 12.3 million workers employed by
advanced industries, another 27.1 million U.S. workers owe their jobs to economic activity supported by
advanced industries. Directly and indirectly, then, the sector supports almost 39 million jobs—nearly
one-fourth of all U.S. employment. ● In terms of the sector’s growth and change, the total number of jobs in the sector has
remained mostly flat since 1980, but its output has soared. From 1980 to 2013 advanced industry output expanded at a rate of 5.4 percent
annually—30 percent faster than the economy as a whole. Since
the Great Recession, moreover, both employment and output have
risen dramatically. The sector has added nearly one million jobs since 2010, with employment and output
growth rates 1.9 and 2.3 times higher, respectively, than in the rest of the economy. Advanced services
led this post-recession surge and created 65 percent of the new jobs. Computer systems design alone
generated 250,000 new jobs. Certain advanced manufacturing industries—especially those involved in transportation equipment—
have also added thousands of jobs after decades of losses. Advanced industries also provide high-quality economic opportunities for workers.
Workers in advanced industries are extraordinarily productive and generate some $210,000 in annual value added per worker compared with
$101,000, on average, outside advanced industries. Because of this, advanced industries compensate their workers handsomely and, in contrast
to the rest of the economy, wages are rising sharply. In 2013, the average advanced industries worker earned $90,000 in total compensation,
nearly twice as much as the average worker outside of the sector. Over time, absolute earnings in advanced industries grew by 63 percent from
1975 to 2013 after adjusting for inflation. This compares with 17 percent gains outside the sector. Even workers with lower levels of education
can earn salaries in advanced industries that far exceed their peers in other industries. In this regard, the sector is in fact accessible: More than
half of the sector’s workers possess less than a bachelor’s degree. Advanced industries are present in nearly every U.S. region, but the sector’s
geography is uneven:
And
Slow economic recovery leads to financial crashes.
Sumner 12 (Scott Sumner, Scott B. Sumner is the director of the Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University and an economist who teaches at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. “Slow Recoveries Cause financial crashes”,
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=17115)
People often argue that financial crises lead to slow recoveries. But I rarely see people argue the
reverse; that slow recoveries cause financial crises. It’s incredibly easy to make the reverse causation argument for the
18
current eurozone crisis, or for the US financial crises during the Great Depression. But what about the US crisis of 2008? There certainly was
significant financial stress before the recession began, or indeed even before economists were predicting a recession. So the reverse causality
argument is more difficult to make for the US banking turmoil in 2007. But
what about the much more severe crisis in late
2008? In that case I think we can easily make a reverse causation argument. Markets correctly began to realize that
monetary policy (NGDP growth) was becoming too tight, and that a long slump was getting underway. This
reduction in expected future NGDP led to lower current levels of AD, and also lower asset prices. This
asset price decline greatly intensified the financial crisis in the fall of 2008. Financial markets are
forward-looking. As soon as they recognize that a long slump lies ahead, asset prices will crash. That
will often (not always) cause a financial crisis. Ironically the cause of the crisis occurs after the effect,
which is why it’s so often misdiagnosed. PS. In one nanosecond a commenter will point out that the cause isn’t really coming
after the effect. That’s getting too deep into metaphysics for me. PPS. I see a number of liberal bloggers trying to defend Obama by arguing that
recoveries from financial crises are usually slow. I don’t get it. Are they claiming recoveries are slow because of a lack of AD? Yes, but then the
problem is insufficient monetary and fiscal stimulus, not financial turmoil. Are they claiming recovery is slow for structural reasons? Maybe, but
I thought that was the conservative argument that liberals generally treated with contempt. Can someone help me here?
D. Impact- Economic decline causes war – statistics prove
Royal 10 [Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense,
2010, “Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises,” in Economics of
War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-214]
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science
literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defense behavior of
interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable
contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson’s (1996) work on leadership cycle theory,
finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and
the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crisis could
usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin, 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of
miscalculation (Fearon, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for
conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner, 1999). Seperately, Pollins (1996) also
shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small
powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown.
Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland’s (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that ‘future expectation of trade’ is a significant
variable in understanding economic conditions and security behavious of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific
benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations, However, if the expectations of future trade decline,
particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states
will be inclined to
use force to gain access to those resources. Crisis could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or
because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states. Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and
external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict,
particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write, The linkages
between internal and external conflict and
prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the
favor. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflict
self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. P. 89) Economic decline has been linked with an increase in the likelihood
of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions.
Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. ‘Diversionary theory’ suggests that, when facing unpopularity
arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increase incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a ‘rally around the
flag’ effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995), and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline
and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency
towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more
susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods
of
weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to
an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlated economic integration with an increase
19
in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and
national levels. This implied connection between integration, crisis and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security
debate and deserves more attention.
20
Adv 2- EU Relations
A. The E.U. is halting agreements with the U.S. due to NSA spying. A decrease of U.S.
spying is the only way to gain trust back.
European Parliament Press Release“12-03-2014 –US NSA: stop mass surveillance now or face
consequences”, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/newsroom/content/20140307IPR38203/html/US-NSA-stop-mass-surveillance-now-or-face-consequencesMEPs-say
Parliament's consent to the EU-US trade deal "could be endangered" if blanket mass surveillance by
the US National Security Agency (NSA) does not stop, MEPs said on Wednesday, in a resolution wrapping up their sixmonth inquiry into US mass surveillance schemes. The text also calls on the EU to suspend its bank data deal with
the US and the “Safe Harbour agreement” on data privacy. The fight against terrorism can never
justify secret and illegal mass surveillance, it adds. The resolution, in which MEPs set out their findings and
recommendations to boost EU citizens' privacy, was backed by 544 votes to 78, with 60 abstentions. "The Snowden revelations gave us a
chance to react. I hope we will turn those reactions into something positive and lasting into the next mandate of this Parliament, a data
protection bill of rights that we can all be proud of", said Civil Liberties inquiry rapporteur Claude Moraes (S&D, UK). "This is the only
international inquiry into mass surveillance. (...) Even Congress in the United States has not had an inquiry", he added.
Parliament's
should withhold its consent to the final Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal with the US unless it
fully respects EU fundamental rights, stresses the resolution, adding that data protection should be ruled out of the trade talks.
This consent “could be endangered as long as blanket mass surveillance activities and the interception
of communications in EU institutions and diplomatic representations are not fully stopped”, notes the text. MEPs also call
for the "immediate suspension" of the Safe Harbour privacy principles (voluntary data protection
standards for non-EU companies transferring EU citizens’ personal data to the US). These principles
“do not provide adequate protection for EU citizens” say MEPs, urging the US to propose new
personal data transfer rules that meet EU data protection requirements. The Terrorist Finance
Tracking Programme (TFTP) deal should also be suspended until allegations that US authorities have
access to EU citizens’ bank data outside the agreement are clarified, insist MEPs. European whistle-blower
protection and EU cloud The text also calls for a "European whistle-blower protection programme", which should pay particular attention to the
"complexity of whistleblowing in the field of intelligence". EU countries are also asked to consider granting whistleblowers international
protection from prosecution. Furthermore, Europe should develop its own clouds and IT solutions, including cybersecurity and encryption
technologies, to ensure a high level of data protection, adds the text. The UK, France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Poland should
clarify the allegations of mass surveillance - including potential agreements between intelligence services and telecoms firms on access to and
exchange of personal data and access to transatlantic cables - and their compatibility with EU laws, the resolution says. Other EU countries, in
particular those participating in the "9-eyes" (UK, Denmark, France and the Netherlands) and "14-eyes" arrangements (those countries plus
Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden) are also urged to review their national laws to ensure that their intelligence services are subject to
parliamentary and judicial oversight and that they comply with fundamental rights obligations.
And, Europe is questioning US commitment to the alliance- reinvigorating relations
are key to solve Russian aggression
Coffey ’14 (By Luke Coffey —Luke Coffey is Margaret Thatcher Fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center
for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The
Heritage Foundation., March 2014, http://europe.newsweek.com/junckers-calls-eu-spy-service-hasopened-can-worms-327874
The President needs to get the
transatlantic community united over the Ukraine, committed to NATO, supporting genuine free trade, and focused on
Afghanistan. Time to Unite over Ukraine Ever since Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, the U.S. and its European
This trip will provide an opportunity for the President to demonstrate America’s commitment to transatlantic relations.
21
allies have not been on the same sheet of music regarding how best to deal with Russia. There is a big
gap between U.S. and EU sanctions. The U.S. targeted people who at one time or another have been
close to Vladimir Putin. In stark contrast, the EU’s larger list of 13 Russians targeted by sanctions (plus
eight Crimeans) hits much lower-ranked figures. This demonstrates that the EU cannot move beyond a
“lowest common denominator” approach to foreign policy making. There have also been inconsistent
messages coming from inside Europe on how to deal with Russia. For example, on one hand, NATO’s
Secretary General describes Russia’s annexation of Crimea as the biggest threat to European security
since the Cold War. Yet the French continue to sell Moscow warships, and the Spanish allow the Russian
navy to use their territories in North Africa. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) In February 2013, President Obama called for a free
trade agreement between the U.S. and the EU during his annual State of the Union address. With a number of foreign policy decisions by the Obama Administration leaving Europeans
questioning America’s commitment to transatlantic relations, politicians and commentators on both sides of the Atlantic have seized on this announcement as the answer to the transatlantic
relationship’s woes. Failure of the trade deal to deliver the expected political and economic results could further damage transatlantic relations. The promotion of economic freedom is a vital
part of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. A TTIP that genuinely reduced trade barriers would contribute significantly to this aim. But even though negotiations are still at an early stage, there
are reasons to be concerned that TTIP will not promote free trade but instead will build a transatlantic managed market. This would reduce or even eliminate U.S. gains from TTIP and would
not promote economic freedom. The U.S. should continue negotiating but be cautious and assess any agreement on its merits. Supporters of economic freedom and limited government
should be prepared to support a TTIP that empowers consumers and opens market opportunities for entrepreneurs, but they should not start cheering for TTIP before they confirm that the
agreement is not a Trojan horse for increased regulation and the importation of the EU’s managed market into the U.S. Such an agreement would be a bad deal for everyone, especially the
U.S. The Upcoming NATO Summit The NATO summit taking place in September in Wales will be particularly important and should be high on the President’s agenda during his visit. This will be
the last summit before NATO ends its combat operations in Afghanistan and the first summit since Russia invaded Crimea. Many of the important issues that will be discussed at the summit
As NATO redefines its mission in a post–Afghan War world, it will need U.S.
leadership. The alliance should make collective defense the underpinning of everything it does. In addition, the
will require the U.S. to prepare the groundwork now.
U.S. should use the next NATO summit to advance an agenda that keeps NATO focused on the future of Afghanistan, ensures that NATO enlargement is firmly on the agenda, and readies the
NATO should focus on preventing nuclear proliferation, defending against
cyber attacks, ensuring energy security, combatting terrorism, and establishing a comprehensive missile
defense system. It should also get back to training for its Article 5 mission. Remember Afghanistan? One of the most crucial periods of the
Afghan campaign will commence in 2015, when Afghans take the lead for their security. The President
should also use his visit to drum up financial and military support for Afghanistan after 2015. After NATO-led
combat operations end this year, two important issues regarding Afghanistan remain to be resolved: the
number of troops in Afghanistan and the funding for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). A
major part of the transition strategy in Afghanistan has been training the ANSF to a level where it can
meet Afghanistan’s internal security challenges without tens of thousands of NATO troops on the
ground. Maintaining the ANSF after 2015 will cost the international community approximately $4.1 billion per year. According to a report by the Government
Accountability Office, the international community is still short $1.8 billion for the years 2015–2017 for ANSF funding. NATO should demonstrate
that it will stay engaged in Afghanistan after 2014. Do Not Waste This Opportunity President Obama’s visit to Europe could not come at a
more important time. With Ukraine, the future of NATO, stability in Afghanistan, and free trade high
on the agenda, President Obama should use his trip as an opportunity to show America’s commitment
to transatlantic relations. The President should: Show leadership on dealing with Russia. The President should rally America’s
European allies around a common approach when dealing with Russia. This will require American
leadership. Having a divided transatlantic alliance does no good for Europe’s security and stability. Promote
alliance for the challenges of the 21st century.
transatlantic free trade. An agreement that reduces trade barriers and empowers individuals over government bureaucrats would be beneficial. Talks that make the U.S. more like another
member of the EU would not. Keep NATO focused on territorial defense. NATO’s original mission of territorial defense has not been as important since the Cold War. In light of Russia’s recent
Keep Europe focused on
Afghanistan. Too much blood and treasure has been spent the past 13 years in Afghanistan for the West
to turn its back now. The U.S. needs to drum up financial support for the ANSF and seek concrete troop
pledges for the mentoring mission in Afghanistan after 2015. This is no time for NATO to turn its back on the situation there. Strengthen the
Alliance Regrettably, the Obama Administration has attached little importance to the transatlantic alliance,
and Europe has barely figured in the Administration’s foreign policy. Consequently, Europeans are left
questioning America’s commitment to transatlantic relations. A strong transatlantic alliance should be
at the heart of U.S. foreign policy. The President should reinvigorate partnerships with America’s key
friends and allies in Europe.
bellicose behavior, the U.S. should lead the alliance toward refocusing on policies that keep the North Atlantic region safe and secure.
22
And, Russian aggression is happening now due to EU Sanctions.
Berzina, May 2015 (Kristine Berzina, May 20 , 2015,German Marshall Fund of the United States, “Russia Strikes Back against
th
Europe’s Energy Union” http://www.gmfus.org/blog/2015/05/20/russia-strikes-back-against-europe%E2%80%99s-energy-union Kristine
Berzina is a Transatlantic Fellow for Energy & Society in the Brussels office of The German Marshall Fund of the United States.
BRUSSELS—Europe is starting to play hardball with Russia on energy — and the Kremlin is fighting back. For years, the European Union was
highly dependent on Russia’s natural gas and was unable to exert any influence on its supplier since it is the world’s largest energy importer.
This spring, the European
Commission launched an EU Energy Union to finally bind the 28 countries into a
single energy market. The three Baltic States — previously linked only to each other and to Russia — have
been instrumental to this new era of EU energy policy. Last December, Lithuania leased a floating
liquefied natural gas terminal, and now buys Norwegian natural gas from Statoil that it can share with Latvia and
Estonia. Electricity is Lithuania’s other major vulnerability, but with the EU’s support, it will soon complete grid connections to Poland and
Sweden. Lithuania also initiated a European Commission investigation of Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom in 2011, arguing that it
should not have to pay significantly more for natural gas than EU member states further away. Not only did the Commission agree, but last
month, it charged Gazprom with hindering competition in eight Central and Eastern European member states. Gazprom could now face up to
$10 billion in fines. Russia
may be losing its commercial levers over Lithuania’s energy sector, but it is
beginning to intervene militarily in the region’s energy sector. In the past few weeks, Russian naval
vessels in the Baltic Sea have chased and disrupted ships in Lithuania’s exclusive economic zone that are
laying the NordBalt electricity cable, intended to create an integrated Baltic electricity market. These Russian naval actions
present a new military threat to energy in Europe. The EU needs to be aware that actions against
Russia’s commercial practices may risk escalating conflicts across Europe. Other forms of Russian
political interference could also increase. The prospect of greater political maneuvering against
vulnerable EU member states — such as Greece — is especially worrisome. Russian President Vladimir
Putin has proposed a new pipeline, Turkish Stream, which may deliver gas to Greece as well. The
pipeline bypasses Ukraine and is a political tool for the Kremlin. Putin has directly courted Greek Prime
Minister Alexis Tsipras, describing the economic benefits of the pipeline just as Greece struggles to
repay its debts. Conveniently for Moscow, Turkish Stream could also interfere with the EU’s long-supported Trans-Anatolian pipeline,
which is slated to bring gas from Azerbaijan to European markets. The EU and the United States can expect the
continuation of such political, military, and economic maneuvering from Moscow on energy issues. In the
past, the transatlantic partners have focused largely on gas pipelines rather than on other aspects of the energy sector as levers for Russia’s
political influence. But energy security risks are no longer confined to one single area of the energy industry. With
a more aggressive
European energy policy, threats to energy security may come in the form of military and cyber moves
against electricity as well as oil and gas infrastructure.
B. The plan is critical to improve relations with the E.U.
Landler, 2014 (MARK LANDLER MAY 2, 2014, The New York Times, “Merkel Signals That Tension
Persists Over U.S. Spying” , http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/world/europe/merkel-says-gapswith-us-over-surveillance-remain.html?_r=0)
WASHINGTON — President Obama
tried to mend fences with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Friday, calling
her “one of my closest friends on the world stage.” But Ms. Merkel replied tartly that Germany still had significant
differences with the United States over surveillance practices and that it was too soon to return to
“business as usual.” The cordial but slightly strained encounter, which played out as the two leaders stood next to each
other at a Rose Garden news conference, attested to the lingering scars left by the sensational disclosure last October that the
National Security Agency had eavesdropped on Ms. Merkel’s phone calls. It came as the two leaders sought to
project a unified front against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, threatening President Vladimir V. Putin with sweeping new
sanctions if Russia disrupted elections in Ukraine later this month, even as they acknowledged that not all European countries were ready to
sign on to the most punishing measures. Ms. Merkel, who last fall declared that “spying between friends is simply unacceptable” and that
23
the United States had opened a breach of trust that would have to be repaired, said at the news conference that “we
have a few
difficulties yet to overcome.” One remaining issue, she said, was the “proportionality” of the
surveillance. Mr. Obama, pointing to his administration’s efforts to restore privacy safeguards, even for non­Americans, said, “We have
gone a long way in closing some of the gaps, but as Chancellor Merkel said, there are some gaps that need to be worked through.” Nearly a
year after the first disclosures about the N.S.A.’s practices at home and abroad, however, the agency is emerging with a mandate to make only
modest changes: some new limits on what kind of data it can hold about Americans, and stricter White House oversight of decisions to tap the
cellphones of foreign leaders. The Obama administration is now turning its attention to Silicon Valley — the subject of a major White House
study released Thursday — and whether the government should intervene to protect and prevent discriminatory behavior. “These are
complicated issues,” Mr. Obama said of the debate over surveillance and civil liberties, as he glanced over at Ms. Merkel. “We’re not perfectly
aligned yet, but we share the same values, and we share the same concerns.” The depth of their differences, however, was reflected by the
failure to reach a broader intelligence­sharing agreement between the United States and Germany. The two sides could not even agree on how
the talks had begun, with Mr. Obama disputing that the United States had ever offered Germany a socalled no­spy agreement. “We do not have
a blanket no­spy agreement with any country,” he said, adding, “we’re not holding back from doing something with Germany that we somehow
do with somebody else.” Months of negotiations to reach an agreement ended unsuccessfully after the two sides could not agree on its scope.
According to administration officials, the Germans insisted that the United States not conduct any unsanctioned espionage on German soil,
including from its embassy in Berlin, something it has not agreed to with other allies. Ms. Merkel did not address the negotiations directly, but
said the debate showed the need for further dialogue between the United States and Germany, not just at the level of governments but also
between lawmakers and the German and American people. Even as she highlighted differences with the White House, Ms. Merkel’s
government advised against inviting Edward J. Snowden, the renegade former N.S.A. contractor who leaked the information about its
surveillance practices, to testify before the German Parliament. A report by a German ministry on Friday said Mr. Snowden’s appearance would
cause further damage to the relationship between the United States and Germany. The German officials had solicited an opinion from a
Washington law firm suggesting that American authorities could seek to charge members of Parliament for complicity in Mr. Snowden’s
publicizing of classified information. Still, for
two leaders who had bonded over thorny issues like the European
financial crisis, the N.S.A. furor has taken an obvious toll. Ms. Merkel deflected a question about whether the personal
trust between her and Mr. Obama had been restored. When Ms. Merkel was asked if she was satisfied with how the White House had
responded, Mr. Obama jumped in to answer first, saying he knew how emotional the issue was in Germany. “Angela Merkel is one of my
closest friends on the world stage, somebody whose partnership I deeply value,” the president said. “It has pained me to see the degree to
which the Snowden disclosures have created strains in the relationship.” In their private meetings on Friday, an American official said, the
chemistry between Ms. Merkel and Mr. Obama was still good. They spent most of their time talking about the crisis in Ukraine, where they
have emerged as the two leaders marshaling the Western response. Both kept up the pressure on Mr. Putin over Ukraine, setting a new trigger
for much broader sanctions against Russian industry. Ms. Merkel noted that these measures would be imposed if Russia disrupted an election
in Ukraine planned for May 25. “Should that not be possible to stabilize the situation further, further sanctions will be unavoidable,” she said.
“This is something that we don’t want. Mr. Obama was even more emphatic, saying, “The Russian leadership must know that if it continues to
destabilize eastern Ukraine and disrupt this month’s presidential election, we will move quickly on additional steps, including further sanctions
that will impose greater costs.” While
administration officials say Germany and the United States have been
united in their response, the Germans have balked at sweeping sanctions on the Russian energy industry
because that could reverberate on their fossil fuel­dependent economy. Building European support for
industrywide sanctions will be a challenge, Mr. Obama said, because “you’ve got 28 countries, and some are more vulnerable
than others to potential Russian retaliation. And we have to take those into account. Not every country is in the same place.” Some experts on
Germany said the Ukraine crisis could give Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel the foundation to rebuild their relationship, reminding them that despite
the suspicion generated by the surveillance disclosures, their countries still have much in common. “Despite their enormous differences in
background and style, Merkel and Obama share a similar approach to crises — they react cautiously, slowly, and incrementally,” said Jackson
Janes, the president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “That instinct has been on display
again in recent months.” David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
C. US EU cooperation on Russia is key to avoid miscalculation and full-scale war
Stacey ‘14 – Jeffrey Stacey, Dr. Jeffrey Stacey is currently Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H.
Nitze School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He joined CTR after serving in the Obama Administration as a State
Department official specializing in NATO and EU relations at the Bureau for Conflict Stabilization Operations. At State he founded and managed
the International Stabilization and Peacebuilding Initiative (ISPI), which has over 20 government and international organization partners. Dr.
Stacey has just joined forces to blog at the Duck of Minerva foreign policy blog. He is the author of "Integrating Europe" by Oxford University
Press and is currently working on a follow-up book about how the West should deal with the rise of China. He has been a guest blogger at The
Washington Note and Democracy Arsenal, a professor of U.S. foreign policy at Tulane University and Fordham University, a consultant at the
Open Society Institute and the U.S. Institute of Peace, and a visiting scholar at George Washington, Georgetown, and the University of
California. He received his PhD from Columbia University. , 3-23-14)
24
The U.S. and Europe are going to need
to up their game to keep Vladimir Putin’s hands off the rest of Ukraine. Beyond this crisis the West needs a new defense posture, as
The U.S. and Russia are not engaged in a new Cold War, but Russia is clearly playing the geopolitical menace du jour.
the world just entered a new era of international relations. Just weeks ago numerous observers dubbed the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sochi “Putin’s Triumph,” when it was anything
but that. Russia may have barely edged the U.S. in total medals, but the price for Putin’s orderly Olympics was serious repression, severe environmental damage, and seismic corruption. Then
But contrary to conventional
wisdom, his abject territorial grab of Crimea has less to do with any grand plan on his part—and more to
do with western miscalculation and the momentum of reactive decision-making by a country led by
officials with a stark inferiority complex. The catalyst for the current crisis came in two parts. First, Europe badly miscalculated by offering Ukraine membership
came Ukraine. His reputation already tarnished, Putin seemingly wasted little time in setting off the biggest East-West crisis in decades.
in the European Union (EU) and making ensuing moves that forced Putin’s hand by making him choose to keep Ukraine in Russia’s sphere of influence or not. Second, Putin did not decide to
embark on his current course until the day after former President Yanukovich fled, specifically when the Ukrainian Parliament stripped him of his powers and scheduled new president
elections. But the seeds of this crisis were sewn long before. Putin and his coterie have long been adding up sleights from the West: NATO expansion to Russia’s border, in particular the
Kosovo War and the bombing of Serbia without UN Security Council approval, the same for the Iraq War, U.S. involvement in the Ukraine and Georgia revolutions, an intention to install radar
stations in Poland and the Czech Republic, and NATO’s coming close to offering both Georgia and Ukraine membership. Russia is not “back” so much as acting out again in its own region of the
world. Its 2008 invasion of Georgia, notably, came after the end of the Kosovo War when NATO and Russian troops raced to be the first to occupy a former Yugoslav Army base on the outskirts
of Pristina. Russian Foreign Secretary Lavrov at the time flatly stated that the West was forcing Russian to go to war somewhere. After making good on that threat in Georgia, Russia kept
Putin
has gained Crimea, but he has cost Russia a great deal in both economic and reputational terms, made a
mockery of future claims of any imperative for the West to gain approval of the UN Security Council for
crisis interventions, and above all lost the rest of Ukraine. Or not? Will Putin seek further Ukrainian
territory in the Russian-speaking east? Already Russian troops have seized a petroleum plant across the
border in Ukraine proper and Russia placed thousands of troops just over Ukraine’s eastern border for
the purposes of “exercises.” Moreover, Putin is displaying enormously risky behavior, for direct
altercations could easily spiral into a prolonged battle that with reinforcements could rapidly lead to
full-scale war. It is better to deter him from even trying. To do this the U.S. and Europe need to do more than place a small number of jet
troops in two breakaway regions of the country that are now considered in international limbo. So after a period of virtual strategic irrelevance, Russia has achieved a Pyrrhic victory.
fighters in Eastern Europe and kick Russia out of the G8. Putin views the West as feckless and is likely emboldened by the lack of a robust Western response thus far. Much more costly
economic sanctions are necessary, plus stepped up aerial patrols, forward placement of additional ground capabilities, and staging a NATO ground exercise in Poland, in order to establish
At
present, in conventional deterrence terms, the U.S. and Europe are not credible in the eyes of Putin. The fact
credible conventional deterrence. Now that there are indications that part of Moldova–on the other side of Ukraine–may also be in Russia’s sights, this has become an urgent task.
that he views the West as feckless and unlikely to intervene indicates that deterrence is low. Western inaction in this case is more likely to lead to a massive Russian action, thus moderate
action intended to augment deterrence is necessary to prevent this. The Western preference is to keep the rest of Ukraine intact but not to go to war to ensure this, thus it needs to focus on
reestablishing deterrence but it has little time in which to do so. Directly arming Ukraine would likely backfire, but ground movements in exercise form in either Poland or Romania would
constitute an appropriately measured but more forceful response. The Bush Administration’s error in not sanctioning Russia’s Georgia invasion is even more glaring in retrospect. Now by
openly accusing President Obama of appeasement, the American political right has only reinforced Putin’s perception. Yet in the process it made an unintentional but crucial strategic point:
other countries also need to be deterred from territorial takeovers, especially China. The aborted Syrian intervention already harmed Western deterrence, and a meager response to the
annexation of Crimea could easily lead to a Chinese occupation of the islands it claims from Japan. The Russia-Ukraine case may not be identical to the China-Japan case, but wouldbe border
changers are buoyed by Putin’s getting away with Crimea fairly cost free. Japan is more powerful than Ukraine, but until very recently has been averse to using force and has little experience
doing so. Thus, if China does not view the U.S. as credible in conventional deterrence terms, it may be emboldened to occupy the disputed islands despite the US-Japan defense treaty. The lack
of action in the Syria and Ukraine cases has degraded this deterrence; it now needs to be reestablished. The fallacy of those advocating a buildup in Asia and drawdown in Europe is now clear.
The U.S. commitment to its alliances in both the Asian and European spheres must be sufficient to achieve its simultaneous security interests. But
with economic austerity and a decreased defense budget, the U.S. cannot build back up in Europe AND
pivot fully to Asia. As a consequence the U.S. needs to rely on partners to a greater extent than in the
past. In addition to NATO, the most capable and like-minded bilateral partners are France, the UK, and Germany. Despite reduced defense budgets, they have made their military forces
more capable and shown an increased willingness to act even when the U.S. is reluctant to lead. This new “lead nation” model calls for rotating which country spearheads a particular crisis
intervention, with the others playing support roles by providing smaller scale but vital assistance. On-the-fly uses of this yet to be fully developed model were on display in the interventions in
Libya and Mali, as well as the near intervention in Syria. It is time to put this model fully in place, including in the Pacific theater by partnering with Australia and an increasingly activist Japan
under Prime Minister Abe. Meanwhile, this crisis is NATO’s to handle. If the Post-war era after World War II gave way to the Post-Cold War era, that in turn gave way to the Post 9-11 era which
has been with us for just over a decade. The new era–call it for now the Era of Incessant Conflict–may not be welcome, but with the Middle East in pieces and the forceful posturing of Russia
and China we are going to have to get used to it and make the necessary adjustments. It no doubt is too early to deem this a completely new era of world politics, but there nonetheless is
something distinctive about this emerging period of international lawlessness. In the past several years, since the advent of the Arab Awakening or perhaps back to the 2008 Russia-Georgia
war, there has been a clear shift–not a sizable power shift, but certainly a notable shift in the ability of the West to influence the behavior of states who are not like-minded. This rise of
regional powers, an increased penchant for meddling across borders, and large-scale instability in the Mideast and elsewhere together herald a new period in which western powers rapidly
need to recalibrate their capabilities and how they will wield the less effective tools of foreign policy in their hands. Wielding them in concert will increase their utility and effectiveness. But
western leaders cannot afford to be led by their increasingly isolationist publics; it is time for them to educate their people about this emerging era, and get on with leading.
D.US-Russian war causes extinction
PressTV, 13 [Press TV, citing nuclear scientist Ira Helfand, “US-Russia nuclear war to end human race:
Study”, http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/12/10/339285/usrussia-nuclear-war-to-extinct-humanrace/, 12-10-2013, Evan]
25
"With
a large war between the United States and Russia, we are talking about the possible -- not certain, but
possible -- extinction of the human race,” Helfand, the co-president of International Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War, said in a report released on Tuesday. "In this kind of war, biologically there are going to be
people surviving somewhere on the planet but the chaos that would result from this will dwarf anything we've ever
seen," he added. There are currently more than 17,000 nuclear warheads which have been ignored since
the Cold War ended in 1991, according to the study called “Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk?" Helfand said modern
nuclear weapons are far more powerful than the atomic bombs the US used against Japan in 1945 which
killed more than 200,000 people. The scientist warned that even a limited nuclear war-- involving just less than 0.5
percent of the world's nuclear arsenal-- would put 2 billion lives at grave risk with more than 20 million
people losing their lives within the first week of the explosions. The ecological consequences of a
nuclear war would put the survival of the entire planet at risk, according to the study. The firestorms caused by such
a war would send approximately 5 million tons of soot into the atmosphere, blocking out sunlight and
dropping temperatures across the planet. Helfand painted a scenario where this climate hazard would cause “a
nuclear famine” across the world. Hundreds of millions of people would face severe food shortages for
years.
26
Adv 3- Safe Harbor
A. EU are uncertain about Safe Harbor after NSA revelations
Privacy Tracker 13
Privacy Tracker | Aug 2, 2013 US-EU Safe Harbor Under Pressure https://privacyassociation.org/news/a/us-eu-safe-harbor-under-pressure/ TH
The European Union (EU) approved the U.S.-EU Safe-Harbor Agreement in 2000. Since that time, Safe
Harbor has allowed companies to transfer personal data from the EU to the United States without
violating EU data protection laws. EU data protection laws permit transfers of personal data to countries deemed to lack adequate
protections for personal data only when those transfers are governed by certain legal mechanisms. One of those mechanisms is Safe Harbor,
which was negotiated, with stakeholder input, between EU and U.S. officials who recognized the need for cross-border data transfers despite
the EU’s position that the United States does not provide adequate protection for the personal data of EU data subjects. Under
Safe
Harbor, U.S. organizations certify to the U.S. Department of Commerce that they provide certain
protections for personal data. Those protections are designed to ensure that organizations meet EU
data protection requirements. Safe Harbor certifications are enforced by the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of
Transportation as appropriate. Over four thousand organizations are currently listed on the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor
list. These organizations rely on Safe Harbor to authorize transfers of personal data from the EU to the U.S. Recent events, however,
have created uncertainty for Safe Harbor and the organizations that depend on it. Early this year, EU
parliamentarian Jan-Phillip Albrecht, who is charged with steering the European Commission’s proposed data protection reform package
through the EU Parliament, released a report in which he recommended 350 amendments to the Commission’s proposal. Albrecht surprised
many by recommending that the EU discontinue the Safe Harbor framework two years after enactment of the data protection reform.
Further signs of EU discontent over Safe Harbor came to light after the announcement of the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. Those negotiations are aimed at
establishing a free trade agreement between the U.S. and the EU. Because of the substantial
contribution that data transfers make to international trade, senior U.S. officials wanted cross-border
data transfers to be included in TTIP negotiations. The Coalition for Privacy and Free Trade, launched by Hogan Lovells in
March of this year, stated in comments to the United States Trade Representative that TTIP offers a unique “opportunity to progress the
interoperability of data privacy frameworks in a way that endures.” But not all stakeholders felt that TTIP was an appropriate forum for
addressing cross-border data transfers. Germany’s
data protection commissioner, for example, blogged that the
United States data protection framework is lacking and that the Safe Harbor “cannot compensate for
these deficits.” Recent attention to the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) surveillance operations have
made things even tougher for Safe Harbor. The European Parliament has called on the European
Commission to conduct a full review of Safe Harbor. Parliament’s resolution notes that some companies
involved in NSA’s PRISM surveillance program are certified under Safe Harbor. Parliament claims that
PRISM surveillance may have involved a “serious violation” of EU data protection laws, and that the
Commission may therefore be obliged to reverse or suspend Safe Harbor. Germany’s data protection commissioners
wrote a letter asking German Chancellor Merkel to recommend that the EU suspend Safe Harbor. EU Vice President Viviane Reding announced
the European Commission’s plan to conduct a full review of Safe Harbor by the end of this year. Reding, who drafted the Commission’s
proposed data reform package, called PRISM a “wake-up call” and said that Safe Harbor “may not be so safe after all.” These claims come a
little more than one year after Reding, in a joint release with then U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson, reaffirmed the EU’s commitment to
Safe Harbor “as a tool to promote transatlantic trade and economic growth.” Criticisms of Safe Harbor and other mechanisms that allow data to
be transferred from the EU to the United States have, in many instances, been blind to the nature of government surveillance in EU countries.
As Hogan Lovells privacy lead Chris Wolf wrote in a recent Privacy Perspectives blog post, “[I]t is naïve to think that intelligence agencies in
European countries do not utilize information collected from phone and Internet companies in their investigations.” And those countries often
lack the judicial and legislative oversight protections incorporated into U.S. surveillance laws. Regardless
of the relative strengths
and weaknesses of the privacy protections in EU and U.S. surveillance laws, however, the outcry over
U.S. government surveillance has apparently reenergized EU data protection reform efforts. That could
spell trouble for Safe Harbor even though Safe Harbor facilitates substantial and valuable data transfers
27
that have been undisturbed by government access. Moreover, there have been no allegations that the FTC has failed to
adequately address EU complaints of perceived Safe Harbor violations. Although the FTC does not publicize filed complaints, complainants may
disclose their complaint and whether they have been resolved satisfactorily. In addition, there have been no allegations that the
certification/dispute resolution bodies—operated by organizations such as TRUSTe and the BBB—are not working. In spite of Safe Harbor’s
success at facilitating cross-border transfers, the mechanism does appear to be in danger. Organizations
that have certified
under Safe Harbor should closely monitor the EU’s legislative process and the TTIP for indications about
Safe Harbor’s future. And they should give careful thought to contingency plans for handling the
personal data of EU data subjects.
B. Europe wants less U.S. power over Internet for trust improvements for
collaboration. The plan is key to those improvements.
Faiola, February 12, 2014 Anthony Faiola Washington Post Journalist Bureau chief — Berlin Wash Post “Europe wants less U.S.
power over Internet” http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe-wants-less-us-power-over-internet/2014/02/12/7e231bde-9409-11e39e13-770265cf4962_story.html TH
The European Union’s executive body called Wednesday for new steps to dilute America’s broad
influence over the architecture of the Internet, exposing a growing transatlantic rift in the aftermath of revelations about U.S. spying in
the region. In a communique presented in Brussels, the European Commission said it would seek a firm timetable to limit
U.S. influence over institutions that control the nuts and bolts of the Internet and oversee tasks such as
the assignment of .com and .org domain names used to access Web sites. The commission, which effectively acts as a
cabinet government of the 28 member states of the E.U., additionally said it would seek other ways to “globalize” key decisions about the expansion of the Internet
that are now largely concentrated in the United States. Those include the assignment of names and numbers used to direct Web traffic around the globe.
Changes were needed, the commission said, because the world has lost confidence in U.S. stewardship
of the Internet after the snooping programs revealed by former National Security Agency contractor
Edward Snowden. “Recent revelations of large-scale surveillance have called into question the
stewardship of the U.S. when it comes to Internet governance,” the commission said in a statement. The
language used by the European Commission illustrates the continuing fallout of the Snowden
revelations, which have deeply rattled millions of Europeans. Negative reactions have been particularly
strong in Germany, where reports have emerged that U.S. intelligence eavesdropped on the phone calls of Chancellor Angela Merkel and former
chancellor Gerhard Schröder. References to the Snowden scandal in the commission statement, however, were
perhaps more consequential than the contents of the policy paper itself. The commission has previously
stated its desire for more international oversight of Internet governance, and it did not offer any new
concrete plans for change.
C. Suspending Safe Harbor would result in cloud loss
Zaske 1-27
In Germany, data watchdogs will meet this week to debate the future of the Safe Harbor agreement in the post-Snowden world. By Sara
Zaske for The German View | January 27, 2015 -- 09:48 GMT (01:48 PST) | Topic: Security http://www.zdnet.com/article/germanys-privacyleaders-gather-to-discuss-suspending-us-safe-harbor/ TH
On Wednesday, German data privacy commissioners will meet in Berlin for their annual conference. On
the agenda will be discussions on one thing: whether the Safe Harbor agreement between the EU and
the US should be scrapped. The meeting will allow the German regulators to voice their ongoing frustration over the lack of reform
that followed the recent revelations that the US' surveillance agency, the NSA, was collecting German citizens' data. Safe Harbor is a
critical agreement for US-based businesses - and particularly tech companies such as Google, Facebook,
and Twitter - as it allows them to legally transfer commercial data from the European Union to the US if
they agree to uphold EU citizens' rights over how the data is collected and handled. Even a short
suspension of the agreement could mean serious disruption to those US companies' business. For many
28
German officials and politicians, the NSA's ongoing ability to access the data of European citizens held by US companies violates the privacy
principles of the agreement - principles that companies can self-certify they uphold. "I, as well as several of my German colleagues, have serious
doubts whether the US companies that have self-certified under the agreement can be considered to be in a safe harbor," Alexander Dix,
Berlin's commissioner for data and information, told ZDNet. He called the NSA's data monitoring "aggressive" and "disproportionate".
Following the NSA spying scandal, there have been many calls across Europe to suspend the Safe Harbor
agreement - with some of the loudest calls coming from privacy-conscious Germany. Instead of
suspending the agreement, however, in November 2013 the European Commission sent the US a list of
13 reforms it would like to see made to Safe Harbor. The US government has still not fully responded to
the request, even though it promised to do so by last summer. The delay is weighing on many privacy regulators like
Dix, who believes that if Safe Harbor doesn't provide adequate protection, alternative measures that do should be considered. It's unclear
what the full impact of suspending Safe Harbor would be. Not being allowed to transfer data outside the
EU would certainly cause major problems for companies like Twitter whose servers are all in the US. For
companies that do have European servers, it would affect their back-office business, where local data
may be transferred across the Atlantic for processing by algorithms, profiles, fraud detection, and other
data services that are part of their day-to-day operations. It would also be fundamentally disruptive to
cloud service providers that have datacenters in multiple countries and constantly move data among
them.
D. Two Impacts to cloud computing
Barga, Gannon, and Reed 2011
(Roger Barga, Dennis Gannon, and Daniel Reed, They are Microsoft Researchers, “The Client and the Cloud, Democratizing Research
Computing” http://www.computer.org/cms/ComputingNow/homepage/2011/0311/W_IC_ClientandCloud.pdf_)
Whether we realize it or not, nearly all of us as consumers experience client plus cloud technology in our
daily lives: when we share photos, shop online, download and use applications for mobile phones, or use a search engine. This
seemingly invisible technology has changed how we live and work, empowering us with new kinds of
information and services, new ways of communicating and collaborating, and unparalleled convenience.
This technology has the same potential to transform research, but to date it has been relatively
underexplored. Cloud computing allows computation to occur in remote datacenters instead of on a user’s own computer. With the
power of the cloud, the easy-to-use tools that scientists and engineers use every day can become
infinitely more powerful than they have in the past — accessing and manipulating more data and applying more complex
calculations — while still being used in familiar ways. This ability to provide easy access at arbitrary scale has the power
to democratize research by making computing power available for the vast majority of researchers using
desktop computers today and by fostering collaborative research communities. Client plus cloud technology
provides an opportunity to empower researchers in new ways, profoundly changing the nature of research and accelerating engineering and
scientific discovery around the world. The Changing Nature of Research Virtually all research has become data-centric. Over the years,
researchers in all disciplines have benefited from improved computer performance. Now, low-cost
sensors and instruments are amassing petabytes of data from computer-assisted experiments,
simulations and other sources. Scientists and engineers are capturing data at a scale previously
unimaginable, and this necessitates a sea change in how they extract insight from all that data. Research
itself is at an inflection point as a result of this explosive data growth, as well as the growing trend of
interdisciplinary research. Scientists and academics are required to access and share large data sets and
collaborate with other researchers in many disparate locations. For example, accurately understanding and predicting
the long-term effects of a major environmental disaster such as an oil spill requires detailed analysis of ocean chemistry, biology and ecology,
and the simulation of complex oceanographic and atmospheric models. Today, an expert in one of those areas often works in just that one
discipline and only has access to information relevant to that specific area. But
to truly address increasingly complex global
issues such as climate change, genetics and personalized medicine, researchers will be expected to
29
develop ever-more-complex simulations and models. To do so, they will need to mine, search and
analyze huge sets of data in near-real time and collaborate across disciplines like never before. It’s their
ability to extract insight based upon statistics together with their ability to collaborate that will drive a
transformative effect. Not only are researchers in many fields confronted by an overwhelming amount
of data, they also have an insatiable demand for easy-to-use tools and computing support. One of the great
challenges created by relatively inexpensive computing infrastructure over the past 15 years is that we’ve turned generations of researchers
into systems administrators. Graduate students, post-doctorates and faculty spend months or years maintaining the computing systems they
require to do their research. However, at even the best- funded research organizations, the majority of researchers do not have access to the
computing resources they need. Scientists do not want to spend time building and managing computer infrastructure; they would prefer to
focus on their science and leverage easy-to-use technology to advance discovery. Universities and research organizations try to supply the
computational support needed, but often lack the necessary scale and funding to keep pace with the exponential explosion of demand. The
cost to maintain and refresh this computing infrastructure is becoming a larger and larger burden, and the economics are rapidly becoming
unsustainable.  The Client Plus Cloud: A Platform for the Democratization of Research Fortunately, the emergence of cloud
computing coupled with powerful software on “clients,” such as a local desktop computer, offers a solution to this conundrum. Cloud
computing can provide software applications and computing power to users as a service over the Internet via familiar tools. The offsite cloud is
constantly managed and upgraded, providing the ability to deliver computational resources on demand — a “pay as you go” strategy with
access to virtually unlimited computational capacity. The cost to use 10,000 processors for an hour is the same as using 10 processors for 1,000
hours, but will deliver radically faster analysis to the researcher. Organizations can buy just-in-time services to process data and exploit it,
rather than on a perpetual refresh of infrastructure that not only increases the capital costs associated with the computing, but also the energy
management and security issues, which are increasingly important constraints. Budgets can be invested in the research and in the acquisition of
cloud services rather than in the distributed maintenance of infrastructure, allowing researchers to focus on unsolved questions and discovery,
not on computing infrastructure. This will be a transformative shift for the majority of researchers who will be able to tap into the advanced
computational power that has only been available to a small portion of the researcher community. Powerful
cloud-based data
analysis tools will seamlessly connect to and amplify the capabilities of desktop applications that
researchers use today, such as extensive spreadsheets, visualization and simulation tools. Data stored in
the cloud can be accessible to researchers in many locations from different disciplines who can then
build communities around solving complex problems. In Europe, clouds will add a new dimension to the research
infrastructure, facilitating the work of researchers using multiple cloud providers and becoming a seamless extension of the highly evolved
computational grid. With cloud computing, virtually any researcher can use simple tools to get answers to complex data- intensive questions.
For example, a scientist might use a spreadsheet tool to tap into a genomic analysis service running on 600 servers or use a simple script to do
data mining across 10,000 fMRI images in minutes. A researcher could access data from remote instruments such as sensors in a rain forest and
pull it down to the desktop for visualization and analysis. By
extending the capabilities of powerful, easy-to-use PC, Web
and mobile applications through on- demand cloud services, the capabilities of the entire research
community will be broadened significantly, accelerating the pace of engineering and scientific discovery.
The net effect will be the democratization of research capabilities that are now available only to the
most elite scientists.
i. Genome sequencing is key to solve Anti-Biotic Resistant diseases
Koser et al 14
*ABR is anti-biotic resistant
*WGS is whole genome sequencing
1 Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK 2Clinical Microbiology and Public Health Laboratory, Public Health England,
Cambridge, UK 3Cambridge University Hospitals National Health Service Foundation Trust, Cambridge, UK 4Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute,
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK (Claudio, “Whole-genome sequencing to control antimicrobial resistance,” Cell Press, 2014,
Elsevier, Accessed April 8, 2015, http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0168952514001140/1-s2.0-S0168952514001140-main.pdf?_tid=b6aec3dc-def8-11e49b5b-00000aab0f6c&acdnat=1428612232_7e13b78f2121498282f37bd79b933b98)//AD
WGS has become an essential tool for drug development by enabling the rapid identification of
resistance mechanisms, particularly in the context of tuberculosis (TB), which remains a global public health emergency [15,16]. In
2005 the first published use of 454 pyrosequencing (the first second-generation WGS technology) was to identify the F0 subunit ofthe ATP synthase as the target of
30
which subsequently became the first representative of a novel class of anti-TB agents to be approved in 40 years [16,17]. This has
enabled researchers to sequence this gene in phylogenetically diverse reference collections to ensure thatitis conserved across Mycobacterium canettii as
well as the various lineages and species that comprise the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), the causative agents ofTB[18]. This represents an important
step because drug candidates are usually only tested against a small number of isolates during the early phases of drug
development. Similarly, only a limited number of MTBC genotypes are sampled in clinical trials, depending on where these are conducted [19]. As a result, intrinsically
resistant strains might be missed, ashas been the case forPA-824, ananti-TB agent in Phase III trials [19–21]. The early elucidation of
resistance mechanisms using WGS also has implications for the design of clinical trials. If resistance
mechanisms are discovered that only result in marginally increased minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) compared with the wild type MIC distributions, more
frequent dosing or higher doses could be employed in clinical trials to overcome this level of resistance. Moreover,
the discovery of cross-resistance between agents using WGS can influence the choice of antibiotics that
are included in novel regimens. TB is always treated with multiple antibiotics to minimise the chance of treatment failure as a result of the emergence of resistance
bedaquiline,
during treatment [22]. Regimens that contain agents to which a single mutation confers cross-resistance should be avoided if these mutations arise frequently in vivo. WGS has recently
highlighted that this may be the case with three Phase II trial regimens that contain bedaquiline and clofazimine because the mutational upregulation of an efflux pump confers cross-
it is increasingly being
used to distinguish exogenous reinfection from relapse of the primary infection, which is crucial in assessing the efficacy of the
drug or regimens under investigation [24,25]. Traditional epidemiological tools do not always provide the necessary resolution for this purpose. This is due to the fact that they only
interrogate minute parts of the genome {e.g., multilocus sequence typing (MLST) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa analyses only 0.18% of the genome [26]}. By contrast, WGS
interrogates the complete (or near-complete) genetic repertoire of an organism. Therefore, the resolution of WGS is only limited by the
rate of evolution of the pathogen and will become the gold standard for clinical trials of new antiTB agents and other infectious
diseases associated with recurrent disease [27,28].
resistance to both drugs [23]. In addition to being a tool to design clinical trials, WGS has become an increasingly important tool during clinical trials. Specifically,
Drug-resistant diseases cause extinction.
Davies 8—Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia
(Julian, “Resistance redux: Infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance and the future of mankind”, EMBO Rep. Jul 2008; 9(Suppl 1): S18–S21, dml)
For many years, antibiotic-resistant
pathogens have been recognized as one of the main threats to human
survival, as some experts predict a return to the pre-antibiotic era. So far, national efforts to exert strict
control over the use of antibiotics have had limited success and it is not yet possible to achieve worldwide concerted action to
reduce the growing threat of multi-resistant pathogens: there are too many parties involved. Furthermore, the problem has not yet really arrived on the radar
screen of many physicians and clinicians, as antimicrobials still work most of the time—apart from the occasional news headline that yet another nasty superbug
has emerged in the local hospital. Legislating the use of antibiotics for non-therapeutic applications and curtailing general public access to them is conceivable, but
legislating the medical profession is an entirely different matter. In order to meet the growing problem of antibiotic resistance among pathogens,
the
discovery and development of new antibiotics and alternative treatments for infectious diseases, together
with tools for rapid diagnosis that will ensure effective and appropriate use of existing antibiotics, are imperative. How the health services,
pharmaceutical industry and academia respond in the coming years will determine the future of treating
infectious diseases. This challenge is not to be underestimated: microbes are formidable adversaries
and, despite our best efforts, continue to exact a toll on the
ii. Key to warming adaptation
Pope 10
[ Vicky Pope is the head of climate science advice at the Met Office Hadley Centre, “ How science will
shape climate adaptation plans,” 16 September 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cifgreen/2010/sep/16/science-climate-change-adaptation]
the demand for information on how climate change will affect our future outstrips the current
capability of the science and climate models. My view is that as scientists, we can provide useful information, but we need to be clear about its
limitations and strive to improve information for the future. We need to be clear about the uncertainties in our projections while still extracting useful
Some would argue that
31
information for practical decision-making. I have been involved in developing climate models for the last 15 years and despite their limitations we are now able to assess the probability of
different outcomes for the first time. That means
we can quantify the risk of these outcomes happening. These projections – the UK climate projections
published in 2009 - are already forming the backbone of adaptation decisions being made in the UK for 50 to 100 years ahead. A project commissioned by the Environment Agency to
investigate the impact of climate change on the Thames estuary over the next 100 years concluded that current government predictions for sea level rise are realistic. A major outcome from
the scientific analysis was that the worst-case scenarios for high water levels can be significantly reduced - from 4.2m to 2.7m – because we are able to rule out the more extreme sea level
rise. As a result, massive investment in a tide-excluding estuary barrage is unlikely to be needed this century. This will be reviewed as more information becomes available, taking a flexible
approach to adaptation. The energy industry, working with the Met Office, looked at the likely impact of climate change on its infrastructure. The project found that very few changes in design
standards are required, although it did highlight a number of issues. For instance, transformers could suffer higher failure rates and efficiency of some types of thermal power station could be
markedly reduced because of increasing temperatures. A particular concern highlighted by this report and reiterated in today's report from the Climate Change Committee - the independent
body that advises government on its climate targets - is that little is known about how winds will change in the future - important because of the increasing role of wind power in the UK energy
Demand for
climate information is increasing, particularly relating to changes in the short to medium term . More still needs
to be done to refine the climate projections and make them more usable and accessible. This is especially true if
we are to provide reliable projections for the next 10 to 30 years. The necessary science and modelling tools are
being developed, and the first tentative results are being produced. We need particularly to look at how we communicate complex and often conflicting results. In order to explain
mix. Fortunately many people, from private industry to government, recognise the value of even incomplete information to help make decisions about the future.
complex science to a lay audience, scientists and journalists are prone to progressively downplay the complexity. Conversely, in striving to adopt a more scientific approach and include the full
range of uncertainty, we often give sceptics an easy route to undermine the science. All too often uncertainty in science offers a convenient excuse for delaying important decisions. However,
in the case of climate change there is overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing — in part due to human activities — and that changes will accelerate if emissions continue unabated.
Scientists now need to
press on in developing the emerging tools that will be used to underpin sensible adaptation decisions which will
determine our future.
In examining the uncertainty in the science we must take care to not throw away what we do know. Science has established that climate is changing.
Warming is inevitable–only adaptation can prevent extinction
Romero 8
[Purple, reporter for ABS-CBN news, 05/17/2008, Climate change and human extinction--are you ready
to be fossilized? http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/05/16/08/climate-change-and-humanextinction-are-you-ready-be-fossilized
Climate change killed the dinosaurs. Will it kill us as well? Will we let it destroy the human race? This was the grim, depressing message that hung in the background of
the Climate Change Forum hosted on Friday by the Philippine National Red Cross at the Manila Hotel. "Not one dinosaur is alive today. Maybe someday it will be our
fossils that another race will dig up in the future, " said Roger Bracke of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, underscoring his
point that no less than extinction is faced by the human race, unless we are able to address global warming and climate
change in this generation. Bracke, however, countered the pessimistic mood of the day by saying that the human race still has an opportunity to save
itself. This more hopeful view was also presented by the four other speakers in the forum. Bracke pointed out that all peoples of the world must be involved in two
types of response to the threat of climate change: mitigation and adaptation. "Prevention" is no longer possible , according to Bracke and the other experts at
the forum, since climate change is already happening. Last chance The forum's speakers all noted the increasing number and intensity
of devastating typhoons--most recently cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, which killed more than 100,000 people--as evidence that the world's climatic
and weather conditions are turning deadly because of climate change. They also reminded the audience that deadly typhoons have also hit
the Philippines recently, particularly Milenyo and Reming, which left hundreds of thousands of Filipino families homeless. World Wildlife Fund Climate and Energy Program head Naderev Saño
this generation the last chance for the human race" to do something and ensure that humanity stays alive
in this planet. According to Saño, while most members of our generation will be dead by the time the worst effects of climate change are felt, our children will be the ones to suffer.
said that "
How will Filipinos survive climate change? Well, first of all, they have to be made aware that climate change is a problem that threatens their lives. The easiest way to do this – as former
Consultant for the Secretariats of the UN Convention on Climate Change Dr. Pak Sum Low told abs-cbnews.com/Newsbreak – is to particularize the disasters that it could cause. Talking in the
language of destruction, Pak and other experts paint this portrait of a Philippines hit by climate change: increased typhoons in Visayas, drought in Mindanao, destroyed agricultural areas in
Pampanga, and higher incidence rates of dengue and malaria. Sañom said that as polar ice caps melt due to global warming, sea levels will rise, endangering coastal and low-lying areas like
Manila. He said Manila Bay would experience a sea level increase of 72 meters over 20 years. This means that from Pampanga to Nueva Ecija, farms and fishponds would be in danger of being
would be inundated in saltwater. Sañom added that Albay, which has been marked as a vulnerable area to typhoons, would be the top province at risk. Sañom also pointed out that extreme
weather conditions arising from climate change, including typhoons and severe droughts, would have social, economic and political consequences: Ruined farmlands and fishponds would
hamper crop growth and reduce food sources, typhoons would displace people, cause diseases, and limit actions in education and employment. Thus, Saño said, while environmental
protection should remain at the top of the agenda in fighting climate change, solutions to the phenomenon "must also be economic, social, moral and political." Mitigation Joyceline Goco,
Climate Change Coordinator of the Environment Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, focused her lecture on the programs Philippine government is
implementing in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Goco said that the Philippines is already a signatory to global agreements calling for a reduction in the "greenhouse gasses"-mostly carbon dioxide, chloroflourocarbons and methane--that are responsible for trapping heat inside the planet and raising global temperatures. Goco said the DENR, which is tasked to
oversee and activate the Clean Development Mechanism, has registered projects which would reduce methane and carbon dioxide. These projects include landfill and electricity generation
initiatives. She also said that the government is also looking at alternative fuel sources in order do reduce the country's dependence on the burning of fossil fuels--oil--which are known culprits
behind global warming. Bracke however said that mitigation is not enough. "The ongoing debate about mitigation of climate change effects is highly technical. It involves making fundamental
changes in the policies of governments, making costly changes in how industry operates. All of this takes time and, frankly, we're not even sure if such mitigation efforts will be successful. In
A few nations and communities have already
begun adapting their lifestyles to cope with the effects of climate change. In Bangladesh, farmers have switched
to raising ducks instead of chickens because the latter easily succumb to weather disturbances and immediate effects, such as floods. In Norway, houses with
the meantime, while the debate goes on, the effects of climate change are already happening to us." Adaptation
32
elevated foundations have been constructed to decrease displacement due to typhoons. In the Philippines main body for fighting climate change, the
Presidential Task Force on Climate Change, (PTFCC) headed by Department on Energy Sec. Angelo Reyes, has identified emission reduction measures and has looked into what fuel mix could
be both environment and economic friendly. The Department of Health has started work with the World Health Organization in strengthening its surveillance mechanisms for health services.
, bringing information hatched from PTFCC’s studies down to and crafting an action plan for adaptation with the communities in the
remains a challenge. Bracke said that the Red Cross is already at the forefront of efforts to prepare for disasters related to climate change. He pointed out that
However
barangay level
since the Red Cross was founded in 1919, it has already been helping people beset by natural disasters. "The problems resulting from climate change are not new to the Red Cross. The Red
Cross has been facing those challenges for a long time. However, the frequency and magnitude of those problems are unprecedented. This is why the Red Cross can no longer face these
problems alone," he said. Using a medieval analogy, Bracke said that the Red Cross can no longer be a "knight in shining armor rescuing a damsel in distress" whenever disaster strikes. He said
that disaster preparedness in the face of climate change has to involve people at the grassroots level. "The role of the Red Cross in the era of climate change will be less as a direct actor and
increase as a trainor and guide to other partners who will help us adapt to climate change and respond to disasters," said Bracke. PNRC chairman and Senator Richard Gordon gave a picture of
how the PNRC plans to take climate change response to the grassroots level, through its project, dubbed "Red Cross 143". Gordon explained how Red Cross 143 will train forty-four volunteers
from each community at a barangay level. These volunteers will have training in leading communities in disaster response. Red Cross 143 volunteers will rely on information technology like
cellular phones to alert the PNRC about disasters in their localities, mobilize people for evacuation, and lead efforts to get health care, emergency supplies, rescue efforts, etc.
33
2AC Extensions
34
Inherency
XO 12333 violates the 4th Amendment and it is a threat to U.S Democracy
John Napier Tye July 20, 2014
The Washington Post Sunday Every Edition How a Reagan order set the NSA loose OUTLOOK; Pg. B01 TH
In March I received a call from the White House counsel's office regarding a speech I had prepared for my boss at the State Department. The
speech was about the impact that the disclosure of National Security Agency surveillance prac-tices would have on U.S. Internet freedom
policies. The draft stated that "if U.S. citizens disagree with congressional and executive branch determinations about the proper scope of
signals intelligence activities, they have the opportunity to change the policy through our democratic process." But the White House counsel's
office told me that no, that wasn't true. I was instructed to amend the line, making a gen-eral reference to "our laws and policies," rather than
Even after all the reforms President Obama has announced, some intelligence
practices remain so secret, even from members of Congress, that there is no opportunity for our
democracy to change them. Public debate about the bulk collection of U.S. citizens' data by the NSA has
focused largely on Section 215 of the Pa-triot Act, through which the government obtains court orders to compel American
telecommunications companies to turn over phone data. But Section 215 is a small part of the picture and does not
include the universe of collection and storage of communications by U.S. persons authorized under
Executive Order 12333. From 2011 until April of this year, I worked on global Internet freedom policy as a civil servant at the State
our intelligence practices. I did.
Department. In that capacity, I was cleared to receive top-secret and "sensitive compartmented" information. Based in part on classi-fied facts
I believe that Americans should be even more concerned about the
collection and storage of their communications under Executive Order 12333 than under Section 215.
Bulk data collection that occurs inside the United States contains built-in protections for U.S. persons,
defined as U.S. citizens, permanent residents and companies. Such collection must be authorized by
statute and is subject to oversight from Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The statutes set a high bar for
that I am prohibited by law from publishing,
collecting the content of communications by U.S. persons. For example, Section 215 permits the bulk collection only of U.S. telephone
metadata - lists of incoming and outgoing phone numbers - but not audio of the calls. Executive Order 12333
contains no such
protections for U.S. persons if the collection occurs outside U.S. borders. Issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 to authorize
foreign intelligence investigations, 12333 is not a statute and has never been subject to meaningful oversight from
Congress or any court. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has said that
the committee has not been able to "sufficiently" oversee activities conducted under 12333. Unlike Section 215,
the executive order authorizes collection of the content of communications, not just metadata, even for U.S. persons. Such persons cannot be
if the con-tents of a U.S. person's communications are
"incidentally" collected (an NSA term of art) in the course of a lawful over-seas foreign intelligence investigation, then
Section 2.3(c) of the executive order explicitly authorizes their retention. It does not require that the
affected U.S. persons be suspected of wrongdoing and places no limits on the volume of com-munications by
individually targeted under 12333 without a court order. However,
U.S. persons that may be collected and retained. "Incidental" collection may sound insignificant, but it is a legal loophole that can be stretched
very wide. Remember that the NSA is building a data center in Utah five times the size of the U.S. Capitol building, with its own power plant
that will reportedly burn $40 million a year in electricity. "Incidental collection" might need its own power plant. A legal regime in which U.S.
citizens' data receives different levels of privacy and oversight, depending on whether it is collected inside or outside U.S. borders, may have
made sense when most communications by U.S. persons stayed in-side the United States. But today, U.S.
communications
increasingly travel across U.S. borders - or are stored beyond them. For example, the Google and Yahoo
e-mail systems rely on networks of "mirror" servers located throughout the world. An e-mail from New
York to New Jersey is likely to wind up on servers in Brazil, Japan and Britain. The same is true for most
purely domestic communications. Executive Order 12333 contains nothing to prevent the NSA from
collecting and storing all such communications - content as well as metadata - provided that such collection occurs outside
the United States in the course of a lawful foreign intelligence investigation. No warrant or court approval is required, and such collection never
35
need be reported to Congress.
None of the reforms that Obama announced earlier this year will affect such
collection. Without any legal barriers to such collection, U.S. persons must increasingly rely on the affected companies to imple-ment
security measures to keep their communications private. The executive order does not require the NSA to notify or
obtain consent of a company before collecting its users' data. The attorney general, rather than a court, must approve
"minimization procedures" for handling the data of U.S. persons that is collected under 12333, to protect their rights. I do not know the details
of those procedures. But the director of national intelligence recently declassified a document (United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18)
showing that U.S. agencies may retain such data for five years. Before I left the State Department, I filed a complaint with the department's
the current system of collection and storage of communications by U.S. persons
under Executive Order 12333 violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. I
inspector general, arguing that
have also brought my complaint to the House and Senate intelligence committees and to the inspector general of the NSA. I am not the first
person with knowledge of classified activities to publicly voice concerns about the collection and re-tention of communications by U.S. persons
under 12333. The president's own Review Group on Intelligence and Com-munication Technologies, in Recommendation 12 of its public report,
addressed the matter. But the review group coded its references in a way that masked the true nature of the problem. At first glance,
Recommendation 12 appears to concern Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which authorizes collection inside the United States against
foreign targets outside the United States. Although the recommendation does not explicitly mention Executive Order 12333, it does refer to
"any other authority." A member of the review group confirmed to me that this reference was written deliberately to include Executive Order
12333. Recommendation 12 urges that all data of U.S. persons incidentally collected under such authorities be immediately purged unless it has
foreign intelligence value or is necessary to prevent serious harm. The review group further rec-ommended that a U.S. person's incidentally
collected data never be used in criminal proceedings against that person, and that the government refrain from searching communications by
U.S. persons unless it obtains a warrant or unless such searching is necessary to prevent serious harm. The White House understood that
Recommendation 12 was intended to apply to 12333. That understanding was con-veyed to me verbally by several White House staffers, and
was confirmed in an unclassified White House document that I saw during my federal employment and that is now in the possession of several
congressional committees. In that document, the White House stated that adoption of Recommendation 12 would require "significant changes"
to current practice under Executive Order 12333 and indicated that it had no plans to make such changes. All of this calls into question some
recent administration statements. Gen. Keith Alexander, a former NSA director, has said publicly that for years the NSA maintained a U.S.
person e-mail metadata program similar to the Section 215 tele-phone metadata program. And he has maintained that the e-mail program was
terminated in 2011 because "we thought we could better protect civil liberties and privacy by doing away with it." Note, however, that
Alexander never said that the NSA stopped collecting such data - merely that the agency was no longer using the Patriot Act to do so. I suggest
that Americans dig deeper. Consider the possibility that Section 215 collection does not represent the outer limits of collection on U.S. persons
but rather is a mechanism to backfill that portion of U.S. person data that cannot be collected overseas under 12333. Proposals for replacing
Section 215 collection are currently being debated in Congress. We need a similar debate about Executive Order 12333.
The order as
used today threatens our democracy. There is no good reason that U.S. citizens should receive weaker
privacy and oversight protections simply because their communications are collected outside, not
inside, our borders. I have never made any unauthorized disclosures of classified information, nor would I ever do so. I fully support
keep-ing secret the targets, sources and methods of U.S. intelligence as crucial elements of national security. I was never a disgruntled federal
employee; I loved my job at the State Department. I left voluntarily and on good terms to take a job outside of government. A draft of this
article was reviewed and cleared by the State Department and the NSA to ensure that it contained no classified material. When I started at the
I don't believe that there is any valid
interpretation of the Fourth Amendment that could permit the government to collect and store a large
portion of U.S. citizens' online communications, without any court or congressional oversight, and without any suspicion of
State Department, I took an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States.
wrongdoing. Such a legal regime risks abuse in the long run, regardless of whether one trusts the individu-als in office at a particular moment. I
am coming forward because I think Americans deserve an honest answer to the simple question: What kind of data is the NSA collecting on
millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans?
NSA taps Yahoo, Google and other tech companies to gain access to Americans’ data
Barton Gellman; Ashkan Soltani 2013
The Washington Post October 31, Thursday Suburban Edition SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01 TH
The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect
Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials. By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will
from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep
everything it collects, but it keeps a lot. According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSA's acquisitions directorate
36
sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the
agency's headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back
181,280,466 new records - including "metadata," which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text,
audio and video. The
NSA's principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated
jointly with the agency's British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception
points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry
information among the data cen-ters of the Silicon Valley giants. The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA,
under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door ac-cess to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process. The
MUSCULAR project appears to be an unusually aggressive use of NSA tradecraft against flagship
American com-panies. The agency is built for high-tech spying, with a wide range of digital tools, but it has not been known to use
them routinely against U.S. companies. In a statement, the NSA said it is "focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign
intelligence targets only." "NSA applies Attorney General-approved processes to protect the privacy of U.S. persons - minimizing the likelihood
of their information in our targeting, collection, processing, exploitation, retention, and dissemination," it said. In a statement, Google's
chief legal officer, David Drummond, said the company has "long been concerned about the possibility
of this kind of snooping" and has not provided the government with access to its systems. "We are
outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private
fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform," he said. A Yahoo spokeswoman said, "We have strict
controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other
government agency." Under PRISM, the NSA gathers huge volumes of online communications records by legally compelling U.S. technolo-gy
companies, including Yahoo and Google, to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. That pro-gram, which was first
disclosed by The Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper in Britain, is authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act and
overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Intercepting communications overseas has clear advantages for the NSA, with
looser restrictions and less oversight. NSA
documents about the effort refer directly to "full take," "bulk access"
and "high volume" operations on Yahoo and Google networks. Such large-scale collection of Internet
content would be illegal in the United States, but the operations take place overseas, where the NSA is
allowed to presume that anyone using a foreign data link is a foreigner. Outside U.S. territory, statutory restrictions
on surveillance seldom apply and the FISC has no jurisdiction. Senate Intel-ligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has
acknowledged that Congress conducts
little oversight of intelligence-gathering under the presidential authority
of Executive Order 12333 , which defines the basic pow-ers and responsibilities of the intelligence
agencies. John Schindler, a former NSA chief analyst and frequent defender who teaches at the Naval War College, said it
is ob-vious why the agency would prefer to avoid restrictions where it can. "Look, NSA has platoons of lawyers, and their entire job is figuring
out how to stay within the law and maximize col-lection by exploiting every loophole," he said. "It's
fair to say the rules are less
restrictive under Executive Order 12333 than they are under FISA," the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In a
statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence denied that it was using executive authority to "get around the limitations"
imposed by FISA. The
operation to infiltrate data links exploits a fundamental weakness in systems
architecture. To guard against data loss and system slowdowns, Google and Yahoo maintain fortresslike
data centers across four continents and connect them with thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable. Data
move seamlessly around these globe-spanning "cloud" networks, which represent billions of dollars of
investment. For the data centers to operate effectively, they synchronize large volumes of information
about account holders. Ya-hoo's internal network, for example, sometimes transmits entire e-mail
archives - years of messages and attachments - from one data center to another. Tapping the Google
and Yahoo clouds allows the NSA to intercept communications in real time and to take "a retro-spective
look at target activity," according to one internal NSA document. To obtain free access to data- center traffic, the NSA had to
circumvent gold-standard security measures. Google "goes to great lengths to protect the data and intellectual property in these centers,"
according to one of the company's blog posts, with tightly audited access controls, heat-sensitive cameras, round-the-clock guards and
biometric verification of identities. Google and Yahoo also pay for premium data links, designed to be faster, more reliable and more secure. In
recent years, both of them are said to have bought or leased thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables for their own exclusive use. They had
reason to think, insiders said, that their private, internal networks were safe from prying eyes. In an NSA presentation slide on "Google Cloud
Exploitation," however, a sketch shows where the "Public Internet" meets the internal "Google Cloud" where their data reside. In hand-printed
37
letters, the drawing notes that encryption is "added and removed here!" The artist adds a smiley face, a cheeky celebration of victory over
Google security. Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing. "I hope you publish this," one of
them said. For the MUSCULAR project, the GCHQ directs all intake into a "buffer" that can hold three to five days of traffic be-fore recycling
storage space. From the buffer, custom-built NSA tools unpack and decode the special data formats that the two companies use inside their
clouds. Then the data are sent through a series of filters to "select" information the NSA wants and "defeat" what it does not. PowerPoint slides
about the Google cloud, for example, show that the NSA tries to filter out all data from the company's "Web crawler," which indexes Internet
pages. According to the briefing documents, prepared by participants in the MUSCULAR project, collection from inside Ya-hoo and Google has
produced important intelligence leads against hostile foreign governments that are specified in the documents. Last month, long before The
Post approached Google to discuss the penetration of its cloud, Eric Grosse, vice president for security engineering, said the company is rushing
to encrypt the links between its data centers. "It's an arms race," he said then. "We see these government agencies as among the most skilled
players in this game." Yahoo has not announced plans to encrypt its data-center links. Because digital communications and cloud storage do not
usually adhere to national boundaries, MUSCULAR and a previously disclosed NSA operation to collect Internet address books have
amassed content and metadata on a previous-ly unknown scale from U.S. citizens and residents. Those
operations have gone undebated in public or in Congress be-cause their existence was classified. The Google and
Yahoo operations call attention to an asymmetry in U.S. surveillance law. Although Congress has lifted
some restrictions on NSA domestic surveillance on grounds that purely foreign communications
sometimes pass over U.S. switches and cables, it has not added restrictions overseas, where American
communications or data stores now cross over foreign switches. "Thirty-five years ago, different countries had their
own telecommunications infrastructure, so the division between foreign and domestic collection was clear," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a
member of the intelligence panel, said in an interview. "Today there's a global communications infrastructure, so
there's a greater risk of collecting on Americans when the NSA collects overseas." It is not clear how much data
from Americans is collected and how much of that is retained. One weekly report on MUSCULAR says the British operators of the site allow the
NSA to contribute 100,000 "selectors," or search terms. That is more than twice the number in use in the PRISM program, but even 100,000
cannot easily account for the mil-lions of records that are said to be sent to Fort Meade each day. In 2011, when the FISC learned that the NSA
was using similar methods to collect and analyze data streams - on a much smaller scale - from cables on U.S. territory, Judge John D. Bates
ruled that the program was illegal under FISA and inconsistent with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.
Recent Restrictions to 12333 aren’t doing enough
Ellen Nakashima 14
The Washington Post December 18, 2014 Thursday Regional Edition Congress sets retention limits on data that U.S. collects abroad
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A06 TH
A little-noticed provision in the Intelligence Authorization Act passed by Congress last week puts
restrictions on spy agencies' ability to keep communications collected overseas, but critics say it does
not go far enough to protect Ameri-cans' privacy. The measure marks the first time Congress, in the wake of revelations by
former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about widespread government surveillance, has tried to put some limits in an
area of espionage gov-erned expressly by executive authority. Section 309
of the legislation, which is headed to President
Obama's desk for his signature, specifies that communica-tions that are not gathered through a court
order or subpoena shall not be held longer than five years, with some excep-tions. The provision applies
to communications collected overseas without court oversight under Executive Order 12333, a Reagan-era
directive that spells out surveillance authorities and responsibilities. The executive order covers collection activities that
are "reasonably anticipated" to result in gathering of communications to or from a U.S. citizen or
resident. Its supporters include Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and outgoing Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), intelligence committee members who
were highly critical of certain NSA activities revealed by Snowden, such as the bulk collection of data on Americans' phone calls. "While this
provision would not place meaningful new restrictions on the NSA, Wyden believes this provision sets a
precedent for creating a legislative framework on Executive Order 12333 collection, where there
currently is none," his spokesman Keith Chu said. Civil liberties advocates said the measure is a step in the right direction but contains
numerous loopholes that put Amer-icans' privacy at risk. It fails to "fully address the underlying problem: The executive
branch is collecting vast amounts of U.S. persons' in-formation . . . without congressional authorization
38
or appropriate judicial process," said Neema Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union. Under the provision,
a spy agency may keep data longer than five years if, for instance, it is determined to be foreign intelligence or counterintelligence; is believed
to constitute evidence of a crime; or if none of the parties to the commu-nication is an American or a U.S. resident. It also allows an agency to
keep the data if the agency head decides it is nec-essary to protect national security and informs Congress in writing. Some
lawmakers
said that the rushed nature of the bill, passed by the Senate on Dec. 9 and the House the next day, offered no time for debate over a provision that they contend weakens privacy rights. "The manner in
which this language was inserted late in the process, without real notice to most House Members, is
indicative of the lengths that supporters of unwarranted surveillance will go to undercut the Fourth
Amendment to the Constitution and is a disservice to Congress," Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said in an e-mail. "If
members had the oppor-tunity to adequately review this change in law, I sincerely doubt it would have passed." House members such as
Lofgren said the provision places in statute an authority to collect communications that didn't exist before. A
Senate Intelligence
Committee spokesman said the measure provides no new authority for collection or retention. David
Medine, chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent executive branch
watch-dog, said that imposing retention limits on communications collected by intelligence agencies is
"an important statement by Congress that it has the authority and is willing to step in and legislate in a
realm that has largely been governed by the executive branch." He said his view does not necessarily represent those of
the board members at large. The board is in the initial stage of an inquiry into activities conducted under Executive Order 12333.
X0 12333 sets the guidelines for all NSA actions and it justifies the lack of oversight for
their programs.
Watkins 2013 (Ali Watkins, November 21, 2013, McClatchy Washington Bureau
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/21/209167/most-of-nsas-data-collection-authorized.html
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency’s collection of information on Americans’ cellphone and Internet usage reaches far beyond the
two programs that have received public attention in recent months, to a presidential order that is older than the Internet itself. Approved by
President Ronald Reagan in 1981, Executive
Order 12333 (referred to as “twelve-triple-three”) still governs most of what
the NSA does. It is a sweeping mandate that outlines the duties and foreign intelligence collection for
the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies. It is not governed by Congress, and critics say it has little privacy
protection and many loopholes. What changes have been made to it have come through guidelines set by the attorney general or
other documents. The result is a web of intelligence law so complicated that it stymies even those tasked with interpreting it. As one former
executive official said, “It’s complicated stuff.” Confusing though it may be, the
order remains the primary authority under
which the country’s intelligence agencies conduct the majority of their operations. Neither the office of
Attorney General Eric Holder nor that of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper would comment about 12333. Under its
provisions, agencies have the ability to function outside the confines of a warrant or court order, if
approved by the attorney general. Its Section 2.5 effectively gives the attorney general the right to authorize
intelligence agencies to operate outside the confines of judicial or congressional oversight, so long as
it’s in pursuit of foreign intelligence – including collecting information of Americans. “The Attorney
General hereby is delegated the power to approve the use for intelligence purposes, within the United
States or against a United States person abroad, of any technique for which a warrant would be
required,” 12333 reads. Monitoring the actual content of Americans’ communications still requires a warrant under 12333, but
metadata – the hidden information about a communication that tells where a person is, who he’s
communicating with, even the number of credit cards used in a transaction – can be swept up without
congressional or court approval. The impact of 12333 is enormous – and largely unknown. Documents leaked by
former NSA contractor Edward Snowden suggest that less than half of the metadata the NSA has collected has been acquired under provisions
of the USA Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the two laws that have received the most attention for permitting NSA
programs. Gen.
Keith Alexander, the NSA director, has ratified that impression, saying that the majority of NSA
data is collected “solely pursuant to the authorities provided by Executive Order 12333.” At the time the
order was written, the nation’s intelligence community was dealing with a shattered reputation after decades of widespread abuses. The
39
Church Committee – a special congressional panel tasked in the 1970s with investigating intelligence abuses – had revealed CIA efforts to cover
up the Watergate scandal, the CIA’s opening of Americans’ mail, and the agency’s efforts to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Executive Order
12333 was intended to bolster a reeling intelligence community and further define its authority to conduct foreign intelligence gathering. The
global telecommunications network didn’t exist, and collecting foreign communications posed little risk for Americans’ data to be swept up in
the dragnet. But in the three decades since 12333 was written, global communications have changed dramatically. The order, however, has
not. “In 1996, when (12333) was 15 years old, we said, ‘Gee, this probably ought to be revised.’ Now we’re more than 15 years after that,” said
John Bellinger, a former legal adviser to the National Security Council during the presidency of George W. Bush. Still, the order hasn’t
undergone any major change, “in part, because it’s so difficult and complex to change it,” he said. The
National Security Act of
1947 requires that Congress be kept “fully and currently informed” about “significant” intelligence
activities. But 12333 activities receive little oversight. The problem, legal experts and lawmakers say, is that only the
executive branch – and the intelligence agencies that are part of it – determines what “fully and
currently informed” means and what details it needs to share with Congress. “There’s no clear definition,” said
House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who recently sparred with fellow committee members over whether the NSA had
briefed the panel on its monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone. “We need to have a bigger discussion of what our mutual
understanding is of what we want to be informed of.” Schiff isn’t alone in raising questions about how well informed Congress is kept of
activities undertaken under 12333 authorities. Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate Intelligence
Committee, has called for a broad review of what’s taking place under 12333, noting that the order
authorizes phone and email metadata collection beyond what the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act does. Feinstein has consistently defended the NSA’s collection of domestic cellphone metadata,
saying the program under which it is doing so is overseen by both the courts and Congress. But even
she has said the 12333 programs skirt similar protections. “The other programs do not (have the same oversight as
FISA). And that’s what we need to take a look at,” she said, adding that her committee has not been able to “sufficiently” oversee the programs
run under the executive order. “Twelve-triple-three programs are under the executive branch entirely.” Feinstein has also said the order has
few, if any, privacy protections. “I don’t think privacy protections are built into it,” she said. “It’s an executive policy. The executive controls
intelligence in the country.” Intelligence
officials have said that each respective agency’s 12333 collection is
governed by supplemental guidelines written by the attorney general and that those guidelines
protect Americans’ data. But intelligence officials have admitted that most of those guidelines have
not been revisited in decades and that they don’t offer the same protections as the metadata
collection programs authorized under the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A
glimpse of those classified guidelines emerged at a hearing convened earlier this month of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which
Congress created in 2004 to oversee the government’s expanded intelligence collection operations, but that until that meeting had never held a
substantive hearing. Pressing a panel of intelligence community lawyers, board members asked what evidence is required before U.S.
intelligence agents are allowed to sift through metadata collected under 12333. They learned that virtually none is required. Jim Dempsey, a
member of the board who is the vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based organization
encouraging free and open Internet, asked whether it was right that 12333 records can be searched without establishing a “reasonable,
articulable suspicion,” the standard needed for searching records collected under the Patriot Act or FISA. The NSA’s deputy general counsel,
Rajesh De, acknowledged that that standard might not apply. “I think, yeah,” he said. But he declined to say what rules might apply, referring by
using jargon. “I don’t know if we’ve declassified sort of minimization procedures,” he said. “But there are different rules that apply.” Even those
rules – whatever they are – can be broken, both intentionally and unintentionally. When they are, there is no requirement that the violation be
reported outside the executive branch. According to an internal memo leaked by Snowden and published in August, the NSA saw more than
2,000 compliance violations with its 12333 programs in the span of a year, from March 2011 to March 2012. For comparison, the agency
tracked just over 700 violations in the same period in the telephone and Internet metadata collection programs that have received so much
attention. The 12333 violations were not reported to the congressional intelligence committees. Intelligence
community leaders have been loath to address 12333 issues when testifying before Congress. During a recent House Judiciary Committee
hearing into metadata collections, Director of National Intelligence Clapper refused to answer when asked about specific violations. “The
subject matter of the hearing was Section 215 and 702,” said Clapper, referring to sections of the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, respectively. “And these violations . . . (occurred) under the auspices of Executive Order 12333.” Feinstein has said publicly
that she thinks more attention needs to be paid to what takes place under 12333. A
bill recently approved by the Senate
Intelligence Committee would require increased congressional oversight of 12333, including more
detailed reporting of what guidelines govern access to information collected under it and violations of
those guidelines.
40
12333 provides a legal loophole to avoid the need for warrants to collect Americans’
data.
Nakashima and Soltani 2014 ( Ellen Nakashima and Ashkan Soltani July 23, 2014, The Washington Post, Privacy watchdog’s
next target: the least-known but biggest aspect of NSA surveillance. Ellen Nakashima is a national security reporter for The Washington Post.
She focuses on issues relating to intelligence, technology and civil liberties.)
An independent privacy watchdog agency announced Wednesday that it will turn its focus to the largest and most complex of U.S. electronic
surveillance regimes: signals intelligence collection under Executive Order 12333. That highly technical name masks a constellation of complex
surveillance activities carried out for foreign intelligence purposes by the National Security Agency under executive authority. But unlike two
other major NSA collection programs that have been in the news lately, EO
12333 surveillance is conducted without court
oversight and with comparatively little Congressional review. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an
independent executive branch agency, over the last year has taken in­depth looks at the other two NSA programs. It concluded the bulk
collection of Americans’ phone call metadata under Section 215 of the Patriot Act was illegal and raised constitutional concerns. By contrast, it
found the gathering of call and email content under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to be lawful, though certain
elements pushed “close to the line” of being unconstitutional. Now the board is planning to delve into EO 12333 collection, among other topics.
It is not clear, however, how deep or broad its examination will be. “It’s obviously a complex thing to look at 12333,” but "it's something we'll
likely be delving into,” said a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board who requested anonymity in order to speak freely. The
board has highlighted 12333 issues in the past. For example, each
agency is supposed to have guidelines to carry out
the executive order, but some guidelines are three decades old. The board has encouraged the
guidelines be updated, the source said. Collection outside the United States has attained new relevance given media reports in the last
year about broad NSA surveillance based on documents leaked to journalists by former agency contractor Edward Snowden. “Americans
should be even more concerned about the collection and storage of their communications under
Executive Order 12333 than under Section 215,” said a former State Department official, John Napier
Tye, in an oped published Sunday in The Washington Post. Issued in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, EO 12333 laid
out the roles and powers of the various intelligence agencies. It specified that the NSA had control of signals
intelligence collection for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. But the nature and scope of the collection activities have not
been clarified for the public. Unlike
surveillance inside the United States or which targets U.S. citizens and
legal residents, collection under 12333 does not require a warrant. Once upon a time, you could be
fairly certain that overseas collection would pick up only foreigners’ phone calls, and that Americans’
communications would stay inside the United States. But today, emails, calls and other
communications cross U.S. borders and are often stored beyond them. Companies like Google and
Yahoo have “mirror” servers around the world that hold customers’ data. That means Americans’ data
are often stored both in the United States and abroad simultaneously, subject to two different legal
and oversight regimes. Surveillance on U.S. soil requires court permission and an individual warrant
for each target. Surveillance abroad requires a warrant for U.S. persons, but if collection is coming
from a data center overseas, large volumes of Americans’ communications may be picked up as
“incidental” to collection on a foreign target. “So a lot of ordinary data crosses borders, including
domestic communications between Americans,” said Edward W. Felten, a computer science professor
at Princeton University. Or as former NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis has said of the falling away of
borders in cyberspace: “There is not an away game. There is not a home game. There is only one
game.” With the merging of the home and away games, the question arises as to whether a legal regime that bases privacy protections and
oversight largely on geography is sufficient, analysts say. The Post reported last fall, for example, that NSA was collecting
500,000 e­mail account “address books” a day outside the United States from companies such as
Yahoo and Google. According to documents obtained from Snowden, the agency was collecting the data through secret arrangements
with foreign telecommunications companies or allied intelligence services in control of facilities that direct traffic along the Internet’s main data
routes. Although
the collection takes place overseas, two senior U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged
that it “incidentally” sweeps in the contacts of many Americans, the article said. The Post also reported
41
that the agency in conjunction with Britain’s GCHQ, was collecting data traveling between Google and
Yahoo data centers overseas. In Google’s case, that was up to 6 million records a day, according to a
slide obtained from Snowden. The firms have since said they are encrypting the data moving between their data centers. EO 12333
collection is not available everywhere in the world, former U.S. officials said. It is not as precise as collection from a U.S. carrier in the United
States, which can filter out unwanted communications. Under 12333, the agency is “collector and processor,” said one former U.S. official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “Things go by and you now have to figure out which things are of interest to you.”
And those things are “incredibly fractured and packetized.” Tye
said before he left the State Department, he filed a complaint
collection through its “incidental
collection” of Americans’ data, violated the Fourth Amendment’s bar on unreasonable searches and
seizures. “Basically 12333 is a legal loophole,” said Tye, who is now legal director at Avaaz, a civil society group working on
regional and national issues ranging from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change. “It allows the NSA to collect all
kinds of communications by Americans that the NSA would not be able to collect inside the borders”
without a warrant. Inglis said Tye’s description of 12333 as a loophole is “simply wrong, in both fact and spirit.” Said Inglis: “There are
with its inspector general, as well as the NSA inspector general, alleging that 12333
no ‘rules free’ zones at NSA and the responsibility to ensure the privacy rights of U.S. persons conveys across all facets of the signals intelligence
cycle, from collection to dissemination.” Jennifer
Granick, Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for
Internet and Society, said 12333 allows “bulk collection” of data or the ingestion of massive amounts
of data without a filter for a target’s e­mail address or phone number, for instance. “Both collection and use are far
less regulated” than collection inside the United States, she said. “We don't know how or how much information is collected, used, analyzed or
shared.” At the same time, she said, “while 12333
greatly affects Americans and regular people from all over the
world, the public and Congress are basically in the dark about what the NSA is doing.” NSA Spokeswoman
Vanee Vines said that “whether NSA’s activities are conducted under EO 12333 or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [which governs
domestic surveillance], NSA applies attorney general­approved processes to protect the privacy of U.S. persons in the collection, retention and
use of foreign intelligence.” She added that President Obama issued additional guidance in January under Presidential Policy Directive 28, which
provides that such activities “shall be as tailored as feasible.” The directive specified that “appropriate safeguards be applied to protect the
personal information of all individuals, regardless of nationality.” A fundamental unresolved question is this: At what point should these privacy
safeguards kick in? At the point the data are swept in by the intelligence agency or when they are plucked out for analysis and sharing with
other agencies? Currently, they apply once the data are processed, former officials said. The privacy protections governing 12333 collection are
in US Signals Intelligence Directive 18. That NSA policy document, for instance, states that communications to, from or about U.S. persons
collected under the authority may be retained for five years, unless the NSA director determines a longer period is required. It also states that
they may be kept for a “period sufficient” if they are reasonably believed to become relevant to a current or future foreign intelligence
requirement. Or if the information provides evidence of a crime, in which case it may be shared with the relevasnt agency. Such qualifications,
privacy advocates have said, amount to “loopholes” that enable the retention of large amounts of U.S. persons’ data. One thing is clear:
examining overseas collection under 12333 “is a massive undertaking,” the board source said. But “it is something we have to look at.”
42
Solvency
Modifying EO 12333 is a more durable solution than creating oversight committees or
amendments to FISA
Arnbak and Goldberg 15 Axel Arrnbak, Faculty Researcher at the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam and a
Research Affiliate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University. Sharon Goldberg, Associate Professor of Computer Science,
Boston University and a Research Fellow, Sloan Foundation. “LOOPHOLES FOR CIRCUMVENTING THE CONSTITUTION: UNRESTRAINED BULK
SURVEILLANCE ON AMERICANS BY COLLECTING NETWORK TRAFFIC ABROAD,” University of Michigan Law School
Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review. 21: 317 Spring 2015.
Aside from the differences discussed thus far, EO
12333 has a more fundamental difference from FISA: over the next
years, all three branches of government could be involved with Patriot Act and FISA reform. For EO
12333, this is hardly the case. International surveillance regulated under EO 12333 is overseen first and
foremost by the executive branch. n130 This simple observation has a long tradition in US Constitutional law that gives broad
Article II authority to the President when it comes to protecting national security against overseas threats. n131 As Part II will highlight,
however, today's technologies challenge the long-standing core concept in US surveillance law that operations conducted abroad will not affect
Americans in large numbers. This tension between local law and global technology surfaces in a particularly striking manner with EO 12333,
which regulates surveillance operations conducted abroad. This broad Article II constitutional authority can result in a lack of oversight, or
checks and balances, between separate branches of government. Even
if the Attorney General-approved procedures must
be submitted to the US Senate Intelligence Committee, tasked to oversee US intelligence agencies, legal
and practical constraints to oversight remain. n132 These constraints [*341] range from the executive branch constructing
permanent emergency national security scenarios that obstruct oversight, to Congress being practically barred from oversight via classification
to practical constraints that include being forbidden to take notes or bring assistants to briefings. The Committee
Chair, Senator
Dianne Feinstein, said that EO 12333 "programs are under the executive branch entirely," and have "few, if
any, privacy protections." n133 The relative lack of authority for EO 12333 policies in the broader policy
arena, beyond the executive branch, might explain why there are still so many redactions in place in
USSID 18. In any event, considering the legal loopholes in EO 12333 and the technical means by which
they can be exploited, n134 EO 12333 reform is urgent to protect Americans' privacy. Although the PCLOB
announced in July 2014 that it will investigate EO 12333 policies, n135 the PCLOB reports directly to the President; technically, the investigation
cannot be said to be fully independent because the executive branch controls the prospects of EO 12333 reform as investigated by the PCLOB.
Finally, during its annual intelligence community budget negotiations in December, 2014, Congress introduced and approved a new legal
provision, all within forty-eight hours. This provision could have deep implications for protections afforded to US persons during surveillance
operations conducted abroad. Intelligence Authorization Bill 2014-15 § 309 n136mandates that the Attorney General set a five year retention
limit on data collected abroad that involves US persons, thereby codifying similar provisions similar to USSID 18. n137 This provision was
introduced shortly before the deadline of the budget negotiations, hardly debated, and approved within forty-eight hours [*342] by both the
Senate and the House. n138The bill was then sent to the President, who signed the bill into law shortly thereafter. The wording of § 309 leaves
many open questions of interpretation. It has become the subject of considerable controversy and debate amongst lawmakers, the media, and
the public. For instance, it is unclear how § 309 relates to FISA§§703 and 704, which afford more robust protections to US persons when data is
collected abroad. n139 One plausible explanation could be that the new provision legitimizes an already existing surveillance operation that
collects huge amounts of US person data on foreign soil, without approval of the FISA Court.n140 This would be an intelligent move from a
compliance perspective. By approving § 309, Congress might have created a statutory basis for further uses of data collected abroad, formerly
based on USSID 18 minimization procedures merely approved by the Attorney General. With § 309, diminished legal protections to Americans
under USSID 18 minimization procedures could have a chance to become statute, making the legitimacy of programs based on EO 12333 and
USSID 18, like MUSCULAR, n141 no longer an issue if a court would find these now disclosed programs should have been based on FISA and
reviewed by the FISA Court. The lack of comprehensive legislative debate on § 309 renders it impossible to come to robust conclusions on its
implications. At this point, this is merely an issue for further research. But one can criticize the approval both in the House and the Senate of
such critical surveillance policy introduced 48 hours before a budgetary deadline, without proper legislative debate to establish the actual
meaning of a provision or to express the intent of the legislature. § 309 could go down as a historic moment in surveillance policy. It could entail
a significant depression of legal protections afforded to US persons when data is collected abroad. It is also apparently the first time that
Congress involved itself directly with data collection and retention usually regulated under EO 12333. Paradoxically, the effect of § 309 might be
a legal precedent for more transparently deliberated, better informed and perhaps privacy protective approaches going forward. D. Summary
43
Surveillance programs under EO 12333 might collect startling amounts of sensitive data on both
foreigners and Americans. Agents acting under the [*343] authority of EO 12333 and USSID 18 may
presume communications are non-American, precisely because their operations are conducted abroad.
Such operations are regulated by guidelines adopted almost entirely within the executive branch,
without any meaningful congressional or judicial involvement. Generous exemptions, more permissive than under FISA,
enable use of information "incidentally" collected on US persons, and critical details remain classified. These concerns remain primarily within
the purview of the executive branch. So far, the executive branch has not yet sufficiently addressed these concerns. The lack of checks and
balances between three branches of government in this respect is likely exacerbating the situation. Oversight
between branches of
government and constitutional safeguards can be circumvented by designing surveillance operations in
ways that lead to application of the EO 12333regime, instead of FISA. Consequently, regardless of the
outcome of Patriot Act and FISA reform, EO 12333 will continue to provide opportunities for largely
unrestrained surveillance on Americans from abroad.
44
12333 and 1st/4th Amendments
Bill of rights key to democracy
Edward White 14
[http://aclj.org/us-constitution/the-bill-of-rights-importance-limited-government Edward White is Senior Counsel with the ACLJ and has been practicing law for more than twenty years. He is a graduate of the University of
Notre Dame Law School, where he was a Thomas J. White Center for Law & Government Scholar and managing and student articles editor of the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy. He began his legal career by
having the privilege to serve as a law clerk for three judges, gaining experience on a number of state and federal legal matters. White clerked for the Honorable G. Kendall Sharp of the United States District Court for the
Middle District of Florida, the Honorable Bobby W. Gunther of the Florida District Court of Appeal for the Fourth District, and the Honorable Daniel A. Manion of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. After
his judicial clerkships, White worked as an associate in a products liability law firm. He then served for five years as an Assistant United States Attorney, handling federal civil and criminal cases at the trial and appellate court
levels. Since 2000, White has been specializing in civil rights litigation, representing clients across the country primarily in the areas of free speech, religious freedom, sanctity of human life, and traditional family values. TH]
The Bill of Rights illustrates that our Founders understood that for personal freedoms to be broad, the
power of the federal government must be limited. Our nation, however, has moved away from its founding principles,
especially during recent decades. Our ever-growing federal government is intervening into more and more
aspects of our lives, especially through bureaucratic regulations, and is reducing our personal freedoms
in the process. Government at all levels is doing more and more things that were once left to private individuals and groups, and the
federal government is doing more and more things that were once the province of state and local governments, where greater accountability to
the public is often possible. One need only look at the HHS mandate—forcing employers to violate their religious beliefs, under pain of penalty,
by paying for and providing abortion pill insurance coverage—to see the harm caused by an overreaching government. The
preservation
of our liberties is a daily battle, something our Founders understood. The process of scaling back the size
and role of government and returning limits to it is a long one. But, since the federal government is
supposed to be our servant and not our master, no one should doubt the importance of this endeavor.
45
Courts rule 12333 unconstitutional
Previous court rules prove that 12333 is unconstitutional.
Bedoya 14 (Alvaro Bedoya, October 9, 2014 Alvaro Bedoya is Executive Director of the Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology.
From 2011 to August 2014, he was chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. [Executive Order
12333 and the Golden Number] http://justsecurity.org/16157/executive-order-12333-golden-number/)
I recently moderated a debate between Professor Nathan Sales of Syracuse Law, Professor Laura Donohue of Georgetown Law, Bob Litt,
general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and John Tye, the former head of the Internet Freedom section at the
State Department who left government after filing whistleblower complaints alleging that the NSA’s collection practices abroad were
unconstitutional. As a moderator, I had to be neutral. With the panel behind us, I am adding my voice to a growing chorus of people who are
highly concerned with the NSA’s collection under Executive Order 12333, the Reagan-era authority that governs the NSA’s signals intelligence
collection abroad. To date, the intelligence community has responded to criticisms of 12333 with two principal rebuttals: (1) We cannot target
Americans’ electronic communications under these authorities, and (2) To the extent we inevitably collect Americans’ electronic
communications through Executive Order 12333, those data are subject to strict minimization requirements. Since Tye’s op-ed, critics have
countered that the use of the 12333 data (e.g. for law enforcement purposes) raises significant constitutional concerns. These arguments about
the proper scope of minimization are important and valid, but they do not address the core of Tye’s complaint. As he told Ars Technica: “My
complaint is not that [the NSA is] using [Executive Order 12333] to target Americans. My complaint is that the volume of incidental collection
on US persons is unconstitutional.” Too few people are focusing on the simple question that Tye is challenging us to ask: How many Americans’
communications are caught up in 12333 collection in the first place? That number matters – a lot. It matters from a policy perspective: It may
not make sense for Congress to allow a more lax set of collection and minimization standards for 12333 collection if those programs collect as
much if not more Americans’ data than FISA collection. The number matters from a democratic perspective: Americans, and their elected
officials, cannot reach an informed opinion of these programs if they don’t know how broadly they impact Americans. Most critically, that
number matters for the Fourth Amendment. Americans’
Fourth Amendment rights don’t stop at the border. Even
where the acquisition of foreign intelligence information abroad is found to fall within the foreign
intelligence exception to the warrant requirement, that acquisition must still satisfy the Fourth
Amendment’s reasonableness requirement. (See Laura Donohue’s forthcoming Harvard Journal of Law and Policy article on
section 702 for an in-depth discussion of the application of the reasonableness requirement abroad.) If an “incidental” collection of
an Americans’ data is too substantial, that collection may be rendered unreasonable by that fact
alone. As Judge Bates wrote in his October 2011 opinion on section 702 collection: [T]he acquisition of non-target
information is not necessarily reasonable under the Fourth Amendment simply because its collection is incidental to the purpose of the search
or surveillance. […] There surely are circumstances in which incidental intrusions can be so substantial as to render a search or seizure
unreasonable. Bates
went on to clarify that an incidental collection of Americans’ data can be particularly
problematic for Fourth Amendment purposes if the data are entirely unrelated to the targeted facility.
“The distinction is significant and impacts the Fourth Amendment balancing,” he wrote. Based on this reasoning,
Judge Bates found that the NSA’s October 2011 proposed targeting and minimization procedures were not consistent with the Fourth
Amendment. Judge Bates did not reach this ruling because he discovered that the targeting procedures would result in the discovery of
millions, or even hundreds of thousands of Americans’ communications. No, the offending acquisition collected “roughly
two to ten
thousand discrete wholly domestic communications […] as well as tens of thousands of other
communications that are to or from a United States person or a person in the United States but that
are neither to, from, nor about a targeted selector.” This bears repeating: Judge Bates found the 702
targeting procedures unconstitutional because they collected tens of thousands of U.S. person
communications. We need to know approximately how many Americans’ communications are
collected under 12333. That’s the golden number. But we don’t know it. Apparently, neither does the
NSA. In a December 2013 Washington Post article on the use of 12333 to collect cellphone location records, the NSA demurred an
attempt to estimate how many Americans were swept up in that program: “It’s awkward for us to try to provide
any specific numbers,” one intelligence official said in a telephone interview. An NSA spokeswoman who took part in the call
cut in to say the agency has no way to calculate such a figure. Yet in that same story, a “senior collection
manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity but with permission from the NSA,” appears to have told the Post that “data
are often collected from the tens of millions of Americans who travel abroad with their cellphones
46
every year.” In a separate Post story in October 2013 on the use of 12333 to collect address books globally, two U.S. senior intelligence
officials told Bart Gellman and Ashkan Soltani that that program sweeps in the contacts of many Americans. “They declined to offer an estimate
but did not dispute that the number is likely to be in the millions or tens of millions,” wrote Gellman and Soltani. Behind closed doors, the
intelligence community seems to acknowledge a scale of 12333 collection on Americans that far
outstrips the collection that Judge Bates found unconstitutional under section 702. In the recent Georgetown
Law debate, I asked Bob Litt whether it was acceptable that the intelligence community did not know how many Americans’ communications
were caught up in 12333 – since some scale of such collection would render 12333 collection unreasonable and violate the Fourth Amendment.
He answered: We can’t give numbers but there is a data point you can use and that is that 702 collection by definition is going to be collection
that’s passing through the United States. 12333 collection is not. One can assume that you’re more likely to collect a U.S. person
communication under 702 than under 12333 as a result of that. And the courts have found that 702 collection is reasonable in this regard. So
while you may not have the exact number, you can extrapolate from that and it suggests that the 12333 collection would be reasonable as well.
There are significant gaps in this reasoning. First, while electronic surveillance under 12333 cannot be conducted within the U.S., 12333 has
been used to collect bulk records from American companies, many of which store or “mirror” purely domestic communications on international
servers. More importantly, Litt’s explanation overlooks the fact that 12333 is a bulk collection authority – while section 702 is not. Yes, 702 data
pass through the United States. But at the end of the day, while section 702 collection may seem “bulky,” it is nonetheless an exclusively
targeted collection authority. Section 702 can be used only to collect on communications to, from or (controversially) about a specific target.
There aren’t an infinite number of targets. In 2013, there were 89,138 of them. Executive Order 12333, by contrast, allows for pure bulk
collectionof overseas electronic communications. There is no requirement that electronic surveillance under 12333 be targeted at a particular
individual, organization or facility. A recent directive from the President (PPD-28) explains: References to signals intelligence collected in “bulk”
mean the authorized collection of large quantities of signals intelligence data which, due to technical or operational considerations, is acquired
without the use of discriminants (e.g., specific identifiers, selection terms, etc.). (Emphasis mine.) Indeed, 12333 lets the government conduct
any electronic surveillance, so long as it does so from a location abroad, so long as it does not affirmatively target a U.S. person, and so long as
it is done for a “foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purpose.” The resultant difference in scale of collection is significant. In his 2011
opinion, Judge
Bates stated that NSA acquired over 250 million Internet communications annually under
section 702; the Washington Post revealed that a single program under 12333 collected nearly 5
billion cellphone location records every day. This may be a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison, but it’s an instructive one
nonetheless. The untargeted nature and massive scope of 12333 collection strongly suggest that it may be
used to collect far more U.S. person communications than are collected under section 702. Moreover,
because 12333 allows for bulk collection, it would seem to stand a high chance of capturing
Americans’ communications that are, in fact, entirely unrelated to foreign intelligence – precisely the
category of protected communications that Judge Bates found so problematic. Curiously, the new report on
12333 from the NSA’s Civil Liberties and Privacy Office explicitly excludes bulk collection from its analysis. It would be great if Judge
Bates could ask these questions. But he can’t. The FISC lacks jurisdiction over 12333 collection. And so
it is on Congress – and on us – to fill in the gap. For section 702, the sponsors of the USA FREEDOM Act succeeded in adding a modest but
nonetheless incrementally positive provision that would require the Director of National Intelligence to either annually disclose an estimate of
the number of Americans affected by section 702 programs, or to provide a detailed, public explanation of why he or she cannot provide that
figure (see subsection “(e)(4)” of section 603 of the bill). At a bare minimum, a parallel requirement should be added for 12333. More
importantly, however, civil liberties-minded technologists must work to develop a rigorous, peer-tested method to determine whether or not
the party to a communication is a U.S. person – or, alternatively, if that individual is likely located in the United States. This method could then
be used to analyze a statistically representative sample of 12333 data. We need a way to calculate the golden number. As a former staffer who
engaged in the lengthy process of developing the USA FREEDOM legislation, I can confirm that this was always a debate that we lost: We would
ask the IC to commit to producing an estimate of U.S. person impact for section 702; they would respond that this would be “difficult if not
impossible.” Engineers and mathematicians would do well to prove them wrong – and all of us would benefit.
47
Advantage 1 Ext
NSA practices are financially hurting American companies.
Waterman 2013 (Shaun Waterman, October 9 2013, The Washington Times, “Wyden: NSA eavesdropping is hurting U.S. economy”
th
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/9/wyden-nsa-eavesdropping-hurting-us-economy/)
Revelations about the National Security Agency’s monitoring of online communications have damaged the U.S. economy so badly that
Americans should “be in the street with pitchforks,” according to a senator leading the effort to reform federal surveillance laws. Sen.
Ron
Wyden, Oregon Democrat, told a day-long conference at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, (said) that U.S. companies
trying to do business in the global technology and communications market are hurting because of the
revelations that American Internet giants like Microsoft, Google and Facebook have been under court
order to cooperate with the NSA to monitor Web traffic. “If a foreign enemy was doing this much
damage to the economy, people would be in the streets with pitchforks,” Mr. Wyden said. A recent report
from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonprofit, public policy think tank, estimated
that the U.S. cloud computing industry alone stands to lose up to $35 billion over the next three years
as a result of the revelations — and its impact on the reputation and customer relations of U.S. firms.
American firms weren’t just given that reputation, “they won it over the years with good customer practices”
only to see it swept away by “this overly broad surveillance,” Mr. Wyden said. Analysts say that a particular problem is
that many overseas customers now understand that the U.S. Constitution offers them no protection from NSA eavesdropping. “ Companies
like Google and Facebook get more than half their revenue from outside the United States,” says Alan B.
Davidson, who was head of public policy for Google Inc. for seven years until 2012. “It’s a really big problem.” Mr. Davidson, now a researcher
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, predicts the NSA
revelations will “drive the traffic away” from U.S.
companies.
China is dropping US tech companies in fear of NSA Backdoors.
Whittaker, Feb 2015 (Zack Whittaker writes for ZDNet, CNET and CBS News. ZDNET-Technology news website “It's official: NSA
spying is hurting the US tech economy China is backing away from US tech brands for state purchases as NSA revelations continue to make
headlines in newspapers all around the world.” http://www.zdnet.com/article/another-reason-to-hate-the-nsa-china-is-backing-away-from-ustech-brands/)
China is no longer using high-profile US technology brands for state purchases, amid ongoing revelations about mass surveillance and hacking
by the US government. A
new report confirmed key brands, including Cisco, Apple, Intel, and McAfee -among others -- have been dropped from the Chinese government's list of authorized brands, a Reuters
report said Wednesday. The number of approved foreign technology brands fell by a third, based on an analysis of
the procurement list. Less than half of those companies with security products remain on the list. Although a number of reasons were cited,
domestic companies were said to offer "more product guarantees" than overseas rivals in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. Some
reports have attempted to pin a multi-billion dollar figure on the impact of the leaks. In reality, the figure could be incalculable. The
report
confirms what many US technology companies have been saying for the past year: the activities by
the NSA are harming their businesses in crucial growth markets, including China. The Chinese
government's procurement list changes coincided with a series of high profile leaks that showed the
US government have been on an international mass surveillance spree, as well as hacking expeditions into
technology companies, governments, and the personal cellphones of world leaders. Concerned about backdoors implanted by
the NSA, those revelations sparked a change in Chinese policy by forcing Western technology companies to
hand over their source code for inspection. That led to an outcry in the capital by politicians who in the not-so-distant past
accused Chinese companies of doing exactly the same thing. The fear is that as the China-US cybersecurity standoff continues, it's come
too late for Silicon Valley companies, which are already suffering financially thanks to the NSA's
activities. Microsoft said in January at its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that China "fell short" of its
48
expectations, which chief executive Satya Nadella described as a "set of geopolitical issues" that the company was working through. He
did not elaborate. Most recently, HP said on Tuesday at its fiscal first-quarter earnings call that it had "execution
issues" in China thanks to the "tough market" with increasing competition from the local vendors
approved by the Chinese government. But one company stands out: Cisco probably suffered the worst of all.
Earlier this month at its fiscal second-quarter earnings, the networking giant said it took a 19 percent revenue ding in
China, amid claims the NSA was installing backdoors and implants on its routers in transit. China
remains a vital core geography for most US technology giants with a global reach. But until some middleground can be reached between the two governments, expect Silicon Valley's struggles in the country to only get
worse.
NSA will cost tech company billions.
BAILEY 2014 (BRANDON BAILEY, AP Writer, October 8, 2014 “Sen. Wyden: NSA tech spying hurts economy”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/8/sen-wyden-nsa-tech-spying-hurts-economy/
Leading Senate critic of online surveillance wants the government to stop widespread spying on phone
calls, texts and emails, saying the “digital dragnet” doesn’t make the country safer, and only hurts the U.S.
economy. “When the actions of a foreign government threaten red-white-and-blue jobs, Washington gets up at arms. But, even today,
almost no one in Washington is talking about how overly broad surveillance is hurting the U.S.
economy,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in remarks prepared for a Senate Finance Committee event in Palo Alto, California on
Wednesday. Wyden convened the roundtable, which also includes Google Inc. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and top corporate attorneys
from Facebook and Microsoft, to discuss the economic fallout from the surveillance programs revealed last year by former National Security
Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Some
analysts estimated last year that U.S. tech companies could lose tens
of billions of dollars in sales, particularly after European firms began marketing themselves as being
more secure than U.S. competitors - or less vulnerable to legal demands from the U.S. government.
Sdiminishes growth in tech industries
Kehl et al 14 Danielle Kehl, Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin Bankston, Policy Director at OTI.
Robyn Greene, a Policy Counsel at OTI. Robert Morgus, Research Associate at OTI. “Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy,
Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity,” New American’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper.
https://www.newamerica.org/downloads/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf
“It is becoming clear
that the post-9/11 surveillance apparatus may be at cross-purposes with our high-tech
economic growth,” declared Third Way’s Mieke Eoyang and Gabriel Horowitz in December 2013. “The economic
consequences [of the recent revelations] could be staggering.”25 A TIME magazine headline projected that
“NSA Spying Could Cost U.S. Tech Giants Billions,” predicting losses based on the increased scrutiny
that economic titans like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo have faced both at home and
abroad since last June.26 The NSA’s actions pose a serious threat to the current value and future
stability of the information technology industry, which has been a key driver of economic growth and
productivity in the United States in the past decade.27 In this section, we examine how emerging evidence
about the NSA’s extensive surveillance apparatus has already hurt and will likely continue to hurt the
American tech sector in a number of ways, from dwindling U.S. market share in industries like cloud
computing and webhosting to dropping tech sales overseas. The impact of individual users turning away from American
companies in favor of foreign alternatives is a concern. However, the major losses will likely result from diminishing
confidence in U.S. companies as trustworthy choices for foreign government procurement of products
and services and changing behavior in the business-to-business market. Costs to the U.S. Cloud Computing
Industry and Related Business Trust in American businesses has taken a significant hit since the initial reports on the PRISM program suggested
that the NSA was directly tapping into the servers of nine U.S. companies to obtain customer data for national security investigations.28 The
Washington Post’s original story on the program provoked an uproar in the media and prompted the CEOs of several major companies to deny
knowledge of or participation in the program.29 The exact nature of the requests made through the PRISM program was later clarified,30 but
the public attention on the relationship between American companies and the NSA still created a significant trust gap, especially in industries
49
where users entrust companies to store sensitive personal and commercial data. “Last year’s national security leaks have also had a commercial
and financial impact on American technology companies that have provided these records,” noted Representative Bob Goodlatte, a prominent
Republican leader and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in May 2014. “They have experienced backlash from both American and
foreign consumers and have had their competitive standing in the global marketplace damaged.”31 Given heightened concerns about the NSA’s
ability to access data stored by U.S. companies, it is no surprise that American companies offering cloud computing and webhosting services are
among those experiencing the most acute economic fallout from NSA surveillance. Within just a few weeks of the first disclosures, reports
began to emerge that American cloud computing companies like Dropbox and Amazon Web Services were starting to lose business to overseas
competitors.32 The CEO of Artmotion, one of Switzerland’s largest offshore hosting providers, reported in July 2013 that his company had seen
a 45 percent jump in revenue since the first leaks,33 an early sign that the country’s perceived neutrality and strong data and privacy
protections34 could potentially be turned into a serious competitive advantage.35 Foreign companies are clearly poised to benefit from
growing fears about the security ramifications of keeping data in the United States. In
a survey of 300 British and Canadian
businesses released by PEER 1 in January 2014,36 25 percent of respondents indicated that they were moving
data outside of the U.S. as a result of the NSA revelations. An overwhelming number of the companies surveyed indicated
that security and data privacy were their top concerns, with 81 percent stating that they “want to know exactly where their data is being
hosted.” Seventy
percent were even willing to sacrifice performance in order to ensure that their data
was protected.37 It appears that little consideration was given over the past decade to the potential economic repercussions if the NSA’s
secret programs were revealed.38 This failure was acutely demonstrated by the Obama Administration’s initial focus on reassuring the public
that its programs primarily affect non-Americans, even though non-Americans are also heavy users of American companies’ products. Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg put a fine point on the issue, saying that the government “blew it” in its response to the scandal. He noted sarcastically:
“The government response was, ‘Oh don’t worry, we’re not spying on any Americans.’ Oh, wonderful: that’s really helpful to companies [like
Facebook] trying to serve people around the world, and that’s really going to inspire confidence in American internet companies.”39 As
Zuckerberg’s comments reflect, certain parts of the American technology industry are particularly vulnerable to international backlash since
growth is heavily dependent on foreign markets. For example, the U.S. cloud computing industry has grown from an estimated $46 billion in
2008 to $150 billion in 2014, with nearly 50 percent of worldwide cloud-computing revenues coming from the U.S.40 R Street Institute’s
January 2014 policy study concluded that in the next few years, new products and services that rely on cloud computing will become
increasingly pervasive. “Cloud computing is also the root of development for the emerging generation of Web-based applications—home
security, outpatient care, mobile payment, distance learning, efficient energy use and driverless cars,” writes R Street’s Steven Titch in the
study. “And it is a research area where the United States is an undisputed leader.”41 This trajectory may be dramatically altered, however, as a
consequence of the NSA’s surveillance programs. Economic forecasts after the Snowden leaks have predicted significant, ongoing losses for the
cloud-computing industry in the next few years. An August 2013 study by the
Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation (ITIF) estimated that revelations about the NSA’s PRISM program could cost the American cloud
computing industry $22 to $35 billion over the next three years.42 On the low end, the ITIF projection suggests that
U.S. cloud computing providers would lose 10 percent of the foreign market share to European or Asian competitors, totaling in about $21.5
billion in losses; on the high-end, the $35 billion figure represents about 20 percent of the companies’ foreign market share. Because the cloud
computing industry is undergoing rapid growth right now—a 2012 Gartner study predicted global spending on cloud computing would increase
by 100 percent from 2012 to 2016, compared to a 3 percent overall growth rate in the tech industry as a whole43—vendors in this sector are
particularly vulnerable to shifts in the market. Failing to recruit new customers or losing a competitive advantage due to exploitation by rival
companies in other countries can quickly lead to a dwindling market share. The ITIF study further notes that “the percentage lost to foreign
competitors could go higher if foreign governments enact protectionist trade barriers that effectively cut out U.S. providers,” citing early calls
from German data protection authorities to suspend the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor program (which will be discussed at length in the next section).44
As the R Street Policy Study highlights, “Ironically, the NSA turned the competitive edge U.S. companies have in cloud computing into a liability,
especially in Europe.”45 In a follow up to the ITIF study, Forrester
Research analyst James Staten argued that the think tank’s estimates
were low, suggesting that the actual figure could be as high as $180 billion over three years .46 Staten
highlighted two additional impacts not considered in the ITIF study. The first is that U.S. customers—not just foreign companies—would also
avoid US cloud providers, especially for international and overseas business. The ITIF study predicted that American companies would retain
their domestic market share, but Staten argued that the economic blowback from the revelations would be felt at home, too. “You don’t have
to be a French company, for example, to be worried about the US government snooping in the data about your French clients,” he wrote.47
Moreover, the analysis highlighted a second and “far more costly” impact: that foreign cloud providers, too, would lose as much as 20 percent
of overseas and domestic business because of similar spying programs conducted by other governments. Indeed, the NSA disclosures “have
prompted a fundamental re-examination of the role of intelligence services in conducting coordinated cross-border surveillance,” according to
a November 2013 report by Privacy International on the “Five Eyes” intelligence partnership between the United States, the United Kingdom,
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.48 Staten predicts that as the surveillance landscape around the world becomes more clear, it could have a
serious negative impact on all hosting and outsourcing services, resulting in a 25 percent decline in the overall IT services market, or about $180
billion in losses.49
Internet surveillance hurts growth in technology related industries and limits
American economic competitiveness.
Kehl et al 14 Danielle Kehl, Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI). Kevin
Bankston, Policy Director at OTI. Robyn Greene, a Policy Counsel at OTI. Robert Morgus, Research
50
Associate at OTI. “Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom &
Cybersecurity,” New American’s Open Technology Institute Policy Paper.
https://www.newamerica.org/downloads/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf
It is abundantly clear that the NSA surveillance programs are currently having a serious, negative impact
on the U.S. economy and threatening the future competitiveness of American technology companies.
Not only are U.S. companies losing overseas sales and getting dropped from contracts with foreign
companies and governments—they are also watching their competitive advantage in fast-growing
industries like cloud computing and webhosting disappear, opening the door for foreign companies who
claim to offer “more secure” alternative products to poach their business. Industry efforts to increase
transparency and accountability as well as concrete steps to promote better security by adopting
encryption and other best practices are positive signs, but U.S. companies cannot solve this problem
alone. “It’s not blowing over,” said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith at a recent conference. “In
June of 2014, it is clear it is getting worse, not better.”98 Without meaningful government reform and
better oversight, concerns about the breadth of NSA surveillance could lead to permanent shifts in the
global technology market and do lasting damage to the U.S. economy.
Economic decline guarantees multiple scenarios for nuclear war and turns every other
impact
Harris and Burrows 9 - PhD in European History @ Cambridge and Counselor of the US National Intelligence Council AND
Member of the National Intelligence Council’s Long Range Analysis Unit (Mathew J. and Jennifer, “Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of
the Financial Crisis,” April, Washington Quarterly, http://www.twq.com/09april/docs/09apr_Burrows.pdf)
Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting
and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample Revisiting the Future opportunity for unintended
consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so, history may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the
Great Depression is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include the
harmful effects on fledgling democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and
1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason
to think that this would not be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. Fo r that reason, the ways in which the potential for
greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile economic
environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed the likelihood that terrorism and
nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda. Terrorism’s appeal will decline if
economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025,
however, the diffusion
of technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the world’s most
dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long
established groups_inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct
sophisticated attacks and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become self-radicalized, particularly in the absence
of economic outlets that would become narrower in an economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced
drawdown of U.S. military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable,
worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security arrangements with external powers, acquire
additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed
between the great powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity
conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and
broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close
51
proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian
missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of
strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions may
place
more focus on preemption rather than defense, potentially leading to escalating crises. 36 Types of
conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over resources, could reemerge, particularly if
protectionism grows and there is a resort to neo-mercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will
drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In the worst case, this
could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for example, to be essential for
maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions short of war, however, will have important geopolitical
implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and modernization efforts, such as China’s and India’s
development of blue water naval capabilities. If
the fiscal stimulus focus for these countries indeed turns inward, one
of the most obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to
increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves, but it also will create opportunities for multinational cooperation
in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle East, cooperation to manage changing
water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both within and between states in a more dog-eatdog world.
52
Advantage 2 Ext
53
Relations Bad Now
French Anger Over NSA Spying Further Strains Europe-U.S. Relations
Williams 6-15
BY LAUREN C. WILLIAMS POSTED ON JUNE 24, 2015 AT 1:06 PM Lauren C. Williams is the tech reporter for ThinkProgress with an affinity for
consumer privacy, cybersecurity, tech culture and the intersection of civil liberties and tech policy. Before joining the ThinkProgress team, she
wrote about health care policy and regulation for B2B publications, and had a brief stint at The Seattle Times. Lauren is a native Washingtonian
and holds a master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s of science in dietetics from the University of Delaware.
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/06/24/3673403/french-anger-nsa-spying-strains-europe-us-relations/ TH
New WikiLeaks documents show the U.S. National Security Agency spied on the private communications
of three French presidents, angering the French government and adding strain to an already tenuous
Europe-American relationship. French news site Mediapart first published the documents Tuesday, which cover NSA activity from
2006 to 2012, and were part of the original WikiLeaks provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. That news quickly drew
the ire of French President François Hollande, who called an emergency meeting Wednesday with the
U.S. ambassador and government attorneys. “France will not tolerate actions that threaten its security
and the protection of its interests,” Hollande said in a statement Wednesday. “These are unacceptable facts that have already
been the subject of clarification between the US and France, notably at the end of 2013 when the first revelations were made and during a
state visit by the president of the Republic to the United States in February 2014. Commitments were made by the US authorities. They need to
be recalled and strictly respected.” The White House has denied the spying allegations, saying via a statement Wednesday: We are not
targeting and will not target the communications of President Hollande. Indeed, as we have said previously, we do not conduct any foreign
intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and validated national security purpose. This applies to ordinary citizens and world
leaders alike. We work closely with France on all matters of international concern, and the French are indispensable partners. Spying on friendly
and enemy governments alike isn’t a new occurrence and is widely practiced, the U.S. is generally more brazen about it. German
lawmakers accused its own intelligence agencies earlier this year of violating German regulations and
gathering information in European targets for the NSA. The new Snowden-derived information comes as
trust in U.S. government wanes domestically and overseas. Only a quarter of Americans trust the government always or most of
the time, according to a 2014 Pew Research survey. When it comes to foreign relations, only 43 percent are at least fairly confident in how the
U.S. handles international matters, Gallup found. This week’s WikiLeaks also follows news that Germany folded its investigation into the NSA’s
spying practices after documents surfaced in 2013 indicating the agency spied on Chanecellor Angela Merkel’s personal communications. But
public disclosing of what should be clandestine movements fuels international sentiment of American
government’s disregard for civilian privacy. “We find it hard to understand or imagine what motivates an ally to spy
on allies who are often on the same strategic positions in world affairs,” Stéphane Le Foll, a French
government spokesman told iTELE television. Negative global perception of the NSA’s actions could also
affect how the U.S. does business overseas. European regulators have already begun investigating tech
companies’ potential wrongdoing by participating in NSA surveillance programs. The Court of Justice of the
European Union is hearing a case involving Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo, for potential privacy law violations. The decision
could seriously damage the U.S.-European relationship by deterring companies from doing business through stricter
regulations.
54
Russia War = Bad
Russia nuclear war causes extinction
Bostrom ‘2 (Nick Bostrom 2, PhD, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, www.nickbostrom.com)
A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR. An
all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that
might have been persistent enough to qualify as global and terminal. There was a real worry among
those best acquainted with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would
occur and that it might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization.[4] Russia and
the US retain large nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or
deliberately. There is also a risk that other states may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note
however that a smaller nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan for instance, is not an existential
risk, since it would not destroy or thwart humankind’s potential permanently.
US-Russia war causes global collapse – hair-trigger posturing makes deterrence
breakdown inevitable
Starr 14 [Steven, Senior Scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility (www.psr.org) and Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science
Program at the University of Missouri. Starr has published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Strategic Arms Reduction (STAR)
website of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, June 5, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons: Nuclear War has No Winner,”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-lethality-of-nuclear-weapons-nuclear-war-has-no-winner/5385611/AKG]
Nuclear war has no winner. Beginning in 2006, several of the world’s leading climatologists (at Rutgers, UCLA, John
Hopkins University, and the University of Colorado-Boulder) published a series of studies that evaluated the long-term
environmental consequences of a nuclear war, including baseline scenarios fought with merely 1% of the explosive
power in the US and/or Russian launch-ready nuclear arsenals. They concluded that the consequences of even a “small” nuclear
war would include catastrophic disruptions of global climate[i] and massive destruction of Earth’s
protective ozone layer[ii]. These and more recent studies predict that global agriculture would be so negatively affected
by such a war, a global famine would result, which would cause up to 2 billion people to starve to death. [iii]
These peer-reviewed studies – which were analyzed by the best scientists in the world and found to be without error – also
predict that a war fought with less than half of US or Russian strategic nuclear weapons would destroy
the human race.[iv] In other words, a US-Russian nuclear war would create such extreme long-term damage
to the global environment that it would leave the Earth uninhabitable for humans and most animal forms of life. A
recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear war”,[v] begins by stating: “A
nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear
winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in self-assured destruction.” In 2009, I wrote an article[vi] for
the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament that summarizes the findings of these studies. It explains that
nuclear firestorms would produce millions of tons of smoke, which would rise above cloud level and form a global
stratospheric smoke layer that would rapidly encircle the Earth. The smoke layer would remain for at least a decade, and it would
act to destroy the protective ozone layer (vastly increasing the UV-B reaching Earth[vii]) as well as block warming
sunlight, thus creating Ice Age weather conditions that would last 10 years or longer. Following a US-Russian nuclear war,
temperatures in the central US and Eurasia would fall below freezing every day for one to three years; the intense
cold would completely eliminate growing seasons for a decade or longer. No crops could be grown, leading to a
famine that would kill most humans and large animal populations. Electromagnetic pulse from highaltitude nuclear detonations would destroy the integrated circuits in all modern electronic devices[viii],
including those in commercial nuclear power plants. Every nuclear reactor would almost instantly meltdown; every
nuclear spent fuel pool (which contain many times more radioactivity than found in the reactors) would boil-off, releasing
55
vast amounts of long-lived radioactivity. The fallout would make most of the US and Europe
uninhabitable. Of course, the survivors of the nuclear war would be starving to death anyway. Once nuclear
weapons were introduced into a US-Russian conflict, there would be little chance that a nuclear
holocaust could be avoided. Theories of “limited nuclear war” and “nuclear de-escalation” are
unrealistic.[ix] In 2002 the Bush administration modified US strategic doctrine from a retaliatory role to permit preemptive nuclear attack;
in 2010, the Obama administration made only incremental and miniscule changes to this doctrine, leaving it essentially unchanged.
Furthermore, Counterforce doctrine – used
by both the US and Russian military – emphasizes the need for
preemptive strikes once nuclear war begins. Both sides would be under immense pressure to launch a preemptive
nuclear first-strike once military hostilities had commenced, especially if nuclear weapons had already been used on the
battlefield. Both the US and Russia each have 400 to 500 launch-ready ballistic missiles armed with a total of
at least 1800 strategic nuclear warheads,[xi] which can be launched with only a few minutes warning.[xii] Both
the US and Russian Presidents are accompanied 24/7 by military officers carrying a “nuclear briefcase”, which
allows them to transmit the permission order to launch in a matter of seconds.
56
AT: Sanctions Curb Aggression
Current Sanctions aren’t curbing Russian Aggression.
Labott, June 12, 2015 (Elise Labott, CNN, “U.S., Europe ready new sanctions to deter Putin on Ukraine”,
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/12/politics/ukraine-russia-sanctions-us-eu/)
The United States and the European Union are finalizing further sanctions against Russia that could be imposed if Moscow takes additional
military action in Ukraine, senior U.S. administration officials and European diplomats said Thursday. The sources stressed that no decisions
have been made yet to put additional measures in place. This
week's renewed fighting triggered a discussion of
additional sanctions, they said, but the fighting ended before a decision to act was made. The sources said the
potential new measures to be presented to Western leaders range from adding names and companies to the current sanctions to imposing
broader penalties on Russia's financial, energy and defense sectors. The point at which Russian military moves would prompt new sanctions is a
case of "you know it when you see it," a senior administration official said. "It could be any major assault anywhere across the line of contact.
We all know what we are talking about, and we want to be prepared and have stuff ready to go in case we need it." "There is a whole range of
different options leaders will have available to respond to any renewed Russian aggression, to which we could respond pretty quickly and
vigorously. We are not talking about weeks," the official said. Discussion
of additional sanctions comes as the EU is widely
expected to renew trade and personal sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine when they expire
toward the end of the month. Both the U.S. and EU have linked the lifting of sanctions to
implementation of a peace accord hammered out in February by Russia with the leaders of Ukraine,
France and Germany in the capital of Belarus. The so-called Minsk Agreement has been repeatedly
violated. The U.S. and EU claim that most of those violations were by Russia and the separatists it supports. Some of the fiercest fighting
since the agreement came this week, with heavy artillery fire reported near Donetsk. The European parliament passed a
resolution calling on EU governments to keep the measures in place after Russian President Vladimir
Putin traveled to Italy Wednesday in what many in the West saw as a bid to break European solidarity
on the sanctions. "Europe has acted with more unity than most people expected, including Putin himself," one of the senior
administration officials said. A European diplomat briefing reporters Thursday noted that this week's violence strengthened European resolve
to maintain the current measures. "The concerns that we all began to feel about additional violations and suggestions there were troops and
equipment coming across the border from Russia ... all that in fact was quite useful in getting European nations collectively to grasp that now is
not the time to start softening the position we are taking on sanctions," the European diplomat said. President Barack Obama said in Austria on
Monday that he'd convinced European leaders to maintain the economic sanctions. The extension of sanctions was one of his chief goals at this
week's G7 meeting in the Bavarian Alps. Obama said Europe and the United States stand ready to impose new sanctions if violence increases.
The sources said that while they prefer not to impose the new sanctions, they hope the knowledge that they are being prepared will deter Putin
from taking further action. "It is both preparation and also a degree of credible messaging," the European diplomat briefing reporters said.
"One is to make very clear that if there are further acts of aggression that we can move quickly. The other is to let it be known we are serious
about being ready to do that as a deterrent." The diplomat stressed, "We would rather not to have to do that, but it needs to be clear that if
that is the direction Putin's Russia goes in, that we will react." U.S.
officials and European diplomats insist the sanctions
are taking a toll on the Russian economy, where the ruble has plummeted in value. But they admit the
sanctions have done little to prevent Putin from continuing the campaign in Ukraine or curb aggression
by separatists in Eastern Ukraine. In total, more than 6,000 people have died in the fighting in Eastern Ukraine since the conflict
began last year, according to the United Nations.
57
EU Relations Key to Ending Russian Aggresion
International Co-op is key to decreasing Russian aggression.
Ben Wolfgang May 27, 2015- The Washington Times - Wednesday,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/27/joseph-biden-ending-ukraine-war-a-key-t-138637751/?page=all
Joseph R. Biden said Wednesday that ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict is a key test of U.S. and
European leadership for this generation — but specialists say the vice president laid out no new American strategy for
countering Russian aggression, and the Obama administration seems content on staying the course with
economic sanctions and continued diplomatic outreach to Moscow. Mr. Biden outlined the challenges facing Ukraine, and Russia’s
ongoing hostility in the region, during a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He defended U.S. cooperation with Russian Vladimir
Putin on issues such as halting Iran’s nuclear program but at the same time stressed the world community
simply cannot
allow Moscow to impose its will on eastern Europe. The vice president said it’s up to the U.S., NATO, the
European Union and other regional players to act. “There’s a price tag here. What happens in Ukraine and how the West and
the world responds has, I think, consequential implications for the nature of international order in the years to come, in particular the bedrock
principles of security, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders,” Mr. Biden said. “President Putin is wagering that he has greater
staying power than all the parties I just mentioned have. In Ukraine, he’s betting he can outlast the current pro-reformist European government
… President Putin also is trying to scare our allies and partners with the threat of a new and aggressive Russia.” The U.S. and its European allies
have responded to Russian aggression in Ukraine with a host of economic sanctions targeted at officials in the Putin regime and specific sectors
of the Russian economy. The U.S. also has continued diplomatic communication with Moscow in an attempt to calm tensions in eastern
Ukraine, where violence between Ukrainian military forces and pro-Russia rebels has continued despite a cease-fire — known as the Minsk
Agreement — between the two sides. More than 6,000 people have been killed since the fighting broke out in April 2014. Secretary of State
John F. Kerry recently met with Mr. Putin earlier this month in Russia in an effort to achieve true peace. But the administration so far has
resisted sending lethal arms to the Ukrainian military and other steps that many U.S. lawmakers believe are necessary to secure the peace. Mr.
Biden seemed to leave the door open to providing lethal aid, calling the issue a “debate worth having.” Still, specialists say Mr. Biden’s speech
Wednesday indicated that no major change in the White House’s policy is forthcoming. “He didn’t promise anything new. There are no new
goodies for the Ukrainians. I think it was kind of a recapitulation of what our strategy has been. No sign of backing down, but also no
announcement that anything else is in the pipeline,” said Jeffrey Mankoff, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies. The U.S. and its allies, Mr. Mankoff said, essentially have ceded some ground to Russia. The Crimean
Peninsula — which Moscow claims as its own territory following a highly suspicious referendum last year — likely is lost, he added. “Crimea has
basically been secured for Russia to the point we’re not even really talking about it,” Mr. Mankoff said. “It’s one of those things we’ve
acknowledged is going to be part of the landscape, like other frozen conflicts in that part of the world.” President Obama discussed
the situation in Ukraine Tuesday with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg during an Oval Office meeting. Public statements by both men
also suggested no new plan for dealing with Russia’s actions. “We discussed Crimea, Ukraine, and the
importance of the full
implementation of the Minsk Agreements. That’s the path to peace, and I urge all parties to fully implement the
Minsk Agreements, and Russia to stop supporting the separatists and to rid all its forces from eastern Ukraine,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. Mr.
Biden also said the chilly relations between the U.S. and Moscow will not affect efforts to slow Iran’s nuclear program. Russia, along with the
U.S., Britain, Germany, France and China, is seeking a deal that would slow Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for some relief from
economic sanctions. “It
makes sense to cooperate where there’s a clear mutual interest as long as you’re not
being asked to back off,” the vice president said.
58
Hurts Relations
NSA programs hurt US relations with allies – Germany, Japan, Brazil, and Great Britain
– disbanding gets it back
Stokes 7/30 – (Bruce Stokes, director of global economic attitudes in the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, former
senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, “Did NSA snooping hurt U.S.
image? Not so much”, CNN, July 30, 2014, http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/30/did-nsa-snooping-hurt-u-s-image-not-somuch/)
Make no mistake about it. Publics
around the world aren’t happy about NSA spying. In 37 of 43 nations outside the
say American surveillance of ordinary
citizens in the respondent’s country is unacceptable. This includes 97 percent in Greece, 94 percent in
Brazil and 91 percent in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. But it also includes opposition by important U.S.
allies: 87 percent of Germans, 85 percent of Japanese and 70 percent of the British.¶ There’s similar public
opposition to U.S. spying on the respondent’s national leaders. Majorities in 34 countries find such action by Washington to be
offensive. This sentiment is particularly strong in Germany, where the American government allegedly
listened in on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone conversations. But there are similarly overwhelming
objections in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Venezuela, Greece and Brazil.¶ Publics around the world also generally oppose
United States that were surveyed recently by the Pew Research Center, majorities
Washington’s surveillance of Americans. Majorities in 26 nations say it is wrong. But such opposition is less intense than criticism of U.S. spying
on non-Americans, while majorities in the Philippines, Nigeria and Uganda actually back Uncle Sam’s electronic oversight of Americans.¶ Spying
on suspected terrorists is another matter. Majorities in 30 countries surveyed voice the view that electronic oversight of alleged terrorists is
acceptable. Israelis, Italians and Kenyans are particularly supportive, as are roughly eight-in-ten Russians and Tunisians. Notably, Germans, who
are particularly incensed about American spying on both Merkel and on ordinary German citizens, have few qualms about U.S. eavesdropping
on alleged terrorists: 70 percent support such efforts.¶ But U.S.
spying has tarnished America’s image as a staunch
defender of the personal freedoms of its own people, long one of the positive attributes of U.S. soft
power.¶ Admiration for America as a defender of such civil liberties has dropped significantly in 22 of 36 nations
where there is comparable data for 2013 and 2014. NSA actions have particularly hurt the U.S. reputation in Brazil,
where belief that Uncle Sam respects Americans’ freedoms is down 25 percentage points, and in Germany, where it is down 23 points.
Drops of 20 points or more are also found in El Salvador, Pakistan, Argentina, Spain and Russia.¶
The NSA kills soft power – perception and credibility jack
Migranyan, ‘13 (Andranik Migranyan, director of the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, professor at the Institute of
International Relations in Moscow, former member of the Russian Presidential Council, “Scandals Harm U.S. Soft Power”, The National Interest,
July 5, 2013, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/scandals-harm-us-soft-power-8695) Wang
**WE DO NOT ENDORSE ANY USE OFFSIVE RHETORIC**
On a practical geopolitical level, the
spying scandals have seriously tarnished the reputation of the United
States. They have circumscribed its ability to exert soft power; the same influence that made the U.S. model very
attractive to the rest of the world. This former lustre is now diminished. The blatant everyday intrusions into the private
lives of Americans, and violations of individual rights and liberties by runaway, unaccountable U.S.
government agencies, have deprived the United States of its authority to dictate how others must live and what
others must do. Washington can no longer lecture others when its very foundational institutions and values are
being discredited—or at a minimum, when all is not well “in the state of Denmark.”¶ Perhaps precisely because not all is well, many
American politicians seem unable to adequately address the current situation. Instead of asking what isn’t working
in the government and how to ensure accountability and transparency in their institutions, they try, in their annoyance, to blame the
messenger—as they are doing in Snowden’s case. Some Senators hurried to blame Russia and Ecuador for anti-American behavior, and
threatened to punish them should they offer asylum to Snowden.¶
59
NSA undermines international relations – surveillance problems
Bowen 2/10 – (Grant Bowen, Project Manager at BPM LLC, “The Long Term Effects of NSA Revelations”, Journal of High Technology
Law, February 10, 2014, http://jhtlblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-long-term-effects-of-nsa-revelations/) Wang
Rolling scandal over National Security agency surveillance, triggered by a mass leak of secrets by Edward Snowden, as well
as further revelations of spying on allies, continues to follow President Obama and the U.S. Government. Due to this,
various experts are worried of two results: the government is suffering in its relationships with allies and
cryptography, which has continuously formed the backbone of U.S. surveillance programs, and simultaneous the public may be damaged
by cloud computing surveillance.¶ Primarily, experts are concerned about the extent to which the US can
successfully exert “soft power” through political and cultural values, while simultaneously lowering its military
presence throughout the world. It was intended that through networks of friends and allies, the U.S. could extend this “soft power” and
influence more countries through peace, rather than war-tactics. Maintaining
and establishing more alliances through this
method will help to mitigate consequences of lessening military might.¶ However, the current
surveillance problems do harm to this plan. In order to establish “soft power” in the first place, there
has to be a baseline level of trust. The global opinion of America is hardly positive at the moment, though. Coming off a long
government shutdown, and repeated surveillance scandals, American status has suffered. If the long-term plan is to carefully manage military
decline, while preserving maximum influence, surveillance issues can’t continue. They repeatedly break down the requisite trust in order to
successfully follow such a plan.¶ Furthermore, NSA
surveillance issues continue to wreak havoc for the American
public. Primarily, many organizations have noted access to stored data in the public cloud, even though the
U.S. insisted it was only doing so to track suspected terrorist activities overseas. However, both Microsoft’s Office
365 and SharePoint Online experienced NSA surveillance activity (whether they were “accidents” or purposeful is still disputed). Due to the
large universe of SharePoint and other online services (think Apple’s iCloud or Google Online Doc Suite), smaller providers, cloud computing
services and others are feeling the influence. They are putting their cloud migration plans on hold, or simply terminating those already
occurring. In fact, according to one study, nearly 35% of those with plans to migrate to cloud computing are now in a holding pattern.¶ It may
need to go without say that there is a question of whether the NSA security “surveillance” tactics raise issues of legality.
According to Congress, and the Supreme Court the processes employed by the NSA do not violate the 4th amendment “as long as the
government can show that it is relevant to an authorized investigation into known – and, significantly – unknown terrorists who may be in the
United States.” Yet, legality, as determined by the government, does
not answer the question of what the long-term
effects of such surveillance will be. As we have seen already it could affect as much as international political
relationships, or simply public and commercial computing access.
Lack of trust undermines diplomatic relations
Riechmann 13 – (Deb Riechmann, Foreign Affairs reporter at Associated Press , “NSA Spying Threatens U.S. Foreign Policy Efforts”,
AP, October 26, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/26/nsa-spying-foreign-
policy_n_4166076.html) Wang
WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary
of State John Kerry went to Europe to talk about Mideast peace, Syria and Iran.
What he got was an earful of outrage over U.S. snooping abroad.¶ President Barack Obama has defended America's
surveillance dragnet to leaders of Russia, Mexico, Brazil, France and Germany, but the international anger over the disclosures
shows no signs of abating in the short run.¶ Longer term, the revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward
Snowden about NSA tactics that allegedly include tapping the cellphones of as many as 35 world leaders
threaten to undermine U.S. foreign policy in a range of areas.¶ This vacuum-cleaner approach to data collection has
rattled allies.¶ "The magnitude of the eavesdropping is what shocked us," former French Foreign Minister Bernard
Kouchner said in a radio interview. "Let's be honest, we eavesdrop too. Everyone is listening to everyone else. But we don't have the same
means as the United States, which makes us jealous."¶ So where in the world isn't the NSA? That's one big question raised by the disclosures.
Whether the tapping of allies is a step too far might be moot.¶ The British ambassador to Lebanon, Tom Fletcher, tweeted
this past week: "I work on assumption that 6+ countries tap my phone. Increasingly rare that diplomats say anything sensitive on calls."¶
Diplomatic relations are built on trust. If America's credibility is in question, the U.S. will find it harder to
60
maintain alliances, influence world opinion and maybe even close trade deals.¶ Spying among allies is not new.¶
Madeleine Albright, secretary of state during the Clinton administration, recalled being at the United Nations and having the French
ambassador ask her why she said something in a private conversation apparently intercepted by the French.¶ The French government
protested revelations this past week that the NSA had collected 70.3 million French-based telephone and electronic message records in a 30day period.¶ Albright says Snowden's
disclosures have hurt U.S. policymakers.
61
Impact Modules
62
Asian War Module
US EU relations key to solve coming Asian conflicts
Timmerman ’14 -- Dr. Martina Timmermann, DAAD/AICGS Research Fellow
(Setting the Stage for a U.S.-German Partnership Befitting the Twenty-First Century Author: Martina Timmermann Published: August 6, 2014
Topics: German Foreign and Security Policy, Reconciliation in Europe and Asia Dr. Martina Timmermann was a DAAD/AICGS Research Fellow
from July to August 2014. While at AICGS, Dr. Timmermann explored the potential and options for EU/German involvement as a mediator in
East Asia In 1998, Dr. Timmermann received her doctorate degree from Ruhr-University Bochum for a study in comparative politics, titled The
Power of Collective Thought Patterns: Values, Change and Political Culture in Japan and the United States of America (Leske & Budrich 2000, in
German). Her PhD research, which she conducted at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo from 1993-1994 and at Harvard University’s U.S.-Japan
Program and Reischauer Institute in summer 1995, was kindly funded by the Japanese-European Special Exchange Program (SEP), the so-called
Takeshita-Initiative.
Critical challenges facing the German-American relationship—in Ukraine and Russia, Iraq, Syria, Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan, and several countries in Africa—
urgently need solutions. Overcoming them would be easier and mutually beneficial if Germany, the European
Union, and the U.S. walked more closely side by side. Such closer cooperation would be beneficial not only
to conflicts in and around Europe, but also to a set of conflicts in East Asia that have the potential to
exert a major global impact: the conflict between China, Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam, the Philippines, and
Malaysia over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea and the conflict between China and Japan on
the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. The United States has been prodded by its allies in Asia-Pacific
to serve as a mediator. Several American observers (like Jonathan Pollack[1] or Daniel Sneider[2]) have
also argued for U.S. high-level shuttle diplomacy. Giving this a second thought, however, it is obvious
that the United States as a direct stakeholder in the region, with its hands tied by its bilateral security
treaties with both Japan and the Republic of Korea, could not really fill the role of an independent
broker on this matter. China, moreover, has already made clear that it will not accept any American role
as a mediator in these conflicts. The U.S. would therefore benefit from involving a trusted and reliable partner,
such as the EU, whose reputation for credibility and integrity in peaceful multilateral conflict resolution
is well known. Still, although European economic interests would also be affected by conflicts in Asia, and especially when militaries are involved, these conflicts have not advanced
to a center stage debate between the U.S. and Europe. Instead, there seems to be a shared perception that conflicts occurring beyond Europe’s doorstep do not require European attention or,
Particularly in East Asia, all
stakeholders would benefit from stronger U.S.-European cooperation resulting in a more constructive
complementing of their experiences and soft and hard policy instruments.
from an American perspective, do not require European involvement. This, however, would be a waste of precious political opportunity.
Asian wars escalate- cause great power wars
Rudd ‘13 (“East Asia is a tinderbox on water” BY KEVIN RUDD | JANUARY 30, 2013 Kevin Rudd is the former prime minister and foreign
minister of Australia. He studied a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies at the Australian National University, majoring in Chinese language and
Chinese history. He worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs from 1981 to 1988, when he became Chief of Staff to Queensland Premier
Wayne Goss. After the Goss Government lost office in 1996, Rudd was hired as a Senior China Consultant by the accounting firm KPMG
Australia. Rudd was first elected to the House of Representatives for Griffith at the 1998 federal election, joining the Shadow Cabinet in 2001 as
Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/30/a_maritime_balkans_of_the_21st_century_east_asia?page=0,1
These are no ordinary times in East Asia. With tensions rising from conflicting territorial claims in the East
China and South China seas, the region increasingly resembles a 21st-century maritime redux of the
63
Balkans a century ago -- a tinderbox on water. Nationalist sentiment is surging across the region,
reducing the domestic political space for less confrontational approaches. Relations between China and
Japan have now fallen to their lowest ebb since diplomatic normalization in 1972, significantly reducing
bilateral trade and investment volumes and causing regional governments to monitor developments
with growing alarm. Relations between China and Vietnam, and between China and the Philippines,
have also deteriorated significantly, while key regional institutions such as the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) have become increasingly polarized. In security terms, the region is more brittle
than at any time since the fall of Saigon in 1975. In Beijing, current problems with Tokyo, Hanoi, and Manila are top of mind. They dominate both the
official media and the social media, and the latter have become particularly vitriolic. They also dominate discussions between Chinese officials and foreign visitors. The relationship with Japan
in particular is front and center in virtually every official conversation as Chinese interlocutors probe what they identify as a profound change in both the tenor of Japanese domestic politics
Beijing does not desire armed conflict with Japan over territorial disputes,
but nonetheless makes clear that it has its own red lines that cannot be crossed for its own domestic
reasons, and that it is prepared for any contingency. Like the Balkans a century ago, riven by overlapping
alliances, loyalties, and hatreds, the strategic environment in East Asia is complex. At least six states or
political entities are engaged in territorial disputes with China, three of which are close strategic partners of the
United States. And there are multiple agencies involved from individual states: In China, for example, the
International Crisis Group has calculated that eight different agencies are engaged in the South China
Sea alone. Furthermore, these territorial claims -- and the minerals, energy, and marine resources at stake -- are vast. And while the United States remains mostly neutral,
the intersection between the narrower interests of claimant states and the broader strategic competition
between the United States and China is significant and not automatically containable. Complicating matters, East
Asia increasingly finds itself being pulled in radically different directions. On the one hand, the forces of globalization are bringing its
and the centrality of China within the Japanese debate.
peoples, economies, and countries closer together than at any other time in history, as reflected in intraregional trade, which is now approaching 60 percent of total East Asian trade. On the
the idea of armed conflict,
which seems contrary to every element of rational self-interest for any nation-state enjoying the benefits of such
unprecedented regional economic dynamism, has now become a terrifying, almost normal part of the
regional conversation, driven by recent territorial disputes, but animated by deep-rooted cultural and
historical resentments. Contemporary East Asia is a tale of these two very different worlds. The most worrying
other hand, the forces of primitive, almost atavistic nationalisms are at the same time threatening to pull the region apart. As a result,
fault lines run between China and Japan, and between China and Vietnam. In September 2012, the Japanese government purchased from a private owner three islands in the Senkakus, a small
chain of islands claimed by both countries (the Chinese call the islands the Diaoyu). This caused China to conclude that Japan, which had exercised de facto administrative control over the
islands for most of the last century, was now moving toward a more de jure exercise of sovereignty. In response, Beijing launched a series of what it called "combination punches": economic
retaliation, the dispatch of Chinese maritime patrol vessels to the disputed areas, joint combat drills among the branches of its military, and widespread, occasionally violent public protests
against Japanese diplomatic and commercial targets across China. As a result, Japanese exports to China contracted rapidly in the fourth quarter of 2012, and because Japan had already
become China's largest trading partner, sliding exports alone are likely to be a significant contributive factor in what is projected to be a large contraction in overall Japanese economic growth
in the same period. In mid-December, Japan claimed that Chinese aircraft intruded over Japanese airspace above the disputed islands for the first time since 1958. After a subsequent incident,
Japan dispatched eight F-15 fighter planes to the islands. While both sides have avoided deploying naval assets, there is a growing concern of creeping militarization as military capabilities are
transferred to coast guard-type vessels. While the "static" in Japanese military circles regarding China-related contingency planning has become increasingly audible, Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe, who took office in mid-December, has sought to moderate his public language on China, apparently to send a diplomatic message that he wishes to restore stability to the relationship.
This was reinforced by a conciliatory letter sent from Abe to Xi Jinping, China's new leader, on Jan. 25 during a visit to Beijing by the leader of New Komeito, the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party's coalition partner. This has been publicly and privately welcomed in Beijing, as reflected in Xi's public remarks the following day. Beijing's position is that while it wants Japan to formally
recognize the existence of a territorial dispute in order to fortify China's political and legal position on the future of the islands, it also wishes to see the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute managed in a
manner that does not threaten regional security, which would undermine the stability necessary to complete its core task of economic reform and growth. There may therefore be some
softening in the China-Japan relationship for the immediate period ahead. But diplomatic and strategic realities appear to remain largely unchanged. The intensity of Abe and Japanese Foreign
Minister Fumio Kishida's unprecedented mid-January diplomatic offensive involving visits to seven East Asian states demonstrates that the temperature between Beijing and Tokyo remains
high -- just as the late January statement from Tokyo on the establishment of a special Japanese Coast Guard force of 12 enhanced vessels and 600 servicemen specifically dedicated to the
Senkaku theater underlines the nature of the challenges lying ahead. The problem is that
neither side can afford domestically to be seen as
retreating from current positions. China believes that Japan has altered the status quo; Japan believes it has no need to budge because there is no sovereignty issue
in the first place. All of this means that both sides remain captive to events on the high seas and in the air -events that could quickly spiral out of control.
Asia conflict goes nuclear
Dibb ‘1 (emeritus professor of strategic and defence studies at The Australian National University (Paul, Winter. “Strategic Trends: Asia at a
Crossroads.” Naval War College Review, Vol. 54, Issue 1. Ebsco.)
64
areas of maximum danger and instability in the world today are in Asia, followed by the Middle East and parts of the former
Soviet Union. The strategic situation in Asia is more uncertain and potentially threatening than anywhere in Europe.
Unlike in Europe, it is possible to envisage war in Asia involving the major powers: remnants of Cold War ideological confrontation still exist across the Taiwan
The
Straits and on the Korean Peninsula; India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and these two countries are more confrontational than at any time since the early 1970s; in
Southeast Asia, Indonesia--which is the world's fourth-largest country--faces a highly uncertain future that could lead to its breakup. The Asia-Pacific region spends more on defense (about
$150 billion a year) than any other part of the world except the United States and Nato Europe. China and Japan are amongst the top four or five global military spenders.
Asia also
has more nuclear powers than any other region of the world. Asia's security is at a crossroads: the region could go in the direction of peace
and cooperation, or it could slide into confrontation and military conflict. There are positive tendencies, including the resurgence of economic growth and the spread of democracy, which
would encourage an optimistic view. But there are a number of negative tendencies that must be of serious concern. There are deep-seated historical, territorial, ideological, and religious
the region has no history of successful multilateral security cooperation or arms control.
Such multilateral institutions as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the ASEAN Regional Forum have shown themselves to
be ineffective when confronted with major crises.
differences in Asia. Also,
65
ISIS Module
US-EU cooperation key to solve ISIS
Lang et al. ’14 (Brian Katulis and Hardin Lang are Senior Fellows with the National Security and International Policy team at the Center
for American Progress. Vikram Singh is the Vice President for National Security and International Policy. Defeating ISIS: An Integrated Strategy
to Advance Middle East Stability Syria SOURCE: AP Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, are seen in Raqqa, Syria. By Brian
Katulis, Hardin Lang, and Vikram Singh | September 10, 2014
A transatlantic and allied response to ISIS The September 2014 NATO summit took several steps to
energize the transatlantic community to confront ISIS. Nine countries pledged to join U.S. efforts to
counter ISIS, but no specific commitments were made. And as evidenced over the past few years in
Afghanistan and Libya, follow through on commitments is essential. Further, the United States and its
Western partners need to proactively manage the dangers posed by European and American citizens
now fighting alongside ISIS. The United States should work with its transatlantic partners and traditional
allies to: Enable reliable and capable partners in the region to take the fight directly to ISIS. The United States is
providing the greatest support to forces fighting ISIS. NATO and other U.S. allies should together develop a strategy to help the region counter ISIS with technical support and military
assistance. This should include specific commitments to provide support to the Iraqi government, Kurdish forces, and third-way opposition alternatives to the Assad regime and ISIS in Syria.
Enhance law enforcement and intelligence fusion efforts to identify and counter ISIS and other terrorist
fighters holding Western passports. This should build on existing U.S.-European efforts in coordination with the International Criminal Police
Organization, or INTERPOL. More than 12,000 foreign fighters are estimated to have flocked to Iraq and Syria. According to intelligence agencies and outside experts, one-quarter of these
With an estimated 3,000 individuals, including perhaps 500 each from Britain and
France, the dangers of extremists coming home to continue the fight with acts of terrorism cannot be
ignored. Western countries should partner with allies in the Middle East and local communities on counter-radicalization efforts.
fighters come from Western countries.
ISIS triggers World War 3
Corre ’14 (Addam Corre 6-17-14, Inquisitr writer, “World War 3: Forget Ukraine, Iraq Is The Most Likely Flash Point”, Inquisitr,
06/17/2014, http://www.inquisitr.com/1303680/world-war-3-forget-ukraine-iraq-is-the-most-likely-flash-point/
Over the past few months speculation has been rife that the events in Ukraine could trigger the next World War. Numerous articles have proclaimed that to be the most likely scenario. But is
ISIS – has created a new situation on the ground
which has a far greater potential for setting off a world conflict than Ukraine could ever have. Despite all the
it? The actions of the Islamic militant group calling itself ” The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” – or
world posturing and tut-tutting about the Crimea, it is, after all, simply a piece of land whose ownership is disputed. Viewed objectively, given the demographic structure of the area, the
Russians have at least an arguable case to justify its annexation. Whether the fears of the local Russian speaking population were real or imagined, it’s now a fait-accompli, and no one is going
to do anything to change the situation any time soon. Even that the expansion of Russian interests in other parts of Ukraine have similar elements of justification, which might keep the
the situation in the Middle East is completely
different. It is far more volatile and dangerous because it is not really a question of land. What the world is witnessing, not
diplomats busy for a few months, but are unlikely to include any significant military dimension. But
for the first time – and certainly not for the last – is a clash of ideologies within Islam. Some may feel that while they are busy butchering and beheading each other at least they are not a
threat to the rest of the world. That is mistaken and shortsighted thinking. With every passing year, the theories of Samuel P. Huntington that people’s cultural and religious identities will be
the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world, gain even more credence. Huntington’s concept, which he aptly termed “The Clash of Civilizations” was first proposed in 1992. Since
then, the world has witnessed with growing horror the expansion of ever increasingly radical Islamic groups in almost every corner of the globe. Islamic militant groups are active in Somalia,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Nigeria, Kenya, Lebanon, The Palestinian territories, and Gaza, just to list a few. Although Russia nominally crushed the Islamists of Chechnya, remnants of them
still manage the odd bombing atrocity in Russia. Islamic activity in China also appears to have been suppressed, but facts from there are almost impossible to verify. But Islamic extremism and
terrorism is not confined to countries with mainly Muslim populations. From the attack on the Twin Towers in New York to the London bus bombings to the Madrid train bombings, Islam
carried its war to the rest of the world. And the world cleaned up the sites, mourned – and moved on. Some might argue that the U.S., and one or two other countries, tried to do something
about those atrocities by invading Iraq, toppling Saddam Hussein, fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and (eventually) killing their leader, Osama bin-Laden. History will judge whether those
actions of ISIS trigger a third world war? It all depends on
which group, or groups, the major powers ally themselves with and support diplomatically, financially, or militarily. We are today
tactics succeeded or not; currently, the legacy is not looking too good. Why could the
witnessing the truth of the adage that adversity makes strange bedfellows. Even a week ago, who could have envisaged a scenario in which the U.S. and Iran could share a mutual interest, and
Apart from the fact that Russia, and sometimes China, have an almost knee-jerk
reaction against any direction the U.S. might take in the international arena, Israel is the wild card in the
possibly support each other in actions against ISIS?
66
pack. If it senses that – for whatever reason – the U.S. and Iran will find themselves allies, it will
understand that the U.S. will be constrained in taking further action against Iran regarding its efforts to
manufacture a nuclear bomb. Facing such a situation, The Israeli government may feel that he window of
opportunity to take military action against Iran is rapidly closing. Although, until now, the prevailing belief has been that Israel could not
act alone – and succeed – it could be, and probably is the fact, that Israel will be left with no alternative. Diplomatic efforts to stop the
Iranian nuclear program have palpably failed. The danger of such a course of action is that it would almost certainly result in the
Islamist factions stopping their mutual bloodletting in order to confront their joint enemy, Israel. From
that point, it does not require too much imagination to project what will be the effect of world and regional
governments aligning themselves with one side or the other. World War 3 starting in the Middle East as
an indirect result of the actions of ISIS is not such a fanciful prediction!
Unchecked ISIS causes extinction
Brent Budowsky 8/22, LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics, former aide to former Sen.
Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief deputy majority whip of the House, “ISIS poses nuclear 9/11 threat”, 2014,
http://www.opednews.com/articles/ISIS-poses-nuclear-9-11-th-by-Brent-Budowsky-ISI_Military_Nuclear_insanity_Threat-To-World-Peace140822-911.html
After the latest grotesque atrocity by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the beheading of an American journalist, American and European policymakers must clearly understand the near certainty that unless it is defeated and
ISIS will launch a major terror attack on American or European soil. Analysts estimate that ISIS has amassed a
cash hoard of between $400 million and $2 billion. It is highly probable that ISIS will attempt to use
some of this money to obtain nuclear, chemical, biological or other weapons of mass death on the
international black market or from corrupt officials in nations such as Russia, China, Pakistan or North
Korea to use in attacks against New York, Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Brussels or other nations it considers infidel enemies. This danger is magnified by
the fact that ISIS has recruited nationals of the United States and Europe, who possess American and European passports and are physically
indistinguishable from local populations in America and Europe. It is extraordinary that the mass murdering butchery of ISIS is so demented than even al Qaeda is offended. It is alarming that the CIA,
destroyed,
which launched intelligence operations even against the United States Senate, and the NSA, which launched massive and unprecedented eavesdropping operations, and intelligence services of leading European nations were blind
the most barbaric terrorists in modern history had taken over almost a third of Iraq
and are on the brink of creating a terrorist super-state that dwarfs al Qaeda's efforts prior to 9/11. I vehemently
to the magnitude of the ISIS threat until
opposed the misguided Iraq War from the moment it was proposed by former President George W. Bush and have never been a neoconservative, warmonger or super-hawk. But aggressive action against ISIS is urgently needed.
ISIS has stated its intention to attack the United States and Europe to advance its evil, messianic and genocidal
ideology and ambitions. ISIS has the money to purchase the most deadly weapons in the world, and has
recruited American and European traitors with above-average capability to execute an attack. The odds that ISIS
can obtain nuclear, chemical, biological or other forms of mass destruction weapons are impossible to ascertain but in a world of vast illegal arms trafficking, with so
many corrupt officials in nations possessing arsenals of destruction, the danger is real. The fact that WMD scares prior to the
Iraq War ranged from mistaken to deceitful does not mean that the WMD danger does not exist today. It does. I applaud the recent actions taken by President Obama. Obama's airstrikes
saved tens of thousands of Yazidis from genocide, took back the Mosul Dam from ISIS and saved countless Iraqis, Kurds and Syrians from slaughter. The airstrikes inflicted material damage to ISIS. The diplomacy of Obama and
Secretary of State John Kerry contributed mightily to the replacement of a disastrous Iraqi government by a government can unite Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. The Obama-Kerry initiatives will lead to the creation of a stable
Afghan government and avoid the collapse that was possible after the recent controversial Afghan elections. These are real successes. In the current political climate, Obama seems to get credit for nothing, but he deserves great
the danger of ISIS pulling off a nuclear, chemical, biological or other mass
death 9/11-style attack in a major American or European city is real. Even with dirty or primitive WMD
weapons, the casualty totals could be catastrophic. ISIS must be defeated and destroyed. This will not be achieved with "boots on the ground" proxies from Iraqi or
credit for some important successes in recent weeks. And yet
Kurd forces alone, though Kurdish forces should immediately receive strong military assistance. America should not initiate another massive Iraq ground war. What is needed is a multinational special ops strike force made up of
10,000 troops from NATO nations and possibly Arab League nations.
67
North Korea Module
US EU relations are key to solve North Korea and Iran conflict and nuclearization
Stivachtis ’10 -- Professor of Poli Sci & Ph.D. in Politics & International Relations from Lancaster University Yannis Stivachtis 10,
Director of International Studies Program @ Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University A. Stivachtis (Professor of Poli Sci & Ph.D. in Politics
& International Relations from Lancaster University), THE IMPERATIVE FOR TRANSATLANTIC COOPERATION,” The Research Institute for
European and American Studies, 2010, pg. http://www.rieas.gr/research-areas/global-issues/transatlantic-studies/78.html
There is no doubt that US-European
relations are in a period of transition , and that the stresses and strains of globalization
are increasing both the number and the seriousness of the challenges that confront transatlantic relations. The events of 9/11 and the Iraq War
have added significantly to these stresses and strains. At the same time, international terrorism, the nuclearization of
North
Korea and especially Iran, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the transformation of Russia into a stable and
cooperative member of the international community, the growing power of China, the political and economic transformation and integration of
the Caucasian and Central Asian states, the integration and stabilization of the Balkan countries, the promotion of peace
and stability in
the Middle East, poverty, climate change, AIDS and other emergent problems and situations require further cooperation
among countries at the regional, global and institutional levels. Therefore, cooperation between the U.S. and Europe is more
imperative than ever to deal effectively with these problems. It is fair to say that the challenges of crafting a new
relationship between the U.S. and the EU as well as between the U.S. and NATO are more regional than global, but
the implications of success or failure will be global. The transatlantic relationship is still in crisis, despite efforts to improve it
since the Iraq War. This is not to say that differences between the two sides of the Atlantic did not exist before the war. Actually, post-1945
relations between Europe and the U.S. were fraught with disagreements and never free of crisis since the Suez crisis of 1956. Moreover, despite
trans-Atlantic proclamations of solidarity in the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. and Europe parted ways on issues from global warming and
biotechnology to peacekeeping and national missile defense. Questions such as, the future role of NATO and its relationship to the common
European Security and Defense policy (ESDP), or what constitutes terrorism and what the rights of captured suspected terrorists are, have been
added to the list of US-European disagreements. There are two reasons for concern regarding the transatlantic rift. First, if European leaders
conclude that Europe must become counterweight to the U.S., rather than a partner, it will be difficult to engage in the kind of open search for
a common ground than an elective partnership requires. Second, there is a risk that public opinion in both the U.S. and Europe will make it
difficult even for leaders who want to forge a new relationship to make the necessary accommodations. If both sides would actively work to
heal the breach, a new opportunity could be created. A vibrant transatlantic partnership remains a real possibility, but only if both sides make
the necessary political commitment. There are strong reasons to believe that the security challenges facing the U.S. and Europe are more
shared than divergent. The most dramatic case is terrorism. Closely
related is the common interest in halting the spread of
weapons of mass destruction and the nuclearization of Iran and North Korea. This commonality of threats is clearly perceived by
publics on both sides of the Atlantic. Actually, Americans and Europeans see eye to eye on more issues than one would expect from reading
newspapers and magazines. But while elites on both sides of the Atlantic bemoan a largely illusory gap over the use of military force,
biotechnology, and global warming, surveys of American and European public opinion highlight sharp differences over global leadership,
defense spending, and the Middle East that threaten the future of the last century’s most successful alliance. There are other important, shared
interests as well. The transformation of Russia into a stable cooperative member of the international community is a priority both for the U.S.
and Europe. They also have an interest in promoting a stable regime in Ukraine. It
is necessary for the U.S. and EU to form a
united front to meet these challenges because first, there is a risk that dangerous materials related to WMD will fall into
the wrong hands; and second, the spread of conflict along those countries’ periphery could destabilize
neighboring countries and provide safe havens for terrorists and other international criminal organizations. Likewise, in the Caucasus
and Central Asia both sides share a stake in promoting political and economic transformation and integrating these states into larger
communities such as the OSCE. This would also minimize the risk of instability spreading and prevent those countries of becoming havens for
international terrorists and criminals. Similarly, there is a common interest in integrating the Balkans politically and economically. Dealing
with Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as other political issues in the Middle East are also of
a great concern for both sides although the U.S. plays a dominant role in the region. Finally, US-European cooperation will be more
effective in dealing with the rising power of China through engagement but also containment. The post Iraq War realities have shown that it is
no longer simply a question of adapting transatlantic institutions to new realities. The changing structure of relations between the U.S. and
Europe implies that a new basis for the relationship must be found if transatlantic cooperation and partnership is to continue. The
future
course of relations will be determined above all by U.S. policy towards Europe and the Atlantic Alliance. Wise
68
policy can help forge a new, more enduring strategic partnership, through which the two sides of the Atlantic cooperate in meeting the many
major challenges and opportunities of the evolving world together. But a
policy that takes Europe for granted and routinely
ignores or even belittles European concerns, may force Europe to conclude that the costs of continued alliance
outweigh its benefits.
Unchecked North Korea nuclearization causes nuclear war and extinction
Hayes & Hamel-Green ’10 -- Victoria University AND **Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute
(Peter and Michael, “-“The Path Not Taken, the Way Still Open: Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia”, 1/5)
The consequences of failing to address the proliferation threat posed by the North Korea developments, and related political
and economic issues, are serious, not only for the Northeast Asian region but for the whole international community. At worst, there is
the possibility of nuclear attack1, whether by intention, miscalculation, or merely accident, leading to the resumption
of Korean War hostilities. On the Korean Peninsula itself, key population centres are well within short or medium range missiles. The whole of
Japan is likely to come within North Korean missile range. Pyongyang has a population of over 2 million, Seoul (close to the North Korean
border) 11 million, and Tokyo over 20 million. Even a limited nuclear exchange would result in a holocaust of unprecedented proportions. But
the catastrophe within the region would not be the only outcome. New
research indicates that even a limited nuclear war
in the region would rearrange our global climate far more quickly than global warming. Westberg draws attention to new studies
modelling the effects of even a limited nuclear exchange involving approximately 100 Hiroshima-sized 15 kt bombs2 (by comparison it should
be noted that the United States currently deploys warheads in the range 100 to 477 kt, that is, individual warheads equivalent in yield to a
range of 6 to 32 Hiroshimas).The studies indicate that the soot from the fires produced would lead to a decrease in global temperature by 1.25
degrees Celsius for a period of 6-8 years.3 In Westberg’s view: That is not global winter, but the nuclear darkness will cause a deeper drop in
temperature than at any time during the last 1000 years. The temperature over the continents would decrease substantially more than the
global average. A decrease in rainfall over the continents would also follow...The period of nuclear darkness will cause much greater decrease in
grain production than 5% and it will continue for many years...hundreds of millions of people will die from hunger...To make matters even
worse, such amounts of smoke injected into the stratosphere would cause a huge reduction in the Earth’s protective ozone.4 These, of course,
are not the only consequences. Reactors might also be targeted, causing further mayhem and downwind radiation effects, superimposed on a
smoking, radiating ruin left by nuclear next-use. Millions of refugees would flee the affected regions. The direct impacts, and the
follow-on impacts on the global economy via ecological and food insecurity, could make the present global
financial crisis pale by comparison. How the great powers, especially the nuclear weapons states respond to such a crisis, and in
particular, whether nuclear weapons are used in response to nuclear first-use, could make or break the global non proliferation and
disarmament regimes. There could be many unanticipated impacts on regional and global security relationships5, with subsequent nuclear
breakout and geopolitical turbulence, including possible loss-of-control over fissile material or warheads in the chaos of nuclear war, and
aftermath chain-reaction affects involving other potential proliferant states. The Korean nuclear proliferation issue is not just a regional threat
but a global one that warrants priority consideration from the international community
69
Iran Talks Module
US EU relations are key to solve Iran talks
Pollard ’14 -- Robert Pollard is a State Department visiting fellow with the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS)(By Robert A. Pollard MAR 14, 2014 Robert Pollard is a State Department visiting fellow with the Europe Program
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.)
If the recent crisis in Ukraine has brought home one clear message, it is this: policy unity between the
United States and the European Union is absolutely essential. NATO will remain the first place where the
United States will turn due to our treaty obligations and our status as a member. Yet the European
Union is an increasingly important player in the transatlantic policy discourse, and Washington has been
slow to fully recognize it. Therefore, it is very timely and fitting that, for the first time in his presidency,
Barack Obama will visit Brussels on March 26 for the U.S.-EU summit. That said, while the EU leadership is eagerly
awaiting the meeting, the history of U.S.-EU summits has been long on aspirations and short on achievements. So what can we reasonably
expect from this, the first transatlantic summit in over two years? The Unfinished Agenda First, let’s look at the score card from the
last summit in Washington. Measured against the official declaration issued at the end of the meeting, the track record is not bad. One major
achievement was the decision to set up a High-Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth, which ultimately resulted in the launch of
negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It is easy to forget, but at the time, it was not a foregone conclusion
that the two sides would go ahead with such a comprehensive free trade agreement, a goal that had eluded decisionmakers for literally
decades. One downside: the inauguration of TTIP meant that the preexisting Transatlantic Economic Council was virtually disbanded, meaning
that ongoing efforts to cut back costly regulatory barriers to trade and investment were largely put on hold for the duration of the trade talks.
Another bright spot was Iran. After the Washington summit, the United States and European Union
spearheaded extraordinary international cooperation on sanctions, including a nearly total oil embargo
that helped force Tehran to the negotiating table. No one is ready to declare victory, but transatlantic
cooperation in this instance showed that economic sanctions can work if the United States and its
European allies pull together.
Iran prolif causes nuclear war
Montgomery ‘11 -- research fellow at the CSBA
(Eric Edelman, distinguished fellow at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments, Andrew Krepinevich, President of the CSBA, evan
montgomery, research fellow at the CSBA “Why Obama Should Take Out Iran's Nuclear Program,”)
Even so, the U.S. government might persist with its existing approach if it believes that the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran are
manageable through a combination of containment and deterrence. In fact, the Obama administration has downplayed the findings of the new
IAEA report, suggesting that a change in U.S. policy is unlikely. Yet this view underestimates the challenges that the United States would
once Iran acquired nuclear weapons. For example, the Obama administration should not discount
the possibility of an Israeli-Iranian nuclear conflict. From the very start, the nuclear balance between
these two antagonists would be unstable. Because of the significant disparity in the sizes of their
respective arsenals (Iran would have a handful of warheads compared to Israel's estimated 100-200), both sides would have huge
confront
incentives to strike first in the event of a crisis. Israel would likely believe that it had only a short period during which it could launch a nuclear
attack that would wipe out most, if not all, of Iran's weapons and much of its nuclear infrastructure without Tehran being able to retaliate. For
absence of early warning
systems on both sides and the extremely short flight time for ballistic missiles heading from one country
to the other would only heighten the danger. Decision-makers would be under tremendous pressure to
act quickly. Beyond regional nuclear war, Tehran's acquisition of these weapons could be a catalyst for additional proliferation throughout
its part, Iran might decide to use its arsenal before Israel could destroy it with a preemptive attack. The
70
the Middle East and beyond. Few observers have failed to note that the United States has treated nuclear-armed rogues, such as North Korea,
very differently from non-nuclear ones, such as Iraq and Libya. If Iran became a nuclear power and the United States reacted with a policy of
containment, nuclear weapons would only be more appealing as the ultimate deterrent to outside intervention. Meanwhile, Iran's rivals for
regional dominance, such as Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, might seek their own nuclear devices to counterbalance Tehran. The road to
acquiring nuclear weapons is generally a long and difficult one, but these nations might have shortcuts. Riyadh, for example, could exploit its
close ties to Islamabad -- which has a history of illicit proliferation and a rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal -- to become a nuclear power almost
overnight.
71
Generic Terrorism/Prolif Module
Cooperation with Europe solves nuclear terror and prolif
Stivachtis 10 – Director of International Studies Program @ Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University [Dr. Yannis. A. Stivachtis
(Professor of Poli Sci & Ph.D. in Politics & International Relations from Lancaster University), THE IMPERATIVE FOR TRANSATLANTIC
COOPERATION,” The Research Institute for European and American Studies, 2010, pg. http://www.rieas.gr/research-areas/globalissues/transatlantic-studies/78.html]
There is no doubt that
US-European relations are in a period of transition, and that the stresses and strains of globalization are increasing both the
number and the seriousness of the challenges that confront transatlantic relations. The events of 9/11 and the Iraq War have added significantly to these stresses and strains. At the same
terrorism, the nuclearization of North Korea and especially Iran, the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD), the transformation of Russia into a stable and cooperative member of the international community, the growing power of China, the
political and economic transformation and integration of the Caucasian and Central Asian states, the integration and stabilization of the Balkan
countries, the promotion of peace and stability in the Middle East, poverty, climate change, AIDS and other emergent
problems and situations require further cooperation among countries at the regional, global and institutional levels. Therefore, cooperation between
the U.S. and Europe is more imperative than ever to deal effectively with these problems. It is fair to say that the
challenges of crafting a new relationship between the U.S. and the EU as well as between the U.S. and NATO are more
regional than global, but the implications of success or failure will be global. The transatlantic relationship is still in crisis,
time, international
despite efforts to improve it since the Iraq War. This is not to say that differences between the two sides of the Atlantic did not exist before the war. Actually, post-1945 relations between
Europe and the U.S. were fraught with disagreements and never free of crisis since the Suez crisis of 1956. Moreover, despite trans-Atlantic proclamations of solidarity in the aftermath of
9/11, the U.S. and Europe parted ways on issues from global warming and biotechnology to peacekeeping and national missile defense. Questions such as, the future role of NATO and its
relationship to the common European Security and Defense policy (ESDP), or what constitutes terrorism and what the rights of captured suspected terrorists are, have been added to the list of
US-European disagreements. There are two reasons for concern regarding the transatlantic rift. First, if European leaders conclude that Europe must become counterweight to the U.S., rather
than a partner, it will be difficult to engage in the kind of open search for a common ground than an elective partnership requires. Second, there is a risk that public opinion in both the U.S. and
Europe will make it difficult even for leaders who want to forge a new relationship to make the necessary accommodations. If both sides would actively work to heal the breach, a new
A vibrant transatlantic partnership remains a real possibility, but only if both sides
make the necessary political commitment. There are strong reasons to believe that the security challenges facing the U.S. and Europe are more shared
opportunity could be created.
than divergent. The most dramatic case is terrorism. Closely related is the common interest in halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the nuclearization of Iran and North
Korea. This commonality of threats is clearly perceived by publics on both sides of the Atlantic. Actually, Americans and Europeans see eye to eye on more issues than one would expect from
reading newspapers and magazines. But while elites on both sides of the Atlantic bemoan a largely illusory gap over the use of military force, biotechnology, and global warming, surveys of
American and European public opinion highlight sharp differences over global leadership, defense spending, and the Middle East that threaten the future of the last century’s most successful
There are other important, shared interests as well. The transformation of Russia into a stable cooperative
member of the international community is a priority both for the U.S. and Europe. They also have an interest in promoting a stable
regime in Ukraine. It is necessary for the U.S. and EU to form a united front to meet these challenges because first, there is
a risk that dangerous materials related to WMD will fall into the wrong hands; and second, the spread of
conflict along those countries’ periphery could destabilize neighboring countries and provide safe
havens for terrorists and other international criminal organizations. Likewise, in the Caucasus and Central Asia both sides share a
stake in promoting political and economic transformation and integrating these states into larger communities such as
alliance.
the OSCE. This would also minimize the risk of instability spreading and prevent those countries of becoming havens for international terrorists and criminals. Similarly, there is a common
interest in integrating the Balkans politically and economically. Dealing with Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as other political issues in the Middle East are also of
a great concern for both sides although the U.S. plays a dominant role in the region. Finally, US-European cooperation will be more effective in dealing with the rising power of China through
engagement but also containment. The post Iraq War realities have shown that it is no longer simply a question of adapting transatlantic institutions to new realities. The changing structure of
relations between the U.S. and Europe implies that a new basis for the relationship must be found if transatlantic cooperation and partnership is to continue. The future course of relations will
be determined above all by U.S. policy towards Europe and the Atlantic Alliance. Wise policy can help forge a new, more enduring strategic partnership, through which the two sides of the
a policy that takes Europe for granted and
routinely ignores or even belittles European concerns, may force Europe to conclude that the costs of
continued alliance outweigh its benefits.
Atlantic cooperate in meeting the many major challenges and opportunities of the evolving world together. But
Nuclear terrorism is highly likely
Plame ’14 (Nuclear terrorism: Most immediate and extreme threat to global security 143686 2 By Valerie Plame - 09/26/14 07:00 AM
EDT A former career covert CIA operations officer, Plame worked to protect U.S. national security and prevent the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction. She is now a New York Times best-selling author and a leader of the international Global Zero movement for the elimination
of all nuclear weapons.
72
Yet this mounting violence and instability pales in comparison to what could be wrought by nucleararmed terrorists. We know that the Islamic State group has the means and motive to attain weapons of
mass destruction. They have an appetite for shocking demonstrations and indiscriminate killing, and
have already seized low-grade nuclear material from a facility in Mosul. They are acquiring the ability to
build radioactive dirty bombs that could cause major health and economic damage. With reports of
escalating funding and recruitment of citizens from every continent, and ties to radicals in nuclear
weapons-states such as Pakistan, it is increasingly conceivable that weapons-grade materials – or even
a ready-made nuclear device – could fall into their hands. If that happens, they would not hesitate to
use them – possibly at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. There are more than 16,000 nuclear weapons in the
world and enough highly-enriched uranium and plutonium to make hundreds of thousands more. We can do our best to prevent isolated
incidents in which terrorists buy, build or steal them – but those efforts are stop-gap at best, and we won’t know if we missed something until
it’s too late. Nuclear
terrorism is all but inevitable unless we work quickly and urgently to secure all
nuclear materials and eradicate all nuclear weapons. To eliminate the risk we have to drain the swamp.
Terrorism causes full scale nuclear wars
Hellman ‘8 (Martin E. Hellman* * Martin E. Hellman is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and Professor Emeritus at
Stanford University. His current project applies risk analysis to nuclear deterrence
Nuclear proliferation and the specter of nuclear terrorism are creating additional possibilities for
triggering a nuclear war. If an American (or Russian) city were devastated by an act of nuclear terrorism, the
public outcry for immediate, decisive action would be even stronger than Kennedy had to deal with
when the Cuban missiles first became known to the American public. While the action would likely not
be directed against Russia, it might be threatening to Russia (e.g., on its borders) or one of its allies and
precipitate a crisis that resulted in a full-scale nuclear war. Terrorists with an apocalyptic mindset might
even attempt to catalyze a full-scale nuclear war by disguising their act to look like an attack by the U.S. or
Russia.
Prolif causes extinction- it will be fast and dangerous
Kroenig ’12 (Matthew Kroenig: The History of Proliferation Optimism: Does It Have A Future? NPEC asked Council on Foreign Relations
Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow and Georgetown University assistant professor of government Matthew Kroenig to review the bidding. His take
and bottom line is that such nuclear optimism always was strained, that it remains far less popular out of academe than in and with cause. May
26, 2012 AUTHOR: Matthew Kroenig: Assistant Professor of Government, Georgetown University and Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow, Council
on Foreign Relations The History of Proliferation Optimism (PDF) 173.80 KB The History of Proliferation Optimism: Does It Have A Future?
Prepared for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center)
The greatest threat posed by the spread of nuclear weapons is nuclear war. The more states in
possession of nuclear weapons, the greater the probability that somewhere, someday, there is a
catastrophic nuclear war. A nuclear exchange between the two superpowers during the Cold War could have arguably resulted in human extinction and a nuclear
exchange between states with smaller nuclear arsenals, such as India and Pakistan, could still result in millions of deaths and casualties, billions of dollars of economic devastation,
environmental degradation, and a parade of other horrors. To date, nuclear weapons have only been used in warfare once. In 1945, the United States used one nuclear weapon each on
Many analysts point to sixty-five-plus-year tradition of nuclear non-use
as evidence that nuclear weapons are unusable, but it would be naïve to think that nuclear weapons
will never be used again. After all, analysts in the 1990s argued that worldwide economic downturns
like the great depression were a thing of the past, only to be surprised by the dot-com bubble bursting
in the later 1990s and the Great Recession of the late Naughts.[53] This author, for one, would be surprised if nuclear weapons are not used
in my lifetime. Before reaching a state of MAD, new nuclear states go through a transition period in which they
lack a secure-second strike capability. In this context, one or both states might believe that it has an
incentive to use nuclear weapons first. For example, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons neither Iran, nor its nuclear-armed rival, Israel, will have a secure, secondHiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing World War II to a close.
strike capability. Even though it is believed to have a large arsenal, given its small size and lack of strategic depth, Israel might not be confident that it could absorb a nuclear strike and respond
73
, when it first crosses the nuclear
threshold, Tehran will have a small and vulnerable nuclear force. In these pre-MAD situations, there are
at least three ways that nuclear war could occur. First, the state with the nuclear advantage might
believe it has a splendid first strike capability. In a crisis, Israel might, therefore, decide to launch a
preemptive nuclear strike to disarm Iran’s nuclear capabilities and eliminate the threat of nuclear war against Israel. Indeed, this incentive might be
further increased by Israel’s aggressive strategic culture that emphasizes preemptive action. Second, the
state with a small and vulnerable nuclear arsenal, in this case Iran, might feel use ‘em or loose ‘em
pressures. That is, if Tehran believes that Israel might launch a preemptive strike, Iran might decide to strike first rather than risk having its entire nuclear arsenal destroyed. Third, as
Thomas Schelling has argued, nuclear war could result due to the reciprocal fear of surprise attack.[54] If there are advantages to
with a devastating counterstrike. Similarly, Iran might eventually be able to build a large and survivable nuclear arsenal, but
striking first, one state might start a nuclear war in the belief that war is inevitable and that it would be better to go first than to go second. In a future Israeli-Iranian crisis, for example, Israel
and Iran might both prefer to avoid a nuclear war, but decide to strike first rather than suffer a devastating first attack from an opponent. Even in a world of MAD, there is a risk of nuclear war.
Rational deterrence theory assumes nuclear-armed states are governed by rational leaders that would
not intentionally launch a suicidal nuclear war. This assumption appears to have applied to past and current nuclear powers, but there is no guarantee
that it will continue to hold in the future. For example, Iran’s theocratic government, despite its inflammatory rhetoric, has followed a fairly pragmatic foreign policy since 1979, but it contains
We cannot rule out the
possibility that, as nuclear weapons continue to spread, one leader will choose to launch a nuclear
war, knowing full well that it could result in self-destruction. One does not need to resort to irrationality, however, to imagine a nuclear
leaders who genuinely hold millenarian religious worldviews who could one day ascend to power and have their finger on the nuclear trigger.
war under MAD. Nuclear weapons may deter leaders from intentionally launching full-scale wars, but they do not mean the end of international politics. As was discussed above, nucleararmed states still have conflicts of interest and leaders still seek to coerce nuclear-armed adversaries. This leads to the credibility problem that is at the heart of modern deterrence theory:
how can you threaten to launch a suicidal nuclear war? Deterrence theorists have devised at least two answers to this question. First, as stated above, leaders can choose to launch a limited
nuclear war.[55] This strategy might be especially attractive to states in a position of conventional military inferiority that might have an incentive to escalate a crisis quickly. During the Cold
War, the United States was willing to use nuclear weapons first to stop a Soviet invasion of Western Europe given NATO’s conventional inferiority in continental Europe. As Russia’s
conventional military power has deteriorated since the end of the Cold War, Moscow has come to rely more heavily on nuclear use in its strategic doctrine. Indeed, Russian strategy calls for
the use of nuclear weapons early in a conflict (something that most Western strategists would consider to be escalatory) as a way to de-escalate a crisis. Similarly, Pakistan’s military plans for
nuclear use in the event of an invasion from conventionally stronger India. And finally, Chinese generals openly talk about the possibility of nuclear use against a U.S. superpower in a possible
East Asia contingency. Second, as was also discussed above leaders can make a “threat that leaves something to chance.”[56] They can initiate a nuclear crisis. By playing these risky games of
nuclear brinkmanship, states can increases the risk of nuclear war in an attempt to force a less resolved adversary to back down. Historical crises have not resulted in nuclear war, but many of
them, including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, have come close. And scholars have documented historical incidents when accidents could have led to war.[57] When we think about future
nuclear crisis dyads, such as India and Pakistan and Iran and Israel, there are fewer sources of stability that existed during the Cold War, meaning that
there is a very real risk
that a future Middle East crisis could result in a devastating nuclear exchange. Nuclear terrorism. The spread of nuclear
weapons also increases the risk of nuclear terrorism.[58] It used to be said that “terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead,” but the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001 changed expert perceptions of the terrorist threat.[59] September 11th demonstrated that Al Qaeda and other modern terrorist groups are interested in imposing massive casualties and
there are few better ways of killing large numbers of civilians than detonating a nuclear weapon in a major metropolitan area. And, while September 11th was one of the greatest tragedies in
American history, it would have been much worse had Osama Bin Laden been able to acquire nuclear weapons. Osama Bin Laden declared it a “religious duty” for Al Qaeda to acquire nuclear
weapons and radical clerics have issued fatwas declaring it permissible to use nuclear weapons in Jihad against the West.[60] Unlike states, which can be deterred, there is little doubt that if
terrorists acquired nuclear weapons, they would use them. Indeed, in recent years, many U.S. politicians and security analysts have agreed that nuclear terrorism poses the greatest threat to
U.S. national security.[61] Wanting nuclear weapons and actually possessing them, however, are two different things and many analysts have pointed out the tremendous hurdles that
terrorists would have to overcome in order to acquire nuclear weapons.[62] Nevertheless, as nuclear weapons spread, the possibility that they will eventually fall into terrorist hands increases.
States could intentionally transfer nuclear weapons, or the fissile material required to build them, to terrorist groups. There are good reasons why a state might be reluctant to transfer nuclear
weapons to terrorists, but, as nuclear weapons spread, the possibility that a leader might someday purposely arm a terrorist group with nuclear weapons increases. Some fear, for example,
that Iran, with its close ties to Hamas and Hezbollah, might be at a heightened risk of transferring nuclear weapons to terrorists. Moreover, even if no state would ever intentionally transfer
nuclear capabilities to terrorists, a new nuclear state, with underdeveloped security procedures, might be vulnerable to theft, allowing terrorist groups or corrupt or ideologically-motivated
insiders to transfer dangerous material to terrorists. There is evidence, for example, that representatives from Pakistan’s atomic energy establishment met with Al Qaeda members to discuss a
possible nuclear deal.[63] Finally, a nuclear-armed state could collapse, resulting in a breakdown of law and order and a loose nuclear weapons problem. U.S. officials are currently very
concerned about what would happen with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons if the government were to fall. As nuclear weapons spread, this problem is only further amplified. Iran is a country with
a history of revolutions and a government with a tenuous hold on power. The regime change that Washing has long dreamed about in Tehran could actually become a nightmare if Iran had
nuclear weapons and a break down in authority forced us to worry about the fate of Iran’s nuclear arsenal. Regional instability: The spread of nuclear weapons also emboldens nuclear powers
contributing to regional instability. States that lack nuclear weapons need to fear direct military attack from other states, but states with nuclear weapons can be confident that they can deter
an intentional military attack, giving them an incentive to be more aggressive in the conduct of their foreign policy. In this way, nuclear weapons provide a shield under which states can feel
free to engage in lower-level aggression. Indeed, international relations theories about the “stability-instability paradox” maintain that stability at the nuclear level contributes to conventional
instability.[64] Historically, we have seen that the spread of nuclear weapons has emboldened their possessors and contributed to regional instability. Recent scholarly analyses have
demonstrated that, after controlling for other relevant factors, nuclear-weapon states are more likely to engage in conflict than nonnuclear-weapon states and that this aggressiveness is more
pronounced in new nuclear states that have less experience with nuclear diplomacy.[65] Similarly, research on internal decision-making in Pakistan reveals that Pakistani foreign policymakers
may have been emboldened by the acquisition of nuclear weapons, which encouraged them to initiate militarized disputes against India.[66] Currently, Iran restrains its foreign policy because
it fears a major military retaliation from the United States or Israel, but with nuclear weapons it could feel free to push harder. A nuclear-armed Iran would likely step up support to terrorist
and proxy groups and engage in more aggressive coercive diplomacy. With a nuclear-armed Iran increasingly throwing its weight around in the region, we could witness an even more crisis
prone Middle East. And in a poly-nuclear Middle East with Israel, Iran, and, in the future, possibly other states, armed with nuclear weapons, any one of those crises could result in a
Nuclear proliferation can also lead to regional instability due to preventive strikes
against nuclear programs. States often conduct preventive military strikes to prevent adversaries from
acquiring nuclear weapons . Historically, the United States attacked German nuclear facilities during World War II, Israel bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, Iraq
catastrophic nuclear exchange.
bombed Iran’s Bushehr reactors in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and Iran returned the favor against an Iraqi nuclear plant, a U.S.-led international coalition destroyed Iraq’s nuclear
infrastructure in the first Gulf War in 1991, and Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. These strikes have not led to extensive conflagrations in the past, but we might not be so lucky
in the future. At the time of writing in 2012, the United States and Israel were polishing military plans to attack Iran’s nuclear program and some experts maintain that such a strike could very
well lead to a wider war in the Middle East. Constrained freedom of action. The spread of nuclear weapons also disadvantages American’s national security by constraining U.S. freedom of
action. As the most powerful country on the planet, with the ability to project power to every corner of the globe, the United States has the ability to threaten or protect every other state in
74
the international system. This is a significant source of strategic leverage and maintaining freedom of action is an important objective of U.S. national security policy.[67] As nuclear weapons
spread, however, America’s military freedom of action is constrained. The United States can use or credibly threaten to use force against nonnuclear states. The threat of military action
against nuclear-armed states is much less credible, however, because nuclear-armed states can deter U.S. military action with the threat of nuclear retaliation. In January of 2012, for example,
Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow Persian Gulf waterway through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil flows, and the United States issued a counter-threat, declaring that
Washington would use force to reopen the Strait. If Iran had had nuclear weapons, however, Washington’s threats would have been much less credible. Would a U.S. President really be willing
to risk nuclear war with Iran in order to reopen the Strait? Maybe. But, maybe not. While the United States might not be deterred in every contingency against a nuclear-armed state, it is clear
that, at a minimum, the spread of nuclear weapons greatly complicates U.S. decisions to use force. Undermines alliances: The spread of nuclear weapons also complicates U.S. alliance
relationships. Washington uses the promise of military protection as a way to cement its alliance structures. U.S. allies depend on America’s protection, giving Washington influence over allied
states’ foreign policies. Historically, the United States has offered, and threatened to retract, the security guarantee carrot to prevent allied states from acting contrary to its interests. As
nuclear weapons spread, however, alliances held together by promises of military protection are undermined in two ways. First, U.S. allies may doubt the credibility of Washington’s
commitments to provide a military defense against nuclear-armed states, leading them to weaken ties with their patron. As Charles de Gaulle famously asked about the U.S. commitment to
defend France from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, would Washington be willing to trade New York for Paris? Similarly, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, U.S. partners in the Middle
East, such as Israel and Gulf States, will question Washington’s resolve to defend them from Iran. After all, if the United States proves unwilling to use force to prevent Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons, would it really be willing to fight a war against a nuclear-armed Iran? Qatar, for example, already appears to be hedging its bets, loosening ties to Washington and warming
to Tehran. Second, nuclear proliferation could encourage client states to acquire nuclear weapons themselves, giving them greater security independence and making them less dependable
allies. According to many scholars, the acquisition of the force de frappe was instrumental in permitting the French Fifth Republic under President Charles de Gualle to pursue a foreign policy
path independent from Washington at NATO.[68] Similarly, it is possible that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other regional states will acquire independent nuclear capabilities to counter Iran’s
Nuclear
proliferation poses an additional threat to international peace and security because it causes further
proliferation. As former Secretary of State George Schultz once said, “ proliferation begets proliferation .”[69] When one country
acquires nuclear weapons, its regional adversaries, feeling threatened by its neighbor’s new nuclear
capabilities, are more likely to attempt to acquire nuclear weapons in response. Indeed, the history of nuclear
nuclear arsenal, greatly destabilizing an already unstable region and threatening Washington’s ability to influence regional dynamics. Further proliferation.
proliferation can be read as a chain reaction of proliferation. The United States acquired nuclear weapons in response to Nazi Germany’s crash nuclear program. The Soviet Union and China
acquired nuclear weapons to counter the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The United Kingdom and France went nuclear to protect themselves from the Soviet Union. India’s bomb was meant to counter
China and it, in turn, spurred Pakistan to join the nuclear club. Today, we worry that, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, other Middle Eastern countries, such as Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and Saudi
Arabia, might desire nuclear capabilities, triggering an arms race in a strategically important and volatile region.
75
Advantage 3 Ext
76
Safe Harbor will be removed
EU is threatening to remove Safe Harbor
Khan, 2013 (James Fontanella-Khan, November 2013 “Brussels considers options to respond to
NSA spying scandal”, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6f4bf1a8-470b-11e3-9c1b-00144feabdc0.html)
Ever since Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower, revealed
that US spies were snooping on European leaders and citizens, the EU has been trying to move beyond
rhetoric to mount an effective response. As they weigh their options, policy makers have been forced to balance the demands of
privacy advocates and an angry public against industry fears that overly restrictive rules could limit companies’ ability to transfer data across
borders and weaken their prospects in the digital economy. On Wednesday, the
European Commission is set to take its first
substantive steps when it will present fresh proposals to force the US to respect EU citizens personal
online information. Here are some of the ideas that have emerged in Brussels and across Europe: The commission will
demand that the US do a better job of implementing a data- sharing deal that allows US technology
companies to transfer data across borders without European oversight. This “safe harbour” agreement
is based on the idea that US companies should be able to bypass EU privacy rules as long as they sign up
to a self-reporting scheme that offers equivalent protections. A commission review that will be presented on Wednesday
concludes that Washington has improperly forced US companies to hand over European customers’ data. Brussels will warn that
unless the US respects EU citizens’ privacy, it will scrap “safe harbour”. Suspending “safe harbour”
would be one of the most straightforward ways for the commission to assuage public anger about
privacy violations. European parliamentarians have called for cutting off the US’s access to global financial data processed through a
Belgian-based group called Swift, which Washington has relied on to track terrorist financing. The European Parliament’s request
came after claims that the NSA had illegally tapped information stored by Swift. MEPs argued that this
would be easy to do since the commission has the legal authority to suspend the data-sharing
agreement at any time. Cecilia Malmström, the EU commissioner for home security, however, will announce on Wednesday that there
is no evidence that the agreement has been violated. This means it is unlikely that the EU’s executive arm will push to end an agreement that
Washington has characterised as vital for countering terrorism. Germany has floated the idea of forcing the US to agree to tougher data
protection safeguards as part of a broader EU-US trade pact that is under discussion. This came after it emerged that Angela Merkel, the
German chancellor, was one of 35 international leaders whose mobile phone had been tapped by American spies. But officials in Brussels have
ruled out this option amid fears that it could derail negotiations for a pact they desperately want. The European Parliament, which has veto
power over the trade agreement, could still vote against a pact that does not include privacy rules. Either
way, it could take years
before a trade agreement is reached, so this would not be a fast way to address the problem. Privacy
advocates say the best way to fend off US snooping attacks remains the enforcement of tough EU data
protection rules. The EU is updating rules that have been in place since 1995. New draft legislation prohibits third-country access to EU
personal data without the express permission of an EU supervisory authority. This conflicts with US foreign intelligence laws, which empower
US authorities to oblige American internet companies such as Google and Facebook to hand over data on people who are not US citizens. EU
leaders recently delayed the new legislation until at least 2015, a move that will give Washington ample opportunity to lobby against tougher
rules. Neelie Kroes, the EU’s digital agenda commissioner, has said that
the NSA scandal should be an incentive for
European tech companies to create a homegrown data cloud server business capable of rivalling Google
and other American providers. This would have the advantage of creating a storage space for European
data outside the jurisdiction of US authorities. Such a move would make it difficult for a US court to
order a European company based on EU soil to transfer an individual’s data record, say companies that
have cloud servers outside of America. Privately, however, EU officials admit that regardless of where a data server is located
there is little they can do to stop the US from illegally hacking into a server. Setting up local data centres could also lead to
the Balkanisation of the internet, hindering global communication and challenging the principles that
have allowed the internet to grow into an engine of economic prosperity over the past two decades.
Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner of Justice, called for the creation of a European spy agency to act as a
77
“counterweight” to the NSA. However, the idea, dismissed as a “political non-runner” by several European officials, is unlikely to
address concerns about US intrusions into European citizens’ digital lives. If anything, one official said, it would increase the amount of
snooping, not decrease it.
Europe scapegoating Safe Harbor over Snowden Leaks
Mershon 13
Erin Mershon. she covered technology policy for POLITICO and for Communications Daily. She's covered nearly every aspect of Congress,
from its Eagle Scout members to its wonkiest procedural maneuverings, for National Journal, Roll Call, The Huffington Post and PolitiFact.
She's a graduate of Kenyon College, where she studied political science and ran the college newspaper. Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/us-european-union-safe-harbor-nsa-99495.html#ixzz3eD4QPMNC TH
U.S. regulators are urging their European Union counterparts to preserve a more than decade-old data transfer agreement amid mounting
European anger over NSA spying. An important but little-known mechanism,
the Safe Harbor Framework, lets more than 3,000
companies, including Google and Facebook, process data from European citizens without running afoul of the region’s privacy laws. It has
emerged as a friction point between the United States and EU as European officials move to tighten
their data protection rules — an effort that has intensified in the wake of revelations about NSA
surveillance. Some EU officials, alarmed by reports of the NSA’s work with Internet companies, say Safe Harbor gives U.S. tech firms a way
to skirt their more stringent privacy regime. U.S. officials, however, maintain that the Safe Harbor agreement is wellenforced and represents the best way to protect privacy across transatlantic data flows that serve
millions of consumers. Compared with alternatives, the mechanism “provides more, not less, privacy
protection,” argued Commissioner Julie Brill of the Federal Trade Commission in a speech last week. Safe Harbor was formalized for the
legal transfer of data between the U.S. and EU in 2000 after the EU passed a data-protection directive and determined that U.S. standards were
“inadequate.” The
framework consists of seven principles on topics like notice, choice and data security,
broadly modeled on European standards. American firms that want to handle or store European
citizens’ data have to self-certify annually with the Department of Commerce that they will abide by the
standards. Breaches of that agreement are enforced by the FTC. European regulators ramped up their
criticisms of the framework following the first Edward Snowden leaks this summer, pointing out that
Safe Harbor specifically provides for exemptions “to the extent necessary to meet national security,
public interest or law-enforcement requirements.” European Parliament member Jan Philipp Albrecht, who authored an
updated EU data protection regulation that passed out of committee last month, told U.S. officials last week that the agreement
inappropriately allows U.S companies to “circumvent” democratically established law. His draft regulation contains a so-called anti-FISA clause
that would forbid U.S. companies from complying with government requests for personal data unless expressly approved by EU authorities.
Since American companies can’t agree to rules that would require them to ignore lawful U.S. requests for information, the law could effectively
undermine U.S.-EU data transfers. Recent
NSA revelations should not “distort” discussions about the framework,
Brill has argued. Regardless of what mechanism is in place, U.S. as well as EU companies will have to
comply with lawful domestic requests related to national security or law enforcement, said Jules Polonetsky,
executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum, which is currently drafting a report on the Safe Harbor program. “Europeans seem to
be using [Safe Harbor] as a sacrificial lamb to express their frustration with NSA and law enforcement
access to data,” he said. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding about Safe Harbor.” If European attempts to suspend Safe Harbor are
successful, U.S. companies may have to turn to alternative data transfer methods, such as “model contracts” drafted by EU commissioners or
corporate privacy rules that require approval from data protection authorities in each relevant EU country. Both options are more
“burdensome” and difficult to use than Safe Harbor, said Jeremy Mittman, an attorney with Proskauer Rose in Los Angeles who has experience
drafting Safe Harbor certifications and EU model contracts. None of those mechanisms is subject to FTC enforcement or annual renewal, he
said. “One
of the things to consider is, if you get rid of Safe Harbor, what are you really achieving?”
Mittman said. “Companies are going to be transferring data and they’re going to find ways to do it.” In
addition to their critiques of Safe Harbor’s stringency, European regulators and others have attacked the agreement on the grounds that it is
poorly enforced. EU officials released two reports critical of the program’s enforcement in 2002 and 2004, and the Australian consulting firm
Galexia reported hundreds of Safe Harbor violations in a 2008 report that lambasted both the EU and the U.S. for not taking enforcement more
seriously. Indeed, the FTC did not bring its first enforcement under Safe Harbor rules until 2009, and its batch of seven enforcement actions
that year targeted companies for falsely advertising their Safe Harbor certification, not for any failures to protect Europeans’ data. Since then,
78
the agency has brought three Safe Harbor enforcement actions against Facebook, Google and MySpace as part of larger privacy-related
investigations of the companies. Brill said the FTC hasn’t received many Safe Harbor-related referrals or complaints from Europeans and has
instead taken the initiative itself to enforce the framework. Mittman and several other U.S. attorneys versed in Safe Harbor certification said
their clients had not received any Safe Harbor-related complaints following successful certification. An FTC spokesman declined to comment on
the specific number of complaints the agency has received. FTC
Chairwoman Edith Ramirez recently jumped in to defend
the agency’s enforcement efforts on Safe Harbor, telling the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue forum in
Brussels last week that the agency’s “track record in consumer privacy enforcement is unrivaled among
data protection authorities around the world.” The agency has been “vigorously enforcing” a range of
laws governing consumer information, she said. Both Brill and Ramirez also hinted that there are more enforcement efforts
on the way, without providing details.
Safe Harbor is under Attack
Polonetsky and Wolf 13
Jules Polonetsky Christopher Wolf December 11, 2013 ”The US-EU Safe Harbor” An Analysis of the Framework’s Effectiveness in Protecting
Personal Privacy pg 3-5 http://www.futureofprivacy.org/wp-content/uploads/FPF-Safe-Harbor-Report.pdf TH
When the EU and the US originally launched the Safe Harbor, many Europeans criticized the program,
considering it to be too lenient, particularly with respect to enforcement.24 Meanwhile, US businesses initially
complained that complying with the Safe Harbor was “costly, unworkable and unfair.”25 Despite these and other criticisms,26
the agreement has contributed to increased focus on privacy protection in the US and EU.27 Moreover,
the Safe Harbor has become a popular method of compliance with the EU’s privacy requirements.28
Recently, however, revelations about the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its surveillance of EU citizens have resulted in a threat to upset
the balance crafted by the Safe Harbor.29 Specifically, leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have revealed that the NSA accessed
private user data within the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other Internet giants.30 Snowden’s
leaks showed that the
NSA had collected search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats from millions of
Internet users, including EU citizens.31 Some EU officials have seized on the NSA revelations in order to
refocus scrutiny on the Safe Harbor. For instance, in August 2013, Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission
(EC), called for a review of the Safe Harbor by year-end, calling the Safe Harbor “a loophole” that “may not be so safe after all.”32 Additionally,
Jan Philipp Albrecht, a European Parliament Member, recommended that the EU discontinue the Safe Harbor program unless there is an
express re-authorization following a review.33 Jacob Kohnstamm, Chairman of the Article 29 Working Party, reminded EU Member States of
their authority to suspend data flows where there is “substantial likelihood” that the Safe Harbor is being violated.34 These criticisms drew in
part on reports from independent consulting service Galexia,35 which published a report critical of the Safe Harbor program in 2008 entitled
“The US Safe Harbor – Fact or Fiction?”36 Galexia supplemented its study with additional findings presented at a 2013 Civil Liberties, Justice
and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee Inquiry on Electronic Mass Surveillance of EU Citizens.37 In November 2013, the
European
Commission released a report critical of the Safe Harbor agreement.38 The Commission found that the
framework has several shortcomings, including: a) a lack of transparency of privacy policies of Safe
Harbor members; b) ineffective application of privacy principles by companies in the US, and c) deficient
enforcement by the US.39 As this report will show, these criticisms of the Safe Harbor program are
largely unfounded.40 While the Safe Harbor program surely could be strengthened, as is the case with nearly every privacy regime, a
close look at the experience that companies have had with the Safe Harbor reveals that the program has been largely successful in achieving its
stated twin goals of protecting privacy while promoting international data transfer.41 The
success of the Safe Harbor can be
seen in three distinct areas. First, the program has grown significantly since its inception, underlying the
importance of trans-Atlantic data flows. Second, US companies have increased privacy protections for
individuals by making modifications to their privacy practices in order to comply with the Safe Harbor’s
requirements. Third, there are strong enforcement mechanisms in place – in the form of both the FTC
and third-party dispute resolution providers – to ensure that when individuals complain that a Safe
Harbor participant is failing to live up to its obligations, such complaints are satisfactorily addressed. Many
critics have unfairly attacked the Safe Harbor based on a misunderstanding of the program and its goals, and many of the recent criticisms
reflect a misunderstanding of the relationship between the program and the NSA’s surveillance practices. In fact, suspending the Safe Harbor’s
79
protections would negatively impact both the personal privacy of EU citizens and international trade. The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF)
therefore suggests that rather
than dismantling the Safe Harbor, the US and EU make specific reforms to the
program to increase transparency and enhance efforts on both sides of the Atlantic to police
compliance.
80
NSA actions lead to bad rep for Safe Harbor
NSA surveillance undermines cloud computing
Lomas 13
(Natasha, “NSA Spying Risks Undermining Trust In U.S. Cloud Computing Businesses, Warns Kroes,” Tech Crunch, July 4, 2013, Accessed April 8,
2015, http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/04/spying-bad-for-business/)//AD
NSA spying scandal risks undermining trust in U.S. cloud computing businesses, the European Commission’s vice-president, Neelie Kroes, has
calls for “clarity and transparency” from the U.S. regarding the scope and nature of its
surveillance and access to data on individuals and businesses living and conducting business in Europe in order to avoid a knock-on effect on cloud businesses. Loss of Europeans’
The
warned in a speech today. Kroes also reiterated
trust could result in “multi-billion euro consequences” for U.S. cloud providers, she added. Kroes was speaking during a press conference held in Estonia, following a meeting of the EC’s
cloud
computing businesses are at particular risk of fallout from a wide-reaching U.S. government surveillance
program because they rely on their customers’ trust to function — trust that the data entrusted to them
is stored securely. Kroes said: If businesses or governments think they might be spied on, they will have less
reason to trust the cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay
someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared
against your wishes? Front or back door – it doesn’t matter – any smart person doesn’t want the
information shared at all. Customers will act rationally, and providers will miss out on a great opportunity.
European Cloud Partnership Steering Board, which was held to agree on EU-wide specifications for cloud procurement. In her speech, part of which follows below, she argued that
81
Safe Harbor is Key
CONSEQUENCES OF A SUSPENDED SAFE HARBOR
Jules Polonetsky Christopher Wolf December 11, 2013
Jules Polonetsky Christopher Wolf December 11, 2013 ”The US-EU Safe Harbor” An Analysis of the Framework’s Effectiveness in Protecting
Personal Privacy pg 32-34 http://www.futureofprivacy.org/wp-content/uploads/FPF-Safe-Harbor-Report.pdf TH
As described above, some
members of the European Parliament are calling for a suspension or curtailing of
the Safe Harbor agreement.193 This report has thus far focused on the growth of the Safe Harbor program, the significant amount of
work companies have done in achieving compliance, and the measures regulatory bodies and organizations have taken to enforce the rules.
However, all
of that progress would be lost or severely hampered if the Safe Harbor program were
suspended. As described in Section II above, the Safe Harbor has grown significantly in the past three years.194
Note in particular the 613 companies that joined the program just within the last year, presumably in
reliance on the assumption the program would continue.195 Many of these companies have expended
significant time and resources into joining the Safe Harbor program,196 and that investment would be wasted if the
Safe Harbor were suspended or its protections removed. Moreover, if the Safe Harbor were discontinued, the negative impact on
both personal privacy and international trade would be serious. First, jettisoning the Safe Harbor would mean removing
an important player to enforce privacy protection for EU data subjects – namely, the FTC.197 Second, alternative transfer
mechanisms to the Safe Harbor program may not be feasible for all companies. Rather, limiting Safe
Harbor protection would only destroy critical US and EU privacy protections. A. Lack Of Comparable Enforcement
Regimes The Safe Harbor is unique among the available data protection compliance regimes in that, unlike other data transfer mechanisms, the
Safe Harbor gives the FTC authority to police US companies on behalf of EU citizens.198 Dismantling
the Safe Harbor and its
requirement that companies publicly commit to compliance would result in a significant loss of FTC
oversight.199 In such a scenario, the FTC would no longer be able to bring enforcement actions for the
benefit of EU citizens, nor would it be able to monitor US companies for their compliance, resulting in
less transparency and less protection for individuals.200 Additionally, if the FTC were unable to regulate
companies that undermined EU citizen privacy, it would fall on the EU Member States to enforce the EU
Data Directive. Suing US companies with no physical presence in the EU could result in jurisdictional
chaos.201 Likewise, without the FTC monitoring US companies’ compliance efforts, violations would be much harder to investigate and
detect.202 In the alternative, EU Member States could focus their regulatory efforts on EU companies transmitting data to the US. However,
this would place an unfair burden on EU companies, who could be held responsible any time a US recipient of personal data committed a
violation. EU companies would likely react to this fundamentally unfair regime by either limiting trade with the US, or including broad
indemnity provisions into future data transfer agreements, either of which would significantly burden business in both the US and EU. B. Lack
Of Feasible Data Transfer Alternatives Suspending the Safe Harbor would force US companies seeking to comply with the EU Data Protection
Directive to revert to other compliance methods such as express consent, EU Model Clauses or BCRs.203 While these mechanisms may be
adequate to comply with the EU Data Directive,204 not all companies can realistically implement them. i. Problems with mass adoption of
express consent The
express consent method requires the US company to obtain the express consent of any
EU citizen about whom the company wishes to transfer data.205 Relying solely on this method is not
practical for many companies. First, larger companies would find it extremely difficult to obtain express
user consent on such a large scale. Furthermore, even if consent were obtained, it would not necessarily
be enough for compliance: recent opinions by DPAs have held that many instances of consent, particularly by employees, are not
“freely given” and therefore invalid.206 Gaining the affirmative, “freely given” consent of all European internet users and employees would be
practically impossible; companies would have to significantly scale back their data transfers under this method. ii. Problems with mass adoption
of EU Model Clauses EU Model Clauses are model agreements a company can sign to govern its data transfers.207
The major problem
with relying on EU Model Clauses for all data transfer from the EU to the US is that such contract
privisions fail to provide sufficient flexibility for companies with unique business models. All EU Model Clauses
“must be copied verbatim and strictly adhered to,” and any revisions must be individually approved by each European DPA.208 Compared
to the Safe Harbor program, EU Model Clauses have particularly inflexible rules with respect to onward
82
transfer of data to third-parties, prohibiting transfers unless the recipient also agrees to the model
contractual terms.209 In the context of court orders in e-discovery or litigation, or in the case of data transfers that are necessary to
perform a contract, such strict rules would be extremely difficult for a company to comply with.210 Given the wide variety of companies that
rely on the Safe Harbor,211 such rigid contractual clauses would stifle trade, prevent innovative uses of data, and, for small businesses in
particular, hamper their ability to provide basic operational support for their business. Additionally, EU
Model Clauses are inserted
into purely private agreements between companies, and are therefore significantly less transparent
than privacy policies under the Safe Harbor program. Heightened use of EU Model Clauses would deprive EU regulators of
the benefit of transparent documentation found in the Safe Harbor’s requirements. iii. Problems with mass adoption of Binding Corporate Ruels
BCRs effectively constitute full-blown privacy programs for a company to follow.212 While BCRs are appropriate for large global organizations
with the resources and expertise to develop and enforce them,213 they would not be a workable solution for smaller companies. Binding
corporate rules must be legally enforceable, taking into account the legal systems of each country where they may be applied; additionally, all
BCRs must be submitted for approval to the DPA in each member state from which data would be transferred.214 Getting all the EU Member
States aligned and supportive of a single policy has been described as an “administrative nightmare”;215 if the over 3,000 current Safe Harbor
member companies submitted their own BCRs for approval, it would grind the system to a halt. Moreover, BCRs only cover intra-agency data
transfers, and do not cover transfers to or from unaffiliated parties (e.g., service providers, business partners, M&A parties).216 As of 2013
there were fewer than 50 companies for which the BCR cooperation procedure was closed.217 While there have been some positive efforts
made to streamline the BCRs approval process,218 until such procedures are edified it would make little sense to rely on BCRs over the much
more practical Safe Harbor program.
83
Decreasing Spying increase EU Trust
Decreasing NSA spying on Europe is only way to work together and regain trust.
European Parliament News 14
12-03-2014 -“US NSA: stop mass surveillance now or face consequences”,
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/20140307IPR38203/html/US-NSA-stopmass-surveillance-now-or-face-consequences-MEPs-say
Parliament's consent to the EU-US trade deal "could be endangered" if blanket mass surveillance by the
US National Security Agency (NSA) does not stop, MEPs said on Wednesday, in a resolution wrapping up
their six-month inquiry into US mass surveillance schemes. The text also calls on the EU to suspend its
bank data deal with the US and the “Safe Harbour agreement” on data privacy. The fight against terrorism can
never justify secret and illegal mass surveillance, it adds. The resolution, in which MEPs set out their findings and recommendations to boost EU
citizens' privacy, was backed by 544 votes to 78, with 60 abstentions. "The Snowden revelations gave us a chance to react. I hope we will turn
those reactions into something positive and lasting into the next mandate of this Parliament, a data protection bill of rights that we can all be
proud of", said Civil Liberties inquiry rapporteur Claude Moraes (S&D, UK). "This is the only international inquiry into mass surveillance. (...)
Even Congress in the United States has not had an inquiry", he added. Parliament's should withhold its consent to the final Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal with the US unless it fully respects EU fundamental rights, stresses the resolution, adding that data
protection should be ruled out of the trade talks. This
consent “could be endangered as long as blanket mass
surveillance activities and the interception of communications in EU institutions and diplomatic
representations are not fully stopped”, notes the text. MEPs also call for the "immediate suspension" of
the Safe Harbour privacy principles (voluntary data protection standards for non-EU companies
transferring EU citizens’ personal data to the US). These principles “do not provide adequate protection
for EU citizens” say MEPs, urging the US to propose new personal data transfer rules that meet EU data
protection requirements. The Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) deal should also be suspended until allegations that US
authorities have access to EU citizens’ bank data outside the agreement are clarified, insist MEPs. European whistle-blower protection and EU
cloud The text also calls for a "European whistle-blower protection programme", which should pay particular attention to the "complexity of
whistleblowing in the field of intelligence". EU countries are also asked to consider granting whistleblowers international protection from
prosecution. Furthermore, Europe should develop its own clouds and IT solutions, including cybersecurity and encryption technologies, to
ensure a high level of data protection, adds the text. The UK, France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Poland should clarify the
allegations of mass surveillance - including potential agreements between intelligence services and telecoms firms on access to and exchange of
personal data and access to transatlantic cables - and their compatibility with EU laws, the resolution says. Other EU countries, in particular
those participating in the "9-eyes" (UK, Denmark, France and the Netherlands) and "14-eyes" arrangements (those countries plus Germany,
Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden) are also urged to review their national laws to ensure that their intelligence services are subject to
parliamentary and judicial oversight and that they comply with fundamental rights obligations.
http://europe.newsweek.com/junckers-calls-eu-spy-service-has-opened-can-worms-327874
Lack of Trust with US/Ger Spying Scandal
Deutsche Welle 2015
Deutsche Welle (DW) is Germany’s international broadcaster. Peter Limbourg has been Director General since 2013. Around 3,000
employees and freelancers from 60 countries work in DW’s headquarters in Bonn and main studio in Berlin.
http://www.dw.com/en/breach-of-trust-germany-reacts-to-nsa-accusations/a-18473332 TH
Lack of trust A
US official said the leaks were worse than those attributed to Snowden, according to "Bild." "What
the German government is now doing is more dangerous than what Snowden did," the official was quoted as saying. But Sensburg said
cooperation between the NSA and the BND was "good and positive" overall and that both sides needed
each other. Thomas Oppermann, the Social Democratic Party's (SPD) parliamentary chairman, also said that German intelligence
would not be able to work effectively without US help. "We cannot and will not afford to terminate
cooperation with the American intelligence services," Oppermann told the "Welt am Sonntag" newspaper. Oppermann said
84
a large part of the NSA activities were outsourced to private companies. "I think that is highly problematic." Deadline for the chancellor
Pressure is increasing on Merkel as critics accuse her staff of allowing the BND to help the NSA. The
Chancellery is responsible for overseeing all German intelligence services. A poll conducted last week found that one in three Germans feels
deceived by Merkel. German opposition
lawmakers in the parliamentary committee have called on the
government to publish the NSA lists, which may include data such as names, telephone numbers or
Internet protocol (IP) addresses
85
Adv 3 Impacts
86
Warming
Cloud computing key to climate modeling
Boyce 10
[Eric, technical writer and user advocate for The Rackspace Cloud, September 14, 2010
http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2010/09/14/the-future-of-cloud-computing-the-big-25-in-thenext-25/]
The promise of the cloud isn’t just about gaming and the ability to safely store all those photos that you wish you hadn’t ever taken. Many of the
most
promising cloud-based applications also require massive computational power. Searching a database of global DNA samples
requires abundant, scalable processing power. Modeling protein folding is another example of how compute resources will be used. Protein folding is linked to
many diseases including Alzheimer’s and cancer, and analyzing the folding process can lead to new treatments and cures, but it requires enormous compute power.
Projects like Folding@home are using distributed computing to tackle these modeling tasks. The
cloud will offer a larger, faster, more
scalable way to process data and thus benefit any heavy data manipulation task. 6. Is it going to be hot tomorrow? Like protein
folding modeling, climate simulation and forecasting requires a large amount of data storage and processing. Recently the
German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) installed a climate calculating supercomputer that is capable of analyzing 60
petabytes of data (roughly 13 million DVD’s) at over 158 teraflops (trillion calculations per second). In the next couple of decades, this level of computing
power will be widely available and will exist on remote hardware. Sophisticated climate models combined with
never before seen compute power will provide better predictions of climate change and more rapid early
warning systems
Adaptation solves global wars
Werz and Conley 12 - Senior Fellow @American Progress where his work as member of the National
Security Team focuses on the nexus of climate change, migration, and security and emerging
democracies & Research Associate for National Security and International Policy @ the Center for
American Progress [Michael Werz & Laura Conley, “Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict: Addressing
complex crisis scenarios in the 21st Century,” Center for American Progress, January 2012]
The costs and consequences of climate change on our world will define the 21st century. Even if nations across our
planet were to take immediate steps to rein in carbon emissions—an unlikely prospect—a warmer climate is
inevitable. As the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, noted in 2007, human-created “warming of the climate system is
unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread
melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.”1 As these ill effects progress they will have serious implications for U.S. national security interests as well as global stability—
extending from the sustainability of coastal military installations to the stability of nations that lack the resources, good governance, and resiliency needed to respond to the many adverse
as these effects accelerate, the stress will impact human migration and conflict
around the world. It is difficult to fully understand the detailed causes of migration and economic and political instability, but the growing evidence of
links between climate change, migration, and conflict raise plenty of reasons for concern. This is why it’s time to start
consequences of climate change. And
thinking about new and comprehensive answers to multifaceted crisis scenarios brought on or worsened by global climate change. As Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N.
Environment Program, argues, “The question we must continuously ask ourselves in the face of scientific complexity and uncertainty, but also growing evidence of climate change, is at what
In the coming decades climate change will increasingly
threaten humanity’s shared interests and collective security in many parts of the world, disproportionately affecting the globe’s least developed countries. Climate
point precaution, common sense or prudent risk management demands action.”2
change will pose challenging social, political, and strategic questions for the many different multinational, regional, national, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to improving the human
condition worldwide. Organizations as different as Amnesty International, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the International Rescue Committee, and the World
Recent
intelligence reports and war games, including some conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense, conclude that over the next two or three decades,
vulnerable regions (particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia) will face the prospect of food
shortages, water crises, and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change. These developments could
demand U.S., European, and international humanitarian relief or military responses, often the delivery vehicle for aid in crisis situations. This
Health Organization will all have to tackle directly the myriad effects of climate change. Climate change also poses distinct challenges to U.S. national security.
report provides the foundation and overview for a series of papers focusing on the particular challenges posed by the cumulative effects of climate change, migration, and conflict in some of
our world’s most complex environments. In the papers following this report, we plan to outline the effects of this nexus in northwest Africa, in India and Bangladesh, in the Andean region of
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South America, and in China. In this paper we detail that nexus across our planet and offer wide ranging recommendations about how the United States, its allies in the global community, and
the community at large can deal with the coming climate-driven crises with comprehensive sustainable security solutions encompassing national security, diplomacy, and economic, social, and
environmental development. Here, we briefly summarize our arguments and our conclusions. The nexus The Arab Spring can be at least partly credited to climate change. Rising food prices
and efforts by authoritarian regimes to crush political protests were linked first to food and then to political repression—two important motivators in the Arab makeover this past year. To be
sure, longstanding economic and social distress and lack of opportunity for so many Arab youth in the Middle East and across North Africa only needed a spark to ignite revolutions across the
region. But environmental degradation and the movement of people from rural areas to already overcrowded cities alongside rising food prices enabled the cumulative effects of long-term
economic and political failures to sweep across borders with remarkable agility. It does not require much foresight to acknowledge that other effects of climate change will add to the pressure
in the decades to come. In particular the cumulative overlays of climate change with human migration driven by environmental crises, political conflict caused by this migration, and
competition for more scarce resources will add new dimensions of complexity to existing and future crisis scenarios. It is thus critical to understand how governments plan to answer and
No matter what steps the
global community takes to mitigate carbon emissions, a warmer climate is inevitable. The effects are already being felt
prioritize these new threats from climate change, migration, and conflict. Climate change Climate change alone poses a daunting challenge.
today and will intensify as climate change worsens. All of the world’s regions and nations will experience some of the effects of this transformational challenge. Here’s just one case in point:
African states are likely to be the most vulnerable to multiple stresses, with up to 250 million people projected to suffer from water and food insecurity and, in low-lying areas, a rising sea
level.3 As little as 1 percent of Africa’s land is located in low-lying coastal zones but this land supports 12 percent of its urban population.4 Furthermore, a majority of people in Africa live in
lower altitudes—including the Sahel, the area just south of the Sahara—where the worst effects of water scarcity, hotter temperatures, and longer dry seasons are expected to occur.5 These
developments may well be exacerbated by the lack of state and regional capacity to manage the effects of climate change. These same dynamics haunt many nations in Asia and the Americas,
too, and the implications for developed countries such as the United States and much of Europe will be profound. Migration Migration adds another layer of complexity to the scenario.
In
the 21st century the world could see substantial numbers of climate migrants—people displaced by either the slow or sudden
onset of the effects of climate change. The United Nations’ recent Human Development Report stated that, worldwide, there are already an estimated 700 million internal migrants—those
leaving their homes within their own countries—a number that includes people whose migration isrelated to climate change and environmental factors. Overall migration across national
borders is already at approximately 214 million people worldwide,6 with estimates of up to 20 million displaced in 2008 alone because of a rising sea level, desertification, and flooding.7 One
expert, Oli Brown of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, predicts a tenfold increase in the current number of internally displaced persons and international refugees by
2050.8 It is important to acknowledge that there is no consensus on this estimate. In fact there is major disagreement among experts about how to identify climate as a causal factor in internal
and international migration. But even though the root causes of human mobility are not always easy to decipher, the policy challenges posed by that movement are real. A 2009 report by
the International Organization for Migration produced in cooperation with the United Nations University and the Climate Change, Environment and Migration Alliance cites
numbers that range from “200 million to 1 billion migrants from climate change alone, by 2050,”9 arguing that
“environmental drivers of migration are often coupled with economic, social and developmental factors that can accelerate and to a certain extent mask the impact of climate change.” The
report also notes that “migration can result from different environmental factors, among them gradual environmental degradation (including desertification, soil and coastal erosion) and
climate change is
expected to aggravate many existing migratory pressures around the world. Indeed associated extreme weather events
resulting in drought, floods, and disease are projected to increase the number of sudden humanitarian
crises and disasters in areas least able to cope, such as those already mired in poverty or prone to conflict.11 Conflict This final layer is the most
natural disasters (such as earthquakes, floods or tropical storms).”10 (See box on page 15 for a more detailed definition of climate migrants.) Clearly, then,
unpredictable, both within nations and transnationally, and will force the United States and the international community to confront climate and migration challenges within an increasingly
unstructured local or regional security environment. In contrast to the great power conflicts and the associated proxy wars that marked most of the 20th century, the immediate post- Cold
War decades witnessed a diffusion of national security interests and threats. U.S. national security policy is increasingly integrating thinking about nonstate actors and nontraditional sources of
conflict and instability, for example in the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups. Climate change is among these newly visible issues sparking conflict. But because the direct link
the
potential for the changing climate to induce conflict or exacerbate existing instability in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions is now
recognized in national security circles in the United States, although research gaps still exists in many places. The climate-conflict nexus was highlighted with
particular effect by the current U.S. administration’s security-planning reviews over the past two years, as well as the Center for Naval Analysis, which termed climate
change a “threat multiplier,” indicating that it can exacerbate existing stresses and insecurity.12 The Pentagon’s latest Quadrennial Defense Review also
recognized climate change as an “accelerant of instability or conflict,” highlighting the operational challenges that will confront U.S. and partner
between conflict and climate change is unclear, awareness of the indirect links has yet to lead to substantial and sustained action to address its security implications. Still
militaries amid a rising sea level, growing extreme weather events, and other anticipated effects of climate change.13 The U.S. Department of Defense has even voiced concern for American
military installations that may be threatened by a rising sea level.14 There is also well-developed international analysis on these points. The United Kingdom’s 2010 Defense Review, for
example, referenced the security aspects of climate change as an evolving challenge for militaries and policymakers. Additionally, in 2010, the Nigerian government referred to climate change
as the “greatest environmental and humanitarian challenge facing the country this century,” demonstrating that climate change is no longer seen as solely scientific or environmental, but
increasingly as a social and political issue cutting across all aspects of human development.15 As these three threads—climate change, migration, and conflict—interact more intensely, the
consequences will be far-reaching and occasionally counterintuitive. It is impossible to predict the outcome of the Arab Spring movement, for example, but the blossoming of democracy in
some countries and the demand for it in others is partly an unexpected result of the consequences of climate change on global food prices. On the other hand, the interplay of these factors
will drive complex crisis situations in which domestic policy, international policy, humanitarian assistance, and security converge in new ways. Areas of concern
Several regional
hotspots frequently come up in the international debate on climate change, migration, and conflict. Climate migrants in
northwest Africa, for example, are causing communities across the region to respond in different ways, often to the detriment of regional and international security concerns.
Political and social instability in the region plays into the hands of organizations such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb. And recent developments in Libya, especially the large number of weapons looted from depots after strongman Moammar Qaddafi’s regime fell— which still remain
unaccounted for—are a threat to stability across North Africa. Effective solutions need not address all of these issues simultaneously but must recognize the layers of relationships among
them. And these solutions must also recognize that these variables will not always intersect in predictable ways. While some migrants may flee floodplains, for example, others may migrate to
Bangladesh, already well known for its disastrous floods, faces rising waters in the future due
to climate-driven glacial meltdowns in neighboring India. The effects can hardly be over. In December 2008 the National Defense University in
Washington, D.C., ran an exercise that explored the impact of a flood that sent hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring India. The
result: the exercise predicted a new wave of migration would touch off religious conflicts, encourage the spread of contagious
them in search of greater opportunities in coastal urban areas.16
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diseases, and cause vast damage to infrastructure. India itself is not in a position to absorb climate-induced pressures—never mind
foreign climate migrants. The country will contribute 22 percent of global population growth and have close to 1.6 billion inhabitants by 2050, causing demographic developments that are sure
to spark waves of internal migration across the country. Then there’s the
Andean region of South America, where melting glaciers and snowcaps will drive climate,
migration, and security concerns. The average rate of glacial melting has doubled over the past few years, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service.17 Besides Peru, which faces the
gravest consequences in Latin America, a number of other Andean countries will be massively affected, including Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia. This development
will put water
security, agricultural production, and power generation at risk—all factors that could prompt people to leave their homes and migrate.
The IPCC report argues that the region is especially vulnerable because of its fragile ecosystem .18 Finally, China is now in its fourth
decade of ever-growing internal migration, some of it driven in recent years by environmental change. Today, across its vast territory, China continues to experience
the full spectrum of climate change related consequences that have the potential to continue to encourage such migration.
The Center for a New American Security recently found that the consequences of climate change and continued internal migration in China
include “water stress; increased droughts, flooding, or other severe events; increased coastal erosion and saltwater inundation; glacial melt in the Himala as that could
affect hundreds of millions; and shifting agricultural zones”—all of which will affect food supplies. 19 Pg. 1-7
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Disease
Cloud computing key to genome sequencing and disease spread
Chansanchai 15
(Athima, “Cloud computing contributes to individually tailored medical treatments of the future,” Microsoft News, Feb 2, 2015, Accessed April
8, 2015, http://news.microsoft.com/features/cloud-computing-contributes-to-individually-tailored-medical-treatments-of-the-future/)//AD
in a decade – or less – it could be real science. To get to the
point where technology can give people access to their genetic profiles, cloud computing plays a pivotal
role. By putting resources to analyze genomes in the cloud, researchers can do their work from a variety
of devices, collaborate with each other more easily and save time and money. Just a few years ago, sequencing a human
genome, for example, used to cost $95 million. Now, it’s $1,000. And by 2020, it may be a matter of pennies. Computing makes it possible to run
simulations faster, which leads to more efficient lab work that could produce scientific breakthroughs.
Feng and his team at Virginia Tech have developed tools to help other researchers and clinicians in their quests to find
cures for cancer, lupus and other diseases.
For now, this level of personalized medicine is science fiction. But Feng thinks that
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Ecosystems
Global internet coordination is key to continuing innovation and the global economy
Genachowski and Bollinger 13 Julius Genachowski is chairman of the U.S. Federal
Communications Commission, First Amendment scholar Lee C. Bollinger is president of Columbia
University. Bollinger serves on the board of the Washington Post Company, Foreign Policy, April 16,
2013, "The Plot to Block Internet Freedom",
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/16/plot_block_internet_freedom?page=full
The Internet has created an extraordinary new democratic forum for people around the world to express
their opinions. It is revolutionizing global access to information: Today, more than 1 billion people worldwide have access to
the Internet, and at current growth rates, 5 billion people -- about 70 percent of the world's population -- will be connected in five years. But
this growth trajectory is not inevitable, and threats are mounting to the global spread of an open and
truly "worldwide" web. The expansion of the open Internet must be allowed to continue: The mobile and social media
revolutions are critical not only for democratic institutions' ability to solve the collective problems of a shrinking
world, but also to a dynamic and innovative global economy that depends on financial transparency and
the free flow of information. The threats to the open Internet were on stark display at last December's World
Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, where the United States fought attempts by a number of
countries -- including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia -- to give a U.N. organization, the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), new regulatory authority over the Internet. Ultimately, over the objection of the United States
and many others, 89 countries voted to approve a treaty that could strengthen the power of governments to control online content and deter
broadband deployment. In Dubai, two
deeply worrisome trends came to a head. First, we see that the Arab Spring and
similar events have awakened nondemocratic governments to the danger that the Internet poses to their
regimes. In Dubai, they pushed for a treaty that would give the ITU's imprimatur to governments' blocking or
favoring of online content under the guise of preventing spam and increasing network security.
Authoritarian countries' real goal is to legitimize content regulation, opening the door for governments to block any content they do not like,
such as political speech. Second, the
basic commercial model underlying the open Internet is also under threat. In
change the ground rules
for payments for transferring Internet content. One species of these proposals is called "sender pays" or "sending party pays."
particular, some proposals, like the one made last year by major European network operators, would
Since the beginning of the Internet, content creators -- individuals, news outlets, search engines, social media sites -- have been able to make
their content available to Internet users without paying a fee to Internet service providers. A sender-pays rule would change that, empowering
governments to require Internet content creators to pay a fee to connect with an end user in that country. Sender pays may look merely like a
commercial issue, a different way to divide the pie. And proponents of sender pays and similar changes claim they would benefit Internet
deployment and Internet users. But the opposite is true: If
a country imposed a payment requirement, content creators
would be less likely to serve that country. The loss of content would make the Internet less attractive
and would lessen demand for the deployment of Internet infrastructure in that country. Repeat the process in
a few more countries, and the growth of global connectivity -- as well as its attendant benefits for democracy -- would slow
dramatically. So too would the benefits accruing to the global economy. Without continuing
improvements in transparency and information sharing, the innovation that springs from new commercial
ideas and creative breakthroughs is sure to be severely inhibited. To their credit, American Internet service providers
have joined with the broader U.S. technology industry, civil society, and others in opposing these changes. Together, we were able to
win the battle in Dubai over sender pays, but we have not yet won the war. Issues affecting global Internet
openness, broadband deployment, and free speech will return in upcoming international forums, including an important
meeting in Geneva in May, the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum. The massive investment in wired and wireless broadband
infrastructure in the United States demonstrates that preserving an open Internet is completely compatible with broadband deployment.
According to a recent UBS report, annual wireless capital investment in the United States increased 40 percent from 2009 to 2012, while
investment in the rest of the world has barely inched upward. And according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, more
fiber-optic cable was laid in the United States in 2011 and 2012 than in any year since 2000, and 15 percent more than in Europe. All
91
Internet users lose something when some countries are cut off from the World Wide Web. Each person who is
unable to connect to the Internet diminishes our own access to information. We become less able to understand the world
and formulate policies to respond to our shrinking planet. Conversely, we gain a richer understanding of
global events as more people connect around the world, and those societies nurturing nascent democracy movements
become more familiar with America's traditions of free speech and pluralism. That's why we believe that the Internet should remain free of
gatekeepers and that no entity -- public or private -- should be able to pick and choose the information web users can receive. That is a principle
the United States adopted in the Federal Communications Commission's 2010 Open Internet Order. And it's why we are deeply concerned
about arguments by some in the United States that broadband providers should be able to block, edit, or favor Internet traffic that travels over
their networks, or adopt economic models similar to international sender pays. We
must preserve the Internet as the most
open and robust platform for the free exchange of information ever devised. Keeping the Internet open is perhaps
the most important free speech issue of our time.
Innovation solves extinction
Barker 2k [Brent BARKER, electrical engineer, and manager of corporate communications for the
Electric Power Research Institute and former industrial economist and staff author at SRI International
and as a commercial research analyst at USX Corporation, 2K “Technology and the Quest for
Sustainability,” EPRI Journal, Summer 2000, Vol. 25, p. 8-17]
From a social standpoint, accelerating
productivity is not an option but rather an imperative for the future. It is necessary in
order to provide the wealth for environmental sustainability, to support an aging population in the industrialized world,
and to provide an economic ladder for developing nations. The second area of opportunity for technology lies
in its potential to help stabilize global population at 10-12 billion sometime in the twenty-first century, possibly as early as
2075. The key is economics. Global communications, from television to movies to the Internet, have brought an image
of the comfortable life of the developed world into the homes of the poorest people, firing their own
aspirations for a better quality of life, either through economic development in their own country or through
emigration to other countries. If we in the developed world can make the basic tools of prosperity--infrastructure, health care,
education, and law--more accessible and affordable, recent history suggests that the cultural drivers for producing
large families will be tempered, relatively quickly and without coercion. But the task is enormous. The physical prerequisites for
prosperity in the global economy are electricity and communications. Today, there are more than 2 billion people living without electricity, or
commercial energy in any form, in the very countries where some 5 billion people will be added in the next 50 years. If for no other reason than
our enlightened self-interest, we should strive for universal access to electricity, communications, and educational opportunity. We have little
choice, because the fate of the developed world is inextricably bound up in the economic and demographic fate of the developing world. A
third, related opportunity
for technology is in decoupling population growth from land use and, more broadly,
decoupling economic growth from natural resource consumption through recycling, end-use efficiency,
and industrial ecology. Decoupling population from land use is well under way. According to Grubler, from 1700 to 1850 nearly 2
hectares of land (5 acres) were needed to support every child born in North America, while in the more crowded and cultivated regions of
Europe and Asia only 0.5 hectare (1.2 acres) and 0.2 hectare (0.5 acre) were needed, respectively. During the past century, the amount of land
Europe and North America experiencing the fastest
decreases. Both crossed the "zero threshold" in the past few decades, meaning that no additional land is needed to
support additional children and that land requirements will continue to decrease in the future. One can postulate
that the pattern of returning land to nature will continue to spread throughout the world, eventually
stemming and then reversing the current onslaught on the great rain forests. Time is critical if vast tracts
are to be saved from being laid bare, and success will largely depend on how rapidly economic opportunities
expand for those now trapped in subsistence and frontier farming. In concept, the potential for returning land to
needed per additional child has been dropping in all areas of the world, with
nature is enormous. Futurist and scholar Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University calculates that if farmers could lift average grain yields
around the world just to the level of today's average U.S. corn grower, one-half of current global cropland--an area the size of the Amazon
basin--could be spared. If agriculture is a leading indicator, then the continuous drive to produce more from less will prevail in other parts of
the economy Certainly with
shrinking agricultural land requirements, water distribution and use around the
world can be greatly altered, since nearly two-thirds of water now goes for irrigation. Overall, the technologies of the future will, in
92
the words of Ausubel, be "cleaner, leaner, lighter, and drier"--that is, more efficient and less wasteful of materials and water. They will be much
more tightly integrated through microprocessor-based control and will therefore use human and natural resources much more efficiently and
productively. Energy intensity, land intensity, and water intensity (and, to a lesser extent, materials intensity) for both manufacturing and
agriculture are already heading downward. Only in agriculture are they falling fast enough to offset the surge in population, but, optimistically,
advances in science and technology should accelerate the downward trends in other sectors, helping to decouple economic development from
environmental impact in the coming century. One positive sign is the fact that recycling rates in North America are now approaching 65% for
steel, lead, and copper and 30% for aluminum and paper. A second sign is that economic output is shifting away from resource-intensive
products toward knowledge-based, immaterial goods and services. As a result, although the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) increased 200fold (in real dollars) in the twentieth century, the physical weight of our annual output remains the same as it was in 1900. If anything, this
trend will be accelerating. As Kevin Kelly, the editor of Wired magazine, noted, "The creations most in demand from the United States [as
exports] have lost 50% of their physical weight per dollar of value in only six years.... Within a generation, two at most, the number of people
working in honest-to-goodness manufacturing jobs will be no more than the number of farmers on the land--less than a few percent. Far more
than we realize, the network economy is pulling us all in." Even
pollution shows clear signs of being decoupled from
population and economic growth. Economist Paul Portney notes that, with the exception of greenhouse gases, "in the OECD
[Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] countries, the favorable experience [with pollution control] has been a triumph of
technology That is, the ratio of pollution per unit of GDP has fallen fast enough in the developed world to offset the increase in both GDP per
capita and the growing number of 'capitas' themselves." The fourth opportunity for science and technology stems from their enormous
potential to unlock resources not now available, to reduce human limitations, to create new options for policymakers and businesspeople alike,
and to give us new levels of insight into future challenges. Technically resources have little value if we cannot unlock them for practical use.
With technology, we are able to bring dormant resources to life. For example, it was only with the development of an electrolytic process late
in the nineteenth century that aluminum--the most abundant metal on earth--became commercially available and useful. Chemistry unlocked
hydrocarbons. And engineering allowed us to extract and put to diverse use untapped petroleum and gas fields. Over the course of history,
technology has made the inaccessible accessible, and resource depletion has been more of a catalyst for change than a longstanding problem.
Technology provides us with last-ditch methods (what economists would call substitutions) that allow us to circumvent or leapfrog over crises
of our own making. Agricultural technology solved the food crisis of the first half of the nineteenth century. The English "steam crisis" of the
1860s, triggered by the rapid rise of coal-burning steam engines and locomotives, was averted by mechanized mining and the discovery and use
of petroleum. The U.S. "timber crisis" that Teddy Roosevelt publicly worried about was circumvented by the use of chemicals that enabled a
billion or so railroad ties to last for decades instead of years. The great "manure crisis" of the same era was solved by the automobile, which in
a few decades replaced some 25 million horses and freed up 40 million hectares (100 million acres) of farmland, not to mention improving the
sanitation and smell of inner cities. Oil discoveries in Texas and then in the Middle East pushed the pending oil crisis of the 1920s into the
future. And the energy crisis of the 1970s stimulated the development of new sensing and drilling technology, sparked the advance of non-fossil fuel alternatives, and deepened the penetration of electricity with its fuel flexibility into the global economy Thanks to underground
imaging technology, today's known gas resources are an order of magnitude greater than the resources known 20 years ago, and new reserves
continue to be discovered. Technology has also greatly extended human limits. It has given each of us a productive capability greater than that
of 150 workers in 1800, for example, and has conveniently put the power of hundreds of horses in our garages. In recent decades, it has
extended our voice and our reach, allowing us to easily send our words, ideas, images, and money around the world at the speed of light. But
global sustainability is not inevitable. In spite of the tremendous promise that technology holds for a sustainable future, there
is the potential for all of this to backfire before the job can be done. There are disturbing indications that people
sometimes turn in fear and anger on technologies, industries, and institutions that openly foster an ever-faster
pace of change. The current opposition to nuclear power genetically altered food, the globalization of the economy and the spread of
American culture should give us pause. Technology has always presented a two-edged sword, serving as both cause and effect, solving one
problem while creating another that was unintended and often unforeseen. We solved the manure crisis, but automotive smog, congestion,
and urban sprawl took its place. We cleaned and transformed the cities with all-electric buildings rising thousands of feet into the sky. But while
urban pollution was thereby dramatically reduced, a portion of the pollution was shifted to someone else's sky. Breaking limits "Limits to
growth" was a popular theme in the 1970s, and a best-selling book of that name predicted dire consequences for the human race by the end of
the century. In fact, we have done much better than those predictions, largely because of a factor the book missed--the potential of new
technology to break limits. Repeatedly, human societies have approached seemingly insurmountable barriers only to find the means and tools
to break through. This ability has now become a source of optimism, an article of faith, in many parts of the world. Today's perceived
limits, however, look and feel different. They are global in nature, multicultural, and larger in scale and complexity than
ever before. Nearly 2 billion people in the world are without adequate sanitation, and nearly as many
are without access to clean drinking water. AIDS is spreading rapidly in the regions of the world least able to fight it.
Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are more than 30% greater than preindustrial levels and are climbing
steadily. Petroleum reserves, expected to be tapped by over a billion automobiles worldwide by 2015, may last only another
50-100 years. And without careful preservation efforts, the biodiversity of the planet could become as threatened in
this coming century as it was at the end of the last ice age, when more than 70% of the species of large
93
mammals and other vertebrates in North America disappeared (along with 29% in Europe and 86% in Australia). All
these perceived
limits require innovation of a scope and intensity surpassing humankind's current commitment. The list
of real-world problems that could thwart global sustainability is long and sobering. It includes war, disease,
famine, political and religious turmoil, despotism, entrenched poverty, illiteracy, resource depletion, and
environmental degradation. Technology can help resolve some of these issues--poverty and disease, resource depletion, and
environmental impact, for example--but it offers little recourse for the passions and politics that divide the world. The likelihood is that we will
not catch up and overtake the moving target of global sustainability in the coming century, but given the prospects for technology, which have
never been brighter, we may come surprisingly close. We
should put our technology to work, striving to lift more than
5 billion people out of poverty while preventing irreversible damage to the biosphere and irreversible
loss of the earth's natural resources.
94
Spills
Cloud Computing Helped to solve Deepwater Horizon
King 10
BP: Oil spill response taught cloud and workflow management lessons Separate internal report due out today By Leo King | Computerworld
UK | Published 09:20, 08 September 10 http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-vendors/bp-oil-spill-response-taught-cloud-and-workflowmanagement-lessons-3238110/ TH
But in a separate report filed yesterday with the US drilling regulator, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management,
Regulation and Enforcement, BP said it had learnt a great deal from the equipment and planning tools that were
urgently deployed in response to the incident. It said there were key lessons in collaboration and sharing
information, in improving processes, and in developing and applying major new IT systems. “The
urgency in containing the spill and dealing with its effects has driven innovation in technology, tools,
equipment, processes and know-how.” Using cloud computing had been vital in efforts to “rapidly scale collaboration tools”, BP
said. “From source to shore, existing systems were evolved and expanded and new ones developed to advance work flow, improve
coordination, focus efforts and manage risks,” it said. While
BP said it wanted to avoid any future accidents on the
same scale, it said that by using these systems now it will have the ability to respond more rapidly “with
a clear direction as to personnel, resource and organisational needs”. Access to “timely and reliable
information” was essential in improving decision-making and make the response safe, it said. “The
Deepwater Horizon responders have been able to take advantage of cutting-edge tools to manage
information-sharing inside the Unified Command [response centre],” it said, “and externally, to improve decisionmaking and coordinate complex activities across response and containment, such as simultaneous operations.” In terms of innovation, BP said
it was learning how to operate up to 16 robotic submarines simultaneously in order to work on and repair well heads at immense depth. It
is
also employing “advanced visualisation techniques” to help manage up to 19 surface and submarine
vessels in a narrow radius without crashes.
95
2AC Case Answers
96
Attorney General Oversight
The Attorney General does not stop the collection of U.S. citizens’ data.
Margo Schlanger 15
Intelligence Legalism and the National Security Agency's Civil Liberties Gap. Harvard National Security Journal 6 Harv. Nat'l Sec. J. 112.
What has emerged from this E.O. 12,333 process is a number of ICelement-specific "AG Guidelines."
Once issued, these are bureaucratically difficult to change. n76 For the NSA, as part of the Department of Defense, the
Executive Order 12,333 Attorney General guidelines were signed in 1982 as part of Department of Defense Directive 5240.1-R, and have not
since been modified. n77 These are joined by other similarly amendment-resistant documents. At the NSA, such documents include a (now
mostly de)classified annex governing NSA's role and procedures n78 ; another document titled U.S. Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (generally
referred to as USSID 18), which in turn has its own (de)classified annex and was apparently last updated in 2011; n79 and a formal policy
document most recently issued in 2004, with yet another (de)classified annex. n80 Substantively, these documents together function like FISA
minimization procedures, although they are laxer in several ways. Procedurally, however, they are very different. For FISA minimization, written
justifications and [*132] explanations of each program are filed with the FISA Court and undergird each eventual court approval. Any change in
For E.O. 12,333
processes, the AG Guidelines are more freestanding; there is no subsequent formal implementation
check. Thus even apart from the greater leeway allowed by the AG Guidelines, compared to FISAapproved minimization procedures, the result is substantially more operational freedom under 12,333
than under FISAIn addition to its requirements of Attorney General-approved processes, Executive Order 12,333 "delegate[s]" to
the Attorney General the authority "to approve the use for intelligence purposes, within the United
States or against a United States person abroad, of any technique for which a warrant would be required
the underlying processes might be material to the Court's approval, and therefore needs to be explained.
n81
if undertaken for law enforcement purposes," if the Attorney General finds "probable cause to believe that the technique is directed against a
Attorney General operates essentially like a
warrant granting magistrate, with operational control of the decision to initiate surveillance. (This
foreign power or an agent of a foreign power."
n82
Under this provision, the
requirement has been largely superseded by FISA Title VII, but it remains operative in some rare situations, and also in emergencies. n83) While
there is no judicial involvement, the process is very similar to a judicial one; the same lawyers who prepare FISA applications prepare a similar
application for the Attorney General to approve (or reject). n84
97
Neg
98
Case
The NSA has legal jurisdiction and guidance to collect data overseas. They protect
American Citizens’ data collected via bulk collection.
The New Zealand Herald 2013
December 7, Saturday NSA defends global cellphone tracking as legal Newspaper SECTION: NEWS; World – AP TH
The National Security Agency on Friday said its tracking of cellphones overseas is legally authorized
under a sweeping U.S. presidential order. The distinction means the extraordinary surveillance program is not overseen by a
secretive U.S. intelligence court but is regulated by some U.S. lawmakers, Obama administration insiders and inspectors general.
Documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden showed that the NSA gathers as
many as 5 billion records every day about the location data for hundreds of millions of cellphones
worldwide by tapping into cables that carry international cellphone traffic. The Washington Post said the
collection inadvertently scoops up an unknown amount of U.S. data as well. The NSA said Friday it was
not tracking every foreign phone call and said it takes measures to limit how much U.S. data is collected.
The NSA has declined to provide any estimates about the number of Americans whose cellphones it has tracked because they were traveling
overseas or their data was irrevocably included in information about foreigners" cellphones. "It is not ubiquitous," NSA spokeswoman Vanee
Vines said in a statement. "NSA does not know and cannot track the location of every cell phone." Vines
said the collection of the
global cellphone location data is carried out under the White House order that governs all U.S.
espionage, known as Executive Order 12333. That means congressional committees and relevant
inspectors general can oversee the program, but the secret court established under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act would not. A frequent justification for the NSA programs by President Barack Obama and top U.S.
intelligence officials is that they are overseen by all three branches of government. "The NSA claims its collection is incidental,
but there is no question it"s deliberately engaging in the mass collection of cell phone location data that
it knows will inevitably sweep up information on a huge number of innocent Americans," said Catherine
Crump, American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney, in a statement. "And, all of this is happening without any supervision by a court." The NSA
spokeswoman, Vines, said legal restrictions under the intelligence law still apply to the cellphone tracking. When
NSA analysts realize
they unintentionally collected an American"s information, they would have to separate it when possible
or wall it off from the other information, and limit who can access it and how long it is kept. But an
intelligence lawyer told the Post that when U.S. cellphone data are collected, the data are not covered
by the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures. "FISA
authorization would be required for the intentional collection of domestic metadata," Vines said. "This activity is centered on overseas
locations." She said no domestic NSA program gathers such geolocation data.
XO 12333 ensures that American’s data is protected and confidential. Safe guards are
currently in place.
Joel 2014
(Alexander W. Joel is the civil liberties protection officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and reports directly to Director of
National Intelligence James R. Clapper http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/the-truth-about-executive-order-12333110121.html#ixzz3Zr9NkzSy)
In the Aug. 14 issue of the New York Times, reporter Charles Savage describes whistleblower actions taken by former State Department
employee John Napier Tye. Tye, who was the section chief for Internet freedom in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor before stepping down in April, questioned whether the rules governing certain overseas intelligence surveillance activities
adequately protect information that intelligence agencies “incidentally collect” about Americans while targeting the communications of foreign
nationals overseas. In a Washington Post op-ed on July 18, Tye pointed out that such intelligence collection may be regulated not by the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), but by Executive Order
12333. That order, updated in 2008 by President George W. Bush,
helps govern the activities of the intelligence community. Under EO 12333, intelligence agencies may
99
collect, retain, and disseminate information about Americans “only in accordance with procedures …
approved by the Attorney General … after consultation with the Director [of National Intelligence].” Tye
noted that he is not familiar with the details of these procedures, but nonetheless said that Americans should be troubled by
“the collection and storage of their communications” under the executive order. As the civil liberties
protection officer for the director of national intelligence (DNI), I work with intelligence agencies on these procedures, and would like to
describe how they safeguard privacy and civil liberties. But first I want to commend Tye for raising his concerns through the processes
established for that purpose. Using those processes, he has been able to review his concerns with intelligence oversight bodies as well as with
the public, all while continuing to protect classified information. At the outset, remember that FISA, with very limited exceptions, requires the
government to seek an individualized court order before it can intentionally target a United States person anywhere in the world to collect the
content of his or her communications. The FISA court must be satisfied, based on a probable cause standard, that the United States person
target is an agent of a foreign power, or, as appropriate, an officer or employee of a foreign power. But even when the government targets
foreign nationals overseas in response to valid foreign intelligence requirements, it will inevitably collect some communications about
Americans. As
the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board noted in its examination of Section 702 of FISA, “[t]he
collection of communications to and from a target inevitably returns communications in which nontargets are on the other end, some of whom will be U.S. persons.” Indeed, when Congress first enacted FISA in 1978,
it required the government to follow what are called “minimization procedures.” These procedures, which must be approved by the FISA court,
restrict what the government can do with collected information about U.S. persons (such as for how long that information may be retained, and
under what circumstances it may be shared). Similarly, EO
12333 requires procedures to minimize how an agency
collects, retains or disseminates U.S. person information. These procedures must be approved by the attorney general,
providing an important additional check. The National Security Agency’s procedures are reflected in documents such as United States Signals
Intelligence Directive SP0018 (USSID 18), issued in 1993 and updated in 2011. These procedures generally provide that communications may
not be retained for more than five years. In addition, NSA personnel may not use U.S. person “selection terms” (such as names, phone numbers
or email addresses) to retrieve communications from its collection under EO 12333 without a finding by the attorney general that the U.S.
person is an agent of a foreign power (or in other similarly narrow circumstances). And even if the NSA determines that information about an
American constitutes foreign intelligence, it routinely uses a generic label like “U.S. Person 1” in intelligence reporting to safeguard the person’s
identity. The underlying identity may be provided only in a very limited set of circumstances, such as if it’s necessary to understand the
particular foreign intelligence being conveyed. Oversight is extensive and multi-layered. Executive branch oversight is provided internally at the
NSA and by both the Department of Defense and the Office of the DNI by agency inspectors general, general counsels, compliance officers and
privacy officers (including my office and the NSA’s new Civil Liberties and Privacy Office). The Department of Justice also provides oversight, as
do the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and the president’s Intelligence Oversight Board. In addition, Congress has the power to
oversee, authorize and fund these activities. Many of these protections apply expressly to information about U.S. persons. This is to be
expected, in light of our legal framework and the need to ensure that foreign intelligence agencies protect national security without interfering
with our democratic processes and our values. But intelligence agencies pursue their missions in a manner that provides important safeguards
for all personal information. Indeed, the NSA’s extensive internal compliance system enforces key protections regardless of nationality, as
shown by the letter recently issued by the NSA inspector general. That letter reported on the small number of cases over the past decade in
which government employees had intentionally violated prohibitions on searching signals intelligence information; in several cases, employees
were held accountable for improperly searching for information about foreign nationals. Tye
stated that none of President
Obama’s recent reforms affect 12333 collection. In fact, the president recently issued Presidential
Policy Directive 28 (PPD-28), which covers EO 12333 signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection. It requires
that SIGINT activities be as tailored as feasible, limits the use of SIGINT information collected in bulk
and directs intelligence agencies to safeguard personal information collected through SIGINT,
regardless of nationality. EO 12333 plays an important role in America’s intelligence oversight
framework, so that, in the words of the order, agencies execute their missions “in a vigorous,
innovative, and responsible manner that is consistent with the Constitution and applicable law and
respectful of the principles upon which the United States was founded.” I hope the facts above help inform the
public discussion on EO 12333.
Obamas SIGINT Policy protects Americans’ privacy
Michael Jefferson Adams 14
ARTICLE: Jus Extra Bellum: Reconstructing the Ordinary, Realistic Conditions of Peace. 2014 Harvard National Security Journal 5 Harv. Nat'l Sec. J. 377. Commander, Judge Advocate General's
Corps, U.S. Navy; Deputy Legal Counsel to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. LL.M., Harvard Law School, 2013; J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 2002; B.S., United States Naval
Academy, 1996. The views expressed herein are those of Commander Adams in his personal capacity and are not necessarily those of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Navy, or
the Department of Defense. This Article expands on select points originally made by the author in Six Degrees of Sovereignty: Understanding Sovereignty and Jurisdiction in the Physical,
Informational, and Cognitive Dimensions of the Information Environment 12 (May 30, 2013) (unpublished LL.M. long paper, Harvard Law School) (on file with Harvard Law School Library). The
100
author would like to thank the numerous individuals who assisted with this Article and who transformed a rough sketch into what he hopes is a worthy effort. He thanks his family for their
love, support, and inspiration. Thanks also to Kenneth Anderson and Benjamin Wittes for allowing him to borrow the phrase "the ordinary, realistic conditions of peace." Finally, this Article is
written in appreciation for the men and women who go in harm's way. May it reinforce their lawful actions and offer them room to operate going forward. TH.
After considering the Group's conclusions and recommendations,
President Obama decided to implement a new SIGINT
policy through which he promised to refine SIGINT practices in order to "maintain the trust of the
American people, and people around the world." n270 The SIGINT policy recognizes that technology-driven intelligence
collection is necessary in an era of transnational activities, digital communications, and persistent threats. It "appl[ies] to signals intelligence
activities conducted in order to [*450] collect communications or information about communications . . . . " n271 The policy balances " . . . [U.S]
security requirements, but also [U.S.] alliances; [U.S.] trade and investment relationships . . . ; and [the United States'] commitment to privacy
and basic liberties." n272 To
that end, the policy provides overarching principles of collection, n273 limits bulk
collection of SIGINT, n274 changes interagency review processes, n275 creates reporting requirements and general provisions, n276
and alters long-established intelligence practices regarding those who are not "United States persons" pursuant to Executive Order 12333. n277
As the President explained, "The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United
States is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security, and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our
policies and procedures." n278 Of
course, the U.S. intelligence community is not concerned with the
conversations of ordinary people. It seeks to identify global threats and trends in order to support the
President's obligation to preserve, protect, and defend the United States. Consequently, the SIGINT
policy allows for SIGINT collection "where there is a foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purpose .
. . ." n279 It also provides a significant caveat to the privacy safeguards of Section Four of PPD-228. Following the model of E.O. 12333, PPD-28
limits "the term 'personal information' . . . [to] the same types of information covered by 'information concerning U.S. [*451] persons' under
section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333." n280 Therefore, as a practical matter the SIGINT policy allows the U.S. intelligence community "to
collect, retain, or disseminate information concerning [all] persons" n281 so long as the information is: (a) Information that is publicly available
or collected with the consent of the person concerned; (b) Information constituting foreign intelligence or counterintelligence . . . ; (c)
Information obtained in the course of a lawful foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, international drug or international terrorism
investigation; (d) Information needed to protect the safety of any persons or organizations, including those who are targets, victims, or
hostages of international terrorist organizations; (e) Information needed to protect foreign intelligence or counterintelligence sources,
methods, and activities from unauthorized disclosure. . . . ; (f) Information concerning persons who are reasonably believed to be potential
sources or contacts for the purpose of determining their suitability or credibility; (g) Information arising out of a lawful personnel, physical, or
communications security investigation; (h) Information acquired by overhead reconnaissance not directed at specific United States persons; (i)
Incidentally obtained information that may indicate involvement in activities that may violate Federal, state, local, or foreign laws; and [*452]
(j) Information necessary for administrative purposes. n282 In
short, the SIGINT policy created privacy safeguards but
not at the expense of an extraordinarily wide swath of intelligence activities. In the transnational armed conflict,
for example, enemy belligerents and direct participants in hostilities do not enjoy privacy protections--even if U.S. policy extends them to
foreign civilians. n283 Moreover, outside of the transnational armed conflict, the U.S. intelligence community retained a great deal of freedom
to conduct intelligence activities targeting terrorists and other global threats. n284 The political sensitivities and sensibilities of such operations
may undergo greater scrutiny but they remain permissible under international and U.S. domestic law, as well as under the President's new
policy. Still, the SIGINT policy change should not be overlooked. It
sacrifices some degree of state autonomy in deference
to diplomatic and political capital and out of respect for global privacy interests. n285 The policy does not assert
that the U.S. government has any less legal right to collect SIGINT. But it might stoke the arguments of those who claim that the United States
has no legal right to collect intelligence outside of Afghanistan and those who might go further to assert that American practices must accept
privacy as a universal human right that applies globally and trumps the state's right to conduct intelligence. n286 On
the other [*453]
hand, the policy could better harmonize U.S. and partner intelligence policies or at least aid in bridging
some legal divides. Relatedly, even if not expressions of opinio juris, these standards might also play a
role in expressing some best practices against which the United States expects its conduct and that of
others to be judged. Perhaps this might play a role in helping to explain and justify American practices,
while also increasing political and diplomatic pressure on other states that violate them.
Past court decisions provide the CIA and the NSA the authority to have warrantless
data collection as long as the target is foreign. Multiple cases prove that XO 12333 is
constitutional
Daniel L. Pines Indiana Law Journal Spring, 2009
101
84 Ind. L.J. 637 Article: The Central Intelligence Agency's "Family Jewels": Legal Then? Legal Now?Assistant General Counsel, Office of
General Counsel, Central Intelligence Agency. All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not
reflect the official positions or views of the Central Intelligence Agency or any other U.S. Government agency. Nothing in the contents
should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or CIA endorsement of the author's views. This
material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information. The author wishes to thank Robert M. Chesney
for his assistance with this Article. TH
The Family Jewels describe two CIA operations involving the electronic surveillance of Americans in the United States. In neither operation did
the CIA seek or acquire a warrant. In one operation, the CIA listened to radio telephone calls between alleged drug traffickers in the United
States and South America. n187 The surveillance ended after four months, when the CIA's General Counsel rendered an opinion that the
activity was illegal. n188 A more notorious CIA electronic surveillance operation was Project Mockingbird, which involved tapping the
Washington, D.C. telephones of two U.S. newspaper reporters in 1963. n189 The operation was done with the support of the telephone
company, n190 and with the apparent knowledge and consent of the Attorney General. n191 The reporters had published extensive news articles that contained highly classified CIA information. n192 The CIA tapped the reporters' phones to identify the sources of that classified
information, in order to prevent such leaks from continuing. n193 The operation culminated in the identifi-cation of dozens and dozens of the
reporters' sources, including a White House staffer, an Assistant [*660] Attorney General, twenty-one congressional staffers, six Members of
Congress, and twelve Senators. n194 The question of whether the United States government is permitted to conduct this type of warrantless
electronic surveillance of Americans has been an on-going debate for forty years, and remains unresolved. n195 The tension stems from two
competing facets of the United States Constitution. The
Fourth Amendment prohibits the United States gov-ernment
from searching the property of an American absent a warrant. n196 In juxtaposition is what is referred
to as the inherent constitutional authority of the President to engage in foreign affairs. n197 This tension is
aided by the fact that the Framers of the Constitution did not, and could not, foresee the concept of electronic
surveillance (as there were no tele-phones in 1776, much less a means to tap them), and therefore could not even contemplate the
problems such surveil-lance would place on the Fourth Amendment in the area of national security. n198 The Supreme Court first
addressed the constitutionality of electronic surveillance in 1967 when it held that warrant-less searches
in a domestic criminal context generally were "per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment . . . ."
n199 However, the Court explicitly demurred as to whether a warrant would be required for electronic
surveillance "in a situ-ation involving the national security. . . ." n200 The Court addressed that latter issue in 1972, in
analyzing a warrantless wiretap of three individuals accused of conspiring to destroy a CIA office in Michigan. n201 Though the Court found that
the actions of the government there violated the Fourth Amendment's requirement of a warrant, it was cautious to indi-cate that its opinion
"involves only the domestic aspects of national security. We have not addressed, and express no opinion as to, the issues which may be
involved with respect to activities of foreign powers or their agents." n202 [*661] The Supreme Court has yet to address this last issue regarding
foreign national security concerns. The
Fourth Cir-cuit, however, considered this issue in the well- known case of
United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, an espionage case in which Truong and others stood accused of transmitting classified
information to representatives of the Socialist Re-public of Vietnam. n203 In investigating the case, and seeking to discover the scope and
sources of the espionage, the
United States government placed a tap on Truong's phone, and bugged his
apartment, with Attorney General approval but without seeking a warrant from a court. n204 The
Fourth Circuit upheld the warrantless tap and bug under the Fourth Amendment, noting that thwarting overseas
threats requires speed and secrecy; requiring a warrant "would add a procedural hurdle" that would reduce the Presi-dent's ability to act
quickly and would risk exposure. n205 The court also recognized that the executive branch possesses "unparalleled expertise" in the arena of
foreign affairs, which the courts do not have and should not second- guess. n206 Finally, and most
importantly, the court
recognized that the executive branch is "constitutionally designated as the pre-eminent authority in
foreign affairs" and therefore separation of powers requires the courts "to acknowledge the princi-pal responsibility of the President for
foreign affairs and concomitantly for foreign intelligence surveillance." n207 The Truong court, however, placed some limits
on warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance. The target of the surveil-lance must be a foreign power,
or an agent or collaborator of a foreign power; the surveillance must be primarily for foreign intelligence purposes;
and the surveillance must be reasonable. n208 Every other lower court that considered the matter has come to the same
conclusion and has upheld the executive branch's ability to conduct warrantless electronic searches in the United States so long as there is
Attorney General ap-proval and the purpose of the surveillance is to acquire foreign intelligence information. n209 The [*662] conduct of such
warrantless electronic surveillance for this purpose not only precludes any allegation of constitutional violation, but, being based on the
constitutional power of the President, also would appear to vitiate any claim that such activities vio-late federal statutes that prohibit
warrantless electronic surveillance. n210 The law in this area changed in 1978 with passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),
n211 which was meant to place the constitutional debate on hold. n212 FISA represented a contentious and difficult compromise re-garding
the collection of foreign intelligence. n213 The Supreme Court had left the door open regarding warrantless wire-taps for foreign intelligence
102
purposes, and the lower courts had uniformly permitted the government to go through that door. However, the executive branch worried that
the Supreme Court might decide to take up the matter and issue a less favorable ruling. n214 Furthermore, numerous lawsuits had been filed
challenging warrantless electronic surveillance, and most telephone companies and government agencies were becoming reluctant to engage
in such surveillance without a court order. n215 FISA thus sought to balance the public's concern about an unfettered government with the
executive branch's need to collect foreign intelligence quickly and in secret. n216
One of FISA's main tenets was the creation
of the Foreign Intel-ligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which is a special tribunal comprised of eleven
district court judges. n217 FISA author-izes judges on the FISC to issue foreign intelligence warrants if
certain [*663] criteria are met. n218 Requests to the FISC must be in writing and under oath, and must be approved by the Attorney
General after personal review. n219 For a warrant to issue, the FISC judge must find probable cause to believe that the target is a foreign power
or an agent of a foreign power, and that foreign intelligence information is being sought. n220
FISC judges hold hearings in
secret and ex parte, and their decisions are usually not published. n221 The Attorney General may still
authorize warrantless electronic surveillance, but only in very limited circumstances. n222 Criminal and civil
liabilities attach to violations of FISA, and a private right of action exists. n223 Per its terms, FISA is considered the "exclusive means" of
engaging in electronic surveillance for foreign intelli-gence purposes. n224 Nonetheless, a recent argument has been made that the restrictions
of FISA can be superseded in certain circumstances. Supporters of this position note that portions of FISA contain the provision "unless
authorized by statute." n225 Therefore, it has been argued that a statute authorizing the President to engage in wide-ranging activities
designed to protect the nation in time of emergency, such as the Authorization for Use of Military Force Resolution (AUMF) enacted in the
wake of 9/11, n226 can serve to overcome the restrictions of FISA, including the preclusion of electronic surveillance absent a FISC-ordered
warrant. n227 Indeed, this was the legal argument employed by the Bush Administration to validate the National Security Agency's "Terrorist
Surveillance Program." n228 Critics of this [*664] argument, who are numerous, assert that the specific restrictions contained in FISA cannot be
overcome by a much broader and less specific statute such as the AUMF. n229 An additional, and more fundamental, argument in favor of
Presidential primacy in this area asserts that FISA can-not usurp the aforementioned inherent presidential authority over foreign affairs. As
Professor Robert Turner, one of the most forceful advocates of this position describes: At the core of exclusive presidential constitutional
powers are the conduct of diplomacy, the collection of foreign intelligence, and the supreme command of military forces and conduct of
military operations. Into these areas, Congress was not intended by the Founding Fathers to interfere. This was the consistent view of the
Federalist Papers and the courts have repeatedly affirmed these principles. n230 Per Professor Turner and others, including the Bush
Administration, this authority provides the President with power to engage in warrantless searches, a power that cannot be taken away by
Congress through FISA or any other mechanism, as a matter of constitutional law. n231 The FISC Court of Review, in the only opinion it has ever
issued, ap-pears to confirm this position. The court, in discussing whether the President has the inherent authority to conduct war-rantless
searches to obtain foreign intelligence information, stated: "We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that
is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power." n232 However, this assertion is hotly contested. Critics have asserted
that the Constitution is not as clear cut as Professor Turner suggests; that the executive branch has acceded to the exclusivity of FISA when
President Carter signed FISA into law in 1978; that such accession is further evidenced by the executive branch's continued use of the FISC; and
that the proper mechanism for concerns about FISA is to seek a legislative amendment. n233 Congress apparently sought to resolve this issue
when it amended FISA in 2008 to, inter alia, expressly provide that FISA "shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance and the
interception of domestic wire, oral, or electronic communications may be conducted." n234 However, such legislation does not resolve the
underlying constitutional argument. [*665] Finally,
it should be noted that EO 12,333 also precludes the CIA from
"engag[ing] in electronic surveillance with-in the United States except for the purpose of training,
testing, or conducting countermeasures to hostile electronic sur-veillance." n235 However, as noted previously,
the limitations of EO 12,333 can be countermanded by presidential di-rective. n236 Overall then, it seems
clear that at the time of the Family Jewels in 1973 the CIA could engage in electronic sur-veillance in the
United States without a warrant but with Attorney General approval, so long as the purpose was to collect foreign intelligence. n237 It is also possible that the target of the surveillance needed to be a foreign power or an agent of a
foreign power, as mandated by some courts. n238 These requirements continue today, with the additional requirement that the
Agency likely would need to acquire a warrant from the FISC or at least a presidential directive. n239
103
Adv 1
No set threshold where debt impacts GDP
Pescatori 14 [Andrea, Economist at the Research Department of the IMF, former fellow at the Bank of Italy and Economist at the
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Ph.D. in economics (Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain), this report was coauthored by Damiano
Sandri and John Simon (1st is an economist at the IMF and has an M.A. and PhD in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University + 2nd has a
PhD from MIT and is a Senior Economist at the IMF), “Debt and Growth: Is There a Magic Threshold?” WP/14/34, 2014, IMF,
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2014/wp1434.pdf]
Is there a particular threshold in the level government debt above which the medium-term growth prospects are
dramatically compromised? The answer to this question is of critical importance given the historically high
level of public debt in most advanced economies. Yet there is currently no agreement on the answer and
it is the subject of heated academic and political debate. One camp has argued that high levels of debt are associated with particularly large
negative effects on growth. For example, an influential series of papers by Reinhart
and Rogoff (2010, 2012) argues that there is
a threshold effect whereby debt above 90 percent of GDP is associated with dramatically worse growth outcomes. An opposing
perspective is advanced by those who dispute the notion that there is a clear debt threshold above which debt sharply reduces growth and
raise endogeneity concerns whereby weak growth is the cause of particularly high levels of debt. Thus, according to this view, the priority
should be increasing growth rather than reducing debt and, consequently, that much less short-term fiscal austerity is appropriate. This
paper makes a contribution to the debate by presenting new empirical evidence based on a different way of
analyzing the data and a sizeable dataset. Our methodology is based on the analysis of the relation
between debt and growth over longer periods of time that has the potential to attenuate the concerns of
reverse causality from growth to debt. Our results do not identify any clear debt threshold above which
medium-term growth prospects are dramatically compromised. On the contrary, the association
between debt and medium-term growth becomes rather weak at high levels of debt, especially when
controlling for the average growth performance of country peers. We also find evidence that the debt trajectory can be
just as important, and possibly more important, than the level of debt in understanding future growth prospects.
Indeed, countries with high but declining levels of debt have historically grown just as fast as their peers.
We also find, however, that high levels of debt are weakly associated with higher output volatility. This suggests that high levels of debt may
still be associated with market pressure or fiscal and monetary policy actions that, even if they do not have particularly large negative effects on
medium-term growth, destabilize it.
104
Decline Doesn’t Cause War
Dense economic linkages make conflict impossible
Jervis 11 – Professor of Political Science @ Columbia
Robert, Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs at
Columbia University, December 2011, “Force in Our Times,” Survival, Vol. 25, No. 4, p. 403-425
Even if war is still seen as evil, the security community could be dissolved if severe conflicts of interest were to arise. Could the more
peaceful world generate new interests that would bring the members of the community into sharp disputes? 45 A zero-sum sense of
status would be one example, perhaps linked to a steep rise in nationalism. More likely would be a
worsening of the current
economic difficulties, which could itself produce greater nationalism, undermine democracy and
bring back old-fashioned beggar-my-neighbor economic policies. While these dangers are real, it is
hard to believe that the conflicts could be great enough to lead the members of the community to
contemplate fighting each other. It is not so much that economic interdependence has proceeded to
the point where it could not be reversed – states that were more internally interdependent than anything seen internationally
have fought bloody civil wars. Rather it is that even if the more extreme versions of free trade and
economic liberalism become discredited, it is hard to see how without building on a preexisting high level of
political conflict leaders and mass opinion would come to believe that their countries could prosper by
impoverishing or even attacking others. Is it possible that problems will not only become severe, but that people will
entertain the thought that they have to be solved by war? While a pessimist could note that this argument does
not appear as outlandish as it did before the financial crisis, an optimist could reply (correctly, in my
view) that the very fact that we have seen such a sharp economic down-turn without anyone
suggesting that force of arms is the solution shows that even if bad times bring about greater
economic conflict, it will not make war thinkable.
Empirical studies show no causal relationship between economic decline and war
Miller 1 – prof of economics
Morris Miller 2001, Professor of Economics, Poverty: A Cause of War?,
http://archive.peacemagazine.org/v17n1p08.htm
Library shelves are heavy with studies focused on the correlates and causes of war . Some of the leading scholars
in that field suggest that we drop the concept of causality, since it can rarely be demonstrated. Nevertheless, it may be helpful to look
at the motives of war-prone political leaders and the ways they have gained and maintained power, even to the point of leading their
nations to war. Poverty: The Prime Causal Factor? Poverty is most often named as the prime causal factor. Therefore
we approach the question by asking whether poverty is characteristic of the nations or groups that have engaged in wars. As we shall
see, poverty has never been as significant a factor as one would imagine. Largely this is because of the
traits of the poor as a group - particularly their tendency to tolerate their suffering in silence and/or be
deterred by the force of repressive regimes. Their voicelessness and powerlessness translate into
passivity. Also, because of their illiteracy and ignorance of worldly affairs, the poor become susceptible to the messages of war-bent
demagogues and often willing to become cannon fodder. The situations conductive to war involve political repression of dissidents,
tight control over media that stir up chauvinism and ethnic prejudices, religious fervor, and sentiments of revenge. The poor succumb
to leaders who have the power to create such conditions for their own self-serving purposes. Desperately poor people in poor
nations cannot organize wars, which are exceptionally costly. The statistics speak eloquently on this point. In the
last 40 years the global arms trade has been about $1500 billion, of which two-thirds were the purchases
of developing countries. That is an amount roughly equal to the foreign capital they obtained through official development aid
(ODA). Since ODA does not finance arms purchases (except insofar as money that is not spent by a government on aid-financed roads
is available for other purposes such as military procurement) financing is also required to control the media and communicate with the
populace to convince them to support the war. Large-scale armed conflict is so expensive that governments must resort to exceptional
105
sources, such as drug dealing, diamond smuggling, brigandry, or deal-making with other countries. The reliance on illicit operations is
well documented in a recent World Bank report that studied 47 civil wars that took place between 1960 and 1999, the main conclusion
of which is that the key factor is the availability of commodities to plunder. For greed to yield war, there must be financial
opportunities. Only affluent political leaders and elites can amass such weaponry, diverting funds to the military
even when this runs contrary to the interests of the population. In most inter-state wars the antagonists were wealthy enough to build
up their armaments and propagandize or repress to gain acceptance for their policies. Economic Crises? Some scholars have
argued that it is not poverty, as such, that contributes to the support for armed conflict, but rather some catalyst, such as an
economic crisis. However, a study by Minxin Pei and Ariel Adesnik shows that this hypothesis lacks merit.
After studying 93 episodes of economic crisis in 22 countries in Latin American and Asia since World War II, they
concluded that much of the conventional thinking about the political impact of economic crisis is wrong:
"The severity of economic crisis - as measured in terms of inflation and negative growth - bore no relationship to the
collapse of regimes ... or (in democratic states, rarely) to an outbreak of violence... In the cases of dictatorships and semidemocracies, the ruling elites responded to crises by increasing repression (thereby using one form of violence to abort another)."
Economic decline does not cause war
Boehmer 7 – associate prof of poly sci @ UT-El Paso
Charles Boehmer, Associate Professor, Dept. of Political Science @ University of Texas at El Paso. “The
Effects of Economic Crisis, Domestic Discord, and State Efficacy on the Decision to Initiate Interstate
Conflict”. Politics and Policy. Volume 35, Issue 4, Pages 774-809. Wiley InterScience. December 7, 2007.
Scholars such as MacFie (1938) and Blainey (1988) have nevertheless questioned the validity of the diversionary
thesis. As noted by Levy (1989), this perspective is rarely formulated as a cohesive and comprehensive
theory, and there has been little or no knowledge cumulation. Later analyses do not necessarily build on
past studies and the discrepancies between inquiries are often difficult to unravel. "Studies have used a variety
of research designs, different dependent variables (uses of force, major uses of force, militarized disputes), different estimation
techniques, and different data sets covering different time periods and different states" (Bennett and Nordstrom 2000, 39). To these
problems, we should add a lack of theoretical precision and incomplete model specification. By a lack of
theoretical precision, I am referring to the linkages between economic conditions and domestic strife that
remain unclear in some studies (Miller 1995; Russett 1990). Consequently, extant studies are to a degree
incommensurate; they offer a step in the right direction but do not provide robust cross-national
explanations and tests of economic growth and interstate conflict.
Economic decline empirically doesn’t cause great power wars – global integration
checks
Barnett, senior managing director of Enterra Solutions, 9
[Thomas P.M., August 24, World Politics Review, “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid
Financial Crisis,” http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/4213/the-new-rules-security-remainsstable-amid-financial-crisis, accessed 7-13-13, UR]
Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? ¶ Indeed, no. The
world's
major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain decidedly
friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate
economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no
great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts
toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. ¶ Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? ¶ If it was, that shift was
clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida.
106
And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. ¶ At the
end of the day, the
economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies
into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and
pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare"
and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated
production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute
signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -please!
Causal chains that link economic decline to great power war are factually and
empirically untrue
Ferguson, Harvard University Laurence A. Tisch History Professor, 6
[Niall, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, September/October 2006, Council
on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs vol. 85 issue 5, pp. 62-63, “The Next War of the World,” accessed 713-13, UR]
Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most
familiar causal chain in modern historiography
links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But that simple story
leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not
all the countries affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such
regimes start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is
discernible for the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the causes rather
than the consequences of economic catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed
by wars.¶ Many trace responsibility for the butchery to extreme ideologies. The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm calls the years between
1914 and 1991 "an era of religious wars" but argues that "the most militant and bloodthirsty religions were secular ideologies." At the other
end of the political spectrum, the conservative historian Paul Johnson blames the violence on "the rise of moral relativism, the decline of
the rise of new ideologies or the decline of old
values cannot be regarded as causes of violence in their own right. Extreme belief systems, such as antiSemitism, have existed for most of modern history, but only at certain times and in certain places have
they been widely embraced and translated into violence.
personal responsibility [and] the repudiation of Judeo-Christian values." But
107
Free Trade Defense
Trade conflicts won’t escalate
Joseph Nye 96, Dean of the Kennedy School of Government – Harvard University, Washington
Quarterly
The low likelihood of direct great power clashes does not mean that there will be no tensions between them.
Disagreements are likely to continue over regional conflicts, like those that have arisen over how to deal with the conflict in the former
Yugoslavia. Efforts to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction and means of their delivery are another source of friction, as is the case
over Russian and Chinese nuclear cooperation with Iran, which the United States steadfastly opposes. The sharing of burdens and
responsibilities for maintaining international security and protecting the natural environment are a further subject of debate among the great
powers. Furthermore, in contrast to the views of classical Liberals, increased
trade and economic interdependence can
increase as well as decrease conflict and competition among trading partners. The main point, however, is
that such disagreements are very unlikely to escalate to military conflicts.
No trade war impact
Ian Fletcher 8/29/11 Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, former Research Fellow at the U.S.
Business and Industry Council M.A. and B.A. from Columbia and U Chicago, "Avoid Trade War? We're Already In One!"
[www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/avoid-trade-war-were-alre_b_939967.html]
trade war is that, unlike actual shooting war, it has no historical precedent. In fact, there
has never been a significant trade war, "significant" in the sense of having done serious economic damage. All history records
are minor skirmishes at best.¶ Go ahead. Try and name a trade war. The Great Trade War of 1834? Nope. The Great Trade War of
1921? Nope Again. There isn't one.¶ The standard example free traders give is that America's Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930
either caused the Great Depression or made it spread around the world. But this canard does not survive serious
examination, and has actually been denied by almost every economist who has actually researched the question in
depth -- a group ranging from Paul Krugman on the left to Milton Friedman on the right.¶ The Depression's cause was monetary.
The curious thing about the concept of
The Fed allowed the money supply to balloon during the late 1920s, piling up in the stock market as a bubble. It then panicked, miscalculated,
and let it collapse by a third by 1933, depriving the economy of the liquidity it needed to breathe. Trade had nothing to do with it.¶
As for the charge that Smoot caused the Depression to spread worldwide: it was too small a change to have plausibly so large an effect. For a
start, it only applied to about one-third of America's trade: about 1.3 percent of our GDP. Our average tariff on dutiable goods went from 44.6
to 53.2 percent -- not a terribly big jump. Tariffs were higher in almost every year from 1821 to 1914. Our tariff went up in 1861, 1864, 1890,
and 1922 without producing global depressions, and the recessions of 1873 and 1893 managed to spread worldwide without tariff increases.¶
As the economic historian (and free trader!) William Bernstein puts it in his book A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World,¶ Between
1929 and 1932, real GDP fell 17 percent worldwide, and by 26 percent in the United States, but most economic historians now believe that only
a miniscule part of that huge loss of both world GDP and the United States' GDP can be ascribed to the tariff wars. .. At the time of SmootHawley's passage, trade volume accounted for only about 9 percent of world economic output. Had all international trade been eliminated, and
had no domestic use for the previously exported goods been found, world GDP would have fallen by the same amount -- 9 percent. Between
1930 and 1933, worldwide trade volume fell off by one-third to one-half. Depending on how the falloff is measured, this computes to 3 to 5
percent of world GDP, and these losses were partially made up by more expensive domestic goods. Thus, the damage done could not possibly
have exceeded 1 or 2 percent of world GDP -- nowhere near the 17 percent falloff seen during the Great Depression... The inescapable
conclusion: contrary to public perception, Smoot-Hawley did not cause, or even significantly deepen, the Great Depression.¶ The
oftbandied idea that Smoot-Hawley started a global trade war of endless cycles of tit-for-tat retaliation is also
mythical. According to the official State Department report on this very question in 1931:¶ With the exception of discriminations in France,
the extent of discrimination against American commerce is very slight...By far the largest number of countries do not discriminate against the
commerce of the United States in any way.¶ That is to say, foreign nations did indeed raise their tariffs after the passage of Smoot, but this was
a broad-brush response to the Depression itself, aimed at all other foreign nations without distinction, not a retaliation against the U.S. for its
tit-for-tat retaliation between trading partners that paralyzes free traders with fear today simply
did not happen.¶ "Notorious" Smoot-Hawley is a deliberately fabricated myth, plain and simple. We should not allow this myth
to paralyze our policy-making in the present day.¶ There is a basic unresolved paradox at the bottom of the very concept of
trade war. If, as free traders insist, free trade is beneficial whether or not one's trading partners reciprocate, then why would any
own tariff. The doom-loop of spiraling
108
rational nation start one, no matter how provoked? The only way to explain this is to assume that major national governments like the
Chinese and the U.S. -- governments which, whatever bad things they may have done, have managed to hold nuclear weapons for decades
without nuking each other over trivial spats -- are not players of realpolitik, but schoolchildren.¶ When the
moneymen in Beijing, Tokyo,
ponder the financial realpolitik of exaggerated
retaliation against the U.S. for any measures we may employ to bring our trade back into balance, they will discover the
advantage is with us, not them. Because they are the ones with trade surpluses to lose, not us.¶ So our present position of
Berlin, and the other nations currently running trade surpluses against the U.S. start to
weakness is, paradoxically, actually a position of strength.¶ Likewise, China can supposedly suddenly stop buying our Treasury Debt if we rock
the boat. But this would immediately reduce the value of the trillion or so they already hold -- not to mention destroying, by making their
hostility overt, the fragile (and desperately-tended) delusion in the U.S. that America and China are still benign economic "partners" in a winwin economic relationship.¶ At the end of the day, China cannot force us to do anything economically that we don't choose to.
America is still a nuclear power. We can -- an irresponsible but not impossible scenario -- repudiate our debt to them (or stop paying the
interest) as the ultimate counter-move to anything they might contemplate. More plausibly, we might simply restore the tax on the interest on
foreign-held bonds that was repealed in 1984 thanks to Treasury Secretary Donald Regan.¶ Thus a certain amount of back-and-forth token
retaliation (and loud squealing) is indeed likely if America starts defending its interests in trade as diligently as our trading partners have been
defending theirs, but that's it. The
rest of the world engages in these struggles all the time without doing much
harm; it will be no different if we join the party.
109
Adv 2
Sanctions aren’t working, The U.S. is shifting towards Hard Power to deal with Russia
Lendon, June 23, 2015 (Brad Lendon, CNN http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/23/politics/us-armortanks-europe-russia-ash-carter/
(CNN)The
U.S. military will be sending dozens of tanks, Bradley armored fighting vehicles and selfpropelled howitzers to allied countries in the Baltics and Eastern Europe in response to Russian actions
in the Ukraine, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Tuesday. The equipment, enough to arm one combat brigade, will be positioned in
Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, Carter announced at a press conference with U.S. allies in Estonia. Carter said the
equipment will be moved around Europe for training and exercises. The
U.S. defense chief also said Washington and its
NATO allies will be boosting cyber defense efforts. "We must prepare NATO and our allies for cyber
challenges, particularly from Russia," Carter said in prepared remarks. Carter's announcement comes during a week-long tour of
Europe. "We need to explain to those who doubt the value of our NATO commitments that the security of
Europe is vital to everything else we hold dear," Carter said at a press event with his German counterpart Monday. While
Carter won't be visiting Russia on this trip, Russian President Vladimir Putin's influence looms over the tour's discussions. "One of [Putin's]
stated views is a longing for the past and that's where we have a different perspective on the world and even on Russia's future," he told
reporters en route to Germany, in response to a question about whether Putin is a rational actor. "We'd like to see us all moving forward,
Europe moving forward, and that does not seem to be his stated perspective." Carter also addressed comments Putin made last week,
announcing the addition of 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles to Russia's nuclear arsenal, a move Carter said reflected "posturing" on the
Russian leader's part. "Nuclear weapons are not something that should be the subject of loose rhetoric by world leadership," Carter said. "We
all understand the gravity of nuclear dangers. We all understand that Russia is a long established nuclear power. There is no need for Vladimir
Putin to make that point." Carter's comments are just the latest in an escalating war of words between U.S. and Russian officials. Speaking at
the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, Putin denied his government is behaving aggressively. "We are not aggressive,"
Putin said. "We are persistent in pursuing our interests." "The biggest threat on my mind is what's happening with Russia and the activities of
Russia," James said during a visit to the Paris Air Show. "It's extremely worrisome on what's going on in the Ukraine." Like what Carter said is
planned for the U.S. Army's tanks, U.S.
Air Force planes have been rotating through Europe under Operation
Atlantic Resolve. Participating in those exercises and rotations have been B-2 and B-52 bombers, F-15Cs
and A-10 attack planes. James said the F-22 Raptor, the Pentagon's premier fighter, could join that list. "I could easily see the day -though I couldn't tell you the day exactly -- when the F-22, for example, rotates in is a possibility. I don't see why that couldn't happen in the
future," James said, The Army, too, has been active in these exercises. In
March, the Army sent a convoy of armored
vehicles on an1,100-mile trek from the Baltics through Poland and the Czech Republic to Germany.
Analysts said the size of the armor deployment Carter announced Tuesday was showed it was more symbolic than strategic. During the Cold
War, the U.S. had the same amount of armor, a brigade, stationed in just one small part of what was then West Germany, said retired Brig.
Gen. Mark Kimmit, the former military assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. "We are now
talking about taking one brigade combat team and splitting it among these six countries. That should hardly be seen as a threat to Russia,"
Kimmit said. But the symbolism was important, he
said. "We're sending a message of assurance to our NATO allies.
We have obligations, under the NATO treaty, to defend those countries if attacked. I think those
countries in the region are going to be welcoming the positioning of these - this equipment into their
countries," Kimmit said. Orysia Lutsevych, an analyst with the Chatham House think tank in London, said the U.S. and its NATO allies should
have been making these kind of statement to Moscow sooner. The Obama administration "should have pushed the Kremlin before reaching to
the kind of moment of escalation we are having right now," Lutsevych said. "By trying to appease the Kremlin too long, we will be facing with a
higher cost every day."
E.U. hates the sanctions. It kills their econ and they have to be forced to take actions.
Russia Today, 2014 http://rt.com/usa/193044-us-embarrass-eu-sanctions/
America’s leadership had to embarrass Europe to impose economic hits on Russia over the crisis in
Ukraine – even though the EU was opposed to such a motion, US Vice President Joe Biden revealed
during a speech at Harvard. “We’ve given Putin a simple choice: Respect Ukraine’s sovereignty or face increasing consequences,”
110
Biden told a gathering at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard University's Institute of Politics on Thursday. The consequences were the
sanctions which the EU imposed on Russia, first targeting individual politicians and businessmen deemed responsible for the crisis in Ukraine,
then switching to the energy, defense, and economic sectors. “It
is true they did not want to do that,” Biden admitted. “It was
America’s leadership and the president of the United States insisting, oft times almost having to
embarrass Europe to stand up and take economic hits to impose costs,” the US vice president declared. Those
costs deemed behind the ruble's historic plunge not only forced America’s ExxonMobil to retreat from Russia’s Arctic shelf, but also
provoked counter-measures from Moscow, which suspended certain food imports from the EU. Russia’s
counter-sanctions have hit many of the EU’s agricultural states. EU members, particularly those close to Russia, were the most affected by the
loss of the Russian market. For instance, the
Netherlands – the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural products – is set to
lose 300 million euro annually from canceled business with Russia, as it accounts for roughly 10 percent
of Dutch exports of vegetables, fruit, and meat. At the same time, Poland was hit hard by the Kremlin’s sanctions, as
its food exports to Russia totaled $1.5 billion in 2013. Spain, a large exporter of oranges to Russia, is estimated to
miss out on 337 million euro ($421 million) in food and agriculture sales, while Italy has estimated its losses at nearly 1 billion euro
($1.2 billion). Following pressure from local farmers, a 125 million euro EU Commission Common Agricultural Policy fund was established, from
which the growers are expected to get some cash, while Amsterdam is willing to cover the cost of transporting excess produce to eight food
banks across Holland. Overall, Moscow’s one-year
food embargo against the EU, the US, Norway, Australia,
and Canada will block an estimated $9 billion worth of agricultural exports to Russia. With European countries
now at a loss with apple and dairy surplus, it is not exactly clear whether EU producers will be able to return to the Russian markets after the
one-year ban expires. However, this is no secret to the US, as Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland remarked on Thursday.
“Implementing sanctions isn’t easy and many countries are paying a steep price. We know that. But history shows that the cost of inaction and
disunity in the face of a determined aggressor will be higher,” Nuland said. Nuland’s reference to necessary action against the “aggressor”
might be taken with a grain of salt by the Europeans, as the “F**k the EU” leak is still fresh in their memory. The four-minute video – titled
‘Maidan puppets,’ referring to Independence Square in Ukraine’s capital – was uploaded by an anonymous user to YouTube. Nuland was
recorded as saying the notoriously known phrase during a phone call with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, as the two were
seemingly discussing a US-preferred line-up of the Ukrainian government. It apparently referred to Washington’s policy differences with those
of the EU on ways of handling the Ukrainian political crisis, with Nuland suggesting to “glue this thing” with the help of the UN and ignore
Brussels. The US State Department did not deny the authenticity of the video and stressed that Nuland had apologized for the “reported
comments.”
The E.U. is still working with the United States, despite NSA spying.
Derek E. Mix Analyst in European Affairs 2014 The United States and Europe: Current Issues Derek E. Mix Analyst in European Affairs
February 3, 2015 Congressional Research Service pg 16 The United States and Europe: Current Issues Privacy and Surveillance 35 Greg Miller,
“Backlash in Berlin over NSA Spying Recedes as Threat from Islamic State Rises,” Washington Post, December 29, 2014. TH
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22163.pdf
In 2013, press reports began surfacing about U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs
in the United States and Europe created acute tensions in the transatlantic relationship. Among other
allegations, the reports asserted that objects of U.S. spying included the EU offices in Washington, DC and the cell phone of German Chancellor
Angela Merkel. The information was based on leaked, classified documents obtained from Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor; and
focused on operations allegedly conducted by the NSA and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (the UK’s signals intelligence
agency). The
reports raised serious concerns on both sides of the Atlantic about the extent of U.S.
surveillance operations, the degree of involvement by European intelligence services, and the appropriate balance between promoting
security and upholding privacy rights and civil liberties. Some observers worry that the allegations have resulted in
lasting damage to transatlantic trust, negatively affecting U.S.-European political, security, and economic
ties. Many European leaders, EU officials, and European citizens were deeply dismayed by the reports and concerned that such operations
could violate European privacy rights and civil liberties and compromise the security of European citizens’ personal data. Criticism has been
most pronounced in Germany, where disclosed NSA activities appear to have been broad in scope and the issue of government surveillance of
private citizens evokes particularly strong feelings due to the legacy of domestic spying by the Nazi and East German regimes. Many analysts
point out that the fallout from the reports could have implications for U.S.- European cooperation on counterterrorism and data privacy by
complicating negotiations about renewal of the SWIFT and passenger name record (PNR) agreements (in 2015 and 2019, respectively), as well
as the proposed Data Privacy and Protection Agreement. In the European Parliament, the reports exacerbated long-standing objections to the
111
SWIFT and PNR agreements and intensified MEPs’ concerns about U.S. data protection safeguards and access to European citizens’ personal
data. In the aftermath of the reports, the European Parliament called for suspension of the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor agreement that allows
commercial data exchanges, and there have been suggestions that the purported U.S. surveillance activities may have a wider effect on
economic relations, including with regard to negotiations on the proposed TTIP. Other
analysts argue that the purported U.S.
surveillance operations remain a point of friction but that tensions have proven manageable and do not
pose a sustained threat to the overall transatlantic relationship. Those holding this view contend that
much of the outrage expressed by European leaders has been for domestic public consumption. They
also note that while senior European officials may not have been familiar with the details of U.S.
surveillance activities, many were well aware that their own security services conduct various
surveillance operations and often work closely with U.S. intelligence services to help prevent terrorist
attacks and other serious crimes in Europe. In addition, especially given the potential threat posed by
the Islamic State and returning foreign fighters, officials indicate that cooperation between U.S. and
European intelligence and security services has continued uninterrupted despite any loss of trust at the
political level.
112
No Cooperation
EU structurally incapable of cooperation
Alan Sked is a professor of international history and a former convener of European studies at the
London School of Economics 3/14/2012
(http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/14/hey_serbia_be_careful_what_you_wish_for?page=
full)
The trouble, however, is that the EU as a whole is in absolute demographic decline and relative
economic and technological decline, and its major policies -- whether the common fisheries and
agriculture policies or the euro and monetary union -- have failed. In terms of foreign and security
policies, it is an international joke. It spends next to nothing on defense, and even its main
contributors in this area, Britain and France, have seen their armed forces so severely cut recently
that in the Libyan war, where Europe "took the lead," they were entirely dependent on U.S.
logistics and supplies. If the EU boasts of its reliance on "soft power," that is because it has no
choice. Its head of foreign affairs, the British baroness Catherine Ashton, has been called "the
world's highest-paid female politician," yet she remains anonymous and has no influence on world
events whatsoever. Her position sums up everything that is wrong with the EU -- expensive but
ineffective. The fundamental problem with the EU, however, is that the people of Europe have no
faith in it and do not identify with it. A 2010 Eurobarometer poll found that only 49 percent of EU
citizens think their country's EU membership is a "good thing," while only 42 percent trust EU
institutions. Meanwhile, those institutions, like the EU's whole ethos, are positively antidemocratic. Its key decision-making bodies -- the European Council, Court of Justice, and European
Commission -- are, for all practical purposes, unelected, unaccountable, and removed from the
people (commissioners are usually washed-up has-beens whose political careers in their home
states have ended in failure). Their decisions are irreversible in national parliaments, and the
European Parliament, while vested with powers of co-decision-making with the European Council,
is also remote. The Parliament is a glorified debating society -- not a government with an official
opposition -- and its parties cannot promise any fundamental policy changes in their election
manifestos; indeed, its election outcomes rarely have an impact on the course of EU politics. Its
members are unknown and despised as opportunists who merely seek inflated salaries, perks,
expenses, and pensions. Voter turnout in the EU's parliamentary elections is low and falling,
reflecting the widely held belief among EU citizens that the EU doesn't protect or represent their
interests.
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Cooperation Resilient
Cooperation is resilient- shared values, economic ties, and issue specific cooperation
McCormick ‘6 (The War on Terror and Contemporary U.S.-European Relations James M. McCormick 1 1
Iowa State University ABSTRACT
AU: James M. McCormick TI: The War on Terror and
Contemporary U.S.-European Relations SO: Politics & Policy VL: 34 NO: 2 PG: 426-450 YR: 2006
Even if the conceptual gap were to narrow only slightly over U.S. foreign policy generally and terrorism
particularly, powerful international and domestic constraints remain, which may motivate both the
United States and Europe to close the action gap. In other words, certain existing constraints may
actually serve as incentives to close the action gap between these two global actors in the near term.
Some of these constraints result from the common ties that already exist, but others are unique to the
United States and Europe.First, of course, the United States and Europe are still bound together by a
set of underlying common values and beliefs that brought them together during the Cold War after
World War II, albeit no longer with the Soviet Union acting as a lone star guiding policy formulation.
Those common values and beliefs are hardly empty notions to the vast majority of Europeans and
Americans, particularly not to the new European states that have escaped communist rule since the
fall of the Berlin Wall. How those values should be advanced will surely remain as a source of
disagreement both within and between Europe and America, but those values will undoubtedly
continue to serve as incentives for all parties to seek some policy accommodations. Second, Europe
and America are fundamentally tied by the significant economic links that serve as the "sticky power"
(Mead 2004, 46-53; Mead 2005, 29-36) between them. Indeed, economic ties remain very strong,
despite recent political differences and lingering disputes over access to both participants' markets
(Drozdiak 2005). Third, the often unspoken levels of cooperation on terrorism—for example, in the
areas of law enforcement, intelligence matters, or the tracking of financial matters—remain in place,
even in the face of more visible political differences over Iraq and the wider war on terrorism.
Moreover, the events of 3/11/04 in Madrid and 7/7/05 in London continue to provide very powerful
incentives for this kind of transatlantic cooperation. In this sense, these different kinds of "ties that
bind"—and continue to bind—should not be forgotten as important sources of momentum to seek
common ground between America and Europe.
U.S.-E.U relations resilient – their security interests are aligned and they perceive
interdependence
Leonard 05 (Mark, executive director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former director
of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, Feb 28th. “Why the U.S. Needs the E.U.” Time
International, vol. 165 iss. 9, p. 31. Proquest.)
For the first time in 50 years, it is the U.S. that needs Europe's help, rather than the other way around.
Americans realize that, without European diplomacy, money and soft power, freedom's march would be
a lot more halting. In Kiev, Sarajevo, Ankara, Ramallah and even Tehran, the E.U. is having a more constructive impact than the U.S. Yet the E.U.'s
transformative power is often confused with weakness. The E.U. doesn't change countries by threatening to invade them. Its biggest threat is not intervention but
withdrawal of the hand of friendship and especially the prospect of membership. For countries like Bosnia, Turkey and Ukraine, the only thing worse than having to
deal with the Brussels bureaucracy is not getting to deal with it at all. E.U. membership is such a powerful lure that countries will revamp their legal, judicial and
political systems just to join.
The E.U. and U.S. face similar threats--drug trafficking, large flows of migrants, networks of international
criminals and terrorists--but their responses could not be more different. The U.S. has sent troops into neighboring countries more than 15 times over the past 50
years, but many of them--from Haiti to Colombia--have barely changed; they limp from crisis to crisis, often sucking U.S. troops back in. Sometimes, military force is
the right--and only--solution. In the Balkans, for example, the U.S., with the backing of the U.N. Security Council, led NATO air strikes to protect the Muslim
114
Europeans have learned the hard way that political and economic engagement
can be a more powerful and permanent agent of change. These days in the Balkans, it's the prospect of E.U. membership that's
population while Europe fretted. But
driving political and social transformation. Beyond the 450 million citizens who are already living in the E.U., there are another 1.3 billion people in about 80
countries linked to the E.U. through trade, finance, foreign investment and aid. Nearly a third of the world's population lives in the Eurosphere, the E.U.'s zone of
influence.
The E.U.'s secret weapon is the law. The U.S. may have changed the regime in Afghanistan, but
the E.U. is changing all of Polish society, from its economic policies to its property laws to its treatment of minorities. Each country that joins
the E.U. must absorb 80,000 pages of new laws on everything from gay rights to food safety. Once drawn into the Eurosphere, countries are changed forever--and
they never want to get out.
The U.S. can impose its will almost anywhere in the world, but when its back is turned, its potency
wanes. The elections in Iraq and Afghanistan were only possible because of American intervention, but the Administration's suspicion of international law and
multilateral institutions mean that the democratic changes could be difficult to entrench .
In the aftermath of the war in Iraq, the
Administration has realized it can't change the world on its own. Similarly, the Europeans have learned
that it sometimes takes good, old-fashioned U.S. might to get the attention of undemocratic regimes
and so prepare the ground for reform. There is a lot the U.S. and the E.U. can do together to rein in the
nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, to further cement Turkey's relationship with the West, to
combat the threat of terrorism.
115
Fights are Inevitable
Fights inevitable and no impact
Ahearn, Archick, Belkin 07 Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division
[Raymond Ahearn, Kristin Archick, Paul Belkin “U.S.-European Union Relations and the 2007 Summit”
may 14, 2007 http://ftp.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22645.pdf/]
The U.S. Congress and successive U.S. administrations have supported the EU project since its inception as a way to foster a stable Europe, democratic states, and
strong trading partners. The United States has welcomed EU efforts since the end of the Cold War to expand the political and economic benefits of membership to
central and eastern Europe, and supports the EU aspirations of Turkey and the western Balkan states. The United States and the EU share a huge and mutually
beneficial economic relationship. Two-way flows of goods, services, and foreign investment now exceed $1.0 trillion on an annual basis, and the total stock of twoway direct investment is over $1.9 trillion. Nevertheless, the
U.S.-EU relationship has been challenged in recent years as
numerous trade and foreign policy conflicts have emerged. The 2003 crisis over Iraq, which bitterly
divided the EU and severely strained U.S.-EU relations, is most notable, but the list of disagreements has
been wide and varied. Although Europeans are not monolithic in their views, many EU member states have objected to at
least some elements of U.S. policy on issues ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to U.S. treatment
of terrorist detainees to climate change and aircraft subsidies. Since 2003, however, both sides have made
efforts to improve relations, and successive U.S.-EU summits have sought to emphasize areas of
cooperation and partnership. At the same time, challenges and some tensions remain in the U.S.-EU
relationship.
116
No Impact
No impact to US/EU relations
Daalder 3 (Ivo H., Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies – Brookings Institution, Survival, 45(2),
Summer, p. 147)
The main consequence of these changes in US and European policy priorities is to make the transatlantic
relationship less pivotal to the foreign policy of both actors. For America, Europe is a useful source of
support for American actions – a place to seek complementary capabilities and to build ad hoc coalitions
of the willing and somewhat able. But Washington views Europe as less central to its main interests and
preoccupations than it was during the Cold War. For European countries, America’s protective role has
become essentially superfluous with the disappearance of the Soviet threat, while its pacifying presence
is no longer warranted, given the advance of European integration. The task of integrating all of Europe
into the zone of peace now falls squarely on Europe’s shoulders, with the United States playing at most
a supporting role. Even the stabilisation of Europe’s periphery – from the Balkans in the south to Turkey,
the Caucuses, and Ukraine in the East – is one where Europeans will increasingly have to take the lead.
Their arguments that low relations kills cooperation are complete hype and have no
scholarly backings
- Peters ‘8 (Dr. Ingo Peters, PhD- Prof. @ Center for Transnational Relations - Freie Universität Berlin,
3/26/2008 [Paper to be presented at the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Conference,
“Cooperation, Conflict and Crisis: The Impact of the Iraq War on European-American Relations)
The existing social science literature on transatlantic relations is dominated by policy studies with
stark statements on the immediate and long-term quality of the relationship. Pessimists (mostly neorealists) usually stress diverging trends and predict no viable future for transatlantic relations; optimists
(mostly ascribing to various forms of liberalism) may also find the relationship to be in trouble but
emphasize political mismanagement, which makes for a temporary and resolvable crisis and allows for a
more promising future for the overall relationship, that is if the right lessons are learned and applied to
future political conflicts. Most of the studies on transatlantic relations, whether written by pessimists
or optimists, are, however, underspecified with regard to concepts and yardsticks for systematic
qualifications of the transatlantic relationship. The failure to introduce proper yardsticks for
evaluation, however, may cast doubt on the viability of the overall analysis.7 Experts have qualified
the transatlantic crisis over Iraq as "the greatest trans-Atlantic split since Suez and possibly the deepest
EU divide since its establishment,"8 "a turning point in transatlantic relations,"9 and testify that after
the Iraq war the transatlantic relationship still "is in a deep crisis,"10 or that "the Western order is
experiencing a severe crisis."11 However, the various adjectives used in the above quotes hardly relate
to any systematic frame of reference. When do we see a "severe" or a "deep" crisis, and when a
"minor, shallow or superficial" one?
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EU Relations Irrelevant
EU relations irrelevant AND collapse causes revival
Bergmann 10 Max Bergmann, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow, 3/9/2010, U.S. Neglect May
Be Just What the EU Needs, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=5241
Obama also remains remarkably popular among the European public, and the U.S. and Europe are in sync on
a number of tough global issues, most notably Iran. European governments increased their troop
contributions to Afghanistan and have accepted detainees from Guantanamo. However, the sense of drift in
the transatlantic alliance is undeniable. Europe's complaints in some ways fit the American stereotype of
the continent, focusing more often on process and form than on substance. However, the perceived snubs,
while not intentional, do reveal a broader strategic truth about transatlantic relations: They just don't
matter as much as they used to. Europeans insist that this is because of a shortsighted strategic outlook on
the part of a White House that prioritizes rising powers over traditional ones. While there may be some truth
to this critique, it is also clear that Europe is not as strategically pivotal in the current global environment.
With European security no longer a major concern, Europe's strategic relevance to the U.S. is dependent on
its involvement in global affairs. Despite such activism on the part of certain national capitals, individual
European states lack the global clout to warrant the same level of attention from the U.S. as they used to.
Europe's global engagement as a whole remains limited and disorganized, and as European military
capabilities continue to decline, America's attachment to the transatlantic relationship will only lessen
further. However, the growing estrangement between the U.S. and Europe may actually be beneficial
for relations over the long term. Growing American disinterest in Europe may force a strategic
reassessment in European capitals, prompting them to focus more intently on rationalizing and
modernizing their defense forces and their broader approach to international affairs. A more coherent and
globally involved Europe would, in turn, rekindle the alliance.
-- Relations resilient
Moravcsik 3 (Andrew, Professor of Government and Director of the European Union Program – Harvard
University, July/August, Foreign Affairs, Lexis)
Transatlantic optimists are also right when they argue that the recent shifts need not lead inexorably to
the collapse of NATO, the UN, or the EU. Historically, they note, transatlantic crises have been cyclical events,
arising most often when conservative Republican presidents pursued assertive unilateral military policies. During the Vietnam era and the Reagan administration, as
today, European polls recorded 80-95 percent opposition to U.S. intervention, millions of protesters flooded the streets, NATO was deeply split, and European
politicians compared the United States to Nazi Germany. Washington went into "opposition" at the UN, where, since 1970, it has vetoed 34 Security Council
resolutions on the Middle East alone, each time casting the lone dissent.In the recent crisis, a particularly radical American policy combined with a unique
confluence of European domestic pressures -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schrsder's political vulnerability and French President Jacques Chirac's Gaullist skepticism
of American power -- to trigger the crisis.Most Europeans -- like most Americans -- rejected the neoconservative claim that a preemptive war against Iraq without
multilateral support was necessary or advisable. Sober policy analysis underlay the concerns of the doubters, who felt that the war in Iraq, unlike the one in
Afghanistan, was not really connected to the "war on terrorism." Skeptics were also wary of the difficulties and costs likely to attend postwar reconstruction. No
surprise, then, that most foreign governments sought to exhaust alternatives to war before moving forward and refused to set the dangerous precedent of
spite of these doubts about the Bush administration's
policies, however, underlying U.S. and European interests remain strikingly convergent. It is a cliche but
nonetheless accurate to assert that the Western relationship rests on shared values: democracy, human rights,
open markets, and a measure of social justice. No countries are more likely to agree on basic policy, and to have
the power to do something about it. Even regarding a sensitive area such as the Middle East, both sides
authorizing an attack simply because the United States requested it. In
recognize Israel's right to exist, advocate a Palestinian state, oppose tyrants such as Saddam Hussein,
seek oil security, worry about radical Islamism, and fear terrorism and the proliferation of WMD.
118
AT: Spill Over
No spill-over
Busby 6 (Josh, Assistant Professor of Public Affairs – University of Texas, Austin, “Memo on Reputation,
April,
http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/faculty/busby/papers.php)
Are there any empirical examples of separate reputations that fuse as a result of violations across issue
domains? In thinking about the legitimation problems of the U.S. government under the present
administration, has the U.S. failure to make and its willingness to break its commitments in multiple
arenas had consequences for other arenas? One possibility is that when the George W. Bush administration signaled that the
administration was opposed to various multilateral policy initiatives across a range of unrelated substantive domains—climate change (March 2001), small arms
(July 2001), anti-ballistic missiles (December 2001), steel tariffs (March 2002), the International Criminal Court (May 2002), among other issues --and would no
longer abide by previous commitments, then the segmented reputations may well have fused into a more general impression of the United States that had crossissue consequences. However,
evidence of foot-dragging and non-cooperation by U.S. allies is mixed, and may
be difficult to link back to non-cooperation on secondary issues like climate change. Given the
support offered by America’s allies in Afghanistan and on the war on terror, including covert support
for U.S. policy in Iraq, one could argue that these actions have not had major consequences. Denial of use of
Turkish territory for the war in Iraq, coupled with opposition by several NATO allies to troop deployments and reconstruction assistance in Iraq, indicate the U.S.
may indeed be incurring some higher costs/worse bargains than would have the case had it been a better partner on other issues. It is too soon to make a definitive
judgment on this question. Is there something about the current environment that may empower other actors to punish the U.S. more for failure to honor
commitments, through foot-dragging on issues the U.S. cares about and for which going it alone is simply not a viable option? The bargaining leverage of other
states in an era of interdependence would seem to be improved in some ways. That said, powerful
states generally may find it easier to
break promises without significant consequences since others may find it too costly to punish the
violator or to engage in self-abnegating behavior that denies themselves future benefits because of
earlier rounds of defection (Downs and Jones 2002).
119
No Relations Collapse
No risk of relations collapse – common foreign policy interests overwhelm minor blips.
Ischinger 05 (Wolfgang, former German ambassador to the U.S., Summer. “The U.S.
Should Show More Visible Leadership.” European Affairs.
http://europeanaffairs.org/current_issue/2005_summer/2005_summer_11.php4)
There are not so many differences of substance between U.S. and European foreign policies as often
suggested. Despite claims to the contrary by the media, there is a great deal in common between the socalled freedom agenda espoused by President George W. Bush and the aims that the European Union
has been pursuing, for example, through the Barcelona process that is intended to spread prosperity and political stability around the Mediterranean basin. We may
not use the same words, or even the same methods, but we are in general agreement on the essentials
of the issues involved and on the goals to be attained. European objectives may be slightly less
ambitious, and less urgently defined, than those of the United States. Now, however, that we have put
the dispute over Iraq behind us, there is not really much fundamental difference between declared U.S.
policy goals and declared European policy goals, whether in the world at large, the greater Middle East
or in Central and Eastern Europe. The European Union’s aim is to create stability by establishing better institutions, supporting civil society and working through
democratic procedures. The speech acknowledging the difficulties of nation-building that President Bush gave to the
International Republican Institute in May 2005, for instance, could easily have been delivered by a European
leader. I wish he had made that speech four years ago, but it is still good news.
120
EU Can’t Solve
Europe can’t solve global problems
Bacevich, 10 Andrew, Bacevich, Boston University IR and History Professor, March/April 2010, Let
Europe Be
Europe,"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/22/let_europe_be_europe?page=full, 2/28]
Europe, however, is another matter. By the dawn of this century, Europeans had long since lost their
stomach for battle. The change was not simply political. It was profoundly cultural. The cradle of
Western civilization -- and incubator of ambitions that drenched the contemporary age in blood -- had
become thoroughly debellicized. As a consequence, however willing they are to spend money
updating military museums or maintaining war memorials, present-day Europeans have become
altogether stingy when it comes to raising and equipping fighting armies. This pacification of
Europe is quite likely to prove irreversible. Yet even if reigniting an affinity for war among the
people of, say, Germany and France were possible, why would any sane person even try? Why not
allow Europeans to busy themselves with their never-ending European unification project? It
keeps them out of mischief.
121
Alt Causes
Policy differences make relations collapse inevitable
Smyth 08 (Jamie, 10/23, Irish Times, “If Europeans could vote in US election, Obama would win, but then what?,”
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/1023/1224625124443.html)
THE DESIRE for change has been pinpointed by pollsters as the key theme of the US presidential election
as public dissatisfaction with George Bush reaches record levels. In Europe this sentiment is felt just as
keenly among the public and the political class, who associate Bush with dividing the EU over Iraq, failing
to tackle climate change and undermining human rights by promoting rendition and the Guantanamo detention centre. "He is the
worst president of the US in living memory," socialist leader Martin Schultz told French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the European Parliament earlier this week.
8
per cent of Germans, 9 per cent of French and 20 per cent of British people told a Gallup poll last year
they were in "approval of US leadership". This decline in US popularity has gone hand in hand with a
weakening of the traditional transatlantic relationship and a steady loss of influence for the West as China and India gradually
emerge as real global powers. "Europeans will cheer the departure of George Bush and see it as an opportunity to rebuild the transatlantic relationship but
they should be careful not to have overblown expectations of the new US president," says Hugo Brady, an analyst
Schultz is well known for liberal use of hyperbole in his speeches but his views on the Bush administration match perfectly with European public opinion. Just
with the London-based think tank, Centre for European Reform. Either Barack Obama or John McCain would offer real prospects for better EU-US relations,
although
most of the tricky issues dogging transatlantic relations will remain such as Iran and Afghanistan,
says Brady. If Europeans had a vote in the US election, Obama would win hands down. In Germany, Britain and France, at least 60 per cent of people prefer him to
McCain, according to a recent poll by Gallup. Obama's popularity would provide an immediate boost for the transatlantic relationship, although he may turn out to
be a more challenging interlocutor. "Be careful what you wish for," says John Hulsman at the German Council on Foreign Relations. "Obama promises a very
different style of governance to Bush. Bush didn't listen to his own Republican Party, never mind the Europeans . . . Obama will consult with Europe before he does
things but he will also demand more from his European allies."
Alt causes to US-EU Relations
Ahearn, Archick, Belkin ‘7 Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division
[Raymond Ahearn, Kristin Archick, Paul Belkin “U.S.-European Union Relations and the 2007 Summit”
may 14, 2007 http://ftp.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22645.pdf/]
The U.S. Congress and successive U.S. administrations have supported the EU project since its inception
as a way to foster a stable Europe, democratic states, and strong trading partners. The United States has
welcomed EU efforts since the end of the Cold War to expand the political and economic benefits of
membership to central and eastern Europe, and supports the EU aspirations of Turkey and the western
Balkan states. The United States and the EU share a huge and mutually beneficial economic relationship.
Two-way flows of goods, services, and foreign investment now exceed $1.0 trillion on an annual basis,
and the total stock of two-way direct investment is over $1.9 trillion. Nevertheless, the U.S.-EU
relationship has been challenged in recent years as numerous trade and foreign policy conflicts have
emerged. The 2003 crisis over Iraq, which bitterly divided the EU and severely strained U.S.-EU relations,
is most notable, but the list of disagreements has been wide and varied. Although Europeans are not
monolithic in their views, many EU member states have objected to at least some elements of U.S.
policy on issues ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to U.S. treatment of terrorist detainees to
climate change and aircraft subsidies. Since 2003, however, both sides have made efforts to improve
relations, and successive U.S.-EU summits have sought to emphasize areas of cooperation and
partnership. At the same time, challenges and some tensions remain in the U.S.-EU relationship.
122
-- Iraq permanently shattered US/EU relations
McCormick 7 (John, Political Scientist – University of Miami, The European Superpower, p. 171-172)
But whatever happens as a result of the short- and medium-term fallout from Iraq, whatever policies are
pursued by George W. Bush's successors, and whatever progress is made (or not made) on mending
fences, it is clear that the Alliance will never be the same again. Iraq was just the highest and most
visible peak in a mountain range of transatlantic disputes that stretch back to 1945 and beyond, and it
was symbolic of a host of broader and deeper problems that interfere with the health of the Alliance. In
the eyes of most Europeans, Iraq exemplified the most unfortunate kind of American unilateralism,
highlighted the contrasting perceptions that Europeans and Americans now have of global problems and
their best solutions, revealed a Europe that is more willing than at any time before to publicly and
openly oppose American policy, exposed a seam of public opinion in the United States that is unwilling
to tolerate criticism or opposition from Europe, and made many Europeans more aware of their
subconscious desire for greater foreign and security policy independence. It also exemplified the
problems that can be created when the United States claims to be speaking on behalf of the global
community and claims to identify itself with global interests, when in fact there may not always be much
correlation between US and non-US interests.
US primacy means Europe won’t jeopardize cooperation even if relations are low
McCormick ‘6 (The War on Terror and Contemporary U.S.-European Relations James M. McCormick 1 1
Iowa State University ABSTRACT
AU: James M. McCormick TI: The War on Terror and
Contemporary U.S.-European Relations SO: Politics & Policy VL: 34 NO: 2 PG: 426-450 YR: 2006
In effect, European states and the European Union will be compelled to face the reality of American
global power and presence and, in that process, will be likely to accommodate some American
policies, even as they may seek to modify them. Senator Biden made the same point more colorfully
and more bluntly after visiting Europe in January 2005. At Condoleezza Rice's confirmation hearings, the
senior committee Democrat shouted out for the benefit of Europeans, "[g]et over it. Get over it.
President Bush is our president for the next four years. So get over it and start to act in your interest,
Europe" (U.S. Congress 2005).
Empirically proven
McCormick ‘6 (The War on Terror and Contemporary U.S.-European Relations James M. McCormick 1 1
Iowa State University ABSTRACT
AU: James M. McCormick TI: The War on Terror and
Contemporary U.S.-European Relations SO: Politics & Policy VL: 34 NO: 2 PG: 426-450 YR: 2006
Tensions between America and European states are, of course, not new. Recall Henry Kissinger's book, A
Troubled Partnership (1965). The issue that he dealt with 40 years ago is the same that confronts us
presently. Then, as now, the Atlantic relationship had its troubles, but both parties found a way to
make the relationship work.
123
No Escalation
No escalation – disagreements remain limited
Weitz 11 (Richard, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a World Politics Review senior editor
9/27/2011, “Global Insights: Putin not a Game-Changer for U.S.-Russia Ties,”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/66579517/Global-Insights-Putin-not-a-Game-Changer-for-U-S-Russia-Ties)
Fifth, there will inevitably be areas of conflict between Russia and the United States regardless of who is
in the Kremlin. Putin and his entourage can never be happy with having NATO be Europe's most
powerful security institution, since Moscow is not a member and cannot become one. Similarly, the
Russians will always object to NATO's missile defense efforts since they can neither match them nor join
them in any meaningful way. In the case of Iran, Russian officials genuinely perceive less of a threat from
Tehran than do most Americans, and Russia has more to lose from a cessation of economic ties with Iran
-- as well as from an Iranian-Western reconciliation. On the other hand, these conflicts can be managed,
since they will likely remain limited and compartmentalized. Russia and the West do not have
fundamentally conflicting vital interests of the kind countries would go to war over. And as the Cold
War demonstrated, nuclear weapons are a great pacifier under such conditions. Another novel
development is that Russia is much more integrated into the international economy and global society
than the Soviet Union was, and Putin's popularity depends heavily on his economic track record. Beyond
that, there are objective criteria, such as the smaller size of the Russian population and economy as well
as the difficulty of controlling modern means of social communication, that will constrain whoever is in
charge of Russia.
No nuclear strike
Graham 7 (Thomas Graham, senior advisor on Russia in the US National Security Council staff 20022007, 2007, "Russia in Global Affairs” The Dialectics of Strength and Weakness
http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/20/1129.html)
An astute historian of Russia, Martin Malia, wrote several years ago that “Russia has at different times
been demonized or divinized by Western opinion less because of her real role in Europe than because of
the fears and frustrations, or hopes and aspirations, generated within European society by its own
domestic problems.” Such is the case today. To be sure, mounting Western concerns about Russia are a
consequence of Russian policies that appear to undermine Western interests, but they are also a
reflection of declining confidence in our own abilities and the efficacy of our own policies. Ironically, this
growing fear and distrust of Russia come at a time when Russia is arguably less threatening to the West,
and the United States in particular, than it has been at any time since the end of the Second World
War. Russia does not champion a totalitarian ideology intent on our destruction, its military poses no
threat to sweep across Europe, its economic growth depends on constructive commercial relations with
Europe, and its strategic arsenal – while still capable of annihilating the United States – is under more
reliable control than it has been in the past fifteen years and the threat of a strategic strike approaches
zero probability. Political gridlock in key Western countries, however, precludes the creativity, risktaking, and subtlety needed to advance our interests on issues over which we are at odds with Russia
while laying the basis for more constructive long-term relations with Russia.
124
Won’t go nuclear
Manning 00 (Robert A., Senior Fellow and Director of Asian Studies – Council on Foreign Relations,
“Abbott and Costello Nuclear Policy”, Washington Times, 3-10, Lexis)
We don't want to go any lower because we need these weapons for nuclear deterrence, according to
State Department spokesman James Rubin. But how many nukes do we need for deterrence to be
credible? China, which President Clinton has talked of as a "strategic partner," has a grand total of 20
- count them - strategic warheads that could hit the United States. Nuclear wannabes like North
Korea, Iran, and Iraq would have only a handful if they did manage to succeed in joining the nuclear
club. Russia, which has 6,000 strategic warheads, is no longer an adversary. During the Cold War, it was
not hard to envision a conventional war in Europe escalating into nuclear conflict. But today it is difficult to
spin a plausible scenario in which the U nited S tates and Russia escalate hostilities into a nuclear exchange.
Russia has no Warsaw Pact, and not much of a conventional force to speak of. Yet U.S. nuclear planners
still base their targeting plans on prospective Russian targets, though no one will say so.
125
No Russia War
Domestic problems prevent Russia from being a threat
Lieber ‘08 Robert is professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown (World Affairs,
“Falling Upwards”, Summer 2008)
Farther East, and despite its economic recovery and the restoration of central power under Putin, Russia
remains overwhelmingly dependent on the current boom in energy and commodity prices—and
correspondingly vulnerable in the event of their decline. The country suffers from pervasive
corruption, with a ranking from Transparency International that puts it at 121 among 163 countries in
this category. Its population, already less than half that of the U.S. and plagued with alcoholism,
chronic violence, a decrepit health-care system, and a male life expectancy of fewer than 60 years of
age (lower than that of Bangladesh), shrinks by some half a million people per year. And its army,
while bidding for attention and resources, remains weak and in disarray. As The Economist recently
summarized Putin’s Russia, it has become one of the most “criminalized, corrupt and bureaucratized
countries in the world.” True, the Putin regime plays to its domestic base with strident nationalism and
xenophobia. In doing so, it has actively opposed and occasionally subverted American policies on some
issues while providing a degree of cooperation on others. Instances of the former include opposition to
NATO enlargement and to the stationing of anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, the
use of oil and gas resources as leverage against neighboring countries, overt and covert pressure against
former Soviet Republics, and arms sales to Syria and Iran. Yet Moscow grudgingly collaborates where it
has shared concerns, as with North Korea and combating terrorism. Russia presents a problem for the
United States, but its erratic behavior, its priorities at home, and its own internal decline put it well
short of being a major power challenger.
Give a Russia war impact zero probability – politics, military superiority, economic
concerns, and nuclear security all check war
Graham 7 – National Security Advisor
Thomas Graham, senior advisor on Russia in the US National Security Council staff 2002-2007, 9- 2007,
“The Dialectics of Strength and Weakness,” Russia in Global Affairs, pg. 19
An astute historian of Russia, Martin Malia, wrote several years ago that “Russia has at different times
been demonized or divinized by Western opinion less because of her real role in Europe than because
of the fears and frustrations, or hopes and aspirations, generated within European society by its own
domestic problems.” Such is the case today. To be sure, mounting Western concerns about Russia are a
consequence of Russian policies that appear to undermine Western interests, but they are also a
reflection of declining confidence in our own abilities and the efficacy of our own policies. Ironically, this
growing fear and distrust of Russia come at a time when Russia is arguably less threatening to the
West, and the United States in particular, than it has been at any time since the end of the Second
World War. Russia does not champion a totalitarian ideology intent on our destruction, its military
poses no threat to sweep across Europe, its economic growth depends on constructive commercial
relations with Europe, and its strategic arsenal – while still capable of annihilating the United States – is
under more reliable control than it has been in the past fifteen years and the threat of a strategic strike
126
approaches zero probability. Political gridlock in key Western countries, however, precludes the
creativity, risk-taking, and subtlety needed to advance our interests on issues over which we are at odds
with Russia while laying the basis for more constructive long-term relations with Russia.
Not a threat - resource limitations
Richard Haas, November-December 2014, “The Unraveling: How to Respond to a Disordered World,”
Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142202/richard-n-haass/the-unraveling DOA:
10/30/14
Russia, too, is constrained by interdependence, although less so than China given its energy-concentrated economy and more
modest levels of external trade and investment. That means sanctions have a chance of influencing its behavior over
time. Putin’s foreign policy may be revanchist, but Russia’s hard- and soft-power resources are both
limited. Russia no longer represents anything that appeals to anyone other than ethnic Russians, and as
a result, the geopolitical troubles it can cause will remain on Europe’s periphery, without touching the
continent’s core. Indeed, the critical elements of Europe’s transformation over the past 70 years — the
democratization of Germany, Franco-German reconciliation, economic integration — are so robust that
they can reasonably be taken for granted. Europe’s parochialism and military weakness may make the
region a poor partner for the United States in global affairs, but the continent itself is no longer a
security problem, which is a huge advance on the past.
Cold war calculations no longer apply – neither side would consider war
Cartwright et al 12 [Gen (Ret) James Cartwright, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Amb.
Richard Burt, former ambassador to Germany and chief negotiator of START; Sen. Chuck Hagel; Amb.
Thomas Pickering, former ambassador to the UN; Gen. (Ret.) Jack Sheehan, former Supreme Allied
Commander Atlantic for NATO and Commander-in-Chief for the U.S. Atlantic Command; GLOBAL ZERO
U.S. NUcLEAR POLicy cOMMiSSiON REPORT, http://orepa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/cartwrightreport.pdf]
These illustrative next steps are possible and desirable for five basic reasons. First, mutual
nuclear deterrence based on the
threat of nuclear retaliation to attack is no longer a cornerstone of the U.S.-Russian security
relationship. Security is mainly a state of mind, not a physical condition, and mutual assured destruction (MAD) no
longer occupies a central psychological or political space in the U.S.-Russian relationship. To be sure, there
remains a physical-technical side of MAD in our relations, but it is increasingly peripheral. Nuclear planning for Cold
War-style nuclear conflict between our countries, driven largely by inertia and vested interests left over from the Cold War,
functions on the margins using outdated scenarios that are implausible today. There is no
conceivable situation in the contemporary world in which it would be in either country’s national
security interest to initiate a nuclear attack against the other side. Their current stockpiles (roughly 5,000 nuclear
weapons each in their active deployed and reserve arsenals) vastly exceed what is needed to satisfy reasonable requirements of
deterrence between the two countries as well as vis-à-vis third countries whose nuclear arsenals pale in comparison quantitatively.
127
No risk of U.S.-Russian war – Russia knows the U.S. is infinitely more powerful and
that it couldn’t be a threat.
Bandow 08 (Doug, former senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former columnist with Copley News Service, 3/7. “Turning
China into the Next Big Enemy.” http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=12472)
In fact, America remains a military colossus. The Bush administration has proposed spending $515 billion next year on
the military; more, adjusted for inflation, than at any time since World War II. The U.S. accounts for roughly half of the
world's military outlays. Washington is allied with every major industrialized state except China and Russia. America's
avowed enemies are a pitiful few: Burma, Cuba, Syria, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea. The U.S. government could destroy every
one of these states with a flick of the president's wrist. Russia has become rather contentious of late, but that
hardly makes it an enemy. Moreover, the idea that Moscow could rearm, reconquer the nations that
once were part of the Soviet Union or communist satellites, overrun Western Europe, and then attack
the U.S. – without anyone in America noticing the threat along the way – is, well, a paranoid fantasy
more extreme than the usual science fiction plot. The Leninist Humpty-Dumpty has fallen off the wall
and even a bunch of former KGB agents aren't going to be able to put him back together.
-- No risk of Russia war
Ball 5 (Desmond, Professor – Strategic Defence Studies Centre at Australian National University, “The
Probabilities of ‘On the Beach’ Assessing Armageddon Scenarios in the 21st Century, May,
http://www.manningclark.org.au/papers/se05_ball.html)
The prospects of a nuclear war between the US and Russia must now be deemed fairly remote. There are now no
geostrategic issues that warrant nuclear competition and no inclination in either Washington or Moscow to
provoke such issues. US and Russian strategic forces have been taken off day-to-day alert and their ICBMs 'detargeted', greatly reducing the possibilities of war by accident, inadvertence or miscalculation. On the other hand, while the
US-Russia strategic competition is in abeyance, there are several aspects of current US nuclear weapons policy which are profoundly disturbing. In December 2001
President George W. Bush officially announced that the US was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972, one of the mainstays of strategic
nuclear arms control during the Cold War, with effect from June 2002, and was proceeding to develop and deploy an extensive range of both theatre missile
defence (TMD) and national missile defence (NMD) systems. The first anti-missile missile in the NMD system, designed initially to defend against limited missile
attacks from China and North Korea, was installed at Fort Greely in Alaska in July 2004. The initial system, consisting of 16 interceptor missiles at Fort Greely and
four at Vandenberg Air Force in California, is expected to be operational by the end of 2005. The Bush Administration is also considering withdrawal from the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and resuming nuclear testing. (The last US nuclear test was on 23 September 1992). In particular, some key Administration
officials believe that testing is necessary to develop a 'new generation' of nuclear weapons, including low-yield, 'bunker-busting', earth-penetrating weapons
specifically designed to destroy very hard and deeply buried targets (such as underground command and control centres and leadership bunkers).
-- Common ties, Russian leadership, and defense spending checks
Aron 6 (Leon, Director of Russian Studies – American Enterprise Institute, “The United States and
Russia”, 6-29,
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.24606/pub_detail.asp)
Yet the
probability of a frontal confrontation and a new Cold War remains very remote for at least three
reasons. First, despite the erosion, the countries geopolitical assets are still very weighty, as the bedrock
issues of anti-terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, and energy will continue to force them to seek
common ground and at least limited partnership.[17] Second, the restorationist foreign policy notwithstanding, the three basic
128
elements of the 1992-1993 national consensus on the foreign policy and defense doctrine remain largely the same. Russia
is to stay a
nuclear superpower and the regional superpower, but it seems to have settled for the role of one of the
world’s great states, rather than a global superpower engaged in a worldwide competition with the United States. While
these desiderata will continue to cause occasional sparring with the United States, they are no longer dedicated to the
attainment of goals inimical to the vital interests of the United States and are not likely to ignite a
relentless antagonistic struggle to the bitter end. Lastly, despite
the muscular rhetoric emanating of late from the Kremlin, unlike
the Soviet Union twenty years ago and China today, Russia is not a revisionist power. It does not seek radically to reshape
the geopolitical balance of forces in its favor. Moscow may rail at the score, but it is unlikely to endeavor to change the rules of the
game. For that, one needs a different ideology and, as a result, a different set of priorities. Yet even in today’s Russia flush with petrodollars,
the share of GDP devoted to defense (around 3 percent) is not only at least ten times smaller than in the Soviet Union, but also below the 19921997 average in a Russia that inherited an empty treasury from the Soviet Union and that was, like every revolutionary government, unable to
collect taxes. Calculated
in purchasing power parity, Russia’s defense expenditures in 2005 ($47.77 billion)
were less than one-eleventh of what the U.S. spent ($522 billion).
129
Deterrence Checks
Deterrence checks
Turner 2 (Admiral Stansfield, Former Director – Central Intelligence Agency, Fletcher Forum of World
Affairs, Winter / Spring, 26 Fletcher F. World Aff. 115, Lexis)
There are, of course, other centrals question to be considered: Would Russian psychology differ from
American and would Russian society be willing to accept large numbers of nuclear detonations on their
soil in order to perpetrate a nuclear war against the United States? These are difficult questions to
answer. The more pertinent concern, however, is that this is an issue of life or death. No head of state
could contemplate plunging the world into nuclear conflict without considering both the mortal threat
to his or her citizens, and also the likelihood of his or her own death, underground shelters
notwithstanding. The presumption that heads of state prefer to live than to die gives us one benchmark.
Another is the Cuban missile crisis, in which both Leonid Khruschev and President Kennedy quite visibly
backed away from the prospect of very limited nuclear war. Finally, Russia’s economy, being about the
size of Belgium’s, is so small that its leaders would be well aware that recovery, even from a small
nuclear attack, would be a very lengthy process. In terms of nuclear detonation threats, the United
States must consider Russian deterrence as very close to its own.
130
AT: Bostrum
Bostrom concludes US-Russia war won’t cause extinction
Bostrom 7 (Nick, Ph.D. Professor of Applied Ethics at Oxford University, and the Director of the Oxford
Future of Humanity Institute, “The Future of Humanity”, No specific date
2007, http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/10222/future_of_humanity.pdf)
Extinction risks constitute an especially severe subset of what could go badly wrong for humanity. There
are many possible global catastrophes that would causeimmense worldwide damage, maybe even the
collapse of modern civilization, yet fall short of terminating the human species. An all-out nuclear war
between Russia and the United States might be an example of a global catastrophe that would be
unlikely to result in extinction. A terrible pandemic with high virulence and 100% mortality rate among
infected individuals might be another example: if some groups of humans could successfully quarantine
themselves before being exposed, human extinction could be avoided even if, say, 95% or more of the
world’s population succumbed. What distinguishes extinction and other existential catastrophes is that
a comeback is impossible. A non-existential disaster causing the breakdown of global civilization is, from
the perspective of humanity as a whole, a potentially recoverable setback: a giant massacre for man, a
small misstep for mankind.
U.S. - Russia nuclear war will be limited
Oelrich 05 - Vice President for Strategic Security programs @ Federation of American Scientists
[Ivan Oelrich (Former professor of physics @ Technical University of Munich and Former pre-doctoral
Research Associate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory),“Missions for Nuclear Weapons after
the Cold War,” The Federation of American Scientists, Occasional Paper No. 3, January 2005]
What has not happened since the end of the Cold War is a recalibration of our deterrence requirements
based on the changes in the stakes. The Cold War analyses of nuclear wars took little regard of what the
war might have been about, implicitly assuming it would be about national survival and world
leadership. Today the stakes are, overall, much smaller. Indeed, it is nearly impossible to conjure up
even hypothetical areas of conflict between the United States and Russia with stakes remotely
comparable to those of the Cold War or even a crisis that could rationally justify nuclear weapons.
Where the stakes are high–for example, the ongoing tension between Islamic fundamentalism and the
West–the role of nuclear retaliation is limited. Pg. 22-23
131
Adv 3
Safe Harbor doesn’t apply to national security or surveillance
Polonetsky and Wolf 13
Jules Polonetsky Christopher Wolf December 11, 2013 ”The US-EU Safe Harbor” An Analysis of the Framework’s Effectiveness in Protecting
Personal Privacy pg 28 http://www.futureofprivacy.org/wp-content/uploads/FPF-Safe-Harbor-Report.pdf TH
Scrutinizing the Safe Harbor over concerns about government access misconstrues the purpose of the
Safe Harbor. The Safe Harbor is intended to bring US data practices in line with the EU Data Directive. The Directive does not
apply to matters of national security or law enforcement.173 Article 3 of the Directive states: “This
Directive shall not apply to the processing of personal data...[with respect to] operations concerning
public security, defen[s]e, State security (including the economic well-being of the State when the
processing operation relates to State security matters) and the activities of the State in areas of criminal
law.” 174 Thus, the Safe Harbor always had been envisioned as protecting the privacy of EU citizens
within only the commercial privacy context.175 It should come as no surprise then that the Safe Harbor specifically provides
exceptions to the Safe Harbor’s privacy principles “to the extent necessary to meet national security, public interest, or law enforcement
requirements.”176 Moreover,
eliminating the Safe Harbor will not prevent the US government from accessing
EU citizens’ data. US-based companies that are presented with a valid legal order from the US
government for information will nonetheless be compelled to provide access to that data regardless of
their membership in the Safe Harbor. As a matter of policy, companies are pushing back against overbroad or unnecessary
government information requests,177 but most companies will be legally compelled to comply with US laws that authorize government
access.178 Companies
can and should provide more information to European citizens about their
obligation to comply with US government data requests, but the existence of a national security
exception does not by itself reflect a failure of the Safe Harbor to achieve its goals. The EC has suggested that
any legitimate national security exception be used “only to the extent that it is strictly necessary or proportionate.”179 The Commission has not
offered any further guidelines as to what would constitute what is “necessary” or “proportionate,” and none of the regulators that enforce the
Safe Harbor, including the FTC, are in a position to determine the scope of this exception. Absent
a more comprehensive
agreement between the EU and the US regarding government surveillance, the only way to address
these concerns would be to prohibit all transfer of data into the US. The damage this would cause to the
trans-Atlantic economy would be considerable, and would do little to help EU officials influence US
surveillance programs. Limiting the Safe Harbor would therefore be a misplaced effort to address larger
questions about the scope of the NSA’s surveillance operations.180
Alt causes to safe Harbor suspension
Rich 14
Cynthia Rich is a senior international policy analyst in the Washington office of Morrison & Foerster LLP and was a member of the US
government team that negotiated the 2000 US-EU Safe Harbour agreement. January 14 TH http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/WhyEurope-is-wrong-to-kill-Safe-Harbour
Suspending the EU-US Safe Harbour agreement on data protection will do nothing to address
surveillance, says international policy analyst Growing public scrutiny and outrage over government mass surveillance are both
understandable and legitimate. However, suspending the US-EU Safe Harbour programme on the false pretext that
it facilitates National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance is misguided. Conflating national security and commercial
trade issues serves the interests of the Safe Harbour’s opponents, who have tried to derail the programme since its inception in 2000. Framing
the discussion in this way detracts from the larger and more important public debate that needs to take place in the US and Europe about the
appropriate balance between national security interests and the protection of civil liberties and privacy rights. The
truth is that all of
the mechanisms available under EU law to transfer personal information legally to the US offer no
132
protection against government surveillance. Moreover, shutting out US companies may appeal to
market protectionists, but in the end will only disadvantage European consumers. Europe is also conducting
mass surveillance Concerns about mass surveillance are not limited to the US. The NSA’s Prism internet surveillance
programme has been widely reported, but EU Member States – including France, Germany, the
Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK – are conducting similar mass surveillance programmes. A report by the
Centre for European Policy Studies, commissioned by the European Parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE),
details these extensive surveillance programmes, but tries to minimise their significance by comparing raw budget numbers. Safe Harbour The
Safe Harbour requires Safe Harbour-certified companies to protect personal data they receive in accordance with a set of agreed upon privacy
principles that can be enforced under US law. When the
Safe Harbour agreement was reached in 2000, both the EU
and the US hailed the agreement as a way to avert an interruption in data flows that threatened to
disrupt transatlantic trade and provide a predictable and less bureaucratic way for European and US
companies to share personal information. The Safe Harbour is appealing to US companies because it offers a simpler and less
expensive means of complying with European adequacy requirements, which benefit US and European companies, and in particular small and
medium enterprises. A more meaningful comparison would be to look at budget-to-GDP ratios which show how comparable these programme
budgets are. But even this analysis misses the more salient point – US
and European governments all engage in mass
surveillance and their activities merit public scrutiny and debate rooted in facts. Threats to Safe Harbour
driven by competition, not privacy. This latest flurry of threats to suspend the Safe Harbour immediately
is an 11th hour attempt to shore up lagging support for privacy reform. Merging national security and commercial
trade issues serves the interests of European companies that have fallen behind their US counterparts. It also responds to the public
outrage over government surveillance and gives the public the illusion that there is a quick-fix solution.
If the Safe Harbour and the other cross-border mechanisms for transferring data to the US were
suspended, it would have no effect on government surveillance; it would, however, give a boost to
European companies by hamstringing American competitors.
Alternative Mechanisms to Safe Harbor
Kelsey Finch 13
Treacherous Waters: What the World Would Look Like Without Safe Harbor Kelsey Finch, CIPP/US Privacy Tracker | Westin Research Center
| Oct 22, 2013 https://privacyassociation.org/news/a/treacherous-waters-what-the-world-would-look-like-without-safe-harbor-2/ TH
What would the world look like without the Safe Harbor? Even
without the Safe Harbor, alternative avenues would exist
for U.S. businesses to receive data transfers from the EEA. U.S. businesses ineligible for Safe Harbor, as
well as businesses in other countries that have not been deemed “adequate” (e.g., Australia, Russia and
Japan), already frequently utilize these mechanisms, which are available under Article 25 of the European Directive. These
alternatives would continue to exist under the GDPR, with some mechanisms, namely binding corporate rules, likely gaining more traction.
However, the significant cost and effort needed to ensure compliance through these substitutes is what inspired the creation of the Safe Harbor
in the first place, and those costs have not abated in the intervening years. Commission adequacy findings: The European Commission has
previously approved a small list of nations’ data protection laws as “adequate.” Consequently, commercial data
transfers from the
EEA to those countries will be unaffected by the Safe Harbor decision. The approved countries are: Andorra,
Argentina, Australia, Canada (only organizations subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)),
Switzerland, Faeroe Islands, Guernsey, Israel, Isle of Man, Jersey, New Zealand, and Uruguay. DPA authorization: A
national DPA may
also authorize data transfers on a case-by-case basis if it determines that adequate privacy and security
safeguards exist to protect EU citizens’ privacy rights. Standard Contract Clauses: Businesses can utilize one of three sets of
standard contractual clauses (SCCs), which codify key privacy principles and have been pre-approved by the European Commission to sanction
data flows. SCC Sets I and II apply to transfers from an EEA data controller to a non-EEA data controller; while another model can be used to
authorize transfers from an EEA data controller to a data processor in a third country. In all cases, the SCCs must be copied verbatim and strictly
adhered to. Additionally, some member states require that such contracts be deposited or presented for review as a formality (although such
added restrictions would be abolished under the GDPR passed yesterday by the LIBE committee). Businesses
may also rely on
custom-made contracts, or revise an SCC term, but those must be individually approved by national
133
DPAs. Binding Corporate Rules: Another option is adopting binding corporate rules (BCRs) for the
transfer of personal data across EU borders within a multinational corporation. These codes of conduct
effectively constitute full-blown privacy programs, and therefore fit large global organizations with the
budget and clout to create and enforce them. The EC stated clearly that BCRs protect intra-group transfers of “closely-knit,
highly hierarchically structured multinational companies.” BCRs must also incorporate additional procedural principles, such as audits,
complaint processes, transparency requirements, a duty to cooperate with DPAs and certain liability and jurisdiction rules. The
current
draft of the GDPR would expand the role of BCR as a data transfer mechanism, also explicitly recognizing
BCR for data processors. BCRs must be both binding and legally enforceable, taking into account the
legal systems of each country where they may be applied.
Safe Harbor is not “Safe”
Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co 15
Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co is a UK-headquartered international law firm providing a full service to clients worldwide 03 Mar 2015
Rescuing personal data from an uNSAfe Harbor - European data protection regulators start taking things into their own hands
http://www.wragge-law.com/insights/rescuing-personal-data-from-an-unsafe-harbor-european-data-protection-regulators-start-taking-things/
TH
First and foremost the criticism stresses that the Safe Harbor framework utilizes a self-certification
process. U.S. companies can voluntarily self-certify that they will comply with a binding set of principles on an annual basis. Although the
arrangement is voluntary, once a company signs up to the Safe Harbor register it assumes various legal
obligations which can be enforced by the U.S.' Federal Trade Commission. Concerns over this have been
raised on a number of levels, including: In order to self-certify, the respective company merely needs to
send a letter to the Federal Trade Commission affirming the compliance without further proof of actual
compliance. Dr. Dix and his fellow speakers emphasised that even if U.S. companies would self-certify
that they are in compliance with the Safe Harbor framework, there is no subsequent reconfirmation on
an annual basis (or at all) beyond the initial confirmation. Additionally, U.S. companies would not protect personal data to
the same extent that European companies do, even if they have confirmed they do via a self-certification. Moreover, the Federal Trade
Commission does not verify compliance of the self-certified companies with the Safe Harbor framework
or adequately enforce any breaches of non-compliance. The lack of an independent agency - an
oversight committee - to safeguard compliance with the Safe Harbor is also regarded as a key issue. Taking
into account that the reformation of the rules governing the competencies of the secret services or the limitation of their authority was not
fruitful, it is understandable that German authorities have decided to take matters in their own hands when it comes to Safe Harbor.
134
Impacts
135
Squo solves
Status quo solves cloud computing
Relander 3/27 [Brett, Investment Advisor, 2015, “Cloud-Computing: An industry In Exponential
Growth,” http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/032715/cloudcomputing-industryexponential-growth.asp]
Driving the growth in the cloud industry is the cost savings associated with the ability to outsource the
software and hardware necessary for tech services. According to Nasdaq, investments in key strategic
areas such as big data analytics, enterprise mobile, security and cloud technology, is expected to
increase to more than $40 million by 2018. With cloud-based services expected to increase
exponentially in the future, there has never been a better time to invest, but it is important to make
sure you do so cautiously. (See article: A Primer On Investing In The Tech Industry.)
Cloud infrastructure improving now
Columbus 15
1/24/2015 @ 2:57PM Louis, Forbes “Roundup Of Cloud Computing Forecasts And Market Estimates, 2015” . My academic background
includes an MBA from Pepperdine University and completion of the Strategic Marketing Management Program at the Stanford University
Graduate School of Business. I teach MBA courses in international business, global competitive strategies, international market research,
and capstone courses in strategic planning and market research. I've taught at California State University, Fullerton: University of California,
Irvine; Marymount University, and Webster University. http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2015/01/24/roundup-of-cloudcomputing-forecasts-and-market-estimates-2015/ TH
A Goldman Sachs study published this month projects that spending on cloud computing infrastructure
and platforms will grow at a 30% CAGR from 2013 through 2018 compared with 5% growth for the
overall enterprise IT. Centaur Partners and other firms mentioned in this roundup are seeing more enterprise-size deals for cloud
computing infrastructure and applications. While each of these consultancies and research firms have varying
forecasts for the next few years, all agree that cloud computing adoption is accelerating in enterprises
on a global scale.
136
Impact D – Warming
Tech and adaptive advances prevent all climate impacts—warming won’t cause war
Dr. S. Fred Singer et al 11, Research Fellow at The Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the
University of Virginia, President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, and a Member of the International Academy of Astronautics; Robert M. Carter, Research Professor at James Cook University
(Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia), palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental scientist with
more than thirty years professional experience; and Craig D. Idso, founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon
Dioxide and Global Change, member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, American
Meteorological Society, Arizona-Nevada Academy of Sciences, and Association of American Geographers, et al, 2011, “Climate Change
Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report,” online: http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/FrontMatter.pdf
Decades-long empirical trends of climate-sensitive measures of human well-being, including the percent of
developing world population suffering from chronic hunger, poverty rates, and deaths due to extreme weather events, reveal dramatic
improvement during the twentieth century, notwithstanding the historic increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The
magnitude of the impacts of climate change on human well-being depends on society's adaptability (adaptive capacity),
which is determined by, among other things, the wealth and human resources society can access in order to obtain,
install, operate, and maintain technologies necessary to cope with or take advantage of climate change impacts. The IPCC
systematically underestimates adaptive capacity by failing to take into account the greater wealth and
technological advances that will be present at the time for which impacts are to be estimated. Even
accepting the IPCC's and Stern Review's worst-case scenarios, and assuming a compounded annual growth rate of per-capita GDP of
only 0.7 percent, reveals that net GDP per capita in developing countries in 2100 would be double the 2006 level
of the U.S. and triple that level in 2200. Thus, even developing countries' future ability to cope with
climate change would be much better than that of the U.S. today. The IPCC's embrace of biofuels as a way to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions was premature, as many researchers have found "even the best biofuels have the potential to damage the poor, the
climate, and biodiversity" (Delucchi, 2010). Biofuel production consumes nearly as much energy as it generates, competes with food crops and
wildlife for land, and is unlikely to ever meet more than a small fraction of the world's demand for fuels. The
notion that global
warming might cause war and social unrest is not only wrong, but even backwards - that is, global cooling has
led to wars and social unrest in the past, whereas global warming has coincided with periods of peace,
prosperity, and social stability.
No global action – too many conflicts – empirics prove
Daily Mirror 6 – 18 – 14 (“Global warming continues to be a serious global issue,” 6-18-14,
http://www.dailymirror.lk/business/features/48574-global-warming-continues-to-be-a-serious-globalissue.html)
But the
decline of emissions in the developed countries is more than matched by continued growth in
developing countries like China and India, the new figures show. Coal, the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is growing fastest,
with coal-related emissions leaping more than 5 percent in 2011, compared with the previous year. Emissions continue to grow so rapidly that an
international goal of limiting the ultimate warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees, established three years ago, is on the verge of becoming
unattainable, said researchers affiliated with the Global Carbon Project, a network of scientists that tracks emissions. Yet, nations around the
world, despite a formal treaty pledging to limit warming — and 20 years of negotiations aimed at putting it into effect — have shown
little appetite for the kinds of controls required to accomplish that goal. The conflicts and controversies discussed
are monotonously familiar: the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of
who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests and the need to rapidly develop and
deploy clean energy technology.
137
Warming tipping points inevitable – too late
NPR 9 (1/26, Global Warming Is Irreversible, Study Says, All Things Considered,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99888903)
Climate change is essentially irreversible, according to a sobering new scientific study. As carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, the
world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption. The damage will persist even when, and if, emissions
are brought under control, says study author Susan Solomon, who is among the world's top climate scientists . "We're
used to thinking about pollution problems as things that we can fix," Solomon says. "Smog, we just cut back and everything will be better later.
Or haze, you know, it'll go away pretty quickly." That's the case for some of the gases that contribute to climate change, such as methane and
nitrous oxide. But as Solomon and colleagues suggest in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is not
true for the most abundant greenhouse gas: carbon dioxide. Turning off the carbon dioxide emissions won't stop global
warming. "People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200
years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a
thousand years," Solomon says. This is because the oceans are currently soaking up a lot of the planet's excess heat — and
a lot of the carbon dioxide put into the air. The carbon dioxide and heat will eventually start coming out of the
ocean. And that will take place for many hundreds of years. Solomon is a scientist with the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration . Her new study looked at the consequences of this long-term effect in terms of sea level rise and drought.
Even with co2 cuts, can’t prevent warming
Times Online 8
5/23, Copenhagen Consensus: global warming, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3992368.ece DA 7-11-2010
There is unequivocal evidence that humans are changing the planet’s climate. We are already committed to average
temperature increases of about 0.6°C, even without further rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. The world
has focused on mitigation — reducing carbon emissions — a close look at the costs and benefits suggests that
relying on this alone is a poor approach. Option One: Continuing focus on mitigation Even if mitigation — economic
measures like taxes or trading systems — succeeded in capping emissions at 2010 levels, then the world would pump
out 55 billion tonnes of carbon emissions in 2100, instead of 67 billion tonnes . It is a difference of 18 per
cent: the benefits would remain smaller than 0.5 per cent of the world’s GDP for more than 200 years. These
benefits simply are not large enough to make the investment worthwhile.
No catastrophic warming – Earth is cooling and any fluctuations are natural, not
anthropogenic – prefer long-term predictions backed by empirics and real science
Ferrara 14 (Peter, **Graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, senior fellow for entitlement and budget policy @ Heartland,
senior fellow at the Social Security Institute, White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, Associate Deputy Attorney
General of the United States under the first President Bush**, “The Period Of No Global Warming Will Soon Be Longer Than the Period of
Actual Global Warming,” 2/24, http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2014/02/24/the-period-of-no-global-warming-will-soon-be-longerthan-the-period-of-actual-global-warming/, CMR)
If you look at the record of global temperature data, you will find that the late 20th Century period of global warming actually lasted about 20
years, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Before that, the globe was dominated by about 30 years of global cooling, giving rise in the 1970s
to media discussions of the return of the Little Ice Age (circa 1450 to 1850), or worse. But the
record of satellite measurements
of global atmospheric temperatures now shows no warming for at least 17 years and 5 months, from September,
1996 to January, 2014, as shown on the accompanying graphic. That is surely 17 years and 6 months now, accounting for February. When the
period of no global warming began, the alarmist global warming establishment responded that even several years of temperature data does
not establish a climate trend. That takes much longer. But when
the period of no global warming gets longer than the
period of actual global warming, what is the climate trend then? Even worse for the theory of catastrophic,
anthropogenic (human caused), global warming is that during this now extended period of no global warming
mankind’s emissions of the carbon dioxide (CO2) that are supposed to be predominant in causing global warming continued to
explode, with one third of all CO2 added to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution occurring during this period. The Economist
138
magazine shocked the global warming establishment with an article in March, 2013 that began with this lede: “OVER the past 15 years air
temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion
tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750.” That
one quarter is actually now one third since the industrial revolution, which is now increasingly at stake in this debate. We are not going to be
able to power anything remotely like the modern industrial revolution, which is actually straining even now to burst out of the “Progressive”
bonds holding it back (at least in America), using the wind sources that powered the Roman economy, plus dancing on sunbeams. Moreover,
the now extended trend of no global warming is not turning around any time soon. That increasingly
established trend is being produced by long term natural causes. Even rank amateurs among the general
public can see that the sun is the dominant influence on the Earth’s temperatures. Even the most politicized
scientists know that they cannot deny that solar activity such as sun spot cycles, and variations in solar magnetic fields or
in the flux of cosmic rays, have contributed to major climate changes of the past, such as the Little Ice Age, particularly
pronounced from roughly 1650 AD to 1850 AD, the Medieval Warm period from about 950 AD to 1250 AD, during which global temperatures
were higher than today, and the early 20th century Warming Period from 1910 to 1940 AD. That solar activity, particularly sunspot cycles, is
starting to mimic the same patterns that were seen during the Little Ice Age, as I discussed in a previous column. As a result, outside politically
correct Western circles, where science today has been Lysenkoized on this issue, there is a burgeoning debate about how long of a cooling
trend will result. Britain’s
Met Office, an international cheerleading headquarters for global warming hysteria, conceded in
December, 2012 that there would be no further warming at least through 2017, which would make 21 years with no global
warming. The German Herald reported on March 31, 2013 regarding Russian scientist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov from the St. Petersburg
Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory, “Talking to German media the scientist who first made his prediction in 2005 said that after studying
sunspots and their relationship with climate change on Earth, we are now on an ‘unavoidable advance towards a deep temperature drop.’” His
colleague Yuri Nagovitsyn is quoted in The Voice of Russia saying, “we
could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250
years.” Skepticism over the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is increasingly embraced in China
and elsewhere in Asia as well. In addition, every 20 to 30 years, the much colder water near the bottom of the oceans cycles
up to the top, where it has a slight cooling effect on global temperatures until the sun warms that water. That warmed
water then contributes to slightly warmer global temperatures, until the next churning cycle. Known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), these
natural causes are also contributing to the stabilized and now
temperature trends. The foundation for the establishment argument for global warming are
73 climate models collected by the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). But the problem is that the warming trends
projected by these models are all diverging farther and farther from the real world trend of actual
temperature observations discussed above, as I showed in a previous column, with another graphic. Because none of these
models have been scientifically validated based on past temperature observations, they constitute a very weak scientific
argument that does not remotely establish that the “science is settled,” and “global warming is a fact.” The current data discussed above
establishes indisputably that global warming is not a fact today. The politicians seeking to browbeat down any continuing
even slightly declining natural global
public debate are abusing their positions and authority with modern Lysenkoism, meaning “politically correct” science not established by the
scientific method, but politically imposed. The science behind all of this is thoroughly explained in the 1200 pages of Climate Change
Reconsidered II, authored by 50 top scientists organized into the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), and
published by the Heartland Institute in Chicago. You will want to own this volume if for no other reason than that it says here that future
generations of scientists will look back and say this is the moment when we took the political out of the political science of “climate change,”
and this is how we did it. Real scientists know that these 50 co-authors
are real scientists. That is transparent from the tenor of the
report itself. The publication is “double peer reviewed,” in that it discusses thousands of peer reviewed
articles published in scientific journals, and is itself peer reviewed. That is in sharp contrast to President Obama’s own EPA, which
issued its “endangerment finding” legally authorizing regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, without submitting the finding to its own
peer review board, as required by federal law. What were they so afraid of if 97% of scientists supposedly agree with them? The
conclusion of the report is that the U.N.’s IPCC has exaggerated the amount of global warming likely to occur
due to mankind’s emissions of CO2, and the warming that human civilization will cause as a result “is likely to be modest
and cause no net harm to the global environment or to human well-being.” The primary, dominant cause
of global climate change is natural causes, not human effects, the report concludes. The fundamentals of the argument are that
carbon dioxide is not some toxic industrial gas, but a natural, trace gas constituting just 0.038% of the atmosphere, or less than
4/100ths of one percent. The report states, “At the current level of 400 parts per million, we still live in a CO2-starved world. Atmospheric
levels (of CO2) 15 times greater existed during the pre-Cambrian period (about 550 million years ago) without known
139
adverse effects,” such as catastrophic global warming. Much was made of the total atmospheric concentration of CO2 growing past
400 parts per million. But one percent of the atmosphere would be 10,000 parts per million. Moreover, human
emissions of CO2 are
only 4% to 5% of total global emissions, counting natural causes.
No anthropogenic warming
Spencer ‘10 – climatologist and a Principal Research Scientist for U. of Alabama [Roy W, Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison in 1981, former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy
received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites, “The Great Global
Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists”, pg # below, CMR]
IN SCIENCE it only takes only one finding to overturn decades of mainstream belief. Scientific knowledge is not a
matter of consensus, as if scientific truth were something to be voted on. It is either true or not true. I have described new and
important scientific evidence-some published, some unpublished at this writing—that supports two major conclusions that could end up
dismantling the theory of anthropogenic global warming. The first conclusion is that recent satellite measurements of the Earth reveal
the climate system to be relatively insensitive to warming influences, such as humanity's greenhouse gas emissions. This
insensitivity is the result of more clouds forming in response to warming, thereby reflecting more sunlight back to
outer space and reducing that warming. This process, known as negative feedback, is analogous to opening your car window or putting a
sun shade over the windshield as the sun begins to heat the car's interior. An insensitive climate system does not particularly care how much
we drive suvs or how much coal we burn for electricity. This evidence directly contradicts the net positive feedback exhibited
in the computerized climate models tracked by the IPCC. It is well known that positive feedback in these models is what causes them to
produce so much warming in response to humanity's greenhouse gas emissions. Without the high climate sensitivity of the models,
anthropogenic global warming becomes little more than a minor academic curiosity. 153 The strong negative
feedback in the real climate system has not been noticed by previous researchers examining satellite data because- they
have not been careful about inferring causation. As is the case in all realms of scientific research, making the measurements is
much easier than figuring out what those measurements mean in terms of cause and effect. Climate researchers have neglected to account for
clouds causing temperature change (forcing) when they tried to determine how temperature caused clouds to change (feedback). They mixed up cause and effect when analyzing year-to-year
variability in clouds and temperature. You might say they were fooled by Mother Nature. Clouds causing temperature to change created the illusion of a sensitive climate system. In order to
help you understand this problem, I have used the example that I was given when I asked the experts how they knew that feedbacks in the climate system were positive. It was explained to
me that when there is an unusually warm year, researchers have found that there is typically less cloud cover. The
researchers assumed that the warming caused
the decrease in cloud cover. This would be positive feedback because fewer clouds would let in more sunlight and thereby amplify the
warming. But I always wondered: How did they know that it was the warming causing fewer clouds, rather than fewer
clouds causing the warming? As we have seen, they didn’t know. And when the larger, contaminating effect of clouds
causing temperature change is taken into account, the true signal of negative feedback emerges from the data. I
have demonstrated this with a simple climate model by showing that the two directions of causation-forcing and feedback (or cause and effect)
have distinctly different signatures both in the satellite data and in a simple model of the climate system. These distinct signatures even show
up in the climate models tracked by the IPCC. Probably as a result of the contusion between cause and effect, climate models have been
built to be too sensitive, with clouds erroneously amplifying rather than reducing warming in response to increasing
atmospheric carbon dioxide concen 154 trations. The models then predict far too much warming when the small warming influence of more
man-made greenhouse gases is increased over lime in the models. This ultimately results in pre-dictions of serious lo catastrophic levels of warming for the future, which you then hear about
through the news media. While different models predict various levels of warming, all of them exhibit positive feedbacks. The mix-up between cause and effect also explains why feedbacks
previously diagnosed from satellite observations of the Earth by other researchers have been so variable. There have been differing levels of contamination of the feedback signal by forcing,
depending on what year the satellites were observing the Earth The second major conclusion of this book is closely connected to the first. If the carbon dioxide we produce is not nearly enough
to cause significant warming in a climate system dominated by negative feedback, then what caused the warming we have experienced over the last fifty years or more?
New satellite
measurements indicate that most of the global average temperature variability we have experienced in the last 100 years
could have been caused by a natural fluctuation in cloud cover resulting from the Pacific: Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Nine
years of our best NASA satellite data, combined with a simple climate model, reveal that the PDO causes cloud changes
that might be sufficient to explain most of the major variations in global average temperature since 1900, including 75
percent of the warming trend. Those natural variations in clouds may be regarded as chaos in the climate systemdirect evidence that the Earth is capable of causing its own climate change. Contrary to the claims of the IPCC, global
warming or cooling does not require an external forcing mechanism such as more greenhouse gases, or a change in the sun, or a
major volcanic eruption. It is simply what the climate system does. The climate system itself can cause its own climate change,
140
supporting the widespread public opinion that global warming might simply be part of a natural cycle. I am not the first to suspect
that the PDO might be causing climate change. I just look the issue beyond suspicion, with a quantitative 155 explanation based on both
satellite observations and some analysis with a simple climate model. While some might claim that the timing of the PDO and
associated changes in cloudiness in recent years is just a coincidence, I can make the same claim for the supposed
anthropogenic explanation of global warming: Just because warming in the twentieth century happened during a period
of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't necessarily mean that the increasing CO2 caused the warming. In fact, the
PDO explanation for warming actually has a couple of advantages over the CO2 explanation. The first advantage is the fact that variations in
cloud cover associated with the PDO actually "predict" the temperature changes that come later. It just so happens that
the three PDO changes that occurred in the twentieth century were exactly what would be needed to explain most of the
temperature changes that followed: warming until the 1940s, then slight cooling until the 1970s, and then resumed warming through the
1990s. This then answers a question I am sometimes asked: How do I know that the PDO-induced cloud changes caused the temperature
changes, and not the other way around? It's because the temperature response comes after the forcing, not before . This PDO
source of natural climate change can also explain 75 percent of the warming trend during the twentieth century . Addition of CO2
and other anthropogenic and natural forcings can explain the other 25 percent. This investigation took me only a few days with a desktop computer. In contrast, researchers have been
tinkering for many years with various estimates of manmade aerosol (particulate) pollution in their attempts to explain why global warming stopped between 1940 and the late 1970s, even
while the PDO explanation for temperature variations during the
twentieth century fits like a hand in a glove, the IPPC’s explanation based on aerosol and greenhouse gas pollution
had to be wedged in with a crowbar. Another advantage of the natural explanation for global 155 warming is that the
mechanism-an energy imbalance of the Karth caused by natural cloud variations-was actually observed by satellite. In contrast, the
cooling effects of aerosol pollution and the warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions have remained too small to be
measured. They have to be calculated theoretically before being input into climate models. <153-156>
though this was a period of rapid increase in our greenhouse gas emissions. So,
Reader note – PDO = Pacific Decadal Oscillation
141
Impact D – Disease
Diseases won’t cause extinction – burnout or variation
York 14 Ian, head of the Influenza Molecular Virology and Vaccines team in the Immunology and Pathogenesis Branch, Influenza Division at
the CDC, former assistant professor in immunology/virology/molecular biology (MSU), former RA Professor in antiviral and antitumor immunity
(UMass Medical School), Research Fellow (Harvard), Ph.D., Virology (McMaster), M.Sc., Immunology (Guelph), “Why Don't Diseases Completely
Wipe Out Species?” 6/4, http://www.quora.com/Why-dont-diseases-completely-wipe-out-species
But mostly
diseases don't drive species extinct. There are several reasons for that. For one, the most dangerous
diseases are those that spread from one individual to another. If the disease is highly lethal, then the
population drops, and it becomes less likely that individuals will contact each other during the infectious
phase. Highly contagious diseases tend to burn themselves out that way. Probably the main reason is
variation. Within the host and the pathogen population there will be a wide range of variants. Some hosts may be
naturally resistant. Some pathogens will be less virulent. And either alone or in combination, you end up
with infected individuals who survive. We see this in HIV, for example. There is a small fraction of humans who
are naturally resistant or altogether immune to HIV, either because of their CCR5 allele or their MHC Class I type. And there
are a handful of people who were infected with defective versions of HIV that didn't progress to disease. We can
see indications of this sort of thing happening in the past, because our genomes contain many instances of
pathogen resistance genes that have spread through the whole population. Those all started off as rare mutations
that conferred a strong selection advantage to the carriers, meaning that the specific infectious diseases were serious threats to the species.
Antibiotics decay rapidly
Lawrence & Silbergeld 08 - Co-principal investigators for the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production [Dr.
Robert S. Lawrence (Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, Health Policy, and International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine) and Dr. Ellen Silbergeld (Professor of Environmental
Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in
America, April 29, 08]
Beyond nitrogen and phosphorus, waterborne chemical contaminants associated with ifap facilities include pesticides, heavy metals, and
antibiotics and hormones. Pesticides control insect infestations and fungal growth. Heavy metals, especially zinc and copper, are added as
micronutrients to the animal diet. Antibiotics are used not only to prevent and treat bacterial infections for animals held in close quarters, but
Pharmaceuticals, such as tylosin, a macrolide antibiotic widely used for
therapeutics (disease treatment) and growth promotion in swine, beef cattle, and poultry, decays rapidly in
the environment but persists in surface waters of agricultural watersheds (Song et al., 2007). Pg .26
New antibiotics solve superbugs
RSC 7 (Royal Society of Chemistry, “Unique antibiotic beats superbugs' resistance”, Aug 6,
also as growth promoters.
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/August/06080701.asp)
The discovery of how a unique antibiotic kills its targets has uncovered a new way to tackle resistant superbugs. A team of chemists and
structural biologists have studied how the natural antibiotic lactivicin interacts with a crucial bacterial protein. Nearly all antibiotics kill bacteria
by targeting the penicillin-binding protein (PBP) in the cell wall. But some bacteria's PBPs have mutated into forms that don't bind the drugs,
and over-use of antibiotics has meant the development of new antibiotics can't keep up with the bugs' evolution. Lactivicin, discovered in the
1980s by Japanese scientists, was known to hit the PBP target, but unlike all the antibiotics that have been used before the LTV molecule
doesn't contain a particular chemical structure: a -lactam ring. The British, French and Belgian team used crystallography to show for the first
time how PBPs interact with LTV and a more potent derivative, phenoxyacetyl-LTV (PLTV). They have also demonstrated that pneumococcal
bacteria resistant to antibiotics with a -lactam ring have no defence against LTVs. The ability to visualize the LTV-PBP interaction is crucial. The
crystal structure highlights pockets in the protein's active site that could be targeted in order to design even better antibiotics. 'We hope that
this will help people figure out how to functionalise the molecule to improve its activity,' said the leader of the British group, Christopher
Schofield of the University of Oxford. The team report their findings in Nature Chemical Biology this week.
142
Drug breakthroughs solve antibiotic resistance now
Knapton 6/21 Sarah Knapton (Citing reports from the science journal Nature) is a reporter for The Telegraph, “Scientists Find The
'Achilles Heel' Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria”, 6/21/14, Businessinsider.com, http://www.businessinsider.com/key-to-antibiotic-resistantbacteria-2014-6#ixzz35MfR7juH//OF
The global threat of antibiotic resistance could finally be tackled after British scientists discovered a chink in the
armour of deadly bacteria. Health experts have warned that within 20 years even routine operations like hip replacements and organ
transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection. But now scientists
at the University of East Anglia have
discovered how the bug responsible for E-coli and salmonella builds an impenetrable wall to keep out
antibiotics. They believe that within a few years they could develop a drug which switches off the wallbuilding mechanism, making the bacteria vulnerable. “It is a very significant breakthrough,” said Professor
Changjiang Dong, from the University of East Anglia's (UAE) Norwich Medical School. “This is really important because drug-resistant bacteria is
a global health problem. Many current antibiotics are becoming useless, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. “Many
bacteria build up an outer defence which is important for their survival and drug resistance. We have
found a way to stop that happening. "The number of superbugs are increasing at an unexpected rate. This research
provides the platform for urgently-needed new generation drugs." The discovery, reported in Nature journal, could
pave the way to a new generation of antibiotic drugs that work by bringing down the defensive wall. Bugs such as MRSA (methicillin resistant
Staphylococcus aureus) are becoming increasingly immune to "last resort" antibiotics. If the trend continues the world may see a return to the
pre-antibiotic era when even a trivial scratch could prove fatal. At the heart of the breakthrough is the way "gram negative" bacterial cells
transport the barrier's molecular "bricks" to the surface of the cell and form a wall. "Gram-negative" bacteria, which include Escherichia coli (E.
coli) and the bugs that cause gonorrhea, cholera and Legionnaire's disease, are especially resistant to antibiotics. They can evolve a number of
mechanisms to make them immune to drugs, including reducing the permeability of their outer membrane. But if the membrane barrier falls,
the bacteria die - whatever other defensive ploys they may have developed. Haohao Dong, another member of the UAE team, said: "The really
exciting thing about this research is that new
drugs will specifically target the protective barrier around the
bacteria, rather than the bacteria itself. "Because new drugs will not need to enter the bacteria itself,
we hope that the bacteria will not be able to develop drug resistance in future." The science community and
the government said the research was a ‘welcome piece of news’ “We are facing a difficult era in terms of antibiotic resistance; the need
for new efficacious drugs to treat infectious disease is clearly an important issue,” said Mark Fielder, Professor
of Medical Microbiology at Kingston University and Hon Gen Sec of the Society for Applied Microbiology. “The publication of data from the two
groups is a welcome piece of news. Their
findings give science an insight into some of the structures that are
important in the development of a bacterial membrane. “This could be of great importance as if we
fully understand the workings and construction of structures that help bacteria function as effective
entities we can hopefully then exploit weaknesses therein and kill the organism.” Prof Brendan Wren,
Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, added: “The studies open new avenues to the design a
novel class of antibiotics to disarm and kill pathogenic bacteria." Deputy Chief Medical Officer John Watson said: “Antimicrobial resistance is a
hugely important issue facing the world today. “We welcome all efforts in this area and we will follow any further developments with interest.”
Diseases won’t cause extinction – burnout or variation
York 14 | Ian, head of the Influenza Molecular Virology and Vaccines team in the Immunology and Pathogenesis Branch, Influenza Division
at the CDC, former assistant professor in immunology/virology/molecular biology (MSU), former RA Professor in antiviral and antitumor
immunity (UMass Medical School), Research Fellow (Harvard), Ph.D., Virology (McMaster), M.Sc., Immunology (Guelph), “Why Don't Diseases
Completely Wipe Out Species?” 6/4, http://www.quora.com/Why-dont-diseases-completely-wipe-out-species#THUR
diseases don't drive species extinct. There are several reasons for that. For one, the most dangerous diseases are those that spread from one individual to another. If the
Highly contagious diseases tend to
burn themselves out that way. Probably the main reason is variation. Within the host and the pathogen population there will be a wide range of variants. Some
hosts may be naturally resistant. Some pathogens will be less virulent. And either alone or in combination, you end up with infected individuals
who survive. We see this in HIV, for example. There is a small fraction of humans who are naturally resistant or altogether immune to HIV, either because of their CCR5 allele or their MHC Class I type. And there are a
handful of people who were infected with defective versions of HIV that didn't progress to disease. We can see indications of this sort of thing happening in the past, because our genomes contain
But mostly
disease is highly lethal, then the population drops, and it becomes less likely that individuals will contact each other during the infectious phase.
143
many instances of pathogen resistance genes that have spread through the whole population. Those all started off
as rare mutations that conferred a strong selection advantage to the carriers, meaning that the specific infectious diseases were serious threats to the species.
No global pandemics – international actors will contain spread
Wayne 14
Alex, syndicated columnist on US health policy, “Global Effort Signed to Halt Spread of Infectious Disease,” Bloomber, 2/13,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-13/global-effort-signed-to-halt-spread-of-infectious-disease.html#THUR
25 countries and the World Health Organization to work together on systems to better detect and
combat outbreaks of infectious diseases such as H7N9 avian flu and Ebola virus. The Obama administration plans to spend $40 million in 10 countries this year to upgrade
laboratories and communications networks so outbreaks can be controlled more quickly, Thomas Frieden, director of the
The U.S. won commitments from
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said today in an interview. President Barack Obama will seek another $45 million next year to expand the program. Infectious diseases account for about 1 in 4 deaths worldwide,
according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. While diseases such as Ebola and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome haven’t posed a threat to the U.S., lapses in other countries may allow an outbreak to spread rapidly, Frieden
said. “No country can protect itself solely within its borders,” Frieden said. “We’re all only as safe as the weakest link out there. This is an effort to essentially make the U.S. safer and make the world safer, to improve countries’
capacity to better find, stop and prevent health threats.” Frieden and Kathleen Sebelius, the U.S. health secretary, held a videoconference today with the partners in the effort. While no other country made a specific financial
all the nations at the conference including China, Russia, France and the U.K. agreed to “accelerate progress and address
not just the health sector but include security in health in new ways.” First Consensus “For the first time, really, we have a consensus on not only what are
the threats, but what do we have to do to address them,” he said. As an example, Frieden said Turkey’s government agreed to host a WHO office to respond to
outbreaks in its region. The agreement will also target emerging infections such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. The 10 countries in line for the U.S. investment,
commitment today, Frieden said,
which will be funded by the CDC and the Department of Defense, weren’t identified. The CDC plans to build on test projects last year in Uganda and Vietnam, where the agency helped the two nations’ health officials improve
systems to detect and combat outbreaks of dangerous pathogens that include drug-resistant tuberculosis, Ebola virus and exotic flu strains. In Uganda, CDC officials helped the country’s Ministry of Health upgrade laboratories
where tissue samples would be tested in the event of an outbreak, and developed a system for local doctors to report cases of illness by text message, according to an article published in the CDC’s journal Morbidity and Mortality
Weekly Report. Uganda now is able to quickly transport tissue samples from rural outbreaks to a high-security lab in the capital, Kampala, by motorcycle courier and overnight mail, Frieden said. A mobile phone network-connected
printer then texts lab results back to rural hospitals, he said. “Ultimately every country in the world should have this kind of system,” Frieden said. The $
40 million, he said, “is certainly enough
to make a good start.”
Might be too late and the barrier is getting cures approved for market.
Oxford 13 | Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, is a museum
displaying many of the University of Oxford's natural history specimens, located on Parks Road in Oxford, England. They
produce learning materials for joint study days – and this one was produced by representatives of The University of Oxford
Botanic Garden – “Miracle Cures” – March 12, 2013 – http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/educate/resource/miracle.pdf
Sometimes the biochemical processes needed to create a drug from scratch are too complex to recreate
in a cost effective way in the lab. This does not necessarily mean that the discovery leads to a dead end. Probably the most famous
of all plant based cancer drugs are those derived from the rosy periwinkle, Catharanthus roseus. In the 1950’s the American pharmaceutical
company Eli Lily patented the process of extraction of the active chemicals from the plant. This patent covered the cost of clinical trials and
today the drugs, Vincristne and Vinblastin earn Eli Lilly over £75,000,000 annually. This discovery and eventual patenting of the extraction
process saved the rosy periwinkle from the brink of extinction. It may be too late for other potential miracle cures. Fewer than 10% of the world
plants have been screened for their medicinal properties. The Gran Canaria Group, whose members include major biodiversity conservation
organisations and botanic gardens, recently reported that 1 in 4 of Earth's 40,000 plant species are already on the brink of extinction.
Environments are changing faster than plants can migrate, and this could cause half of Europe's plant species to be lost in the next 80 years.
The figures speak for themselves. The
development of new medicines, from discovery to development, is a
complex and intriguing process. However this is not the end of the story. New medicines have to be approved before they
can be prescribed. This final barrier can sometimes be the most difficult to overcome, particularly if the
medicine is derived form a controversial source. Sufferers of conditions such as MS were increasingly resorting to the use of cannabis to treat
chronic pain. Although the effectiveness of this treatment was dependent on the highly variable nature of the source, increasing numbers of
MS sufferers were ending up in court, and receiving light sentences, or effectively being let off. Concerned that this was bringing the drug laws
into disrepute, the government began making positive, if cautious, noises about legalising medicinal cannabis if a pharmaceutical form could be
developed. In November 2005 Sativex, derived form the plant Cannabis sativa, was licensed in the UK. Since then there has been a flurry of
controversy about its effectiveness from renowned scientists around the world.
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