2ac – t collection
We meet – the plan stops analysis of the data
Counter interp – “surveillance” includes routine data collection.
Ball 3 – Kirstie Ball, Professor of Organization at The Open University, and Frank Webster, Professor of
Sociology at City University, London, The Intensification of Surveillance: Crime, Terrorism and Warfare in
the Information Age, p. 1-2
Surveillance involves the observation, recording and categorization of information about people,
processes and institutions. It calls for the collection of information, its storage, examination and - as a rule - its transmission. It is a
distinguishing feature of modernity, though until the 1980s the centrality of surveillance to the making of our world had been
underestimated in social analysis. Over the years surveillance has become increasingly systematic and
embedded in everyday life, particularly as state (and, latterly, supra-state) agencies and corporations have
strengthened and consolidated their positions. More and more we are surveilled in quite routine
activities, as we make telephone calls, pay by debit card, walk into a store and into the path of security cameras, or enter a library through
electronic turnstiles. It is important that this routine character of much surveillance is registered, since
commentators so often focus exclusively on the dramatic manifestations of surveillance such as
communications interceptions and spy satellites in pursuit of putative and deadly enemies. In recent
decades, aided by innovations in information and communications technologies (ICTs), surveillance has expanded
and deepened its reach enormously. Indeed, it is now conducted at unprecedented intensive and extensive levels while it is vastly
more organized and technology-based than hitherto. Surveillance is a matter of such routine that generally it escapes
our notice - who, for instance, reflects much on the traces they leave on the supermarkets' checkout, and who worries about the tracking their
credit card transactions allow? Most of the time we do not even bother to notice the surveillance made possible by the generation of what has been
called transactional information (Burnham, 1983) - the records we create incidentally in everyday activities such as using the telephone, logging on to
the Internet, or signing a debit card bill. Furthermore, different sorts of surveillance are increasingly melded such that
records collected for one purpose may be accessed and analysed for quite another: the golf club's membership
list may be an attractive database for the insurance agent, address lists of subscribers to particular magazines may be especially revealing when
combined with other information on consumer preferences. Such personal data are now routinely abstracted from individuals through economic
transactions, and our interaction with communications networks, and the data are circulated, as data flows, between various databases via 'information
superhighways'. Categorizations of these data according to lifestyle, shopping habits, viewing habits and travel preferences are made in what has been
termed the 'phenetic fix' (Phillips & Curry, 2002; Lyon, 2002b), which then informs how the economic risk associated with these categories of people
is managed. More generally, the globe is increasingly engulfed in media which report, expose and inflect issues from around the world, these
surveillance activities having important yet paradoxical consequences on actions and our states of mind. Visibility has become a social, economic and
political issue, and an indelible feature of advanced societies (Lyon, 2002b; Haggerty & Ericson, 2000).
They overlimit – the storage, maintenance, and administration of metadata is a core
controversy of the topic – bracketing out affs that engage in data jacks aff ground –
link turns topic education and proves you should prioritize topic coherence
No ground loss – their core DA’s and CP’s that contest the viability of restricting the
process of surveillance still applies
No limits explosion – literature, substantial, and other words in the rez check infinite
regress
Generics check – give the neg a sufficient ability to contest the aff
Extra T is good inevitable – every aff has a step outside of resolutional bounds – at
worst reject the extra t portions of the plan
Reasonability – prevents an arbitrary race to the bottom – judge intervention is
inevitable
2ac – circumvention
Practice not authority
We fiat exec compliance
Durable fiat
We still solve – perception
Plan sends strong language – yes this is in the context of the bill but we still access
this card because we pass the same provisions through agencies, not congress
Granick ‘14
Jennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Jennifer was the Civil Liberties
Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Jennifer practices, speaks and writes about computer crime and security, electronic
surveillance, consumer privacy, data protection, copyright, trademark and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. From 2001 to 2007,
Jennifer was Executive Director of CIS and taught Cyberlaw, Computer Crime Law, Internet intermediary liability, and Internet law
and policy. Before teaching at Stanford, Jennifer earned her law degree from University of California, Hastings College of the Law and
her undergraduate degree from the New College of the University of South Florida. “USA Freedom Act: Oh, Well. Whatever.
Nevermind.” – Just Security - May 21, 2014 http://justsecurity.org/10675/usa-freedom-act-oh-well-whatever-nevermind/
The initially promising USA Freedom Act could have ended
the previously secret government practices of collecting
Americans’ calling records, internet transactional information and who knows what else in bulk. Today’s version would allow
broad collection to continue under the guise of reform. The initial version of the bill would have
reinforced existing statutory language requiring a showing of “relevance to an authorized
investigation” before agents can get an order requiring production of business records, dialing and routing
information, and other data, and would have added other limits to ensure massive collection would stop . It also would
have implemented mild reforms to content surveillance under section 702 of the F ISA A mendments A ct, stopping
“back door” searches for Americans’ communications. Last week, a Managers’ Amendment watered
those provisions down, substituting new language that would allow agents to use a “specific
selection term” as the “basis for production”. The bill defined “specific selection term” as something that
“uniquely describe[s] a person, entity, or account.” Given the intelligence community’s success at getting FISA judges to reinterpret
obvious language—e.g. “relevance”—in counter-intuitive ways, people wondered what this new language might mean. There’s deep public mistrust for the intelligence
community and for the FISA court, which conspired to allow bulk collection under spurious legal justifications for years. Worse, there’s deep public mistrust for the law
itself, since the intelligence community’s “nuanced” definitions of normal words have made the public realize that they do not understand the meaning of words like
“relevance”, “collection”, “bulk”, or “target”.
Including, but not limited to, in the plan text means they can’t find another loophole
to justify the same surveillance
.
2ac – wyden counterplan
Perm do both – the plan could just pass through the committee
Permutation do the counterplan – it’s a clarification of the way in which the plan
could be done
The counterplan won’t result in legislative action — empirically proven
Lupo 14 — Lindsey Lupo, Professor of Political Science at Point Loma Nazarene University, holds a Ph.D.
in Political Science from the University of California-Irvine, 2014 (“What Happened to the 9/11
Commission? What a Century of Riot Commissions Teaches us about America’s Dependence on
Independent Commissions,” Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs, Volume 3, Issue 1, Available Online at
http://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=rbjpa, Accessed 07-10-2015, p.
22)
But, what is the efficacy of these independent commissions? Herein lies the puzzle - they are at once
incredibly ineffective and effective. As problem-solving entities that affect real change in the political
system, they are ineffective, as evidenced by the 9/11 Commission’s own self-issued failing report
card on progress. One woman widowed by the 9/11 attacks expressed her disappointment: “If you were to
tell me that two years after the murder of my husband on live television that we wouldn't have one question
answered, I wouldn't believe it” (Breitweiser 2003). However, as mechanisms of evasion that allow the
government to delay action or elude responsibility altogether , they are incredibly effective. Both
sides of this paradox are harmful to the basic function of democracy , a system of government
reliant on government responsiveness. Indeed, the U.S. government continues to depend on
independent commissions to provide answers and presumably affect change, but neither is the
typical outcome of these commissions. Even if some clarity does emerge, it is often ignored . It has
been over two hundred years since Washington’s commission on the Whiskey Rebellion and during
that time, policy change through independent commissions has been rare or non-existent . Why then
does the American public continue to be comforted and satiated when the government appoints a
commission?
Timeframe solvency – the cp results in massive delays which doesn’t solve tech
sector competitiveness as well as trust within the government – doesn’t send
sufficient link
Double-bind: either existing committees solve
Sledge 14 — Matt Sledge, Reporter for The Huffington Post, 2014 (“John McCain Wants A Special NSA
Committee, And Dianne Feinstein Isn't Too Happy About That,” The Huffington Post, February 5th, Available
Online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/05/john-mccain-nsa-committee_n_4732759.html,
Accessed 07-08-2015)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Intelligence Committee, threw cold water on
McCain's idea.
"There is no need for a select committee to review the Snowden leaks or NSA collection," Feinstein
told HuffPost in a statement Wednesday. "The Senate Intelligence Committee has conducted and
continues to conduct thorough oversight of all intelligence collection activities by the National
Security Agency and other intelligence agencies."
OR — if existing committees fail, so will the counterplan
Sledge 13 — Matt Sledge, Reporter for The Huffington Post, 2013 (“NSA Spying Sparks Calls For New
Senate Church Committee,” The Huffington Post, November 7th, Available Online at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/06/nsa-senate-church-committee_n_4228614.html, Accessed 0708-2015)
Another Church Committee member -- former Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) -- told HuffPost he did not think
much of McCain's call for a new select committee.
"It seems to me that Senator McCain is in a way scoring political points here," Hart said. "He's poking the
Senate Intelligence Committee in the eye.
"If established committees are not doing their job for whatever reason … you don't layer on top
another committee, that is to compound the problems of congressional oversight ," Hart said.
Instead, he suggested reforms like "reconstituting" the committees with new members and
imposing term limits on committee memberships to prevent so-called agency capture.
The CP doesn’t specify who is on the committee which means it becomes watered
down by Republican hawks who don’t pass legislation
No risk of circumvention – the plan ends all present authority and durable fiat
ensures there isn’t any risk of broad loopholes
CP links to politics
Dalal 14 — Anjali S. Dalal, Resident Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, holds a
J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. in Philosophy and B.S. in Economics from the University of
Pennsylvania, 2014 (“Shadow Administrative Constitutionalism And The Creation Of Surveillance Culture,”
Michigan State Law Review (2014 Mich. St. L. Rev. 59), Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via LexisNexis)
The solution to a lack of congressional oversight is conceptually easy but practically difficult . It
requires Congress to pass legislation governing the FBI and regularly exercise its statutory oversight
authority, both of which require significant political capital and effort. However, the Snowden
scandal may have created the momentum necessary to motivate congressional action in this area.
Senator Ron Wyden recently echoed this sentiment while imploring his colleagues to act stating, "'If
we do not seize this unique moment in out [sic] constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws
and practices we are all going to live to regret it.'" n337
CP links to terror because it still results in decreased vigilance and willingness to
work against terror threats
2ac – k
Framework – the K must prove that the whole plan is bad – weighing the AFF is vital
to fair and predictable engagement – the ballot should simulate the plans enactment
and test whether it’s better than the status quo or competitive alternative
Pragmatic legal solutions are key – anything else devolves into theoretical
abstraction which never actualizes material change
Cohen 15 — Julie E. Cohen, Mark Claster Mamolen Professor of Law and Technology at the Georgetown
University Law Center, Member of the Advisory Board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, holds a
J.D. from Harvard University, 2015 (“Studying Law Studying Surveillance,” Surveillance & Society, Volume 13,
Issue 1, Available Online at http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-andsociety/article/viewFile/law/lawsurv, Accessed 07-21-2015, p. 96-97)
Surveillance Studies and Law
Relative to legal scholarship, work in Surveillance Studies is more likely to build from a solid
foundation in contemporary social theory. Even so, such work often reflects both an insufficient grasp
of the complexity of the legal system in action and lack of interest in the ways that legal and
regulatory actors understand, conduct, and contest surveillance. By this I don’t mean to suggest that
Surveillance Studies scholars need law degrees, but only to point out what ought to be obvious but often isn’t:
legal processes are social processes, too, and in overlooking these processes, Surveillance Studies
scholars also engage in a form of black-boxing that treats law as monolithic and surveillance and
government as interchangeable. Legal actors engage in a variety of discursive and normative
strategies by which institutions and resources are mobilized around surveillance, and understanding
those strategies is essential to the development of an archaeology of surveillance practices. Work in
Surveillance Studies also favors a type of theoretical jargon that can seem impenetrable and , more
importantly, unrewarding to those in law and policy communities. As I’ve written elsewhere (Cohen
2012a: 29), “[t]oo many such works find power everywhere and hope nowhere, and seem to offer wellmeaning policy makers little more than a prescription for despair .” Returning to the topics already
discussed, let us consider some ways in which Surveillance Studies might benefit from dialogue with law.
Let us return first to the problem of digitally-enhanced surveillance by law enforcement—the problem of the
high-resolution mosaic. As discussed in the section above, works by Surveillance Studies scholars
exploring issues of mobility and control offer profound insights into the ways in which continual
observation shapes spaces and subjectivities—the precise questions about which, as we have already
seen, [end page 96] judges and legal scholars alike are skeptical. Such works reveal the extent to which
pervasive surveillance of public spaces is emerging as a new and powerful mode of ordering the public and
social life of civil society. They offer rich food for thought— but not for action . Networked surveillance is
increasingly a fact of contemporary public life, and totalizing theories about its power don’t take us very far
toward gaining regulatory traction on it. That enterprise is, moreover, essential even if it entails an inevitable
quantum of self-delusion. Acknowledgment of pervasive social shaping by networked surveillance need not
preclude legal protection for socially-shaped subjects, but that project requires attention to detail. To put the
point a different way, the networked democratic society and the totalitarian state may be points on a
continuum rather than binary opposites, but the fact that the continuum exists is still worth
something. If so, one needs tools for assessment and differentiation that Surveillance Studies does
not seem to provide.
As an example of this sort of approach within legal scholarship, consider a recent article by legal
scholars Danielle Citron and David Gray (2013), which proposes that courts and legislators undertake what
they term a technology-centered approach to regulating surveillance. They would have courts and
legislators ask whether particular technologies facilitate total surveillance and, if so, act to put in
place comprehensive procedures for approving and overseeing their use. From a Surveillance Studies
perspective, this approach lacks theoretical purity because its technology-specific focus appears to
ignore the fact that total surveillance also can emerge via the fusion of data streams originating from
various sources. But the proposal is pragmatic ; it does not so much ignore that risk as bracket it
while pursuing the narrower goal of gaining a regulatory foothold within the data streams. And
because it focuses on the data streams themselves, it is administrable in a way that schemes based
on linear timelines and artificial distinctions between different types of surveillance are not. One can
envision both courts and legislatures implementing the Citron and Gray proposal in a way that
enables far better oversight of what law enforcement is doing.
Grassroots fails – empirics
Plan = neg state action
Kumar and Kudnani vote aff – we don’t preclude grassroots
We get new 1ar answers if they explode this in the block…
2ac – add on
Plan is key to effective HUMINT
Margolis ‘13
Gabriel Margolis – the author presently holds a Master of Arts (MA) in Conflict Management & Resolution from UNC Wilmington
and in his final semester of the program when this article was published in the peer-reviewed journal Global Security Studies . Global
Security Studies (GSS) is a premier academic and professional journal for strategic issues involving international security affairs. All
articles submitted to and published in Global Security Studies (GSS) undergo a rigorous, peer-reviewed process. From the article:
“The Lack of HUMINT: A Recurring Intelligence Problem” - Global Security Studies - Spring 2013, Volume 4, Issue
2http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Margolis%20Intelligence%20(ag%20edits).pdf
The United States has accumulated an unequivocal ability to collect intelligence as a result of the technological advances of the 20th
century. Numerous methods of collection have been employed in clandestine operations around the world
including those that focus on human, signals, geospatial, and measurements and signals intelligence. An
infatuation with technological methods of intelligence gathering has developed within many intelligence
organizations, often leaving the age old practice of espionage as an afterthought. As a result of the focus on technical
methods, some of the worst intelligence failures of the 20th century can be attributed to an absence of human
intelligence. The 21st century has ushered in advances in technology have allowed UAVs to become the ultimate technical
intelligence gathering platform; however human intelligence is still being neglected. The increasing reliance
on UAVs will make the United States susceptible to intelligence failures unless human intelligence
can be properly integrated. In the near future UAVs may be able to gather human level intelligence, but it will be a long time before
classical espionage is a thing of the past.
K2 detect north korea
Johnson ‘9
Dr. Loch K. Johnson is Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. He is editor of the journal "Intelligence
and National Security" and has written numerous books on American foreign policy. Dr. Johnson served as staff director of the
House Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight from 1977 to 1979. Dr. Johnson earned his Ph.D. in political science from the
University of California at Riverside. "Evaluating "Humint": The Role of Foreign Agents in U.S. Security" Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the ISA's 50th ANNUAL CONVENTION "EXPLORING THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE",
New York Marriott Marquis, NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA, Feb 15, 2009 – available via:
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/0/6/6/p310665_index.html
Despite the many negative critiques of humint, former DCI Tenet emphasizes that intelligence is still "primarily a human
endeavor.” — He is obviously not referring to the government's intelligence budget priorities. Recall that the United States devotes
only a small percentage of its annual intelligence budget to human spying. — Spy machines are costly, while human agents
are relatively inexpensive to hire and sustain on an annual stipend. One of the ironies of American intelligence is that the
vast percentage of its spending goes into expensive intelligence hardware, especially surveillance satellites, even
though the value of these machines is questionable in helping the United States understand such
contemporary global concerns as terrorism or China's economic might. Cameras mounted on satellites or airplanes are
unable to peer inside the canvas tents, mud huts, or mountain caves in Afghanistan or Pakistan where terrorists plan their lethal
operations, or into the deep underground caverns where North Koreans construct atomic weapons. "Space cameras
cannot see into factories where missiles are made, or into the sheds of shipyards," writes an intelligence expert. "Photographs cannot tell
whether stacks of drums outside an assumed chemical-warfare plant contain nerve gas or oil, or whether they are
empty” — _As a U.S. intelligence officer has observed, we need "to know what's inside the building, not what the
building looks like”.
Solves prolif via deals
Hernandez 13 – Research Associate, Monterey Institute of International Studies (Jason, “Proliferation Pathways to a North
Korean Intercontinental Ballistic Missile”, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Dec. 20, 2013) RMT
During the Clinton Administration, the United States and
North Korea came extremely close to concluding a "Missile Deal" that
would have halted North Korean development, production, and testing of increasingly longer-range missiles. However, the deal never came
to fruition, and under the Bush Administration it was scrapped completely. One of the primary issues for both the Clinton and Bush administrations was
monitoring and verification. The United States sought a comprehensive monitoring and verification regime that would have permitted U.S. inspectors
on-site access to rocket and missile facilities, while North Korea believed that the United States could accomplish verification through imagery analysis and other national
technical means. [20] It is therefore likely that any future missile deal negotiations
will focus heavily upon verification. Detection and Monitoring
Any advances in rocket technology using the three pathways described above will require numerous tests
before the missile can be accepted into
service and deployed. Given North Korea's limited geographical size, all long-range missile tests will result in debris falling into
international waters. For the December 2012 Unha-3 launch, the rocket's first stage fell into the Yellow Sea, and the second fell off the coast of the
Philippines. By recovering the first stage debris, South Korea was able to confirm some facts about the Unha, while discovering new data that indicated progress in the
Unha's design. The debris demonstrated continued areas of struggle and primitive design elements, such as in the propellant, airframe, and welding, while also showing
program advancements and new design elements, such as the use of steering engines in place of jet vanes for orientation. [21] It is reasonable to assume that over the course
New deployment methods,
such as the use of silos or road-mobile launchers in pathways two or three will not necessarily be detected. While the construction of
of a testing program, debris will be recovered to enlighten the world on the progress of North Korea's missile program.
silos could be detected by satellite imagery analysis, it is not guaranteed that the international community would detect every silo. Iran's Shahab silos went unnoticed in the
open source until displayed on Iranian media during the Great Prophet 6 military exercises. [22] A road-mobile TD-2/Unha would seemingly go undetected unless paraded
or displayed publically. The KN-08 was unknown in the open source until it was displayed at the April 2012 military parade in Pyongyang. Deployments and launches of
silo-based or road-mobile TD-2/Unha's would be very difficult to detect and monitor. Verification The issue of verification is complex, and any missile
deal will
undoubtedly cover the entirety of North Korea's missile production, from battlefield and short-range ballistic missiles to space launch vehicles and
ICBMs. However, this brief will only address the relationship between a missile deal and the three pathways to an ICBM. For the purpose of this section, the author
assumes that a future missile deal will either aim to prevent or reverse a missile program in four key areas: development; manufacturing and
production; acquisition; and deployment. The question becomes for each of the three pathways to an ICBM, can the international community verify that North Korea is
abiding by a deal that prevents or reverses 1) development; 2) manufacturing and production; and 3) deployment of an ICBM?
Extinction
Metz 13 – Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the
Strategic Studies Institute (Steven, 3/13/13, “Strategic Horizons: Thinking the Unthinkable on a Second Korean War,”
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12786/strategic-horizons-thinking-the-unthinkable-on-a-second-korean-war)
Today, North Korea is the most dangerous country on earth and the greatest threat to U.S. security.
For years, the bizarre regime in Pyongyang has issued an unending stream of claims that a U.S. and South
Korean invasion is imminent, while declaring that it will defeat this offensive just as -- according to official
propaganda -- it overcame the unprovoked American attack in 1950. Often the press releases from the official
North Korean news agency are absurdly funny, and American policymakers tend to ignore them as a result.
Continuing to do so, though, could be dangerous as events and rhetoric turn even more ominous. In
response to North Korea's Feb. 12 nuclear test, the U.N. Security Council recently tightened existing
sanctions against Pyongyang. Even China, North Korea's long-standing benefactor and protector, went along.
Convulsed by anger, Pyongyang then threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States and
South Korea, abrogated the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and cut off the North-South hotline
installed in 1971 to help avoid an escalation of tensions between the two neighbors. A spokesman for the
North Korean Foreign Ministry asserted that a second Korean War is unavoidable. He might be right; for the
first time, an official statement from the North Korean government may prove true. No American leader
wants another war in Korea. The problem is that the North Koreans make so many threatening and bizarre
official statements and sustain such a high level of military readiness that American policymakers might fail to
recognize the signs of impending attack. After all, every recent U.S. war began with miscalculation;
American policymakers misunderstood the intent of their opponents, who in turn underestimated
American determination. The conflict with North Korea could repeat this pattern. Since the regime
of Kim Jong Un has continued its predecessors’ tradition of responding hysterically to every action
and statement it doesn't like, it's hard to assess exactly what might push Pyongyang over the edge and cause it
to lash out. It could be something that the United States considers modest and reasonable, or it could be
some sort of internal power struggle within the North Korean regime invisible to the outside world. While we
cannot know whether the recent round of threats from Pyongyang is serious or simply more of the same old
lathering, it would be prudent to think the unthinkable and reason through what a war instigated by a fearful
and delusional North Korean regime might mean for U.S. security. The second Korean War could
begin with missile strikes against South Korean, Japanese or U.S. targets, or with a combination of
missile strikes and a major conventional invasion of the South -- something North Korea has
prepared for many decades. Early attacks might include nuclear weapons, but even if they didn't, the
United States would probably move quickly to destroy any existing North Korean nuclear weapons and
ballistic missiles. The war itself would be extremely costly and probably long. North Korea is the most
militarized society on earth. Its armed forces are backward but huge. It's hard to tell whether the North
Korean people, having been fed a steady diet of propaganda based on adulation of the Kim regime, would
resist U.S. and South Korean forces that entered the North or be thankful for relief from their brutally
parasitic rulers. As the conflict in Iraq showed, the United States and its allies should prepare for widespread,
protracted resistance even while hoping it doesn't occur. Extended guerrilla operations and insurgency could
potentially last for years following the defeat of North Korea's conventional military. North Korea would
need massive relief, as would South Korea and Japan if Pyongyang used nuclear weapons. Stabilizing North
Korea and developing an effective and peaceful regime would require a lengthy occupation, whether U.S.dominated or with the United States as a major contributor. The second Korean War would force military
mobilization in the United States. This would initially involve the military's existing reserve component, but it
would probably ultimately require a major expansion of the U.S. military and hence a draft. The military's
training infrastructure and the defense industrial base would have to grow. This would be a body blow to
efforts to cut government spending in the United States and postpone serious deficit reduction for
some time, even if Washington increased taxes to help fund the war. Moreover, a second Korean
conflict would shock the global economy and potentially have destabilizing effects outside
Northeast Asia. Eventually, though, the United States and its allies would defeat the North Korean military.
At that point it would be impossible for the United States to simply re-establish the status quo ante bellum as
it did after the first Korean War. The Kim regime is too unpredictable, desperate and dangerous to tolerate.
Hence regime change and a permanent ending to the threat from North Korea would have to be America's
strategic objective. China would pose the most pressing and serious challenge to such a transformation of
North Korea. After all, Beijing's intervention saved North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung after he invaded
South Korea in the 1950s, and Chinese assistance has kept the subsequent members of the Kim family
dictatorship in power. Since the second Korean War would invariably begin like the first one -- with North
Korean aggression -- hopefully China has matured enough as a great power to allow the world to remove its
dangerous allies this time. If the war began with out-of-the-blue North Korean missile strikes, China could
conceivably even contribute to a multinational operation to remove the Kim regime. Still, China would
vehemently oppose a long-term U.S. military presence in North Korea or a unified Korea allied with the
United States. One way around this might be a grand bargain leaving a unified but neutral Korea. However
appealing this might be, Korea might hesitate to adopt neutrality as it sits just across the Yalu River from a
China that tends to claim all territory that it controlled at any point in its history. If the aftermath of the
second Korean War is not handled adroitly, the result could easily be heightened hostility between the United
States and China, perhaps even a new cold war. After all, history shows that deep economic connections
do not automatically prevent nations from hostility and war -- in 1914 Germany was heavily involved in the
Russian economy and had extensive trade and financial ties with France and Great Britain. It is not
inconceivable then, that after the second Korean War, U.S.-China relations would be antagonistic and hostile
at the same time that the two continued mutual trade and investment. Stranger things have happened in
2ac – politics
No risk of an impact to the DA – EVEN IF the deal fails there would be no
cascading prolif – too many structural factors check
Esfandiary 4/22/15
(Dina, MacArthur Fellow at the Centre for Science and Security Studies at King's College London, “Why
nuclear dominoes won't fall in the Middle East”, http://thebulletin.org/why-nuclear-dominoes-wont-fallmiddle-east8236, ZS)
The conventional wisdom is wrong. Conventional wisdom holds that a nuclear Iran will lead to a
nuclear weapon proliferation cascade in the highly volatile Middle East, making an already rough
neighborhood even more unstable and insecure. After all, a combination of fragile and failed states, terrorist
organizations, and nuclear weapons could well constitute a horror story.
Nuclear history shows us that nuclear arms races are the exception rather than the rule. A final
agreement between six world powers and Iran to limit the Iranian nuclear program would aim to
keep Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. But if an agreement is not reached or Iran cheats and
acquires nuclear weapons, a nuclear weapons race is still unlikely to unfold in the Middle East . A
number of political and technical challenges are likely to prevent it . No country in the region
currently has the technical ability to develop a nuclear weapon by itself. Most regional candidates to
become nuclear weapons states —especially ones most vocal in claiming they’ll go nuclear, if Tehran
does— depend heavily on the United States and other Western states for their security, providing the
West with significant leverage over them.
PC Not key – Passage inevitable, Obama’s bad at selling, and his UN first strategy
has already infuriated congressional supporters – if their internal link was true that
would tank the deal
Miller, 7/21 -- Aaron David Miller is a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Wall
Street Journal, http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/07/21/how-not-to-sell-the-iran-nuclear-deal/
The Iran nuclear deal is effectively done . The chances that Congress will be able to block the
agreement appear remote . The White House appears able, in at least one house, to hold off the twothirds majority required to overturn a presidential veto. It’s also likely that the International Atomic
Energy Agency will give Iran passing grades on its report on the past military dimensions of Tehran’s nuclear
program and will certify by year’s end that Iran is complying with provisions of the agreement.
But the Obama administration’s methods for marketing this agreement leave much to be desired.
The “Father Knows Best” demeanor: In more than 20 years at the State Department, I had to try to
market my fair share of ideas, plans, and even agreements to a skeptical Congress and media. I know that
negotiators can fall in love with their discussions and the accords they produce. There is also a tendency in
government to feel that you have all the information (and your critics don’t), that you’re charged with
protecting the national interest (and critics have narrower agendas), and that you got the best deal you could
(and critics are living in a fantasy land). But tone is still important. And the administration has adopted a
preemptory, and sometimes arrogant, tone in selling this accord. A better deal may or may not have
been possible. But it doesn’t help matters to suggest, as Secretary of State John Kerry has, that those who
think there was an alternative are fantasizing or to dismiss as dumb any criticism that he wasn’t tough
enough with Iran. The more certain and authoritative the administration sounds, and the more it
suggests in word and tone that it alone knows best, the more pushback it will draw. After all, it’s not
as if this agreement doesn’t have major flaws.
Preempting Congress: Maybe an adversarial relationship with Congress was inevitable. The president
eventually signed the bill giving lawmakers 60 days to review a deal, largely because Sen. Bob Corker
managed to offer sensible legislation that had bipartisan support and seemed to give Congress a voice, though
not an easy route to kill the accord. The White House probably figured that if worse came to worse,
the administration would have the numbers in at least one house of Congress to sustain a
presidential veto. Still, the U.N. Security Council’s vote Monday to endorse the accord–even with a
90-day implementation period over actions on sanctions, to cover Congress’s 60-day review–is being
interpreted as boxing in Congress . Criticism is coming from Democrats whose support the
administration needs and from Republicans who say that the administration is doing an end-run
around the Hill. It’s hard not to draw that conclusion when Secretary Kerry says things like: “If Congress
were to veto the deal, Congress—the United States of America—would be in noncompliance with this
agreement and contrary to all of the other countries in the world.”
This isn’t a peace treaty: The Obama administration has acknowledged that even with a nuclear agreement,
challenges remain in dealing with Iran, particularly its behavior and regional policies. The U.S. intends to hold
Iran accountable for its actions, Secretary Kerry told NPR on Monday, largely by supporting regional allies
such as Saudi Arabia. But the case is far from convincing. The administration was loath to challenge Iran’s
support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or Hezbollah in the run-up to the accord. Why would it risk
causing problems during the implementation period? The U.S. tendency might well be the opposite: to test
the possibility that Iran can be engaged as a partner in the region–precisely the outcome feared by traditional
allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. Even before the agreement was reached, the White House was making
the case that Iran would put assets unfrozen by sanctions relief into its economy, not toward funding
terrorism. Secretary Kerry said as much to journalist Judy Woodruff last week, implying that Iran is somehow
prevented from assisting its bad allies and suggesting that the CIA has concluded that Iran’s fiscal needs will
induce its regime to direct assistance to its economy. A more compelling (and honest) approach would have
been to admit that there are problems with sanctions relief and to look into ways to address them.
This Iran deal would be a hard sell under any circumstances. But smart politics is about expanding
the ranks of those who support you, not willfully making enemies . At this point, even if the deal goes
through, the administration has broken more crockery with Congress and among its traditional allies in
the Middle East than it had to. On such a consequential foreign policy issue, that’s really too bad.
Iran won’t cost capital
Sargent 7/15 {Greg, syndicated politics correspondent, “Morning Plum: Do Republicans Really Want to
Block the Iran Deal in Congress? The Washington Post, 2014,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/07/15/morning-plum-do-republicans-reallywant-to-block-the-iran-deal-in-congress/#THUR}
But
here’s the question : Once all the procedural smoke clears, do Republicans really want an endgame in which they
succeeded in blocking the deal? Do they actually want to scuttle it?
Perhaps many of them genuinely do want that. But
here’s a prediction: as this battle develops, some Republicans may privately conclude that it would be better for
them politically if they fail to stop it . The Iran debate may come to resemble the one over the anti-Obamacare lawsuit that
also recently fell short. Congressional Republicans and GOP presidential candidates are predicting dire consequences if the Iran deal goes forward. But what’s
missing from the discussion is that if Congress does somehow block the deal, that could precipitate a whole
different set of consequences. Former Obama administration official Dennis Ross spells out those consequences this way: Opponents need to explain what
happens if the rest of the world accepts this deal, Iran says it is ready to implement it — and Congress blocks it. Will the European Union, which explicitly commits in the
agreement to lift sanctions once Iran has fulfilled its main nuclear responsibilities, not do so because Congress says no? Can sanctions really be sustained in these
circumstances, particularly if the Iranians don’t increase their enrichment and say they will observe the deal? Could we be faced with a world in which the sanctions regime
collapses, Iran gets its windfall and is only two months from breakout, and there is little on-ground visibility into its program? Some
Congressional
Republicans are also quietly mulling another possibility: What if our allies blame them for tanking
the deal they support? The New York Times points out that GOP repudiation of the deal “was a blow not only to
Mr. Obama but also to conservative leaders the party usually backs, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.” And note this telling moment from GOP Senator Bob Corker: “In the next
couple of months, the international community is going to be focused on Congress . I got that ,” Mr.
I understand the position we’re in.” To be clear, it would be folly to predict with
certainty how the politics of this will play out. Many Democrats may well decide it’s hard for them to back the deal. And Republicans may be
able to use procedural votes to inflict some damage on them. But even so , Republicans could also conclude that their best
outcome is to inflict that damage in the short term while also failing to block the deal in the end. Just as Republicans realized that
Corker said in an interview. “
“winning” the lawsuit against Obamacare could force them to own the consequences of their “victory,” and increase pressure them to specify concrete alternative courses of
action, they may conclude it’s a good thing that the Congressional
supported, by the way)
oversight mechanism negotiated by Senator Corker (which they
makes it so hard for them to “win” by scuttling the Iran deal.
No Obama push
Walsh 7/15 {Deirdre, Senior Congressional producer, B.A. in Political Science/Communications (Boston
College), winner of the Joan Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based Congressional or political
reporting, “WH Dispatches Joe Biden to Lock down Iran Deal on Capitol Hill,” CNN – Politics, 2015,
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/politics/iran-deal-white-house-democrats-congress/#THUR}
A day after the Iran deal was unveiled, the Obama administration's sales job began in earnest. Vice
Biden traveled to Capitol Hill to convince House Democrats to support the deal,
while a small group of senators were invited to the White House to get their questions answered
directly from officials who sat across from the Iranians at the negotiating table. Lawmakers said Biden was candid about the
strengths and weaknesses of the compromise deal. One described his behind closed doors pitch. "I'm going to put
aside my notes and talk to you from my heart because I've been in this business for 45 years," Biden said in his opening
comments, according to Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-New Jersey, who attended the session. " I'm not going to BS you . I'm going to tell you
exactly what I think," the vice president reportedly said. SInce Republicans in the House and Senate are
firmly against the Iran nuclear deal -- announced by President Barack Obama on Tuesday -- the administration is
cranking up its campaign to sway concerned Democrats to back the agreement. Under legislation that allows Congress to
President Joe
review the agreement, the White House needs to secure enough votes from members of his own party to sustain the President's promised veto on an
resolution of disapproval -- 145 in the House and 34 in the Senate.
After the session with Biden , several House
Democrats stressed that while the process is just beginning, right now the administration likely has
the votes to sustain the President's veto on a resolution to block the deal. "I'm confident they will
like it when they understand it all," the vice president told reporters on his way into the session, beginning what will be a
two month campaign culminating in a vote, expected in September. Democrats, both for and against the
deal, praised Biden's presentation . "Joe Biden was as good as I've seen him," Rep. John Larson, DConnecticut, told CNN. "I thought he did an excellent job." Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar said Biden is a
"master of detail" and helped clarify some concerns he had about the verification provisions in the deal, but he still planned
to carefully study it and said he was undecided. Pascrell also cited the verification issue as a potential sticking point
but said he is leaning 'yes' on the agreement. "On our side of the aisle there is concern and skepticism shared by a number of
members but an openness to be persuaded if the facts take them that way," Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia said. "I think (Biden)
made some real progress on behalf of the administration
n today." But Democratic Rep. Steve Israel of New York, a former member of Democratic leadership, told reporters he wasn't sold yet. "For me,
I still have some very significant questions with respect to lifting of the embargo on conventional arms. And missiles. The (International Atomic
Energy Agency) verification process for me is not any time anywhere, I think there are some very significant delays built into that," Israel said.
Larson noted that both Biden's presentation, along with Hillary Clinton's
spoke favorably about the deal,
back the White House .
a day earlier, who
he said
helped lay the groundwork for most Democrats to
KROENIG WANTS TO ATTACK IRAN – THAT WAS CX
Not intrinsic – a logical policy maker could do both
Agency action doesn’t cost PC
Mayer and Price 2 (Kenneth R., Prof Poli Sci – U Wisc Madison and Kevin, Graduate Student, U Wisc
Madison, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 6-1, Lexis)
By using their formal powers, presidents structure the institutions that surround them to standardize
their interactions with other actors. To convert the bargains that would otherwise require skill and
scarce political capital into manageable leadership opportunities, presidents seek routines that encourage
compliance from other actors. By creating institutions and processes that make these once-expensive bargains part of the political landscape,
presidents alter default outcomes, leaving it to other actors to expend resources to undo what the
president has done.
Freedom act debates deny the link – it was debates over surveillance which should
have causes mass controversy
PC not real – winner’s win
Michael Hirsch 13, chief correspondent for National Journal. He also contributes to 2012 Decoded. Hirsh
previously served as the senior editor and national economics correspondent for Newsweek, based in its
Washington bureau. He was also Newsweek’s Washington web editor and authored a weekly column for
Newsweek.com, “The World from Washington.” Earlier on, he was Newsweek’s foreign editor, guiding its
award-winning coverage of the September 11 attacks and the war on terror. He has done on-the-ground
reporting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places around the world, and served as the Tokyo-based Asia
Bureau Chief for Institutional Investor from 1992 to 1994.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207
On Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, President Obama will do what every president does this time of year. For about 60 minutes, he will lay out a sprawling and ambitious wish list highlighted by gun control and immigration reform, climate change and debt reduction. In response, the
pundits will do what they always do
talk about
political capital Obama possesses to push his program through
this time of year: They will
“
how much
this talk will have no bearing on
how unrealistic most of the proposals are, discussions often informed by sagacious reckonings of
”
. Most of
what actually happens
Three months ago
if someone had talked about
capital to oversee
both immigration and gun-control
this person would have been called crazy
In his first term
Obama didn’t
dare to even bring up gun control
And yet, for
reasons that have very little to do with Obama’s
political capital chances
are fair that both will now happen What changed In the case of gun control
Newtown
over the next four years. Consider this:
having enough political
, just before the November election,
passage of
reform
and 5 million votes (the actual final tally)—
seriously
Obama
legislation at the beginning of his second term—even after winning the election by 4 percentage points
and stripped of his pundit’s license. (It doesn’t exist, but it ought to.)
, in a starkly
polarized country, the president had been so frustrated by GOP resistance that he finally issued a limited executive order last August permitting immigrants who entered the country illegally as children to work without fear of deportation for at least two years.
, a Democratic “third rail” that has cost the party elections and that actually might have been even less popular on the right than the president’s health care law.
personal prestige or popularity—variously put in terms of a “mandate” or “
.
were slaughtered in
”—
?
, of course, it wasn’t the election. It was the horror of the 20 first-graders who
, Conn., in mid-December. The sickening reality of little girls and boys riddled with bullets from a high-capacity assault weapon seemed to precipitate a sudden tipping point in the national conscience. One thing changed after anot her. Wayne LaPierre of
the National Rifle Association marginalized himself with poorly chosen comments soon after the massacre. The pro-gun lobby, once a phalanx of opposition, began to fissure into reasonables and crazies. Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot in the head two years ago and is still
struggling to speak and walk, started a PAC with her husband to appeal to the moderate middle of gun owners. Then she gave ri veting and poignant testimony to the Senate, challenging lawmakers: “Be bold.” As a result, momentum has appeared to build ar ound some kind of a plan to curtail sales of
the most dangerous weapons and ammunition and the way people are permitted to buy them. It’s impossible to say now whether such a bill will pass and, if it does, whether it will make anything more than cosmetic changes to gun laws. But one thing is clear: The political tectonics have shifted
dramatically in very little time. Whole new possibilities exist now that didn’t a few weeks ago.
Meanwhile
immigration
turnaround has very little to do with
It has almost entirely to do with
, the Republican members of the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight are pushing hard for a new spirit of compromise on
reform, a sharp
change after an election year in which the GOP standard-bearer declared he would make life so miserable for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. that they would “self -deport.” But this
Obama’s personal influence
the
Hispanic vote
movement on immigration has
—his political mandate, as it were.
Romney,
breakdown of the
just two numbers: 71 and 27. That’s 71 percent for Obama, 27 percent for Mitt
in the 2012 presidential election. Obama drove home his advantage by giving a speech on immigration reform on Jan. 29 at a Hi spanic-dominated high school in Nevada, a swing state he won by a surprising 8 percentage
points in November. But the
mainly
come out of the Republican Party’s
recent
introspection
, and the realization
by its more thoughtful members, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, that without such a shift the party may be facing demographic death in a country where the 2010 census showed, for the first time, that white births have fallen into the minority. It’s got nothing
to do with Obama’s political capital or, indeed, Obama at all. The point is not that “political capital ” is a meaningless term. Often it is a synonym for “mandate” or “momentum” in the aftermath of a decisive election—and just about every politician ever elected has tried to claim more of a mandate
than he actually has. Certainly, Obama can say that because he was elected and Romney wasn’t, he has a better claim on the country’s mood and direction. Many pundits still defend politi cal capital as a useful metaphor at least. “It’s an unquantifiable but meaningful concept,” says Norman Ornstein of
the idea of political
is so poorly defined that presidents and pundits often get it wrong.
capital
conveys that we know more than we really do about ever-elusive
political
unforeseen events can suddenly change everything
the American Enterprise Institute. “You can’t really look at a president and say he’s got 37 ounces of political capital. But the fact is, it’s a concept that matters, if you have popularity and some momentum on your side.” The real problem is that
capita
l—or mandates, or momentum—
“Presidents usually over-estimate it,” says George
Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University. “The best kind of political capital—some sense of an electoral mandate to do something—is very rare. It almost never happens. In 1964, maybe. And to some degree in 1980.” For that reason, political
misleads far more than it enlightens. It is distortionary. It
power
, and it discounts the way
the idea
the
is a concept that
concept of
. Instead, it suggests, erroneously, that a political figure has a concrete amount of political capital to
invest, just as someone might have real investment capital—that a particular leader can bank his gains, and the size of his account determines what he can do at any given moment in history. Naturally, any president has practical and electoral limits. Does he have a majority in both chambers of Congress
and a cohesive coalition behind him? Obama has neither at present. And unless a surge in the economy—at the moment, still stuck—or some other great victory gives him more momentum, it is inevitable that the closer Obama gets to the 2014 election, the le ss he will be able to get done. Going into
the midterms, Republicans will increasingly avoid any concessions that make him (and the Democrats) stronger. But the abrupt emergence of the immigration and gun -control issues illustrates how suddenly shifts in mood can occur and how political interests can align in new ways just as suddenly.
depending on
his second-term
Indeed, the pseudo-concept of political capital masks a larger truth about Washington that is kindergarten simple: You just don’t know what you can do until you try. Or as Ornstein himself once wrote years ago, “Winning wins.” In theory, and in practice,
Obama’s handling of any issue, even in a polarized time he could still deliver on
goals depending on
the breaks
particular
,
his skill and
,
a lot of
. Unforeseen catalysts can appear, like Newtown. Epiphanies can dawn, such as when many Republican Party leaders suddenly woke up in panic to the huge disparity in the Hispanic vote. Some
political capital is, at best, an empty concept that almost
nothing in the academic literature successfully quantifies or even defines it.
Winning on one issue often
political scientists who study the elusive calculus of how to pass legislation and run successful presidencies say that
, and
“It can refer to a very abstract thing, like a president’s popularity, but
there’s no mechanism there. That makes it kind of useless,” says Richard Bensel, a government professor at Cornell University. Even Ornstein concedes that the calculus is far more complex than the term suggests.
changes the calculation for the next issue; there is never any known amount of capital
Ornstein says. “If they think he’s going to
win, they may change positions to get on the winning side. It’s a bandwagon effect.”¶
¶
. “The idea here is, if an issue comes up
where the conventional wisdom is that president is not going to get what he wants, and he gets it, then each time that happen s, it changes the calculus of the other actors”
ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ Sometimes, a
clever practitioner of power can get more done just because he’s aggressive and knows the hallways of Congress well. Texas A&M’s Edwards is right to say that the outcome of the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, was one of the few that con veyed a mandate.
But one of the main reasons for that mandate (in addition to Goldwater’s ineptitude as a candidate) was President Johnson’s masterful use of power leading up to that election, and his ability to get far more done than anyone thought possib le, given his limited political capital. In the newest volume in
his exhaustive study of LBJ, The Passage of Power, historian Robert Caro recalls Johnson getting cautionary advice after he assumed the presidency from the assassinated John F. Kennedy in lat e 1963. Don’t focus on a long-stalled civil-rights bill, advisers told him, because it might jeopardize Southern
lawmakers’ support for a tax cut and appropriations bills the president needed. “One of the wise, practical people around the table [said that] the presidency has only a certain amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtn’t to expend it on this,” Caro writes. (Coinage, of course, was what political
capital was called in those days.) Johnson replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Johnson didn’t worry about co inage, and he got the Civil Rights Act enacted, along with much else: Medicare, a tax cut, antipoverty pr ograms. He appeared to understand not just the ways of Congress but also
the way to maximize the momentum he possessed in the lingering mood of national grief and determination by picking the right issues, as Caro records. “Momentum is not a mysterious mistress,” LBJ said. “It is a controllable fact of political life.” Johnson had the skill and wherewithal to realize that, at
that moment of history, he could have unlimited coinage if he handled the politics right. He did. (At least until Vietnam, th at is.) And then there are the presidents who get the politics, and the issues, wrong. It was the last president before Obama who was just starting a second term, George W. Bush,
who really revived the claim of political capital, which he was very fond of wielding. Then Bush promptly demonstrated that he didn’t fully understand the concept either. At his first news conference after his 2004 victory, a confident-sounding Bush declared, “I earned capital in the campaign, political
capital, and now I intend to spend it. That’s my style.” The 43rd president threw all of his political capital at an overriding passion: the partial privatization of Social Security. He mounted a full-bore public-relations campaign that included town-hall meetings across the country. Bush failed utterly, of
course. But the problem was not that he didn’t have enough political capital. Yes, he may have overestimated his standing. Bush’s margin over John Kerry was thin—helped along by a bumbling Kerry campaign that was almost the mirror image of Romney’s gaffe-filled failure this time—but that was
not the real mistake. The problem was that whatever credibility or stature Bush thought he had earned as a newly reelected president did nothing to make Social Security privatization a better idea in most people’s eyes. Voters didn’t trust the plan, and four years later, at the end of Bush’s term, the
stock-market collapse bore out the public’s skepticism. Privatization just didn’t have any momentum behind it, no matter who was pushing it or how much capital Bush spent to sell it. The mistake that Bush made with Social Security, says John Sides, an associate professor of polit ical science at George
Washington University and a well-followed political blogger, “was that just because he won an election, he thought he had a green light. But there was no sense of any kind of public urgency on Social Security reform. It’s like he went into the garage where various Republican policy ideas were hanging
up and picked one. I don’t think Obama’s going to make that mistake.… Bush decided he wanted to push a rock up a hill. He didn’t understand how steep the hill was. I think Obama has more momentum on his side because of the Republican Party’s concerns about the Latino vote and the shooting
Obama may get his way
not because of his reelection,
but because Republicans are
beginning to doubt whether taking a hard line on fiscal policy is a good idea
¶
¶
at Newtown.”
also
on the debt ceiling,
Sides says, “
,” as the party suffers in the polls. THE REAL LIMITS ON POWER
Presidents are limited in what they can do by time and attention span, of course, just as much as they are by electoral balances in th e House and Senate. But this, too, has nothing to do with political capital. Another well-worn meme of recent years was that Obama used up too much political capital
passing the health care law in his first term. But the real problem was that the plan was unpopular, the economy was bad, and the president didn’t realize that the national mood (yes, again, the national mood) was at a tipping point against big-government intervention, with the tea-party revolt about to
burst on the scene. For Americans in 2009 and 2010—haunted by too many rounds of layoffs, appalled by the Wall Street bailout, aghast at the amount of federal spending that never seemed to find its way into their pockets—government-imposed health care coverage was simply an intervention too
far. So was the idea of another economic stimulus. Cue the tea party and what ensued: two titanic fights over the debt ceilin g. Obama, like Bush, had settled on pushing an issue that was out of sync with the country’s mood. Unlike Bush, Obama did ultimately get his idea passed. But the bigger political
problem with health care reform was that it distracted the government’s attention from other issues that people cared about more urgently, such as the need to jump-start the economy and financial reform. Various congressional staffers told me at the time that their bosses didn’t really have the time to
understand how the Wall Street lobby was riddling the Dodd-Frank financial-reform legislation with loopholes. Health care was sucking all the oxygen out of the room, the aides said. Weighing the impon derables of momentum, the often-mystical calculations about when the historic moment is ripe for
an issue, will never be a science. It is mainly intuition, and its best practitioners have a long history in American politic s. This is a tale told well in Steven Spielberg’s hit movie Lincoln. Daniel Day -Lewis’s Abraham Lincoln attempts a lot of behind-the-scenes vote-buying to win passage of the 13th
Amendment, banning slavery, along with eloquent attempts to move people’s hearts and minds. He appears to be using the politi cal capital of his reelection and the turning of the tide in the Civil War. But it’s clear that a surge of conscience, a sense of the changing times, has as much to do with the
final vote as all the backroom horse-trading. “The reason I think the idea of political capital is kind of distorting is that it implies you have chits you can g ive out to people. It really oversimplifies why you elect politicians, or why they can do what Lincoln did,” says Tommy Bruce , a former political
consultant in Washington. Consider, as another example, the storied political career of President Franklin Roosevelt. Because the mood was ripe for dramatic change in the depths of the Great Depression, FDR was able to push an astonishing array of New Deal programs through a largely compliant
Congress, assuming what some described as near-dictatorial powers. But in his second term, full of confidence because of a landslide victory in 1936 that brought in unprecedented Democratic majorit ies in the House and Senate, Roosevelt overreached with his infamous Court-packing proposal. All of
a sudden, the political capital that experts thought was limitless disappeared. FDR’s plan to expand the Supreme Court by putting in his judicial allies abruptly created an unanticipated wall of opposition from newly reunited Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats. FDR thu s inadvertently
handed back to Congress, especially to the Senate, the power and influence he had seized in his first term. Sure, Roosevelt h ad loads of popularity and momentum in 1937. He seemed to have a bank vault full of political capital. But, once again, a president simply chose to take on the wrong issue at the
wrong time; this time, instead of most of the political interests in the country aligning his way, they opposed him. Roosevel t didn’t fully recover until World War II, despite two more election victories. In terms of Obama’s second-term agenda, what all these shifting tides of momentum and political
if he picks issues
there is no reason to think he can’t win far more victories than
careful calculators of
political capital believe is possible
If he can get some early wins
that will create
momentum, and one win may well lead to others. “Winning wins
calculation mean is this: Anything goes. Obama has no more elections to win, and he needs to worry only about the support he will have in the House and Senate after 2014. But
reform and gun control—
that the country’s mood will support—such as, perhaps, immigration
any of the
now
mind and will ride the mood of the country more adroitly.
, including battles over tax reform and deficit reduction. Amid today’s atmosphere of Republican self-doubt, a new, more mature Obama seems to be emerging, one who has his agenda clearly in
—as he already has, apparently, on the fiscal cliff and the upper-income tax increase—
.” Obama himself learned some hard lessons over the past four years about the falsity of the political-capital
concept. Despite his decisive victory over John McCain in 2008, he fumbled the selling of his $787 billion stimulus plan by p ortraying himself naively as a “post-partisan” president who somehow had been given the electoral mandate to be all things to all people. So Obama tried to sell his stimulus as a
long-term restructuring plan that would “lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth.” The president thus fed GOP suspicions that he was just another big-government liberal. Had he understood better that the country was digging in against yet more government intervention and had sold the
stimulus as what it mainly was—a giant shot of adrenalin to an economy with a stopped heart, a pure emergency measure—he might well have escaped the worst of the backlash. But by laying on ambitious programs, and following up quickly with his health care plan, he only sealed his reputation on
the right as a closet socialist. After that, Obama’s public posturing provoked automatic opposition from the GOP, no matter what he said. If the president put his personal imprimatur on any plan —from deficit reduction, to health care, to immigration reform—Republicans were virtually guaranteed to
come out against it. But this year, when he sought to exploit the chastened GOP’s newfound willingness to compromise on immigration, his approach was differe nt. He seemed to understand that the Republicans needed to reclaim immigration reform as their own issue, and he was willing to let them
have some credit. When he mounted his bully pulpit in Nevada, he delivered another new message as well: You Republicans don’t have to listen to what I say anymore. And don’t worry about who’s got the political capital. Just take a hard look at where I’m saying this: in a state you were supposed to
have won but lost because of the rising Hispanic vote. Obama was cleverly pointing the GOP toward conclusions that he knows i t is already reaching on its own: If you, the Republicans, want to have any kind of a future in a vastly changed electoral map, you have no choice but to move. It’s your
choice.
Obama doesn’t have PC – ISIS, Immigration, the past TPA vote, Iran, etc all prove
Obama’s influence is minimal and he can’t regenerate to get the Cuba vote passed
The tech sector loves and will push for the plan – they’re a key lobby group
Romm, 15 (Tony Romm, senior technology reporter for Politico, 1-21-2015, "Tech giants get deeper into
D.C. influence game", POLITICO, http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/tech-lobby-apple-amazonfacebook-google-114468.html, DA: 6-2-2015)
Apple, Amazon and Facebook shelled out record amounts to influence Washington; Google posted
one of its biggest lobbying years ever; and a slew of new tech companies dipped their toes into politics for
the first time in 2014 — a sign of the industry’s deepening effort to shape policymaking in D.C. The
sharp uptick in spending reflects the tech sector’s evolution from an industry that once shunned Washington into a
powerful interest that’s willing to lobby extensively to advance the debates that matter most to
companies’ bottom lines — from clamping down on patent lawsuits to restricting NSA surveillance
to obtaining more
high-skilled immigration visas and green cards. Story Continued Below “There is increasingly a sense from companies that they need to engage earlier
and smarter,” said Ryan Triplette, a Republican lobbyist for Franklin Square Group, which represents companies like Apple and Google. “They began
opening up their view as their businesses have grown … and not just looking at traditional technology issues.” Apple, which mostly avoided D.C.
under the watch of late CEO Steve Jobs, grew its lobbying balance sheet to just over $4.1 million last year from $3.3 million in 2013,
according to an analysis of lobbying reports, the latest of which were filed midnight Tuesday. The iPhone giant recently has shown a greater willingness
to engage Washington under CEO Tim Cook: It even dispatched executives to Capitol Hill in September to talk about its new smart watch and health
tracking tools hoping to assuage lawmakers’ fears about the new technology’s data-tracking abilities. Amazon’s lobbying expenses —
more than $4.7 million, up from around $3.5 million in 2013 — correspond with the company’s own Washington
makeover. The e-commerce giant last year jumped into new lines of business, expanding its pursuit of government contracts while eyeing a new
drone delivery service, prompting it to hire a slew of new lobbyists and move to a bigger downtown D.C. office. Amazon is also fighting the Federal
Trade Commission over how it handled app purchases made by kids. Apple, Amazon and Google declined to comment on the record. Facebook did
not reply to a request for comment. For all their efforts, these tech giants failed to advance their political priorities in the last Congress — but the
fights are sure to return in 2015 under the Republican-majority Congress. GOP leaders in both chambers have
already promised to revive the debate over patent litigation reform — a critical issue for tech companies like Google that want to curb lawsuits from
so-called patent trolls. There’s also talk of boosting the number of foreign high-skilled workers, something industry titans have coveted as part of
broader immigration reform. The looming expiration of key Patriot Act surveillance authorities means Congress must also wade back
into the fight over what data the NSA can collect — a major issue for tech companies stung by
Edward Snowden’s leaks about the agency’s spying via popular Internet services. And lawmakers are plugging into new issues like drones and
wearable technology that are important to Silicon Valley. “No doubt, Internet and tech companies are a bigger and more
important part of the economy — period. It’s natural they’re going to be more involved in the political
process,” said Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group whose members include Amazon,
Facebook and Google. “There’s been a growing realization that not only do tech companies have to be in there [in D.C.], to make a fair pitch, they
have to be more actively involved because they have to fight off hostile efforts.“ Google is the leader of the tech pack when it comes to lobbying: The
company, which until October owned Motorola Mobility, spent more than $17 million in 2014 — its second-most expensive year after 2012, when it
battled back a federal antitrust investigation. The search giant’s D.C. operation, led by former GOP Rep. Susan Molinari, relocated last year to a new,
sprawling 54,000-square-foot office steps from the Capitol. Facebook, for its part, spent more than $9.3 million in 2014, up from $6.4 million in 2013.
The company’s most recent lobbying report points to its work on privacy and security issues along with Internet access and trade, as Facebook aims to
expand its service worldwide and avoid foreign rules that might restrict where it stores user data. Companies like Belkin, a major player in the emerging
sector of connected home devices, and Snapchat, an app for disappearing photo messages, each registered their first-ever lobbyists last year. Snapchat
hired its new consultants from the firm Heather Podesta + Partners after a major data breach registered on Washington’s radar. Other prominent tech
companies retained new help, as well. Netflix grew its lobbying roster amid the fight at the FCC over net neutrality. And Uber added D.C. lobbyists to
win new allies for its ride-hailing app, which has triggered fights with state and local regulators and cab operators nationwide. And a coalition of
tech titans like Apple, Google and Microsoft banded together to invest in an anti-NSA snooping
coalition, Reform Government Surveillance, which spent $230,000 in 2014. Many of those companies’ executives regularly
traveled to Washington to press President Barack Obama on surveillance reforms, and the group ran frequent
advertisements highlighting the need for more NSA transparency.
Plan doesn’t alienate the democrats
There’s bipartisan momentum for curtailing surveillance
Weisman, 13 (Jonathan Weisman, political writer for NYT, 7-28-2013, "Momentum Builds against N.S.A.
Surveillance", New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/us/politics/momentum-buildsagainst-nsa-surveillance.html, DA: 5-30-2015)
WASHINGTON — The movement to crack down on government surveillance started with an odd couple from
Michigan, Representatives Justin Amash, a young libertarian Republican known even to his friends as “chief wing nut,” and John Conyers Jr., an elder
of the liberal left in his 25th House term. But what began on the political fringes only a week ago has
built a momentum that even
critics say may be unstoppable , drawing support from Republican and Democratic leaders,
attracting moderates in both parties and pulling in some of the most respected voices on national
security in the House. The rapidly shifting politics were reflected clearly in the House on Wednesday, when a plan to defund the National
Security Agency’s telephone data collection program fell just seven votes short of passage. Now, after initially signaling that they were comfortable
with the scope of the N.S.A.’s collection of Americans’ phone and Internet activities, but not their content, revealed last month by Edward J.
Snowden, lawmakers are showing an increasing willingness to use legislation to curb those actions.
Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, and Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, have
begun work on
legislation in the House Judiciary Committee to significantly rein in N.S.A. telephone surveillance. Mr. Sensenbrenner
said on Friday that he would have a bill ready when Congress returned from its August recess that would restrict phone surveillance to only those
named as targets of a federal terrorism investigation, make significant changes to the secret court that oversees such programs and give businesses like
Microsoft and Google permission to reveal their dealings before that court. “There is a growing sense that things have really
gone a-kilter here,” Ms. Lofgren said. The sudden reconsideration of post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism policy has taken much of Washington by
surprise. As the revelations by Mr. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor, were gaining attention in the news media, the White House and leaders in
both parties stood united behind the programs he had unmasked. They were focused mostly on bringing the leaker to justice. Backers of sweeping
surveillance powers now say they recognize that changes are likely, and they are taking steps to make sure they maintain control over the extent of any
revisions. Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee met on Wednesday as the House deliberated to try to find accommodations to growing public
misgivings about the programs, said the committee’s chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado
Democrat and longtime critic of the N.S.A. surveillance programs, said he had taken part in serious meetings to discuss changes. Senator Saxby
Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the panel, said, “We’re talking through it right now.” He added, “There are a lot of ideas on the
table, and it’s pretty obvious that we’ve got some uneasy folks.” Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and the chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, has assured House colleagues that an intelligence policy bill he plans to draft in mid-September will include new privacy
safeguards. Aides familiar with his efforts said the House Intelligence Committee was focusing on more transparency for the secret Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees data gathering, including possibly declassifying that court’s orders, and changes to the way the
surveillance data is stored. The legislation may order such data to be held by the telecommunications companies that produce them or by an
independent entity, not the government. Lawmakers say their votes to restrain the N.S.A. reflect a gut-level concern
among voters about personal privacy. “I represent a very reasonable district in suburban Philadelphia, and my constituents
are expressing a growing concern on the sweeping amounts of data that the government is
compiling,” said Representative Michael G. Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican who represents one of the few true swing districts left in
the House and who voted on Wednesday to limit N.S.A. surveillance. Votes from the likes of Mr. Fitzpatrick were not initially anticipated when
Republican leaders chided reporters for their interest in legislation that they said would go nowhere. As the House slowly worked its way on
Wednesday toward an evening vote to curb government surveillance, even proponents of the legislation jokingly predicted that only the “wing nuts”
— the libertarians of the right, the most ardent liberals on the left — would support the measure. Then Mr. Sensenbrenner, a Republican veteran and
one of the primary authors of the post-Sept. 11 Patriot Act, stepped to a microphone on the House floor. Never, he said, did he intend to allow the
wholesale vacuuming up of domestic phone records, nor did his legislation envision that data dragnets would go beyond specific targets of terrorism
investigations. “The time has come to stop it, and the way we stop it is to approve this amendment,” Mr. Sensenbrenner said. He had not intended to
speak, and when he did, he did not say much, just seven brief sentences. “I was able to say what needed to be said in a minute,” he said Friday.
Lawmakers from both parties said the brief speech was a pivotal moment. When the tally was final, the effort to end the N.S.A.’s programs had fallen
short, 205 to 217. Supporters included Republican leaders like Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington and Democratic leaders like
Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina. Republican moderates like Mr. Fitzpatrick and Blue Dog Democrats like Representative Kurt
Schrader of Oregon joined with respected voices on national security matters like Mr. Sensenbrenner and Ms. Lofgren. Besides Ms. McMorris
Rodgers, Representative Lynn Jenkins of Kansas, another member of the Republican leadership, voted yes. On the Democratic side, the chairman of
the House Democratic Caucus, Representative Xavier Becerra of California, and his vice chairman, Representative Joseph Crowley of New York,
broke with the top two Democrats, Representatives Nancy Pelosi of California and Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, who pressed hard for no votes. On
Friday, Ms. Pelosi, the House minority leader and a veteran of the Intelligence Committee, and Mr. Hoyer dashed off a letter to
the president warning that even those Democrats who had stayed with him on the issue on Wednesday would be
seeking changes. That letter included the signature of Mr. Conyers, who is rallying an increasingly unified
Democratic caucus to his side, as well as 61 House Democrats who voted no on Wednesday but are now publicly signaling their
discontent. “Although some of us voted for and others against the amendment, we all agree that there are lingering questions and concerns about the
current” data collection program, the letter stated. Representative Reid Ribble of Wisconsin, a Republican who voted for the curbs and predicted that
changes to the N.S.A. surveillance programs were now unstoppable, said: “This was in many respects a vote intended to send a message. The vote was
just too strong.” Ms. Lofgren said the White House and Democratic and Republican leaders had not come to grips with what she called “a grave sense
of betrayal” that greeted Mr. Snowden’s revelations. Since the Bush administration, lawmakers had been repeatedly assured that such indiscriminate
collection of data did not exist, and that when targeting was unspecific, it was aimed at people abroad. The movement against the N.S.A. began with
the fringes of each party. Mr. Amash of Michigan began pressing for an amendment on the annual military spending bill aimed at the N.S.A. Leaders
of the Intelligence Committee argued strenuously that such an amendment was not relevant to military spending and should be ruled out of order. But
Mr. Amash, an acolyte of Ron Paul, a libertarian former congressman, persisted and rallied support. Mr. Sensenbrenner and Ms. Lofgren said they
were willing to work with the House and Senate intelligence panels to overhaul the surveillance programs, but indicated that they did not believe those
panels were ready to go far enough. “I would just hope the Intelligence Committees will not stick their heads in the sand on this,” Mr. Sensenbrenner
said.
2ac – terror da
No impact to bioterror
Keller, 13
(Rebecca, 7 March 2013, Analyst at Stratfor, “Bioterrorism and the Pandemic Potential,” Stratfor,
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/bioterrorism-and-pandemic-potential)
The risk of an accidental release of H5N1 is similar to that of other infectious pathogens currently being
studied. Proper safety standards are key, of course, and experts in the field have had a year to determine the
best way to proceed, balancing safety and research benefits. Previous work with the virus was conducted at
biosafety level three out of four, which requires researchers wearing respirators and disposable gowns to work
in pairs in a negative pressure environment. While many of these labs are part of universities, access is
controlled either through keyed entry or even palm scanners. There are roughly 40 labs that submitted to the
voluntary ban. Those wishing to resume work after the ban was lifted must comply with guidelines requiring
strict national oversight and close communication and collaboration with national authorities. The risk of
release either through accident or theft cannot be completely eliminated, but given the established parameters
the risk is minimal. The use of the pathogen as a biological weapon requires an assessment of
whether a non-state actor would have the capabilities to isolate the virulent strain, then weaponize and
distribute it. Stratfor has long held the position that while terrorist organizations may have rudimentary
capabilities regarding biological weapons, the likelihood of a successful attack is very low. Given that the
laboratory version of H5N1 -- or any influenza virus, for that matter -- is a contagious pathogen, there
would be two possible modes that a non-state actor would have to instigate an attack. The virus could be
refined and then aerosolized and released into a populated area, or an individual could be infected with the
virus and sent to freely circulate within a population. There are severe constraints that make success
using either of these methods unlikely. The technology needed to refine and aerosolize a pathogen
for a biological attack is beyond the capability of most non-state actors. Even if they were able to
develop a weapon, other factors such as wind patterns and humidity can render an attack ineffective.
Using a human carrier is a less expensive method, but it requires that the biological agent be a contagion.
Additionally, in order to infect the large number of people necessary to start an outbreak, the infected carrier
must be mobile while contagious, something that is doubtful with a serious disease like small pox. The carrier
also cannot be visibly ill because that would limit the necessary human contact.
No link – surveillance doesn’t solve terrorism
Globe and Mail ‘15
Globe editorial – “The end of US ‘bulk telephony collection,’ and the lessons for Canada” - The Globe and
Mail - Jun. 14, 2015 - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editorials/the-end-of-us-bulktelephony-collection-and-the-lessons-for-canada/article24948261/
For a few days, there was a happily yawning gap in the U.S. N ational S ecurity A gency ’s ability to surveil
American citizens. Congress could not agree on how – or whether – to renew the section of the foolishly
named Patriot Act that had allowed the government to scoop up and hold all the metadata (identifying both callers
and addressees) of all cellphone calls in the U.S. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would then grant or, at least sometimes, not grant, access
to the actual contents of the conversations – in other words, a search warrant. The upshot – under the new U.S.A. Freedom Act
(officially, the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act of 2015”) – is
that
phone companies, not the NSA and the FBI, will record and store all the metadata for all phone calls. Those agencies will no
longer be able to get at that kind of data at will, indiscriminately. The security agencies will have to apply to the FISC court for metadata, too. That’s
progress, though FISC may be a bit of a rubber stamp.
There is, by the way, no sign that terrorists attacked the
United States in the unsurveilled interval between the Patriot Act section and the Freedom Act.
Reject their evidence to bias – the government always overinflates their ability to
solve terrorism
Timm 15 — Trevor Timm, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation,
Columnist for the Guardian on privacy, free speech, and national security, former Activist and Writer with the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, holds a J.D. from New York Law School and a B.A. in Political Science from
Northeastern University, 2015 (“Here’s how not to report on the US government’s terror warnings,” Columbia
Journalism Review, July 10th, Available Online at
http://www.cjr.org/analysis/heres_how_not_to_report_on_the_us_governments_terror_warnings.php,
Accessed 07-12-2015)
If you turned on the television or checked your phone in the lead up to July 4th, it was almost
impossible to miss the wall-to-wall coverage blaring ominous warnings from the US government: ISIS
terrorists could strike Americans at any minute over the holiday weekend.
As it often is in such instances, the media’s reporting was breathless, hyperbolic, and barely contained
a hint of skepticism. When nothing happened—as has been the case literally every time the
government has issued these warnings in the past —there was no apparent self-reflection by these
media outlets about how they could have tempered their coverage.
Instead, many doubled down by re-writing government press releases, claiming that arrests that
happened well before July 4th, and in which the alleged criminals never mentioned the American holiday,
are proof of “just how close” the US came to a terror attack over the holiday weekend.
During the Bush administration, terror alerts were issued with such frequency that they were widely derided
and criticized—even by seasoned counter-terrorism experts. Now that ISIS has emerged, the Bush
administration’s derided “color code system” is gone, but the willingness of the media to immediately buy
into the idea that the public should be freaking out is still alive and well. The last two years have seen the
media become much more skeptical of government surveillance powers. Yet when the terror alert flashes,
they revert right back to their old ways.
Last weekend’s coverage was a case study in rash judgment. All the caveats issued with the warning’s release
were hardly noticeable, downplayed and buried in the middle of the articles, sandwiched in-between urgent
calls for caution from various government agencies.
There will soon be a next time; the government will issue a warning, and the media will inevitably
jump. When it does, the first rule of reporting should be to determine whether the alerts are based on
anything at all and to put that information in the lede. Authorities flatly acknowledged two weeks ago
that they have no “credible” or “specific” information that any attacks will occur, but that barely
registered in the media’s coverage.
CBS News waited until the sixth paragraph in one of their main articles on the subject to tell its readers of the
mitigating information. USA Today also stuck the phrase in the middle of its sixth paragraph and never
returned to it. CNN, with a finely honed talent for siren headlines, didn’t disclose this information until their
10th paragraph.
NBC News, though, was the most brazen. They told readers that authorities “are unaware of any specific or
credible threat inside the country” in the 7th paragraph, quickly followed by a qualifier that could not contain
more hyperbole if they tried: “But the dangers are more complex and unpredictable than ever.” Really?
Apparently the dangers are more complex and unpredictable than ever if you ignore the fact that terrorism
attacks in the US are close to all-time lows, and that Americans have generally never been safer.
[Graphic Omitted]
None of these major news stories mentioned that the US government had issued similar terrorism
warnings that generated alarming headlines at least forty times since 9/11. As FAIR’s Adam Johnson
detailed, all forty times nothing happened . If news organizations are going to list all the reasons
readers should be scared, they should at least attempt to note the reasons that they probably
shouldn’t be.
Link turn –
1. Royal says economic decline causes an increase in terrorism
2. Information overload – the plan leads to streamlined data collection
Greenwald, 14
(Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times best-selling books on
politics and law. His most recent book, No Place to Hide, is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences
reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenn’s column
was featured at The Guardian and Salon. He was the debut winner, along with Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F.
Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his
investigative work on the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning. For his 2013 NSA reporting, he received
the George Polk award for National Security Reporting; the Gannett Foundation award for investigative journalism and
the Gannett Foundation watchdog journalism award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil
(he was the first non-Brazilian to win), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award. Along with Laura
Poitras, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. The NSA reporting he led
for The Guardian was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service – what a baller, “No Place to Hide”,
http://www.simoleonsense.com/snowden-the-nsa-and-the-u-s-surveillance-state/ - some dude transcribed
parts of the book here so swag, ak.)
“Surveillance cheerleaders essentially offer only one argument in defense of mass surveillance: it is only
carried out to stop terrorism and keep people safe. Indeed, invoking an external threat is a historical tactic
of choice to keep the population submissive to government powers.” “That same month, Obama’s hand-picked
advisory panel (composed of, among others, a former CIA deputy director and a former White House aide, and
convened to study the NSA program through access to classified information) concluded that the metadata program “was not
essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using
conventional [court] orders.” “The record is indeed quite poor. The collect-it-all system did nothing
to detect, let alone disrupt, the 2012 Boston Marathon bombing. It did not detect the attempted Christmas-day
bombing of a jetliner over Detroit, or the plan to blow up Times Square, or the plot to attack the New York City
subway system—all of which were stopped by alert bystanders or traditional police powers. It certainly did
nothing to stop the string of mass shootings from Aurora to Newtown. Major international attacks
from London to Mumbai to Madrid proceeded without detection, despite involving at least dozens of
operatives.” “In fact, mass surveillance has had quite the opposite effect: it makes detecting and stopping
terror more difficult . Democratic Congressman Rush Holt, a physicist and one of the few scientists in Congress, has made the
point that collecting everything about everyone’s communications only obscures actual plots being
discussed by actual terrorists . Directed rather than indiscriminate surveillance would yield more
specific and useful information.” “American dying in a terrorist attack is infinitesimal, considerably
less than the chance of being struck by lightning. John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who
has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism, explained in 2011: “The number of
people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred
outside of war zones. It’s basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year.”
More American citizens have “undoubtedly” died “overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal
illnesses,” the news agency McClatchy reported, “than from terrorism.” “After the trouble-free Olympics, Stephen Walt noted in Foreign
Policy that the outcry was driven, as usual, by severe exaggeration of the threat. He cited an essay by John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart in
International Security for which the authors had analyzed fifty cases of purported “Islamic terrorist plots” against the United States, only to conclude
that “virtually
all of the perpetrators were ‘ incompetent , ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant,
unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational, and foolish.’”
Mueller and Stewart quoted from Glenn Carle, former deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who said, “We must see
jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are,” and they noted that alQaeda’s “capabilities are far inferior to its desires.”
Links are non-u/q –
1. Vigilance – the expiration of the Patriot ACT demonstrate terrorists aren’t willing
to strike as soon as we aren’t vigilante
2. Data collection – the Freedom Act severely hampered mass data collection which
triggers their impacts
No link – targeted warrants, which plan allows, solve the terror disad just as well
Wyden ‘14
(et al; This amicus brief issued by three US Senators - Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Martin Heinrich. Wyden
and Udall sat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and had access to the meta-data program.
“BRIEF FOR AMICI CURIAE SENATOR RON WYDEN, SENATOR MARK UDALL, AND
SENATOR MARTIN HEINRICH IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT, URGING REVERSAL
OF THE DISTRICT COURT” – Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals - Appeal from the United States District Court District of Idaho The Honorable B. Lynn
Winmill, Chief District Judge, Presiding Case No. 2:13-cv-00257-BLW – Sept 9th, 2014 – This Amicus Brief
was prepared by CHARLES S. SIMS from the law firm PROSKAUER ROSE LLP. Amici” means “friend of
the court” and – in this context - is legal reference to Wyden, Udall, etc. This pdf can be obtained at:
https://www.eff.org/document/wyden-udall-heinrich-smith-amicus)
As members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, amici Senators Wyden and Udall have for years
participated in the oversight of government surveillance conducted under the Patriot Act that they knew would astonish
most Americans. They sought to warn the public about those activities as best they could without disclosing classified information. They also co-sponsored an amendment
to the Patriot Act’s reauthorization that sought to address the problem of government officials “secretly reinterpret[ing] public laws and statutes” and “describ[ing] the
execution of these laws in a way that misinforms or misleads the public.” See 157 Cong. Rec. S3360 (daily ed. May 25, 2011) (introducing SA 384 to S. 990, 112th Cong. § 3
(2011)); see also 157 Cong. Rec. S3386 (daily ed. May 26, 2011) (statement of Sen. Wyden) (“The fact is anyone can read the plain text of the PATRIOT Act. Yet many
Members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch.”); 157 Cong. Rec. S3258 (daily ed. May 24, 2011) (statement of Sen.
Udall) (“Congress is granting powers to the executive branch that lead to abuse, and, frankly, shield the executive branch from accountability”). Now that the government’s
bulk call-records program has been documented and exposed, the
executive branch has retreated from frequently repeated claims
about its necessity and expressed an intent to end government bulk collection under section 215. Press Release, FACT SHEET: The Administration’s Proposal
for Ending the Section 215 Bulk Telephony Metadata Program (Mar. 27, 2014), http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/27/fact-sheet-administration-sproposal-ending-section-215-bulk-telephony-m (“White House Press Release”). While Senators Udall, Heinrich and Wyden broadly support a policy aimed at ending the
government’s indiscriminate collection of telephony metadata, they share a concern that there is no plan to suspend the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records in the
absence of new legislation, which is not necessarily imminent. Meanwhile, the government continues to defend its bulk call-record collection program vigorously against
statutory and constitutional challenges in the courts. Amici
submit this brief to respond to the government’s argument that its
call records is necessary to defend the nation against terrorist attacks. Amici make one central point: as
members of the committee charged with overseeing the National Security Agency’s surveillance, amici have reviewed
this surveillance extensively and have seen no evidence that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records has provided any
collection of bulk
intelligence of value that could not have been gathered through means that caused far less harm to
the
privacy interests
of millions of Americans. The government has at its disposal a number of authorities that allow it to obtain the call records of suspected
terrorists and those in contact with suspected terrorists. It appears to amici that these more
targeted authorities could have been used to
obtain the information that the government has publicly claimed was crucial in a few important counterterrorism
cases.
Foreign surveillance checks external threats – their impact ev is in the context of
Middle Eastern groups which other countries are able to solve