Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative Answers – Table of Contents
Summary.............................................................................................................................................. 2
Glossary............................................................................................................................................... 3
Uniqueness Answers
Non-Unique – Losing the War on Terror Now ....................................................................................... 4
Link Answers
Drones
No Link – Drones ............................................................................................................................... 5
Link Turn – Federal Regulation of Drones Key to Cyber-terrorism .................................................... 6
Immigration
No Link – Immigration Surveillance .................................................................................................... 7
Link Turn – Immigration Surveillance/Terrorism Trade-Off ................................................................ 8
Mass Surveillance
No Link – Mass Surveillance Ineffective ............................................................................................ 9
Link Turn – Mass Surveillance Hurts Counter-Terrorism ................................................................. 10
Internal Link Answers
No Internal Link – Surveillance Doesn’t Solve Terrorism .................................................................... 11
Internal Link Turn – Right Wing Terror ................................................................................................ 12
Impact Answers
No Impact – Terrorism Attack Not A Major Threat .............................................................................. 13
No Impact – Probability of Attack Low ................................................................................................ 14
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
Summary
The key to answering the Terrorism Disadvantage is keeping a narrow, but consistent strategy.
There are many types of answers in this packet:
1. The Affirmative can contend that the U.S. is already losing the War on Terror, so nothing the plan
could do could further negatively impact that.
2. The Affirmative could argue that the plan itself doesn’t affect our ability to engage in counterterrorism operations, or even that the plan could bolster our counter-terrorism capabilities.
3. The Affirmative could argue that surveillance in general has no effect on our counter-terrorism
operations.
4. The Affirmative could argue that terrorism threats are not that threatening. This involves both
reducing the expected damage of a terrorist attack, as well as the chance that one could happen.
It is critical for the Affirmative to recognize which of these are contradictory, and to develop a
coherent position before a debate tournament.
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
Glossary
NSA – The National Security Agency – this is a government agency that is responsible for monitoring,
collecting, and processing information for foreign intelligence. The NSA was one of the agencies
exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013 as an agency conducting surveillance on domestic (and
foreign) populations for counter-terror efforts.
SIGINT – Signal intelligence – this is a type of intelligence that is largely collected by the NSA.
SIGINT is the process of collecting telecommunication data for counter-intelligence purposes.
Bulk Surveillance – this is the collection of massive amounts of telecommunication information that
isn’t all individually monitored, but bits and pieces are collected and pieced together by computer
systems to monitor certain activity.
AUMF – The Authorization for Use of Military Force – this is a piece of legislation signed by Congress
after the attacks of 9/11 that authorizes the use of United States Armed Forces against those
responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001. The authorization granted the President the
power to use all "necessary and appropriate force" against those whom he determined "planned,
authorized, committed or aided" the September 11th attacks, or who harbored said persons or
groups.
Al Qaeda – Al Qaeda is one of the largest terrorist networks in the world. It is a radical fundamentalist
group often held responsible for the 9/11 attacks. They have networks operating all across the globe
in various countries in Africa, Europe and Central Asia.
AQAP – Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – it is considered one of Al Qaeda’s most active
branches and operates primarily in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
ISIS – The Islamic State of Iraq – this is an extremist terrorist organization that occupies territory in
Syria and Iraq. While many folks that subscribe to Islam denounce the activities of ISIS, they are held
responsible for war crimes, genocide, and massive ethnic cleansing in the region and are one of the
most active terrorist groups attempting to retaliate against the United States.
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
Non-Unique – Losing the War on Terror Now
[___] The US is losing the war on terrorism already—surveillance ineffective.
Goldberg, 2013
(By J.J. Goldberg, editor in chief of Forward, Published May 31, 2013, issue of June 07, 2013, Real
Winner of War on Terror: Osama Bin Laden Decade Later, Terrorists Are Flexing Muscle More Than
Ever Read more: http://forward.com/articles/177683/real-winner-of-war-on-terror-osama-binladen/?p=all#ixzz2a0jD4R3M)
The question is, how far along are we in this war? How much safer are we now than we were before we
started? The answer: We are much, much worse off than we were when we started. Whatever it may have
done to the Constitution, the war on terror has been great for terror. In plain terms, the number of terrorist
incidents per year around the world has more than quadrupled in the decade since we declared war on
terror. Fatalities have doubled. To be specific, there were 982 terrorist incidents worldwide in 2002,
resulting in 3,823 deaths. In 2011, the latest year for which numbers are available, there were 4,564
incidents resulting in 7,493 deaths. Simply put, the war on terror has made terror worse. The good news is
that deaths have been declining since 2007, when they peaked at 10,000. The numbers come courtesy of an
Australian-based think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace, which published its first-ever Global
Terrorism Index in December 2012. It works with a terrorism database maintained by the University of
Maryland.
[___] Nuclear terrorism is already a threat now.
Reuters, 2013
(Governments warn about nuclear terrorism threat, 7/1, http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/01/uknuclear-security-idUKBRE96010G20130701)
(Reuters) - More action is needed to prevent militants acquiring plutonium or highly-enriched uranium
that could be used in bombs, governments agreed at a meeting on nuclear security in Vienna on
Monday, without deciding on any concrete steps. A declaration adopted by more than 120 states at the
meeting said "substantial progress" had been made in recent years to improve nuclear security globally, but it
was not enough. Analysts say radical groups could theoretically build a crude but deadly nuclear bomb
if they had the money, technical knowledge and materials needed. Ministers remained "concerned about the
threat of nuclear and radiological terrorism ... More needs to be done to further strengthen nuclear security
worldwide", the statement said. The document "encouraged" states to take various measures such as
minimising the use of highly-enriched uranium, but some diplomats said they would have preferred firmer
commitments. Many countries regard nuclear security as a sensitive political issue that should be handled
primarily by national authorities. This was reflected in the statement's language. Still, Yukiya Amano, director
general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which hosted the conference, said the agreement
was "very robust" and represented a major step forward. Amano earlier warned the IAEA-hosted
conference against a "false sense of security" over the danger of nuclear terrorism. Holding up a small
lead container that was used to try to traffic highly enriched uranium in Moldova two years ago, the
U.N. nuclear chief said it showed a "worrying level of knowledge on the part of the smugglers". "This
case ended well," he said, referring to the fact that the material was seized and arrests were made. But he
added: "We cannot be sure if such cases are just the tip of the iceberg."
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
No Link – Drones
[___]
[___] Drones don’t play a key role in the War on Terror – small disruptions don`t matter in the
long run.
Wall Street Journal, 2015
(WSJ, 6-16-2015, "Wins in the War on Terror," http://www.wsj.com/articles/wins-in-the-war-on-terror1434496023)
The U.S. scored a noteworthy victory last week when an American missile killed Nasser alWuhayshi, the longtime leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the global
organization's Number Two. Coupled with unconfirmed reports that an F-15 airstrike in Libya
killed jihadist mastermind Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the strikes are a reminder that the war on terror
continues, whatever the Administration calls it. Yet the strikes are also a reminder that while
killing senior jihadists has tactical and symbolic value disrupting terrorist networks while
underscoring U.S. resolve they do not turn the tide of war. "Core" al Qaeda was not defeated
after Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, even if it was humbled. Neither was al Qaeda in Iraq
beaten after the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006. Killing the kingpins is necessary but not
sufficient for victory. That much was made clear by the way Wuhayshi met his end near a beach in
the Yemeni city of Al Mukalla, population 300,000. Al Qaeda took control of Al Mukalla in April,
seizing close to $80 million from the central bank. The group now controls the better part of southern
Yemen. The same goes with Belmokhtar, who orchestrated the 2013 attack on an Algerian gas plant
that killed 38 people and had pledged allegiance to al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri. If reports of
Belmokhtar's death are confirmed this wouldn't be the first time he's been presumed dead it's a
tactical coup for the U.S. and a moral victory for the terrorist's victims. But it does little to change the
fact that jihadist groups, led by Islamic State, control significant territory in Libya, including Moammar
Ghadafi's hometown of Sirte.
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
Link Turn – Federal Regulation of Drones Key to Cyber-terrorism
[___] Federal regulation of drones is necessary to build safeguards against cyber-terrorism.
Bernd, 2013
(Candice, assistant editor/reporter with Truthout]; The Coming Domestic Drone Wars; Sep 19;
www.truth-out.org/news/item/18951-the-coming-domestic-drone-wars#)
Domestic Drone Weaknesses Cyber warfare may prove to be the most enduring challenge for
the FAA when it comes to ensuring guidelines that will protect Americans adequately as drone
technology makes its transition into civilian life. Peter Singer is the director of the Center for 21st
Century Security and Intelligence and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings
Institute. He is the author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.
According to him, the primary weakness of drone technology is many systems' dependence on
GPS signals and remote operation. Even military-grade drone technology can be co-opted, he
said. In December 2011, the Iranian Army's electronic warfare unit brought down an American drone,
the RQ-170 Sentinel, after it crossed into Iranian airspace. In Iraq in 2009, Iraqi insurgents were able
to use $26 software to intercept the video feeds of US Predator drones in a manner "akin to a criminal
listening in on the police radio scanner," Singer told Truthout. Most recently, a research team at the
University of Texas was able to demonstrate successfully the spoofing of a UAV by creating
false civil GPS signals that trick the drone's GPS receiver. "There aren't easy answers to these
other than good encryption requirements," Singer told Truthout in an email. The Texas research team
hoped to demonstrate the dangers of spoofing early on in the FAA's task to write the mandated rules
for UAS integration in the national airspace, and the Department of Homeland Security invited the
team to demonstrate the spoofing in New Mexico. "Vulnerability to jamming and spoofing
depends highly on the design of the aircraft and control systems and vary across differing
architectures. Minimum system performance and design standards developed for civil UAS
designs will address these vulnerabilities," an FAA spokesman told Truthout. Whether minimum
standards for system performance will be enough to address the changing dynamic of cyber warfare,
and for that matter, technology, remains a question, but it's something the FAA and Homeland
Security are examining as drone technology becomes more widespread in the US.
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
No Link – Immigration Surveillance
[___] Enforcing harsh restrictions on individuals who want to immigrate to the United States
does nothing to prevent terrorism.
Griswold, assistant director of trade policy studies at the Cato Institute, 2001
(Danie Griswald, Don’t Blame Immigrants for Terrorism,
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/dont-blame-immigrants-terrorism)
Long-time skeptics of immigration, including Pat Buchanan and the Federation for American
Immigration Reform, have tried in recent days to turn those legitimate concerns about security into a
general argument against openness to immigration. But immigration and border control are two
distinct issues. Border control is about who we allow to enter the country, whether on a
temporary or permanent basis; immigration is about whom we allow to stay and settle
permanently. Immigrants are only a small subset of the total number of foreigners who enter
the United States every year. According to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 351
million aliens were admitted through INS ports of entry in fiscal year 2000 — nearly a million entries a
day. That total includes individuals who make multiple entries, for example, tourists and business
travelers with temporary visas, and aliens who hold border-crossing cards that allow them to
commute back and forth each week from Canada and Mexico. The majority of aliens who enter the
United States return to their homeland after a few days, weeks, or months. Reducing the number of
people we allow to reside permanently in the United States would do nothing to protect us
from terrorists who do not come here to settle but to plot and commit violent acts. And closing
our borders to those who come here temporarily would cause a huge economic disruption by
denying entry to millions of people who come to the United States each year for lawful,
peaceful (and temporary) purposes. It would be a national shame if, in the name of security, we
were to close the door to immigrants who come here to work and build a better life for themselves
and their families. Like the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center towers stood as monuments to
America’s openness to immigration. Workers from more than 80 different nations lost their lives in the
terrorist attacks. According to the Washington Post, “The hardest hit among foreign countries appears
to be Britain, which is estimating about 300 deaths … Chile has reported about 250 people missing,
Colombia nearly 200, Turkey about 130, the Philippines about 115, Israel about 113, and Canada
between 45 and 70. Germany has reported 170 people unaccounted for, but expects casualties to be
around 100.” Those people were not the cause of terrorism but its victims. The problem is not that we
are letting too many people into the United States but that the government is not keeping out the
wrong people.
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
Link Turn – Immigration Surveillance/Terrorism Trade-Off
[___]
[___] The money wasted on enforcing immigration laws trades off with money to combat
terrorism.
Open Borders, pro-immigration advocacy group, 2015
(“Terrorism,” http://openborders.info/terrorism/)
The absence of legal migration channels is responsible for large scale illegal immigration, which
diverts law enforcement resources to combating it: This includes large scale illegal immigration along
the southern US-Mexico border. By allowing more legal migration flows, security agencies could
focus on genuine terrorist threats rather than trying to keep out peaceful workers. Note that
despite the large scale illegal immigration, there have been almost no instances of terrorists
smuggling themselves across the southern border of the United States. All terrorist attacks in
the US carried out by foreigners have been carried out by legal immigrants, tourists, or people
on non-immigrant visas, including some who overstayed their visas.
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
No Link – Mass Surveillance Ineffective
[___] There’s no evidence that mass surveillance has thwarted terrorism.
Sterman et al., 2014
(Peter Bergen is the director of the National Security Program at the New America Foundation, where
David Sterman and Emily Schneider are research assistants and Bailey Cahall is a research
associate, “Do NSA's Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists?”, Peter Bergen, David Sterman,
Emily Schneider, and Bailey Cahall National Security Program January 2014)
However, our review of the government’s claims about the role that NSA “bulk” surveillance of
phone and email communications records has had in keeping the United States safe from
terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading.* An in-depth analysis
of 225 individuals recruited by al-Qaeda or a like-minded group or inspired by al-Qaeda’s ideology,
and charged in the United States with an act of terrorism since 9/11, demonstrates that traditional
investigative methods, such as the use of informants, tips from local communities, and
targeted intelligence operations, provided the initial impetus for investigations in the majority
of cases, while the contribution of NSA’s bulk surveillance programs to these cases was
minimal.
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
Link Turn – Mass Surveillance Hurts Counter-Terrorism
[___] Surveillance makes counter-terror tools ineffective.
Corrigan, senior lecturer in mathematics, computing, and technology, 2015
(Ray,Open University, U.K.; Mass Surveillance Will Not Stop Terrorism; Jan 25;
www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2015/01/mass_surveillance_against_terrori
sm_gathering_intelligence_on_all_is_statistically.html; kdf)
Police, intelligence, and security systems are imperfect. They process vast amounts of imperfect
intelligence data and do not have the resources to monitor all known suspects 24/7. The French
authorities lost track of these extremists long enough for them to carry out their murderous acts. You
cannot fix any of this by treating the entire population as suspects and then engaging in
suspicion-less, blanket collection and processing of personal data. Mass data collectors can dig
deeply into anyone’s digital persona but don’t have the resources to do so with everyone.
Surveillance of the entire population, the vast majority of whom are innocent, leads to the
diversion of limited intelligence resources in pursuit of huge numbers of false leads. Terrorists
are comparatively rare, so finding one is a needle-in-a-haystack problem. You don’t make it easier by
throwing more needleless hay on the stack. It is statistically impossible for total population
surveillance to be an effective tool for catching terrorists. Even if your magic terrorist-catching
machine has a false positive rate of 1 in 1,000—and no security technology comes anywhere
near this—every time you asked it for suspects in the U.K. it would flag 60,000 innocent
people. Law enforcement and security services need to be able to move with the times, using
modern digital technologies intelligently and through targeted data preservation—not a mass
surveillance regime—to engage in court-supervised technological surveillance of individuals whom
they have reasonable cause to suspect. That is not, however, the same as building an infrastructure
of mass surveillance. Mass surveillance makes the job of the security services more difficult and the
rest of us less secure.
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
No Internal Link – Surveillance Doesn’t Solve Terrorism
[___]
[___] The fear of terrorism justifies the expansion of surveillance, but fails to solve terror.
Weiss, 2015
(Leonard [visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation];
On fear and nuclear terror; Mar 3; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2015, Vol. 71(2) 75–87)
The rise of the national surveillance state. Lowering the risk of terrorism, particularly the nuclear
kind, is the quintessential reason that the mandarins of the national security state have given
for employing the most invasive national surveillance system in history. “Finding the needle in
the haystack” is how some describe the effort to discern terrorist plots from telephone metadata and
intercepted communications. But the haystack keeps expanding, and large elements of the
American population appear willing to allow significant encroachments on the constitutional
protections provided by the Fourth Amendment. The fear of terrorism has produced this
change in the American psyche even though there is no evidence that the collection of such
data has resulted in the discovery of terrorist plots beyond those found by traditional police
and intelligence methods. It is doubtful that we shall soon (if ever) see a return to the status quo
ante regarding constitutional protections. This reduction in the freedom of Americans from the
prying eyes of the state is a major consequence of the hyping of terrorism, especially nuclear
terrorism. This is exemplified by the blithe conclusion in the previously referenced paper by
Friedman and Lewis (2014), in which readers are advised to “be more proactive in supporting our
government’s actions to ameliorate potential risks.” The National Security Agency should love this.
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
Internal Link Turn – Right Wing Terror
[___]
[___] Surveillance only increases the risks of right-wing terror.
Cannon, 2015
(Gabrielle; Should the Charleston Attack Be Called Terrorism;
www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/charleston-shooting-terrorism-american-extremism)
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy organization, still maintains a database
called "The Extremist Files" that profiles prominent hate groups and extremist movements and
ideologies, but Johnson hopes more will be done to get lawmakers to take note. "Hopefully this will
get the attention of those in charge of not only enforcement, but also those making our laws," he said.
"Try to wrap your arms around this problem and try to actually develop a strategy to combat it and
mitigate it. That is not being done." Still, as former Mother Jones reporter Adam Serwer pointed out in
his 2011 coverage of the Sikh temple shooting, surveillance doesn't always lead to prevention
and can impede constitutional rights: "Mike German, a former FBI agent who did undercover
work infiltrating extremist groups including neo-Nazis and militia groups and is now senior
policy counsel for the ACLU, told me that more government surveillance isn't the solution, and
that it's a mistake to think there's a technological silver bullet that can flawlessly identify
threats before they can be carried out. Most people with extreme views, German says, hold
horrible (but constitutionally protected) beliefs they never act on." After Johnson left the DHS,
the agency contended it was doing all it could to prevent domestic terror. As WIRED reported, DHS
spokesman Matt Chandler responded by saying that the "DHS continues to work with its state, local,
tribal, territorial, and private partners to prevent and protect against potential threats to the United
States by focusing on preventing violence that is motivated by extreme ideological beliefs."
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
No Impact – Terrorism Attack Not A Major Threat
[___]
[___] Terrorism and terrorist attacks aren’t major threats to countries.
Wolfendale, 2007
(Jessica, Special Research Center, "Terrorism, Security, and the Threat of Counterterrorism,"
archives.cerium.ca/IMG/pdf/WOLFENDALE_2007_Terrorism_Security_and_the_Threat_of_Countert
errorism-2.pdf)
If the claim that terrorism threatens individual lives to such an extent that it justifies radical
counterterrorism measures is based on misleading claims about the extent of the terrorist threat,
the claim about the threat posed to national security is just as misleading. Historically, non-state
terrorist activity has not significantly undermined nor damaged the national cohesiveness or
integrity of liberal democracies. Israel, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and many other
countries have lived with terrorist activity for many years without such activity seriously
threatening their very existence, or even their “way of life.” As noted earlier, greater threats to
the existence and survival of states come from other human activities and natural disasters.
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Terrorism Disadvantage Affirmative
RIUDL
Junior Varsity Division
No Impact – Probability of Attack Low
[___]
[___] A catastrophic terrorist attack on US soil is unlikely.
Wolfendale, 2007
(Jessica, Special Research Center, "Terrorism, Security, and the Threat of Counterterrorism,"
archives.cerium.ca/IMG/pdf/WOLFENDALE_2007_Terrorism_Security_and_the_Threat_of_Countert
errorism-2.pdf)
This is not to deny that terrorism poses a threat to the lives of individuals. Terrorism currently does
threaten lives and it is indeed possible that terrorists might be planning even more destructive
attacks then have hitherto occurred. But to realistically assess the threat to security posed by
terrorism is not enough to show that a threat exists and may continue to exist. Justifying
radical counterterrorism measures and massive counterterrorism budgets requires more than
postulating possibilities; it requires a clear assessment of the likelihood of the possibility
occurring, particularly compared to the likelihood of other future threats. Merely claiming that
terrorist could perform an act of super-terrorism because the means for such an act (e.g.,
weapons and biological pathogens) are available is a truism, not a threat assessment. In fact it is
states, not non-state terrorists that have the easiest access to weapons of mass destruction and
deadly biological agents. In the United States, for example, the Center for Disease Control has
estimated that there are “about 800 labs nationwide who work with so-called select agents, the 49
toxins, on the government’s bioterrorism list” and Federal officials have admitted that “policing these
labs won’t be easy.”27 History has demonstrated that states cannot be relied on not to use such
weapons against their perceived enemies (as occurred in World War II with the bombing of
Hiroshima) and the deaths caused by state violence far outnumber those caused by non-state
terrorism.28 It is untenable to conclude that the possibility of non-state terrorists using
weapons of mass destruction or biological agents means that they are in fact going to use
such weapons. It is equally possible that a state will use such weapons, or that scientists
working in the 800 labs mentioned earlier will cause mass casualties through careless
handling of biological agents. Given that there have already been cases of what is known as
“vial in pocket” syndrome—where scientists carry vials of deadly viruses in their jacket
pockets while travelling on international and domestic flights—the possibility of a
catastrophic accident should not be ignored
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