terror disad
1nc shell
1nc- terror da
Domestic surveillance successfully checks terror incidents now. Prefer longitudinal
studies.
Boot ’13 Max Boot is a Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2004, he was
named by the World Affairs Councils of America as one of "the 500 most influential people in the United States in the field of
foreign policy." In 2007, he won the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism. From 1992 to 1994 he was an
editor and writer at the Christian Science Monitor. Boot holds a bachelor's degree in history, with high honors, from the
University of California, Berkeley and a master's degree in history from Yale University. Boot has served as an adviser to U.S.
commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the published author of Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from
Ancient Times to the Present. From the article: “Stay calm and let the NSA carry on” - LA Times – June 9th http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/09/opinion/la-oe-boot-nsa-surveillance-20130609
After 9/11 there was a
expectation of more terror attacks on the U S So far that hasn't
happened
on the whole we have been a lot safer than most security
experts
expected. In light of
N S A monitoring telephone calls
it is worthwhile
to ask Why is that? It is certainly not due to any change of heart among our enemies.
50 terror attacks on the American homeland had been foiled since
2001.
more attacks would have succeeded absent the
ramped-up counter-terror efforts undertaken by the U.S. intelligence community
a large
element of the
success lies in use of
communications intercepts.
That is the most
important technical advantage we have in the battle against fanatical foes who will not hesitate to
sacrifice their lives to take ours Which brings us to the
monitoring programs
Another program provides access to all the emails, videos and
other data found on the servers of major Internet firms such as Google
these intelligencegathering activities raise the specter of
ordinary American citizens
. In
fact, there are considerable safeguards built in programs to ensure that doesn't happen The phonemonitoring program does not allow the NSA to listen in on conversations without a court order. All that
it can do is to collect information on the time, date and destination of phone calls.
,
widespread
many
ist
nited
tates.
. We haven't escaped entirely unscathed (see Boston Marathon, bombing of), but
, including me,
the current controversy over the
ational
ecurity
gency's
of
and emails,
:
Radical Islamists still want to kill American infidels. But
the vast majority of the time, they fail. The Heritage Foundation estimated last year that
ist
Some, admittedly, failed through sheer incompetence on the part of the would-be terrorists. For instance, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani American jihadist, planted a car bomb in Times Square in 2010 that started smoking before exploding, thereby al erting two New Yorkers
who in turn called police, who were able to defuse it. But it would be naive to adduce all of our security success to pure serendipity. Surely
ism
, the military and law enforcement. And
intelligence community's
its
special intelligence — that is,
The CIA is notoriously deficient in human intelligence
— infiltrating spies into terrorist organizations is hard to do, especially when we have so few spooks who speak Urdu, Arabic, Persian and other relevant languages. But the NSA is the best in the world at intercepting communications.
.
current kerfuffle over two NSA
that have been exposed by the Guardian and
the Washington Post. One program apparently collects metadata on all telephone calls made in the United States.
, Apple and Microsoft. At first blush
Big Brother snooping on
who might be cheating on their spouses or bad-mouthing the president
to both
.
It should go without saying that it would be pretty useful to
know if someone in the U.S. is calling a number in Pakistan or Yemen that is used by a terrorist organizer. As for the Internet-monitoring program, reportedly known as PRISM, it is apparently limited to "non-U.S. persons" who are abroad and thereby enjoy no constitutional protections.
These are hardly rogue operations. Both programs were initiated by President George W. Bush and continued by President Obama with the full knowledge and support of Congress and continuing oversight from the federal judiciary. That's why the leaders of both the House and Senate
It's possible that government programs could be abused
But there is no evidence of abuse so far and plenty of evidence
that
these programs have been effective in disrupting terror plots.
intelligence committees, Republicans and Democrats alike, have come to the defense of these activities.
, like all
example, the IRS making life tough on tea partiers.
, these
— see, for
— in the lack of successful terrorist attacks —
ist
Granted there is something inherently creepy about Uncle Sam scooping up so much information about us. But
Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Citibank and other companies know at least as much about us, because they use very similar data-mining programs to track our online movements. They gather that information in order to sell us products, and no one seems to be overly alarmed. The
NSA is gathering that information to keep us safe from terrorist attackers. Yet somehow its actions have become a "scandal," to use a term now loosely being tossed around. The real scandal here is that the Guardian and Washington Post are compromising our national security by telling
our enemies about our intelligence-gathering capabilities. Their news stories reveal, for example, that only nine Internet companies share information with the NSA. This is a virtual invitation to terrorists to use other Internet outlets for searches, email, apps and all the rest. No
to stop or scale back the NSA's special intelligence efforts would amount to unilateral
against terror
intelligence effort can ever keep us 100% safe, but
disarmament
in a war
ism that is far from over.
Curtailing surveillance boosts terror risks- that risk is serious and underestimated
Lewis ’14 James Andrew Lewis is a senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., where he writes on technology, security, and the international
economy. Before joining CSIS, he worked at the US Departments of State and Commerce as a Foreign Service officer and as a
member of the Senior Executive Service. His diplomatic experience included negotiations on military basing in Asia, the
Cambodia peace process, and the five-power talks on arms transfer restraint. Lewis received his Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago. “Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate” - CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - STRATEGIC
TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM – December - http://csis.org/publication/underestimating-risk-surveillance-debate
Americans are reluctant to accept terrorism is part of their daily lives, but attacks have been planned or
attempted against American targets (usually airliners or urban areas) almost every year since 9/11. Europe faces even greater risk, given
the thousands of European Union citizens who will return hardened and radicalized from fighting in Syria and Iraq. The threat of attack is easy to exaggerate,
but that does not mean it is nonexistent. Australia’s then-attorney general said in August 2013 that communications surveillance had stopped four “mass
casualty events” since 2008. The constant planning and preparation for attack by terrorist groups is not apparent to the public. The dilemma in assessing risk is
that it is discontinuous. There can be long periods with no noticeable activity, only to have the apparent
calm explode. The debate over how to reform communications surveillance has discounted this risk.
Communications surveillance is an essential law enforcement and intelligence tool. There is no replacement for it.
Some suggestions for alternative approaches to surveillance, such as the idea that the National Security Agency (NSA) only track
known or suspected terrorists, reflect wishful thinking, as it is the unknown terrorist who will inflict the
greatest harm.
Strong intelligence gathering is key to discourages initiation of BW attacks.
Pittenger ’14 US Rep. Robert Pittenger, chair of Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, “Bipartisan bill on NSA data
collection protects both privacy and national security” - Washington Examiner, 6/9/14, http://washingtonexaminer.com/rep.robert-pittenger-bipartisan-bill-on-nsa-data-collection-protects-both-privacy-and-nationalsecurity/article/2549456?custom_click=rss&utm_campaign=Weekly+Standard+Story+Box&utm_source=weeklystandard.com&
utm_medium=referral
took that question to a meeting of European Ambassadors at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. During
the conference, I asked three questions: 1. What is the current worldwide terrorist threat? 2. What is America’s role in addressing and mitigating this threat? 3. What role does
intelligence data collection play in this process, given the multiple platforms for attack including physical assets, cyber, chemical,
This February, I
biological nuclear and the electric grid? Each ambassador acknowledged the threat was greater
,
today than before 9/11, with al Qaeda and other extreme Islamist terrorists stronger, more sophisticated, and having a dozen or
more training camps throughout the Middle East and Africa. As to the role of the United States, they felt our efforts were
primary and essential for peace and security around the world. Regarding the intelligence-gathering, their
consensus was, “We want privacy, but we must have your intelligence.” As a European foreign minister stated to me, “Without U.S.
intelligence, we are blind.” We cannot yield to those loud but misguided voices who view the world as void of the deadly and
destructive intentions of unrelenting terrorists. The number of terrorism-related deaths worldwide doubled between
2012 and 2013, jumping from 10,000 to 20,000 in just one year. Now is not the time to stand down. Those who embrace an altruistic
worldview should remember that vigilance and strength have deterred our enemies in the past. That same
commitment is required today to defeat those who seek to destroy us and our way of life. We must make careful, prudent
use of all available technology to counter their sophisticated operations if we are to maintain our freedom and liberties.
Bioterror attacks cause extinction
Mhyrvold ‘13 Nathan, Began college at age 14, BS and Masters from UCLA, Masters and PhD, Princeton “Strategic
Terrorism: A Call to Action,” Working Draft, The Lawfare Research Paper Series Research paper NO . 2 – 2013
most of the classic bioweapons are
based on 1960s and 1970s technology because the 1972 treaty halted bioweapons development efforts
in the United States and most other Western countries. Second, the Russians, although solidly committed to biological weapons long after the
As horrible as this would be, such a pandemic is by no means the worst attack one can imagine, for several reasons. First,
the science and technology of molecular biology have
made enormous advances, utterly transforming the field in the last few decades . High school biology students
treaty deadline, were never on the cutting edge of biological research. Third and most important,
routinely perform molecular-biology manipulations that would have been impossible even for the best
superpower-funded program back in the heyday of biological-weapons research. The biowarfare
methods of the 1960s and 1970s are now as antiquated as the lumbering mainframe computers of that
era. Tomorrow’s terrorists will have vastly more deadly bugs to choose from . Consider this sobering development: in 2001, Australian
researchers working on mousepox, a nonlethal virus that infects mice (as chickenpox does in humans), accidentally discovered that a simple genetic modification transformed the virus.10, 11
Instead of producing mild symptoms, the new virus killed 60% of even those mice already immune to the naturally occurring strains of mousepox. The new virus, moreover, was unaffected by
Buller’s
variation on mousepox was 100% lethal, although his team of investigators also devised combination vaccine and antiviral therapies that were partially
effective in protecting animals from the engineered strain.12, 13 Another saving grace is that the genetically altered virus is no longer contagious.
Of course, it is quite possible that future tinkering with the virus will change that property, too. Strong
reasons exist to believe that the genetic modifications Buller made to mousepox would work for other poxviruses and possibly
for other classes of viruses as well. Might the same techniques allow chickenpox or another poxvirus that infects humans to be turned into a
100% lethal bioweapon, perhaps one that is resistant to any known antiviral therapy? I’ve asked this question of
experts many times, and no one has yet replied that such a manipulation couldn’t be done. This case is
just one example. Many more are pouring out of scientific journals and conferences every year. Just last year, the journal Nature published a
any existing vaccine or antiviral drug. A team of researchers at Saint Louis University led by Mark Buller picked up on that work and, by late 2003, found a way to improve on it:
controversial study done at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in which virologists enumerated the changes one would need to make to a highly lethal strain of bird flu to make it easily
Biotechnology is advancing so rapidly that it is hard to keep track of all the new
potential threats. Nor is it clear that anyone is even trying. In addition to lethality and drug resistance, many other parameters
can be played with, given that the infectious power of an epidemic depends on many properties , including the
length of the latency period during which a person is contagious but asymptomatic. Delaying the onset of
serious symptoms allows each new case to spread to more people and thus makes the virus harder to stop. This
transmitted from one mammal to another.14
dynamic is perhaps best illustrated by HIV , which is very difficult to transmit compared with smallpox and many other viruses. Intimate contact is needed,
and even then, the infection rate is low. The balancing factor is that HIV can take years to progress to AIDS , which can
then take many more years to kill the victim. What makes HIV so dangerous is that infected people have lots of opportunities to infect others. This
A virus
genetically engineered to infect its host quickly, to generate symptoms slowly—say, only after weeks or months—and to
spread easily through the air or by casual contact would be vastly more devastating than HIV . It could silently
penetrate the population to unleash its deadly effects suddenly. This type of epidemic would be almost
impossible to combat because most of the infections would occur before the epidemic became obvious. A
property has allowed HIV to claim more than 30 million lives so far, and approximately 34 million people are now living with this virus and facing a highly uncertain future.15
technologically sophisticated terrorist group could develop such a virus and kill a large part of humanity with it.
Indeed, terrorists may not have to develop it themselves: some scientist may do so first and publish the details. Given the rate at
which biologists are making discoveries about viruses and the immune system, at some point in the near
future, someone may create artificial pathogens that could drive the human race to extinction. Indeed, a
detailed species-elimination plan of this nature was openly proposed in a scientific journal. The ostensible purpose
of that particular research was to suggest a way to extirpate the malaria mosquito, but similar techniques could be directed toward
humans.16 When I’ve talked to molecular biologists about this method, they are quick to point out that it is slow and easily detectable and could be fought with biotech remedies. If you
challenge them to come up with improvements to the suggested attack plan, however, they have plenty of ideas. Modern biotechnology will soon be capable,
if it is not already, of bringing about the demise of the human race— or at least of killing a sufficient
number of people to end high-tech civilization and set humanity back 1,000 years or more. That terrorist groups
could achieve this level of technological sophistication may seem far-fetched, but keep in mind that it takes only a handful of individuals to accomplish these tasks. Never has lethal power of
this potency been accessible to so few, so easily. Even more dramatically than nuclear proliferation, modern biological science has frighteningly undermined the correlation between the
lethality of a weapon and its cost, a fundamentally stabilizing mechanism throughout history. Access to extremely lethal agents—lethal enough to exterminate Homo sapiens—will be available
to anybody with a solid background in biology, terrorists included.
turns case
privacy
Terror disad turns the Aff – spikes surveillance.
Clarke ’13 (et al; This is the Final Report and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and
Communications Technologies. President Obama ordered a blue-ribbon task force to review domestic surveillance. This report
releases the findings of that group. The report was headed by five experts – including Richard Alan Clarke, who is the former
National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States. Other expert
contributors include Michael Joseph Morell, who was the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and served as
acting director twice in 2011 and from 2012 to 2013 and Cass Robert Sunstein, who was the Administrator of the White House
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration and is currently a Professor of Law at Harvard Law
School. “LIBERTY AND SECURITY IN A CHANGING WORLD” – December 12th, 2013 – Easily obtained via a google search.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F
2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdocs%2F2013-12
12_rg_final_report.pdf&ei=Db0yVdDjKIKdNtTXgZgE&usg=AFQjCNH0S_Fo9dckL9bRarVpi4M6pq6MQ&bvm=bv.91071109,d.eXY)
government should base its decisions on a careful analysis of consequences, including both benefits
and costs
The
(to the extent feasible). In many areas of policy, public officials are increasingly insistent on the need for careful analysis of the consequences of their decisions and on the importance of relying not on intuitions and anecdotes, but on evidence and data,
including benefits and costs (to the extent feasible). In the context of government regulation, President Ronald Reagan established a national commitment to careful analysis of regulations in his Executive Order 12291, issued in 1981. In 2011, President Barack Obama issued Executive
Order 13563, which renewed and deepened the commitment to quantitative, evidence-based analysis, and added a number of additional requirements to improve regulatory review, directing agencies “to use the best available techniques to quantify anticipated present and future
benefits and costs as accurately as possible” in order to achieve regulatory ends. A central component of Executive Order 13563 involves “retrospective analysis,” meant to ensure not merely prospective analysis of (anticipated) costs and benefits, but also continuing efforts to explore
what policies have actually achieved, or failed to achieve, in the real world. In our view, both prospective and retrospective analyses have important roles to play in the domain under discussion, though they also present distinctive challenges, above all because of limits in available
surveillance decisions should depend
the anticipated consequences including the full range of relevant risks.
knowledge and challenges in quantifying certain variables. Before they are undertaken,
(to the extent feasible)
,
on a careful assessment of
Such decisions should also be subject to continuing scrutiny, including retrospective analysis,
to ensure that any errors are corrected. As we have seen, there is always a possibility that acquisition of more information—whether in the US or abroad—might ultimately prove helpful. But that abstract possibility does not, by itself, provide a sufficient justification for acquiring more
information. Because risk management is inevitably involved, the question is one of benefits and costs, which requires careful attention to the range of possible outcomes and also to the likelihood that they will actually occur. To the extent feasible, such attention must be based on the
In some cases, officials are
attempting to reduce risks
quantification
experience may turn out to be the best teacher
available evidence. Where evidence is unavailable, public officials must acknowledge the limits of what they know.
that are not subject t
o specification or
public
reasonably
in advance. In such cases,
; it may show
that programs are not working well, and that the benefits and costs are different from what was anticipated. Continued learning and constant scrutiny, with close reference to the consequences, is necessary to safeguard both national security and personal privacy, and to ensure proper
management of the full range of risks that are involved. Finally, in constructing oversight and monitoring of intelligence agencies and particularly of surveillance, the US Government must take care to address perceptions of potential abuse, as well as any realities. To maintain and
it is challenging to strike the right balance between
national security and individual liberty, but as history teaches, it is particularly difficult to reconcile
these values in times of real or perceived crisis.
there is inevitably a risk of overreaction
when we
fear. At such moments those charged with responsibility for keeping our nation safe
supported by an anxious public have too often
jeopardized individual freedom This phenomenon is evident throughout
history.
we have
overreacted in periods of national crisis and then later, with the benefit of hindsight, recognized our
failures
enhance the required level of public trust, especially careful oversight is advisable. For reasons that we have outlined,
always
the often competing
values of
national
act out of
Human nature being what it is,
,
,
dangerously
the
,
gone beyond programs and policies that were in fact necessary and appropriate to protect the nation and taken steps that unnecessarily and sometimes
.
American
Too often,
, reevaluated our judgments, and attempted to correct our policies going forward. We must learn the lessons of history. As early as 1798, Congress enacted the Sedition Act, now widely regarded as a violation of the most fundamental principles of freedom of
expression. Nor is the historical verdict kind to a wide range of liberty restricting measures undertaken in other periods of great national anxiety, including the repeated suspensions of the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the suppression of dissent during World War I, the
when
the nation is at risk
the argument for new restrictions may seem and even be plausible.
Serious threats may tip preexisting balances.
With respect to surveillance in particular
history
can be traced back to the Vietnam War.
Johnson and Nixon
encouraged government intelligence agencies to investigate alleged “subversives” in the antiwar
movement. The
FBI engaged in extensive infiltration and electronic surveillance of individuals
and organizations opposed to the war; the
CIA monitored a broad array of antiwar
organizations and activities, accumulating information on more than 300,000 people
internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the campaign to expose and harass persons suspected of “disloyalty” during the McCarthy era, and the widespread and unlawful spying on critics of the government’s policies during the Vietnam War. It is true that
, or engaged in some kind of military conflict,
,
,
But it is also true that in such periods, there is a temptation to ignore the fact that risks are on all sides of the equation, and to compromise liberty at the expense
of security. One of our central goals in this Report is to provide secure foundations for future decisions, when public fears may heighten those dangers.
is lengthy and elaborate, but the issues in the modern era
Federal Bureau of Investigation (
, the nation’s
directly
Presidents Lyndon
Richard
)
Central Intelligence Agency (
)
; and Army intelligence initiated its own domestic
spying operation, gathering information on more than 100,000 opponents of the Vietnam War, including Members of Congress, civil rights leaders, and journalists. The government sought not only to investigate its critics on a massive scale, but also to expose, disrupt, and neutralize their
efforts to affect public opinion.
National Security interests outweigh the Aff’s privacy concerns.
Branda ‘14
(et al; JOYCE R. BRANDA, Acting Assistant Attorney General, BRIEF FOR THE APPELLEES - Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama –
before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal
reference to the Reporters Committee – October 2nd - https://www.eff.org/document/governments-smith-answering-brief)
In light of the imperative national-security interests the program serves and the numerous privacy
protections that the statute and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court require the government to
observe, the program is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. See U.S. Const. amend. IV. That reasonableness standard
requires balancing “the promotion of legitimate governmental interests against the degree to which [any search] intrudes upon an individual’s
privacy.” Maryland v. King, 133 S. Ct. 1958, 1970 (2013) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The interest in preventing terrorist attacks by identifying
and tracking terrorist operatives is a national security concern of compelling importance. See Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280, 307 (1981) (“ no
governmental interest is more compelling” than national security); In re Directives, 551 F.3d 1004, 1012 (FISC-R 2008) (“the relevant governmental
interest—the interest in national security—is of the highest order of magnitude”). The Section 215 bulk telephony metadata program enhances the government’s
ability to uncover and monitor known and unknown terrorist operatives who could otherwise elude detection, and has
meaningfully contributed to counterterrorism investigations. SER 20-26, ER 74-76. Any Fourth Amendment privacy interest
implicated by the Section 215 program, in contrast, is minimal. The governing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders strictly limit review
and analysis of the metadata, and there is no nonspeculative basis to believe that any information concerning plaintiff’s
calls—or those of the vast bulk of other telephone subscribers—has been or will ever be seen by any person. See King, 133 S. Ct. at
1979-80 (finding no Fourth Amendment violation where safeguards limiting DNA analysis to identification information alone reduced any intrusion into privacy); Bd. of Educ. v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822, 833-34 (2002) (no Fourth
Amendment violation where restrictions on access to drug testing results lessened intrusion on privacy); Vernonia Sch. Dist., 515 U.S. at 658 (no Fourth Amendment violation where student athletes’ urine was tested for illegal
drugs and not for any medical condition); Sitz, 496 U.S. at 450-51 (no Fourth Amendment violation where safety interests served by drunk-driving checkpoints outweighed motorists’ interests in driving without being stopped). The
government obtains telephony metadata in bulk to preserve the information for future analysis based on a reasonable, articulable suspicion; the information is then only accessed as part of the highly restricted querying process,
which requires judicial approval.
Terrorism risk outweighs the specific privacy interest at hand
Branda ‘14
(et al; JOYCE R. BRANDA, Acting Assistant Attorney General, BRIEF FOR THE APPELLEES - Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama –
before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal
reference to the Reporters Committee – October 2nd - https://www.eff.org/document/governments-smith-answering-brief)
The Section 215 telephony metadata program serves
important national security interests, and courts are rightly sensitive to the risks of handcuffing the
government’s efforts to prevent harm to the Nation. Plaintiff claims to suffer irreparable harm from this anti-terrorism program, but waited six months after
filing her complaint before seeking preliminary relief. Plaintiff has at most a minimal privacy interest in having metadata about her
calls removed from the Section 215 database, one that is outweighed by the public interest in maintaining the program’s
important capabilities in combating the continuing terrorist threat.
There is no basis for plaintiff’s request for the extraordinary remedy of preliminary injunctive relief.
Neg’s terror disad on-point outweighs privacy advantage.
Branda ‘14
(et al; JOYCE R. BRANDA, Acting Assistant Attorney General, BRIEF FOR THE APPELLEES - Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama –
before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal
reference to the Reporters Committee – October 2nd - https://www.eff.org/document/governments-smith-answering-brief)
The balance of equities and the public interest also tip markedly in the government’s favor. Any privacy interest
plaintiff has at stake here is surely minimal, particularly given the remote likelihood that metadata pertaining to her calls would
ever be reviewed by a human analyst. On the other side of the ledger, the government has a substantial
interest in continuing the Section 215 program, a valuable program in the government’s antiterrorism arsenal, for
reasons already explained.
Security interests of this program outweigh privacy concerns.
Branda ‘14
(et al; JOYCE R. BRANDA, Acting Assistant Attorney General, BRIEF FOR THE APPELLEES - Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama –
before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal
reference to the Reporters Committee – October 2nd - https://www.eff.org/document/governments-smith-answering-brief)
Even if obtaining bulk telephony metadata from the business records of telecommunications companies were a Fourth Amendment “search,” it would nevertheless
be constitutionally permissible. The
Fourth Amendment bars only unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Section 215
telephony-metadata program is reasonable under the standard applicable to searches that serve “special
needs” of the government. See, e.g., Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 653 (1995). The national security and safety
interests served by the Section 215 program are special needs of the utmost importance that go beyond
ordinary law enforcement needs. See Nat’l Treasury Emps. Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 674 (1989) (noting “national security” interest in
deterring drug use among Customs Service employees); United States v. U.S. Dist. Court (Keith), 407 U.S. 297, 322-23 (1972); Cassidy v. Chertoff, 471 F.3d 67, 82 (2d
Cir. 2006); MacWade v. Kelly, 460 F.3d 260, 270-71 (2d Cir. 2006) (citing Sitz, 496 U.S. at 444). Plaintiff agrees that the
special-needs doctrine applies
where compliance with “the warrant and probable-cause requirements” is “impracticable.” Pl. Br. 29. That standard governs here because, as the
government has shown and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has repeatedly concluded, the Section 215 bulk telephony-metadata program
provides an efficient means to identify otherwise-unknown associations (within one or two steps of contact) with
telephone numbers and other selectors that are reasonably suspected of being used by terrorist organizations. The bulk
collection of metadata allows the government to identify connections using retrospective analysis of calls that occurred before the relevant terrorist connection
became known. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders authorizing the Section 215 bulk telephony-metadata program permit the government to retain a
historical repository of up to five years’ worth of telephony metadata, cutting across multiple providers, for intelligence analysis purposes that could not be
accomplished as effectively, if at all, with more targeted investigative tools, such as probable-cause warrants. SER 20-26, ER 74-76. Under current law, “serving the
phone companies with demands for records relating to particular terrorism suspects,” Pl. Br. 34, does not allow the historical analysis conducted under the Section
215 program to occur as effectively. SER 25.
race
Terror attack spikes racial hate crimes
Akram ‘2
Et al - SUSAN MUSARRAT AKRAM, Professor and Supervising Attorney - Boston University International Human Rights Clinical
Program. She holds a JD from The Georgetown University Law Center. Was formerly a Visiting Professor at AL-QUDS
UNIVERSITY, PALESTINE SCHOOL OF LAW. Her research and publications focus on immigration, asylum, refugee and human and
civil rights. “Race, Civil Rights, and Immigration Law after September 11, 2001: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims.” NYU
Annual Survey of American Law 58 (2002), 295-355. http://www.privacysos.org/sites/all/files/akram.pdf
Times of crisis are often accompanied by hostility toward minorities in the United States. For Arabs and
Muslims, this may be even more problematic, as perpetrators of hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims frequently fail to
differentiate among persons based on religion or ethnic origin, from Pakistanis, Indians, Iranians, and
Japanese to Muslims, Sikhs and Christian Arabs.89 The widespread perception in the United States is that
Arabs and Muslims are identical and eager to wage a holy war against the United States.90 In fact, according to a
1993 report, only 12% of the Muslims in the United States at that time were Arab,91 and Arab Mus-lims are even a minority in the Arab-American community.92
Although there are Muslim “extremists,” the majority of Muslims are “decent, law-abiding, productive citizens.”93 Because
of the lack of
differentiation between different types of Arabs and Muslims, terrorist acts by small groups of Arabs and Muslims often have been
followed by generalized hostility toward entire communities of Arabs and Muslims in the United States.
For example, after Lebanese Shi’a gunmen in 1985 highjacked TWA Flight 847 to Beirut, beat an American on the plane to death, and held the remaining passengers
hostage for over two weeks,94 violent attacks against persons of Arab and Muslim origin occurred across the United States.95 Islamic centers and Arab-American
organizations were vandalized and threatened. A Houston mosque was firebombed. A bomb exploded in the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee office in
Boston, severely injuring two policemen. 96 Later that same year, after terrorists hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise liner and murdered a passenger, a wave of antiArab violence swept the country, including the bombing of an American- Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee office that killed its regional executive director.97
empirics prove
King, 12
(Ryan D. King is an associate professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Albany in the
United States. His research focuses on extremist violence and hate crime in the United States and
Europe, “Terrorist Attacks and Hate Crimes: Lessons from 9/11”,
http://extremisproject.org/2012/12/terrorist-attacks-and-hate-crimes-lessons-from-911/, December 10,
2012, ak.)
Balbir Singh Sodhi walked out of the Chevron station he owned in Mesa, Arizona, to arrange a flowerbed outside the store. Seconds later, a pickup
a Sikh immigrant from India and the father of two
daughters, was shot five times and lay dead in front of his store, the victim of the first, but not the last, fatal
hate crime following the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Sodhi’s assailant, Frank Roque, subsequently fired on two other persons that day who appeared in
On September 15th, 2001,
truck pulled into the gas station, stopped briefly, and the driver fired several shots from a .38 handgun. Sodhi,
his eyes to be Arab or Muslim. When apprehended, Roque stated he was “a patriot” and “stood for America all the way.” Much scholarly attention has been directed towards the terrorist
attacks of 9/11 in the United States, and rightly so. It’s imperative that we learn what warning signs were missed and what security measures were inadequate. Yet there is also a story to be
among the lessons we learned from 9/11 is that a backlash in the form of hate crime is
likely to follow. The murder of Balbir Sodhi was one of many hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims and
Arabs, or those who appeared to be of that faith or ethnicity, beginning on September 11th, 2001. According to hate
crime statistics provided by the FBI, there were over 1,000 hate crimes with an anti-Muslim or anti-Arab
motive during the fourteen-day period beginning on September 11th.* By comparison, fewer than 300 hate crimes with this
told about the aftermath, and
motivation were reported to the FBI between January 1st and September 10th of that year. If we focus only on anti-Islamic hate crimes (omitting anti-Arab), 60% of the hate crimes that year
post-9/11 hate crime wave was fueled largely by the emotion of anger and the
desire for retribution that pervaded the United States, a fact that should not surprise us. The 20th century is replete with examples of
mass violence against minority groups that were ignited by terrorist attacks or assassinations. For instance, the
occurred during that two-week stretch. The
Kristallnacht pogrom that took of the lives of many German Jews in November of 1938 followed the assassination of a German diplomat at the hands of a Jewish youth. The
psychologist Brian Lickel and his colleagues refer to this tendency as ‘vicarious retribution’ – a proclivity to punish innocent
third parties who in some way resemble the perpetrators of an attack – and this sentiment is often found in
the wake of terrorist acts. When my colleagues, Ilir Disha (University at Albany and lead author of the study) and James Cavendish (University of South Florida), and I
wrote about post-9/11 hate crimes in the United States in the journal Social Problems, we focused on the broader lessons to be learned from the 9/11 case. Our study looked at the pre and
post-9/11 hate crimes in detail, breaking down crimes by day and type to answer some fundamental questions. For instance, how long did the post-9/11 hate crime wave last? Were hate
crimes more likely to be perpetrated in New York and Washington than places not directly targeted by the terrorists? Were these crimes perpetrated by organized groups? And what, if
anything, might be done to stymie hate crime waves in the future? Our results suggest a few patterns. Hate crime waves following terrorist attacks are intense but short in duration With
respect to the first issue – the duration of the hate crime wave – our analysis shows that post 9/11 hate crimes took the form of a peak more than a plateau (see Figure below). The crime wave
began abruptly on September 11th and reached its highpoint within 48 hours, and the subsequent decline was nearly as rapid. In short, we can expect hate crime waves following terrorist
attacks by foreign groups to be immediate and intense, but ultimately short in duration. There is some evidence that hate crime levels never fully returned to pre-9/11 averages, but clearly the
initial wave quickly subsided. Attacks are geographically dispersed and victimization risk is associated with target population size We also find that hate crimes increased across the country.
That Balbir Sodhi was murdered thousands of miles from the site of the attacks is not anomalous. Anti-Muslim hate crimes increased in Mesa as well as New York; in Chicago as much as in
Washington. Among the few demographic characteristics that help sort out where Arabs and Muslims were at higher risk are the size of these respective populations. Intuitively, the raw
number of hate crimes was more likely in counties with larger Arab and Muslim populations, largely because of opportunity; more targets equate to more crimes. Yet if we look at the rate of
hate crimes per Arab or Muslim population, our analysis suggests that individual Arabs and Muslims were at higher risk of victimization where they were small in number. Counties with large
Arab populations, such as Wayne County in Michigan (largest city is Detroit) experienced more hate crimes than other large counties, but when standardizing this number by the Arab
population the rate was far smaller than other counties. From the victim’s perspective we might say there is safety in numbers. Evidence suggests hate crimes were rarely the work of
organized hate groups Finally, there is no evidence that a sizeable proportion of hate crime was perpetrated by organized hate groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an
organization that tracks extremist groups,
the number of anti-Muslim hate groups increased after the attacks of 2001, yet the FBI
data and media reports of hate crimes indicate that people like Frank Roque were the more common perpetrator – angry men with a grievance, but not actively involved with an extremist
organization. Two additional points are pertinent to the aftermath of mass terrorism, particularly as it relates to hate crime. First, is the post 9/11 hate crime wave unique? Or should we
expect a similar backlash in other settings? In my assessment 9/11 is unique only in its magnitude. We saw a smaller but hardly negligible increase in hate crimes against Muslims following the
Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, for which responsibility was initially attributed to Islamic fundamentalists (it was soon revealed that an American, Timothy McVeigh, was responsible, and the
anti-Muslim attacks ceased). As the economist Steven Machin has found in his research, attacks against Muslims also rose sharply following the bombing of the London Underground in July of
backlash seems predictable, particularly
following lethal attacks in which responsibility is attributed to a specific minority group. Finally, can anything be done
2005. A violent wave of anti-Islamic attacks also followed a deadly attack on a train in India in February of 2002. A
to prevent hate crimes against innocent civilians if another terrorist attack occurs? My guess is there is little that local or federal governments could have done to prevent the murder of Mr.
Sodhi. However, if the goal is to minimize the intensity of attacks on innocent third parties following a terrorist act, two actions are worth trying. The first is simply disseminating information to
Arabs and Muslims (and Sikhs as well) should take extra precautions during the week following a terrorist attack in which Islamist fundamentalists
are suspects. They are clearly at a higher risk of victimization during the week or two after an attack such as 9/11 or
at-risk populations.
July 7. A second action calls on leaders to confront the issue early and publicly. About a week following the 9/11 attacks President Bush gave a speech stating that the true faith of Islam was
not about terrorism, and that Muslim Americans should be treated with respect. Whether this speech truly had an effect is beyond the scope of this blog (although hate crimes decreased after
the lessons of
9/11 suggest that the potential for reactionary crime and violence is high, and we should plan accordingly.
the speech), but setting the tone at the top is among the few weapons in the government’s arsenal. Our first hope is that terrorism does not occur. But if it does,
torture
In the aftermath of a terror attack, the government uses torture to deal with the
threat
Conrad et al, 14
(Courtenay R. Conrad Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Merced,
Justin Conrad is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration
at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, James, Associate Professor (with tenure), Department of
Political Science, The Pennsylvania State University, “Who Tortures the Terrorists? Transnational
Terrorism and Military Torture”, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/fpa.12066/full, October,
13, 2014, ak.)
Terrorist attacks can have far-reaching, long-term consequences.2 Successful attacks directly and indirectly harm the target state's economy (Enders and
Sandler 2006), especially as attacks often occur within the context of larger, more costly civil conflicts (Findley and Young 2011). Terrorist attacks can also lead to
loss of support for incumbent leaders and influence voting patterns in democracies (Berrebi and Klor 2008). These negative consequences create
strong
pressures for governments to prevent attacks and minimize their repercussions when they do occur, and we argue that
such pressures might lead governments to engage in higher levels of torture and physical abuse. First,
although there is popular debate about the quality of intelligence produced when detainees are questioned under physical duress,3 government officials
may torture terrorist suspects to generate information about future attacks (e.g., Dershowitz 2002; Ignatieff 2004). For
example, Bush administration official Mark Thiessen argues that the “enhanced interrogations” of Khalid Sheik
Mohammed yielded intelligence that foiled terrorist plans to fly an aircraft into a California skyscraper: “Without
enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New
York” (Thiessen 2009). Second, torture may deter future terrorist activities. Potential terrorists may be dissuaded from engaging in
attacks against states that respond to terrorism with human rights violations and other forms of indiscriminate violence (Lyall 2009).4 We discuss each of these
mechanisms in turn.5 Torture and Intelligence Governments often lack reliable information
about terrorist groups and their
activities. This is by design on the part of the terrorists themselves. Organizations that engage in transnational and domestic terrorism do so most often because
they are weak, lacking the capabilities to engage in conventional military strategies, and because they lack popular support for their goals to engage in political
mobilization (Crenshaw 1998; Lake 2002; Kydd and Walter 2006). Because of their relative weakness compared with the states they target, it
is crucial for
terrorists to keep their organization and activities clandestine, to misrepresent their capabilities and
resolve (Lake 2002) and to keep secret the geographic location of their operations. Although some states have successfully
negotiated with terrorists (e.g., Jones and Libicki 2008), the increased probability of bargaining failures and the higher risks of defection by terrorist actors make
such negotiations fraught with difficulty, even if the state is willing to offer concessions.6 States
therefore frequently seek to deal with
terrorism by eliminating groups and their members through policing and military action. Due to the clandestine
and opaque nature of terrorism and terrorist threats, a critical barrier to effective counterterrorism policy is a lack of intelligence about the details of terrorist
organizations themselves and their plans for future terrorist attacks. During the height of the Iraq War, US government sources frequently cited lack of information
about terrorist groups as a key reason for the persistence of the terrorist threat. As an example of the staggering dynamism and complexity of terrorist movements
in that conflict, one journalist compiled a list of 103 groups claiming responsibility for attacks on Americans and Iraqis during a 6-month period in 2005 (Filkins
2008). As authorities become better able to gather intelligence on terrorist threats, the likelihood of successful deterrence, defence, and bargaining increases.
Consequently, the occurrence of terrorist attacks is lower when states have accurate information about the capabilities and intentions of terrorist organizations that
facilitates better counterterrorism efforts. Because intelligence
collection is necessary for preventing terrorist attacks,
governments faced with terrorist threats are incentivized to use whatever intelligence gathering
techniques are available to generate counterterrorism information, including the use of physical abuse
and torture of suspects and detainees. State officials have long engaged in torture both to establish the
credibility of witness testimony and to aid in the determination of guilt or innocence (Rejali 2007). Proponents have
argued that torture of suspected terrorists and their supporters can provide actionable intelligence (Johnson and Ryan 2012), increasing the state's ability to foil
future attacks, identify members and/or destroy terrorist group cells. State
agents are especially likely to engage in torture when
they believe that it will generate information to eliminate a potential threat (Wantchekon and Healy 1999) and/or
prevent a future attack.7 Increased intelligence is also important if the state wishes to respond to terrorism with more targeted violence.
Indiscriminate repression, which is directed at the general population rather than specifically at members
of terrorist and dissident groups, is unlikely to control dissent (e.g., Kalyvas and Kocher 2007; Kocher, Pepinksy, and Kalyvas 2011), eliminate
insurgency (e.g., Findley and Young 2007, Sullivan 2011), or reduce terrorist attacks (e.g., Walsh and Piazza 2010; Dugan and Chenoweth 2012). Torture offers a
focused method of gathering information about dissident activities, which increases the likelihood that state violence is targeted at insurgents and terrorists rather
than at the population more generally. Torture and Deterrence Second, supporters
of torture frequently claim it has a deterrent
effect on terrorism. Torture—more broadly and indiscriminately applied—may be used to punish individual terrorists or
as part of a strategy to intimidate and deter members and supporters of the terrorist organization. Physical punishment as a means
of deterrence is a centuries-old legal and philosophical concept viewed as a legitimate function of sovereign governments (e.g., Hobbes 1651; Locke 1689). Sullivan
(2011:6) argues that one
of the “desired results” of torture is to, “create a link between disobedient behavior
and pain, thereby reinforcing legal norms by associating transgression with negative sanctions .” As with
punishment for criminal offenses, individuals may refrain from participating in or supporting terrorism if authorities have a reputation for torturing suspected
terrorists and sympathizers. The French Army, for instance, randomly tortured Algerian citizens during the Algerian War in the 1960s (DiMarco 2006), suggesting
that torture was used as a punitive and deterrent tool to prevent additional terrorist attacks.8 Supporters
of this tactic argue that using
torture to encourage fear (Walter 1969, Wantchekon and Healy 2005) among terrorist sympathizers and within the general populace can
potentially stem the future growth of terrorist organizations.
Especially true with the increased risk of terrorism
Conrad et al, 15
(Courtenay R. Conrad Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Merced,
Justin Conrad is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration
at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, James, Associate Professor (with tenure), Department of
Political Science, The Pennsylvania State University, “When do countries respond to terrorism with
torture?”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/01/13/understanding-whenstates-rarely-respond-to-terrorism-with-torture/, January 13, 2015, ak.)
Militaries have historically devoted most of their attention to planning for war, not counterterrorism. Torture is a practice that they can implement quickly and
(seemingly) cheaply to gain intelligence about terrorist threats, making it a tempting solution to a novel policy challenge. Police and prison officials, in contrast, are
less likely to view responding to transnational threats as central to their organizational missions, and thus do not respond by increasing the degree to which they
torture. We assess this argument with data from the Ill-Treatment and Torture Data Collection Project, which disaggregates the agencies engaging in torture for
countries around the world from 1995 through 2005. Figure 1 illustrates this relationship by depicting the predicted probability that a country’s military will engage
in greater degrees of torture. The
likelihood of widespread, systemic torture by military forces increases sharply
with the number of transnational terrorist attacks, while the chance that the military will refrain from torturing declines. We further find
that this response is most likely in established democracies. At first glance, this claim is surprising because democracies are less likely
to engage in abuses of human rights, are more likely to cease torturing and long-established and stable democracies are the least likely to torture. Yet most
democracies engage in torture, suggesting that they see utility in the practice or at least view the costs
of stopping torture as unacceptably high. The value of torture for democratic states increases during
periods of foreign threat, including as that posed by transnational terrorists. Democracies have long
responded to external threats by increasing repression at home. Citizens are less likely to object to the
torture of suspected terrorists who are members of “out-groups,” including foreign nationals, and their
preferences carry greater weight in democratic regimes.
Public opinion condones detention and enhanced interrogation against Muslims
Piazza, 14
(James, Associate Professor (with tenure), Department of Political Science, The Pennsylvania State
University, Ph.D. Politics (Comparative Politics and International Relations), New York University, 1999
M.A. Middle East Studies, University of Michigan, 1994 B.A. Political Science, Loyola University Chicago,
1992, “Terrorist Suspect Religious Identity and Public Support for Harsh Interrogation and Detention
Practices”, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pops.12190/full, April 1, 2014, ak.)
The study, therefore, finds some evidence that the
religious identity of terrorism suspects is an important factor in the
American public's approval of the use of some of the new, harsh counterterrorism techniques adopted after
the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The religious identity of a terror suspect—measured in terms of stereotypical Muslim
versus Anglo names and in terms of alleged membership in a radical Muslim versus domestic, right-wing terrorist
organization—significantly affects respondent support for the application of harsh detention practices
against suspects, such as detention without charge, without access to an attorney, and without access to
civilian courts. No significant effects were found for subjecting suspects to harsh interrogation. These findings illustrate the utility of the outgroup-hate and
ingroup-love theoretical model of individual reaction to perception of threat and desire to apply punitive measures to outgroup
transgressors to understanding public opinion regarding a highly salient contemporary policy issue in the United States:
detention of terror suspects. This same theoretical model might apply to other War on Terror policy issues such as the
use of drones for security, NSA surveillance, or the creation of new counterterrorism laws or granting of
new counterterror powers to law enforcement. Future studies could test whether or not public support for these is contingent on the religious
identity of the targeted population. As previously stated, the purpose of surveying respondent support for both harsh interrogation and detention practices was to
use the fullest possible complement of post-9/11 counterterrorism practices against terror suspects in measuring the public's attitudes. The a priori theoretical
expectation was that the
American public was more permissive of harsh treatment in general of Muslimidentified suspects. The hypotheses of the study, supported by existing theoretical work, are not clearly specified in terms of specific counterterrorism
practices. However, there are a couple of possible explanations for the different findings for interrogation and detention in this study and some ideas that future
research could investigate. First, the interrogation
activities portrayed in the survey, such as waterboarding, have received
significantly more media attention than have the more abstract and legalistic practices depicted in the
detention questions. The subject of physical abuse of people detained for terrorism charges—brought to public attention
through public debate over abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay, Baghram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq—also was hotly
debated in national politics, prompting public condemnation by national figures such as U.S. Senator John McCain, a Congressional legislative action
to ban various torture practices in 2005 through the Detainee Treatment Act, and a veto of this act by President Bush. (Jansen, 2008). In contrast, there has
been little contentious public debate about extraordinary detention of detainees. The result has been that the
American public has access to a clearly articulated criticism of extraordinary interrogation and vivid images of the outcome of such interrogation practices
on actual Muslims but little information at all about extraordinary detention. This asymmetry might condition respondent attitudes, making them discount
the negative impact of detention on Muslim suspects and therefore more tolerant of such practices. Future research
might directly test this by interacting measures of respondent familiarity with or exposure to news stories about interrogation versus detention practices with
support for subjecting Muslim suspects to these practices. Second, most of the activities depicted in the 10 questions about interrogation of terror suspects have
since 2009 been made illegal via President Obama's Executive Order requiring interrogation and treatment of terror suspects, held both abroad and within the
United States, to conform to the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogations (White House, 2009). In contrast, the detention practices depicted in the survey remain
legal, having been interpreted as legally valid by both the Bush and Obama Justice Departments (White House, 2001). This may also condition respondent attitudes,
as respondents
might regard application of extraordinary interrogation, regardless of suspect identity, to
be a legally questionable tactic while extraordinary detention, particularly against suspects depicted as
“foreign,” is not freighted with such concerns. These are only speculations. Future research may survey respondents about their level of
awareness of post-9/11 interrogation and detention techniques in order to determine why the public has different levels of toleration for these two practices. As a
final discussion point, it should be noted that although the results provide evidence that both the personal religious identity and the group affiliation of the suspects
are significant predictors of respondent tolerance of extreme detention, the Muslim name treatment is more frequently significant in the tests of respondent
support for specific types of detention. This is a finding that could be further explored in future studies. If it were to be consistently reproduced, it might suggest
that individual religious identity itself primes tolerance for harsh treatment, which would be more consistent with the identity-based theories that motivate the
article. Conclusion The finding that the
American public is more tolerant of subjecting individuals suspected of
terrorist activity to extreme detection if the suspects are Muslim or are claimed to be members of a
Muslim extremist group—if valid—has several public policy implications, potentially identifying a loophole in popular
democratic constraint of executive branch counterterrorism behavior. Counterterrorism officials may
recognize that currently the public is generally hesitant about authorizing enhanced interrogation and
detention techniques in the War on Terror but may bank on greater public leniency in dealing with some
types of terror suspects. This opens the possibility of a nuanced and gradual erosion of standards for civil
liberties and human rights standards in the United States, with less risk of the type of public backlash that a
general, nondiscriminatory policy of terror suspect abuse might provoke.
Xenophobia
Attacks create unwarranted profiling of Muslim Americans.
Shamsi & Harwood 14 – Hina
Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, and Matthew
Harwood, ACLU's senior writer/editor, 2014 (“How Surveillance Turns Ordinary People Into
Terrorism Suspects,”Mother Jones, Nov. 6th, Accessed 6/16/15, J.L.)
The SAR database is part of an ever-expanding domestic surveillance system established after 9/11 to
gather intelligence on potential terrorism threats. At an abstract level, such a system may seem sensible:
far better to prevent terrorism before it happens than to investigate and prosecute after a tragedy. Based on that
reasoning, the government exhorts Americans to "see something, say something"—the SAR program's
slogan. Indeed, just this week at a conference in New York City, FBI Director James Comey asked the
public to report any suspicions they have to authorities. "When the hair on the back of your neck stands,
listen to that instinct and just tell somebody," said Comey. And seeking to reassure those who do not
want to get their fellow Americans in trouble based on instinct alone, the FBI director added, "We
investigate in secret for a very good reason, we don't want to smear innocent people." There are any
number of problems with this approach, starting with its premise. Predicting who exactly is a future
threat before a person has done anything wrong is a perilous undertaking. That's especially the case if the public is
encouraged to report suspicions of neighbors, colleagues, and community members based on a "hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck" threshold. Nor
The civil liberties and
privacy implications are, in fact, truly hair-raising, particularly when the Bureau engages in abusive and
discriminatory sting operations and other rights violations. At a fundamental level, suspicious activity
reporting, as well as the digital and physical infrastructure of networked computer servers and fusion
centers built around it, depends on what the government defines as suspicious. As it happens, this turns
out to include innocuous, First Amendment-protected behavior. As a start, a little history: the
Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative was established in 2008 as a way for federal agencies,
law enforcement, and the public to report and share potential terrorism-related information. The
federal government then developed a list of 16 behaviors that it considered "reasonably indicative of
criminal activity associated with terrorism." Nine of those 16 behaviors, as the government
acknowledges, could have nothing to do with criminal activity and are constitutionally protected,
including snapping photographs, taking notes, and "observation through binoculars." Under federal
regulations, the government can only collect and maintain criminal intelligence information on an
individual if there is a "reasonable suspicion" that he or she is "involved in criminal conduct or activity
and the information is relevant to that criminal conduct or activity." The SAR program officially lowered
that bar significantly, violating the federal government's own guidelines for maintaining a "criminal
intelligence system." There's good reason for, at a minimum, using a reasonable suspicion standard.
Anything less and it's garbage in, garbage out, meaning counterterrorism "intelligence" databases
become anything but intelligent. When the Mundane Looks Suspicious The SAR program provides
striking evidence of this. In 2013, the ACLU of Northern California obtained nearly 2,000 SARs from two
state fusion centers, which collect, store, and analyze such reports, and then share those their intelligence
analysts find worthwhile across what the federal government calls its Information Sharing Environment.
This connects the fusion centers and other federal agencies into an information-sharing network, or
directly with the FBI. Their contents proved revealing. A number of reports were concerned with "ME"—
Middle Eastern—males. One headline proclaimed, "Suspicious ME Males Buy Several Large Pallets of
Water at REDACTED." Another read, "Suspicious Activities by a ME Male in Lodi, CA." And just what was
is it any comfort that the FBI promises to protect the innocent by investigating "suspicious" people in secret.
so suspicious about this male? Read into the document and you discover that a sergeant at the Elk
Grove Police Department had long been "concerned about a residence in his neighborhood occupied by
a Middle Eastern male adult physician who is very unfriendly." And it's not just "Middle Eastern males"
who provoke such suspicion. Get involved in a civil rights protest against the police and California law
enforcement might report you, too. A June 2012 SAR was headlined "Demonstration Against Law
Enforcement Use of Excessive Force" and reported that "a scheduled protest" by demonstrators
"concerned about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers" was about to occur. What we
have here isn't just a failure to communicate genuine threat information, but the transformation of
suspicion into pernicious ideological, racial, and religious profiling, often disproportionately targeting
activists and American Muslims. Again, that's not surprising. Throughout our history, in times of real or
perceived fear of amorphously defined threats, government suspicion focuses on those who dissent or
look or act differently. Counterterrorism Accounting Law enforcement officials, including the Los
Angeles Police Department's top counterterrorism officer, have themselves exhibited skepticism about
suspicious activity reporting (out of concern with the possibility of overloading the system). In 2012,
George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute surveyed counterterrorism
personnel working in fusion centers and in a report generally accepting of SARs noted that the program
had "flooded fusion centers, law enforcement, and other security outfits with white noise," complicating
"the intelligence process" and distorting "resource allocation and deployment decisions." In other
words, it was wasting time and sending personnel off on wild goose chases. A few months later, a
scathing report from the Senate subcommittee on homeland security described similar intelligence
problems in state-based fusion centers. It found that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel
assigned to the centers "forwarded 'intelligence' of uneven quality—oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely,
sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act protections... and more often than not
unrelated to terrorism." Effectiveness doesn't exactly turn out to be one of the SAR program's strong
suits, though the government has obscured this by citing the growing number of SARs that have
triggered FBI investigations. However, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office
(GAO), the FBI doesn't track whether SARs uploaded into the domestic intelligence network actually
help thwart terrorism or lead to arrests or convictions. You are, of course, what you measure—in this
case, not much; and yet, despite its dubious record, the SAR program is alive and kicking. According to
the GAO, the number of reports in the system exploded by 750%, from 3,256 in January 2010 to 27,855
in October 2012. And being entered in such a system, as Wiley Gill found out, can prove just the
beginning of your problems. Several months after his home was searched, his telephone rang. It was a
Chico police officer who told Gill to shut down his Facebook page. Gill refused, responding that there
was only one reason he thought the police wanted his account deleted: its references to Islam. The
phone call ended ominously with the officer warning Gill that he was on a "watchlist." The officer may
have been referring to yet another burgeoning secret database that the federal government calls its
"consolidated terrorism watchlist." Inclusion in this database—and on government blacklists that are
generated from it—can bring more severe repercussions than unwarranted law enforcement attention.
It can devastate lives. Twenty-First-Century Blacklists When small business owner Abe Mashal reached
the ticket counter at Chicago's Midway Airport on April 20, 2010, an airline representative informed him
that he was on the no-fly list and could not travel to Spokane, Washington, on business. Suddenly, the
former Marine found himself surrounded by TSA agents and Chicago police. Later, FBI agents questioned
him at the airport and at home about his Muslim faith and his family members. The humiliation and
intimidation didn't end there. A few months later, FBI agents returned to interview Mashal, focusing
again on his faith and family. Only this time they had an offer to make: if he became an FBI informant,
his name would be deleted from the no-fly list and he would be paid for his services. Such manipulative
quid pro quos have been made to others. Mashal refused. The meeting ended abruptly, and he wasn't
able to fly for four years. As of August 2013, there were approximately 47,000 people, including 800 US
citizens and legal permanent residents like Mashal, on that secretive no-fly list, all branded as "known or
suspected terrorists." All were barred from flying to, from, or over the United States without ever being
given a reason why. On 9/11, just 16 names had been on the predecessor "no transport" list. The
resulting increase of 293,650%—perhaps more since 2013—isn't an accurate gauge of danger, especially
given that names are added to the list based on vague, broad, and error-prone standards. The harm of
being stigmatized as a suspected terrorist and barred from flying is further compounded when innocent
people try to get their names removed from the list. In 2007, the Department of Homeland Security
established the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program through which those who believe they are wrongly
blacklisted can theoretically attempt to correct the government's error. But banned flyers quickly find
themselves frustrated because they have to guess what evidence they must produce to refute the
government's unrevealed basis for watchlisting them in the first place. Redress then becomes a grim
bureaucratic wonderland. In response to queries, blacklisted people receive a letter from the DHS that
gives no explanation for why they were not allowed to board a plane, no confirmation of whether they
are actually on the no-fly list, and no certainty about whether they can fly in the future. In the end, the
only recourse for such victims is to roll the dice by buying a ticket, going to the airport, and hoping for
the best. Being unable to board a plane can have devastating consequences, as Abe Mashal can attest.
He lost business opportunities and the ability to mark life's milestones with friends and family. There is
hope, however. In August, four years after the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of 13 people on the no-fly
list, a judge ruled that the government's redress system is unconstitutional. In early October, the
government notified Mashal and six others that they were no longer on the list. Six of the ACLU's clients
remain unable to fly, but at least the government now has to disclose just why they have been put in
that category, so that they can contest their blacklisting. Soon, others should have the same
opportunity. Suspicion First, Innocence Later... Maybe The No Fly List is only the best known of the
government's web of terrorism watchlists. Many more exist, derived from the same master list.
Currently, there are more than one million names in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, a
database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center. This classified source feeds the Terrorist
Screening Database (TSDB), operated by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. The TSDB is an unclassified
but still secret list known as the "master watchlist." containing what the government describes as
"known or suspected terrorists," or KSTs. According to documents recently leaked to the Intercept, as of
August 2013 that master watchlist contained 680,000 people, including 5,000 US citizens and legal
permanent residents. The government can add people's names to it according to a shaky "reasonable
suspicion" standard. There is, however, growing evidence that what's "reasonable" to the government
may only remotely resemble what that word means in everyday usage. Information from a single
source, even an uncorroborated Facebook post, can allow a government agent to watchlist an individual
with virtually no outside scrutiny. Perhaps that's why 40% of those on the master watchlist have "no
recognized terrorist group affiliation," according to the government's own records. Nothing
encapsulates the post-9/11, Alice-in-Wonderland inversion of American notions of due process more
strikingly than this "blacklist first, innocence later... maybe" mindset. The Terrorist Screening Database is
then used to fill other lists. In the context of aviation, this means the no-fly list, as well as the selectee
and expanded selectee lists. Transportation security agents subject travelers on the latter two lists to
extra screenings, which can include prolonged and invasive interrogation and searches of laptops,
phones, and other electronic devices. Around the border, there's the State Department's Consular
Lookout and Support System, which it uses to flag people it thinks shouldn't get a visa, and the TECS
System, which Customs and Border Protection uses to determine whether someone can enter the
country. Inside the United States, no watchlist may be as consequential as the one that goes by the
moniker of the Known or Appropriately Suspected Terrorist File. The names on this blacklist are shared
with more than 17,000 state, local, and tribal police departments nationwide through the FBI's National
Crime Information Center (NCIC). Unlike any other information disseminated through the NCIC, the KST
File reflects mere suspicion of involvement with criminal activity, so law enforcement personnel across
the country are given access to a database of people who have secretly been labeled terrorism suspects
with little or no actual evidence, based on virtually meaningless criteria. This opens up the possibility of
increased surveillance and tense encounters with the police, not to speak of outright harassment, for a
large but undivulged number of people. When a police officer stops a person for a driving infraction, for
instance, information about his or her KST status will pop up as soon a driver's license is checked.
According to FBI documents, police officers who get a KST hit are warned to "approach with caution"
and "ask probing questions." When officers believe they're about to go face to face with a terrorist, bad
things can happen. It's hardly a stretch of the imagination, particularly after a summer of police
shootings of unarmed men, to suspect that an officer approaching a driver whom he believes to be a
terrorist will be quicker to go for his gun. Meanwhile, the watchlisted person may never even know why
his encounters with police have taken such a peculiar and menacing turn. According to the FBI's
instructions, under no circumstances is a cop to tell a suspect that he or she is on a watchlist. And once
someone is on this watchlist, good luck getting off it. According to the government's watchlist rulebook,
even a jury can't help you. "An individual who is acquitted or against whom charges are dismissed for a
crime related to terrorism," it reads, "may nevertheless meet the reasonable standard and appropriately
remain on, or be nominated to, the Terrorist Watchlist." No matter the verdict, suspicion lasts forever.
American Muslims face an onslaught of hate crimes after each crisis.
Dado 14 – Natash Amer Dado, Arab American News reporter and Wayne State University
graduate, 2014 (http://newamericamedia.org/2014/09/muslim-americans-say-isis-terrorismmay-lead-to-more-hate-crimes.php, USC Annenberg California Endowment Health Fellowships,
September 10th, Accessed 9/18/2015, J.L.)
Muslim Americans Say ISIS Terrorism May Lead to More Hate Crimes Muslim Americans Say ISIS Terrorism May Lead to More Hate Crimes Story
tools Comments AAAResize Print Share and Email Arab American News, News Report, Natasha Dado, Posted: Sep 10, 2014 Linda
Sarsour,
the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, was a victim of a hate crime this
week that wouldn’t have occurred had it not been for the phenomenon of the terrorist group “Islamic
State” (ISIS). Sarsour, who has become a voice for Muslim Americans nationally, discussed the incident on social media. “My deputy director
and I were harassed by a bigoted drunk who hurled hateful Islamophobic and anti-Arab epithets at us on 5th Avenue in Bay Ridge [a
neighborhood in Brooklyn],” Sarsour wrote in a Facebook post about the incident. “He said, ‘you are cutting people’s heads off, sharmoota, I’m
going to cut off your head and see how you will feel, you Arab b…..’” The attacker appeared to be referencing the IS, which beheaded American
journalists James Foley and Steve Sotloff. The IS claimed the men were murdered in retaliation for the united States’ involvement in Iraq.
Sarsour said the attacker had some sort of item or tool in his back pocket. The man ran after them and picked up a huge NYC metal garbage can
and threw it at them, causing them to run into oncoming traffic. Muslim
Americans still face widespread challenges
fighting hate and discrimination more than a decade after 9/11, and IS terrorism seems to be creating
even more misunderstanding about members of the community and their faith. Since ISIS first gained a
stronghold in Mosul, Iraq in early June, Muslim American religious and community leaders have
repeatedly condemned the group publically to prove it doesn’t represent their faith. “The Islamic State is actually
succeeding in causing damage to the image of Muslims and Islam,” said Majid Shah, a Muslim American from
Washington D.C. In response to IS terrorism, users on social media sites have been posting derogatory comments about Arabs and Muslims.
For many Muslim Americans another attack on the United States by a group that commits acts of
terrorism in the name of Islam would be detrimental and possibly increase hate crimes against the
community. After 9/11 many people blamed Islam for the attacks, and took out their anger and
frustration on the community. Former Vice President Dick Cheney recently predicted an attack this decade that would be far
deadlier than 9/11. On Monday, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned that ISIS could attack the United States within two months and Europe in
one month if more action against the IS wasn’t taken. Iraqi
American Alia Almulla said the situation for Muslim
Americans would be worse than it was after 9/11 if the IS attacked the United States. “I feel like it will be way
worse then what happened with Sept. 11,” she said. Almulla was a victim of a hate crime after 9/11. The incident occurred in
2007 while she was pregnant and living in Oklahoma City. She was sitting at a park with her family when people started questioning her about
the headscarf she was wearing. Someone approached her and pulled off the headscarf. “Over there they are not educated at all about Islam or
wearing a scarf. They have not even seen these things,” she said. The attackers asked why she had the headscarf on and whether she was
wearing it because she was bald and had lice. “They pulled it off to see if I really have hair or whatever,” she said. Speaking
to The Arab
American News, one Muslim woman who did not want to be identified remembered that when the
Boston bombings happened she was worried about what it would mean to her community if the
perpetrators were Muslim. “When the Boston bombing happened I was praying, ‘God please don’t let
that be a Muslim, because when an incident like that happens you pay a price,’” she said. She said that after
the Boston bombing, women in parts of Massachusetts were attacked because they were wearing
hijabs. S
Animosity toward Muslims and people of other nationalities
Schwartz, 11
(Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D. was in private practice for more than thirty years. He is a Licensed Clinical
Social Worker in the states of Colorado (#127) and New York (#R039535). He received both his MSW
(1988, Wurzweiler School of Social Work)) and Ph.D. (1976, Ferkhauf Graduate School) from Yeshiva
University in New York City. Dr. Schwartz is a Certified Psychoanalyst having graduated from NPAP
(National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis) in 1992. He now lives and writes about
psychotherapy in Boulder, Colorado and Southwest Florida, “Acts of Violence, Fear of The Unknown,
Xenophobia”, https://www.mentalhelp.net/blogs/acts-of-violence-fear-of-the-unknown-xenophobia/,
July 27, 2011, ak.)
Last week’s tragedy in Norway once again raises important questions about ethnic hatred and violence. Norway is known for being one of the most peaceful nations
in the world. It’s people are tolerant, gentle and generous. It is for these reasons that they happily accepted and embraced immigrants into their country. It seems
that this is what led to the violent bombing and shootings that caused so many deaths and shook Norwegians and other Europeans to the core. According to news
reports, Anders Behring Breivik, the suspect, professes anti Muslim, pro white and pro Christian beliefs and politics. His plan was to incite similar minded people
around the world to rise up and commit similar violent acts against foreigners. His professed fear was that Europe and the world were being colonized by Muslims.
Why do violent acts as those based on ethnic hatred, occur? The answer has a lot to do with the term,
xenophobia. We know that a phobia is a fear of something to which we have been exposed that had an aversive impact on our lives. For instance, I have
known people who, after having been stuck in an elevator, cannot enter any other such conveyance because of a deep seated fear that they cannot control.
Xenophobia is much the same except for the fact that the
fearful response is to people who are foreign or alien. After the
9/11 attacks, some Americans become xenophobic to anyone perceived to be Arab or Muslim. Airplane
passengers refused to fly with them, others demanded that Muslims be deported and a few even
perpetrated violent acts upon completely innocent American Muslims and Arabs. In at least one case that was reported,
someone from India was mistaken for being Muslim and was attacked almost ending his life. A unique reality of
life today is that modern travel and communication has brought the world together as never before. Through the internet people communicate with each other
from the most distant places possible. Internet communication comes not only through E. Mail but through internet telephone service that has made calling
inexpensive. More than a telephone call, people can use Skype and other video services, to have face to face contact with one another without leaving their office
or home. Several years ago, I received an E. Mail inquiry from someone in George…the former soviet state and now an independent country. I was startled when he
told me that he wanted to see me about couples counseling for him and his girlfriend. The appointment was made with information about my address, etc. I was
even more startled when he and his girlfriend appeared for the session. Speaking perfect English and with only the slightest of accents, they told me about their
problems. Several weeks later they flew back to Georgia. This is the paradox of today. The
fact that modern technology has brought the
world close together, that very close proximity has spurred fear and hatred. This fear of anyone foreign is irrational and
dangerous. Yet, in a time of great anxiety about the world’s economy and acts of terrorism, it’s important that everyone
resist the appeal of demagogues who want to prey upon our worst nightmares. It is too easy, as it always
has been in troubled times, to pick a scapegoat and use them as a target for all of our frustrations. This
is not healthy and can lead to dreadful consequences.
Fear
APA, no date
(The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization
representing psychology in the United States, with more than 122,500 researchers, educators, clinicians,
consultants and students as its members, “Managing traumatic stress: coping with terrorism”,
http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/terrorism.aspx, ak.)
Terrorism threatens a society by instilling fear and helplessness in its citizens. It seeks to hold a society or
government hostage by fear of destruction and harm. When terrorist acts occur, people generally look for ways to cope with the
acute stress and trauma. Terrorism evokes a fundamental fear of helplessness. The violent actions are random,
unprovoked and intentional, and often are targeted at defenseless citizens. Trying to cope with the irrational
information that is beyond normal comprehension can set off a chain of psychological events
culminating in feelings of fear, helplessness, vulnerability and grief. Xenophobia — fear or hatred of strangers or
foreigners — can be heightened under a terrorist threat and can become a social and psychological danger.
The fear generated by terrorism can be exacerbated by a population's diversity if there is distrust
between groups, categories and classification of citizens.
public pressure
In the wake of domestic terror, politicians face enormous political pressures to
increase torture, internment, and surveillance of suspected ethnicities
Fearon, 3
(James D. Fearon is Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in Stanford University’s School of Humanities and
Sciences, Professor of Political Science, and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International
Studies. His research focuses mainly on armed conflict and political violence. Fearon is a member of the National
Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a program member of the Canadian
Institute for Advanced Research, “Catastrophic terrorism and civil liberties in the short and long run”,
https://web.stanford.edu/group/fearon-research/cgi-bin/wordpress/wpcontent/uploads/2013/10/Catastrophic-terrorism-and-civil-liberties-in-the-short-and-long-run.pdf,
October 9, 2003, ak.)
will our politicians do? Will they judiciously consider how to construct and reform our institutions to monitor and control the
application of the new government powers that will be increasingly necessary to reduce the risk of
catastrophic terrorism? Or will they respond in a disconnected and frenzied fashion, ratcheting up arbitrary and 8 unchecked
government powers of surveillance, investigation, and detention with each new attack? I suspect the answer will
depend on a largely unpredictable factor: the pace and success of terrorist attacks in the coming years. If we manage to go for five
What
years or so without another major homeland terrorist attack, then prospects are relatively good that Congress and the country will recover some equanimity and confront the problems of
legislative and judicial reform from a more long-run perspective. If and when a Democrat wins back the White House, and if the Republicans still control part or all of Congress, then the
Republicans are sure to want to revisit the powers granted to or assumed by Bush since post 9/11. I would hope that the Democrats would be more willing to go along as a matter of serving
If, on the other hand, terrorists of whatever stripe “get lucky” one or more times in the near future, then we will see
more of what Laura Donohue calls “the counterterrorist spiral.”9 After a dramatic terrorist attack, politicians face
extremely strong pressures to “do something,” which for reelection purposes needs to be highly visible
and easily explainable to voters. Changing laws to give greater powers to law enforcement fits the bill, and has
almost always been the immediate response of democratic governments to major terrorist attacks. Donohue notes that in
the case she knows best, Northern Ireland, counterterrorist laws put on the books in reaction to big attacks have tended to
stay on the books. Politicians don’t want to risk being called “soft on terrorism” in the midst of a conflict.
The result has been a ratchet effect, or spiral, to the great detriment of civil liberty. Over the course of the last
century, the United States has faced a succession of apparent domestic security threats that led to spasms of
legislation and police action. In retrospect, these spasms were widely viewed as having been misguided and unconstitutional. It is
instructive to consider these in thinking about the likely future course of civil liberties law in the face of catastrophic terrorism. In a hysterical response to a few
package bombs, the Palmer Raids of 1919-20 locked up thousands essentially on the presumption that
they were communists or anarchists. During World War II, citizens and non-citizens of Japanese ancestry
were locked up as potential traitors in camps in the western deserts. After World War II, suspected
association with the Communist Party was, for a time, grounds for active government persecution and FBI
harassment. Most recently, after the 1996 Oklahoma City bombing and after 9/11, Congress passed a series of acts
of questionable constitutionality, while the president has used executive authority to detain thousands
of unnamed noncitizens who have no legal recourse or representation, both noncitizens living in the U.S. and hundreds captured in
“non-war” in Afghanistan. The constitutional lawyer David Cole points to a pattern, or evolution, in these several episodes.10 In the midst of each one, the U.S.
courts and judicial system acquiesced to or deliberately authorized laws that, shortly afterwards, they and many others
saw as clearly unconstitutional. After the great fears had waned, the courts crafted and fleshed out new
constitutional doctrines intended to prevent future abuses along the lines of the last episode. Thus, during and
their constituents’ preferences.
after World War I, U.S. laws explicitly criminalized advocating certain political views, such as communism or even opposition to the draft. In the 1917 Supreme Court opinion known for the
famous line about there being no constitutional right to cry fire in a crowded theatre if there was no fire, Oliver Wendell Holmes was actually arguing (successfully) that the state could jail a
person for distributing leaflets opposing the draft for “the Great War.”11 Later rulings clarified that such laws were simply inconsistent with the First Amendment right of freedom of
in the McCarthy era the state criminalized not opinions and speech, but
associations. “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?” After the hysteria subsided,
Supreme Court rulings in 1957 and 1961 asserted what should have been asserted from the start – that this was clearly unconstitutional. Cole argues that in the present
episode, since Oklahoma and 9/11, government has evolved new tactics for restricting civil liberties that do
not criminalize speech, and that target freedom of association only indirectly. He focuses on laws that make it a
criminal act for one to provide “material support” to a “terrorist association,” even if one does not
intend that the support supplied be used for terrorist purposes. The executive branch (via the State Department)
decides what a “terrorist organization” is, according to no legally defined or justiciable criteria. Cole notes that
expression. Understanding these judicial precedents,
since 9/11, almost every criminal “terrorism” case brought by the government has charged the defendant under the “material support” provisions.12 Cole finds depressing this
historical pattern of Fear-induced civil rights abuses, post-Fear judicial action to prevent the repetition
of such abuses, and then, with the next Fear, government invention of new ways to get around the Bill
of Rights. He says there is no “progress,” just the repetition of history. To the contrary, I would view it as notable progress if, over time, our
political system is able to improve itself by forcing government abuse of the constitution to take ever more subtle forms. The more interesting question is whether the self-correction part of
In the past, the Fear had to subside for selfcorrection to occur. But if the risk of catastrophic terrorism is a technological problem that will grow
more and more pressing over time, then will the Fear ever subside enough to allow the political space
necessary for our political class to come to grips with it in an intelligent way? Or will periodic major terrorists attacks produce a
the cycle will continue to operate in the present case, with the threat of catastrophic terrorism.
permanent condition akin to counterinsurgency, in which both public and politicians acquiesce to what would once have been considered massive civil rights violations by a more powerful and
arbitrary state? All I can say is that I certainly hope not, and that I hope that U.S. foreign policy is revised in ways that will genuinely lower rather than possibly increase the short-run risk of
more attacks. But, unfortunately, I’m not sure if we have all that much control here. To a great extent
thereof.
we are hostage to the terrorists’ luck, or lack
civil liberties
Even an infinitesimal risk of our disad should outweigh the aff – all of their harms
assume “potential” surveillance and ignore that another domestic terror attack would
decimate the civil liberties that exist now
Friedman, 13
(Thomas L. Friedman became The New York Times foreign affairs Op-Ed columnist in 1995. He joined the paper in
1981, after which he served as the Beirut bureau chief in 1982, Jerusalem bureau chief in 1984, and then in
Washington as the diplomatic correspondent in 1989, and later the White House correspondent and economic
correspondent. Mr. Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and
the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel). He also won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for
commentary. Mr. Friedman is the author of “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won the National Book Award in
1989. He has written several other books, including “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” an international best seller. Born in
Minneapolis, Mr. Friedman received a B.A. degree in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University in 1975. In
1978 he received a master’s in modern Middle East studies from Oxford , “Blowing a Whistle”,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/friedman-blowing-a-whistle.html, June 12, 2013, ak.)
I’m glad I live in a country with people who are vigilant in defending civil liberties. But as I listen to the debate about the disclosure of two government programs
designed to track suspected phone and e-mail contacts of terrorists, I do wonder
if some of those who unequivocally defend this disclosure are
behaving as if 9/11 never happened — that the only thing we have to fear is government intrusion in our
lives, not the intrusion of those who gather in secret cells in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan and plot how to topple
our tallest buildings or bring down U.S. airliners with bombs planted inside underwear, tennis shoes or
computer printers. Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent
another 9/11 — abuse that, so far, does not appear to have happened. But I worry even more about another
9/11. That is, I worry about something that’s already happened once — that was staggeringly costly — and that
terrorists aspire to repeat. I worry about that even more, not because I don’t care about civil liberties, but because what I
cherish most about America is our open society, and I believe that if there is one more 9/11 — or worse,
an attack involving nuclear material — it could lead to the end of the open society as we know it. If there
were another 9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Americans would tell their members of Congress: “Do whatever you
need to do to, privacy be damned, just make sure this does not happen again.” That is what I fear most. That is
why I’ll reluctantly, very reluctantly, trade off the government using data mining to look for suspicious patterns
in phone numbers called and e-mail addresses — and then have to go to a judge to get a warrant to
actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congress — to prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government a license to look at anyone,
any e-mail, any phone call, anywhere, anytime. What we don't need is to give up our freedoms just to address levels of
paranoia that are, frankly, infantile. So I don’t believe that Edward Snowden, the leaker of all this secret material, is some heroic whistle-blower. No, I
believe Snowden is someone who needed a whistle-blower. He needed someone to challenge him with the argument that we don’t live in a world any longer where
our government can protect its citizens from real, not imagined, threats without using big data — where we still have an edge — under constant judicial review.
It’s not ideal. But if one more 9/11-scale attack gets through, the cost to civil liberties will be so much
greater. A hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for linking on his blog to an essay by David Simon, the creator of HBO’s “The Wire.” For me, it cuts right to the core of the
issue. “You would think that the government was listening in to the secrets of 200 million Americans from
the reaction and the hyperbole being tossed about,” wrote Simon. “And you would think that rather than a legal court
order, which is an inevitable consequence of legislation that we drafted and passed, something illegal had
been discovered to the government’s shame. Nope. ... The only thing new here, from a legal standpoint, is the scale on which the F.B.I.
and N.S.A. are apparently attempting to cull anti-terrorism leads from that data. ... I know it’s big and scary that the government wants a database of all phone calls.
And it’s scary that they’re paying attention to the Internet. And it’s scary that your cellphones have GPS installed. ... The
question is not should the
resulting data exist. It does. ... The question is more fundamental: Is government accessing the data for the
legitimate public safety needs of the society, or are they accessing it in ways that abuse individual liberties and violate personal privacy — and
in a manner that is unsupervised. And to that, The Guardian and those who are wailing jeremiads about this pretenddiscovery of U.S. big data collection are noticeably silent. We don’t know of any actual abuse.” We do need to
be constantly on guard for abuses. But the fact is, added Simon, that for at least the last two presidencies “ this kind of data collection has been a
baseline logic of an American anti-terrorism effort that is effectively asked to find the needles before they are planted into haystacks, to
prevent even such modest, grass-rooted conspiracies as the Boston Marathon bombing before they occur.” To be sure, secret programs, like the virtually
unregulated drone attacks, can lead to real excesses that have to be checked. But here is what is also real, Simon concluded: “Those
planes really did
hit those buildings. And that bomb did indeed blow up at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. And we
really are in a continuing, low-intensity, high-risk conflict with a diffuse, committed and ideologically
motivated enemy. And, for a moment, just imagine how much bloviating would be wafting across our political
spectrum if, in the wake of an incident of domestic terrorism, an American president and his administration had failed
to take full advantage of the existing telephonic data to do what is possible to find those needles in the
haystacks.” And, I’d add, not just bloviating. Imagine how many real restrictions to our beautiful open society we
would tolerate if there were another attack on the scale of 9/11. Pardon me if I blow that whistle.
More attacks create programs that encroach on civil liberties.
Khanna 13 – Derek
Khanna, Yale Law Fellow & Congressional staffer for the House Republican Study
Committee, 2013 (“If PRISM Is Good Policy, Why Stop With Terrorism?” The Atlantic, Jul. 4th ,
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/if-prism-is-good-policy-why-stop-with-terrorism/277531/ Accessed 6/15/15,
JL)
The government's policies in the NSA's PRISM program reflect perhaps the perfect storm of public-policy
conundrums. This surveillance seems to offer short-term advantages, with the real costs hidden, diffuse,
unknown, and, seemingly, far in the future. What, many ask, is the real price of giving up privacy? The
government has presented PRISM, and other similar surveillance programs, as a solution to a danger and fear
-- terrorism -- which is almost impossible to comprehend: Terrorism is everywhere and nowhere; the
battlefield is across the globe; the threat is omnipresent. It is difficult for the average person to perceive
and understand until it is splashed across television screens. Terrorism is by definition designed to
"shock and awe." It is theatre of the macabre. The government has used this fear to justify
unprecedented intrusions into our privacy, including monitoring who we call, our location data, and
allegedly even the contents of our communication (if there is a 51 percent chance that one party to the
communication is foreign). Our personal calling data, emails, letters, credit-card transaction data -everything seems fair game. The fact that the NSA wants this much information shouldn't be surprising.
The old maxim that to a hammer every problem looks like a nail is appropriate here. A spy agency
specializing in "signals" intelligence is always looking for more phone calls, emails, and other signalsbased data to analyze. The more data NSA receives, the more powerful it becomes. The most worrying
facet of this story is the willingness of some Americans and members of Congress to so quickly disregard
the Fourth Amendment and our liberty in the name of terrorism. Not so long ago, the U.S. faced
arguably higher stakes, and more significant dangers, but made the opposite choices -- choices more
consistent with our founding principles. Throughout the Cold War there was a real threat of apocalyptic
proportions. The Soviet Union assembled and deployed more than 45,000 nuclear warheads, enough
destructive power to annihilate the United States and end humanity as we know it. The U.S. government
did plenty of reprehensible things during the Cold War, including trying to assassinate elected leaders,
subverting democracies, and wiretapping political rivals and "subversives" such as Martin Luther King Jr.
As a result of these scandals, along with Watergate, the American people responded and demanded
accountability through the Church and Pike Committees of the 1970s in the House and Senate.* Will
they do the same today? The most worrying facet of the PRISM story is the willingness of some
Americans and members of Congress to so quickly disregard the Fourth Amendment in the name of
terrorism. If the justification for PRISM and associated programs is predicated on their potential
effectiveness, why shouldn't such logic be applied elsewhere? Here are several other even more
effective public-policy solutions that also violate the Fourth Amendment in similar ways and are just as
reprehensible. There is some dispute over whether PRISM and other reported programs are legal or
Constitutional. I believe, and have argued, that third-party records should be protected under the
Fourth Amendment, so that access to these records requires a warrant. This is not the perspective the
courts have taken. But if we are going to use personal data obtained through PRISM for terrorism
purposes in a way that violates our privacy and which I would argue violates the Fourth Amendment,
why not do it for other legitimate purposes? 1. Child Pornography: Whenever the FBI receives a
computer for a routine search, it searches the computer for known "hashes" of video and picture files of
child pornography. This allows it to quickly and easily search every computer brought in, time
permitting, for known child pornography. Of course the FBI receives many computers through warrants,
but this is still a small percentage of all computers. Since the NSA seems to have access to a substantial
amount of web traffic, what if it used spare capacity for "deep packet inspection" technology to identify
known child-pornography pictures and videos? Software would only flag the transfer if there were a 100
percent certainty of it being the exact same file. (Since this is a hypothetical, let's assume the technology
exists and can be implemented.) Laws against child pornography are partially designed to dry up the
market for child exploitation. This policy could greatly reduce child pornography, catch potential
pedophiles, and reduce existing child exploitation. From a legal perspective, the courts have found that
individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy for contraband; therefore, if such a search only
finds contraband then it may be on more solid legal territory. Should the government be able to use
technologies like PRISM and related exposed programs to find child pornography? 2. Speed Limits: Many
accidents are related to reckless driving, and speeding can make them significantly more dangerous and
deadly. What if instead of enforcing speed limits by stationing police officers to patrol our streets, a
relatively ineffective and costly method of enforcement, the government instead monitored the speed
of all cars in real time using cellphones. If NSA data on phone location were analyzed in real time, it
could potentially determine the speed of any user. All phones traveling below 20 mph would be
excluded on the assumption that they're not driving. All phones traveling faster than 20 mph would be
plotted to discern what road they are traveling on and what the speed limit is for that road. The
government could then identify drivers who were speeding and send them tickets in the mail, text them
to slow down (then ticket them for opening it while driving!), or dispatch an officer to catch them.
Further data analysis could identify potential drunk driving for police investigation, based upon erratic
driving patterns or when phones were at known bars for several hours before being in a vehicle. Such
policies could potentially save tens of thousands of lives and increase revenues from speeding fines
while reducing the costs of patrolling the road. Should the government be able to use technologies like
PRISM and related exposed programs to make our roads safer? 3. Illegal Downloading: Millions of
Americans have used BitTorrent or other technologies to illegally download music, movies, TV shows,
and software. While torrents can be used to download non-copyrighted and copyrighted digital goods, a
substantial amount (one study found 89 percent) of the traffic appears to be used for illegal
downloading. NSA PRISM level surveillance could be of use in identifying which users are using
BitTorrent, then identifying the users who have uploaded or downloaded the most, and identifying
whether their downloads involved illegal content. (Again, let's assume the technology is available.) This
information could be forwarded to the Department of Justice for prosecution (or more crafty lobbyists
could get the information forwarded to a private entity like the RIAA or MPAA for lawsuits). Should the
government be able to use technologies like PRISM and related exposed programs to protect copyright
holders? **** If the barometer for violating the Fourth Amendment is efficacy, then why should these
not also be up for discussion? The answer is clear: The Fourth Amendment was not designed for
efficacy. It was designed for privacy and to defend our liberty. If that's not the case, why even stop with
these examples? Most of our phones have cameras and microphones that, at least in some
circumstances, can be turned on remotely that would surely provide invaluable information for
intelligence and law enforcement (the FBI has used this for organized crime prosecution, remotely
turning on the microphone of phones to record non phone-call conversations). Information given to the
government for the NSA may be made available to other agencies such as the IRS, why wouldn't it be?
We already know that it has been shared with foreign agencies (e.g., Dutch intelligence, German
intelligence, and British intelligence). Even if a court were to find that PRISM data violates the Fourth
Amendment, courts have traditionally held that even information that was illegally obtained can be used
in court to impeach testimony -- in other words, it could plausibly be admissible to catch a tax cheat. If
elected leaders were angels there would be less need for protection of our privacy. But they are not
angels. And as many of us in the technology world know, once something exists in data form it is often
retained forever. In an era where data storage is cheap and getting cheaper, American citizens'
information will likely be retained indefinitely (the NSA is building that capacity in a Utah facility). At
some point this massive repository of information may be hacked, at some point could be available to
political appointees looking for partisan gain, or it may be used for "security" reasons against
"troublemakers" trying to change our society -- social change often comes through those who are
perceived to be dangerous to the state. As James Madison argued in Federalist 51, "If men were angels,
no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls
on government would be necessary." But men are not angels and we have experience with elected
leaders that are partisan, opportunist, short-sighted and, sometimes, even corrupt. Government's
natural inclination is to abuse its power, one critical reason why our Founders limited it. The danger of a
surveillance state is not the obscure chance of a truly evil person abusing the system; rather, the actual
threat, the real danger, is a person with good intentions who believes that their draconian actions are
morally justified and prudent. It is such a leader, perhaps with the best of intentions, who can make the
most heinous of mistakes with eyes wide open and belief that the ends justify the means. Those ends
never justify eviscerating the Fourth Amendment. * This is not to say that the Church and Pike
Committees completely dealt with abuses -- they did not -- but they were a clear step in the right
direction and demanding accountability and limits to government abuse.
The aff’s focus on civil liberties doesn’t necessarily preclude security impacts – middle
ground is best because unequivocal focus on security is unrealistic and improbable in
the wake of public perception
Foreign Policy 15 (January 6th, J.M. Berger, analytical researcher and reporter on terrorism, Brookings Fellow, “Europe Cracks Down
After attacks in Paris, Sydney, and Canada, Western countries are flexing counterterrorism muscles. But civil liberties, not would-be jihadis, will
be the casualty,” http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/16/europe-cracks-down-terrorism-civil-liberties-after-paris/) aj
In response to this escalating threat, Western
countries are looking at an array of new laws and government
powers to deal with the problem. In Europe and Australia, proposals to enhance counterterrorism
powers are in full bloom. In the United States, similar ideas of lesser scope are quietly circulating behind
the scenes, likely to emerge into public view soon enough. The proposals are varied, but they all increase the
power that a government has to act against suspects, decrease the amount of evidence needed to use
such power, or both. Among the laws that have been either proposed or enacted: Australia has instituted a variety of new government
powers to deal with both foreign fighters and terrorism suspects, the most controversial of which are control orders allowing uncharged
terrorism suspects’ civil liberties to be severely curtailed and greatly expanded collection of metadata. France, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo
attack, is considering new laws that would double down on broad new authorities adopted in September that include restrictions on travel, a
ban on publishing material “glorifying” terrorism, online censorship provisions, and the creation of new classes of crimes targeting so-called
“lone wolves” by criminalizing a wide range of behavior. British Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged that, if re-elected, he will pursue
broad new authorities for surveillance of electronic communications, potentially including bans on widely used encrypted messaging platforms.
The European Parliament is reconsidering a previously shelved proposal requiring airlines to provide information on passengers to national
governments, albeit with some talk of added civil liberties protections. The Canadian government is considering vaguely defined new
counterterrorism powers in the wake of consecutive lone-wolf attacks by supporters of the Islamic State in October. Other specific measures
have been discussed or implemented in Germany, Portugal, Greece, Serbia, Kosovo, Cyprus, and elsewhere as other countries worry that they
could become the targets of similar attacks. In many ways, this
is the continuation of a debate that started on Sept. 11,
2001: What price is freedom willing to pay for security? Most Western countries have enshrined
individual liberties as a fundamental principle. But they also accept that the government has a role in
preventing crime and risk of harm to citizens. When a tragic, traumatic attack takes place, the balance
between these concerns is disrupted. But the 9/11 paradigm of large, complicated terrorist attacks that occur
only rarely is giving way to a new dynamic of smaller, simpler plots that take place frequently. The reevaluation of priorities that took place on Sept. 12, 2001, has become a continuous process of
adjustments that are often more reflexive than reflective.
Post-FREEDOM Act public poll proves that general consensus is that civil liberties
should not be compromised, even in counter-terror efforts
Gass 6/10 (Nick Gass, POLITICO breaking news reporter, citing a Gallup poll, “Poll: Americans say
terrorism shouldn't trump civil liberties,” http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/poll-terrorism-civilliberties-118812.html) aj
Americans would appear to agree with Congress’ latest efforts to limit the scope of its anti-terrorism
efforts, with more than six in 10 saying that the federal government should take steps to prevent
terrorism but not violate civil liberties, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. Among all Americans
surveyed, 65 percent prioritized civil liberties over counterterrorism efforts, compared with 30 percent
who said that the government should take all steps necessary to prevent acts of terror, even if that
infringes on civil liberties. Gallup conducted the survey after the USA Freedom Act, which pulled back the
government’s ability to collect bulk communications data, was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama. Among
those identifying as liberal, 48 percent said government efforts violate civil liberties, compared with 41 percent of moderates and 38 percent of
conservatives. On a partisan level, 40 percent of Democrats and leaners said those efforts run roughshod over their rights, compared with 42
percent of Republicans and leaners. The results stand in contrast to those from January 2002, just four months after the 9/11 attacks. Even
then, however, Americans were at most split over how the federal government should stop future attacks. At that time, 47 percent of
Americans said that government should prioritize anti-terrorism efforts, compared with 49 percent who still showed a greater concern for civil
liberties. A year after 9/11, Gallup
found that 56 percent felt the government should not violate civil liberties in
pursuit of anti-terror efforts, and public opinion has remained mostly stable in that direction in the
dozen years’ since. The poll was conducted June 2-7 among 1,527 adults nationwide, featuring an overall margin of error of plus-orminus 3 percentage points.
The public has consistently prioritized personal liberty interests over security interests
– statistical analysis
Jones 15 (Jeffrey M. Jones, Hoover Institution assistant director and research fellow, published on Gallup, an American research-based
consulting company known for universal public opinion polls, “Americans Still Say Liberties Should Trump Anti-Terrorism,”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/183548/americans-say-liberties-trump-anti-terrorism.aspx) aj
PRINCETON, N.J. -- The
federal government's recent actions to limit the scope of what it can do to prevent
terrorism are consistent with Americans' preference to prioritize civil liberties over anti-terrorism
efforts when the two come into conflict. Sixty-five percent of Americans say the government should
take steps to prevent terrorism but not violate civil liberties, while 30% think any steps to prevent
terrorism are justified, even if they violate liberties. In the first few months after 9/11, Americans were more divided on the
issue. The latest results are based on a June 2-7 Gallup poll, conducted after Congress passed and
President Barack Obama signed into law the USA Freedom Act, designed to replace the expiring and
controversial Patriot Act that was passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. These laws help define the
scope of government efforts to prevent terrorist attacks against the U.S. Notably, the new law does not authorize the
government to collect data on citizens' electronic communications, a secret program that was exposed
by former government contractor and now U.S. exile Edward Snowden. However, the government can still
obtain those records from the phone companies if it has a warrant. In January 2002, four months after the 9/11
attacks and with concerns about terrorism still high, 47% of Americans said the government should take all necessary steps to prevent
terrorism, even those that violated individual civil liberties, while 49% said anti-terror efforts should stop short of violating civil liberties. A year
after the attacks, in September 2002, Americans showed a greater concern for civil liberties, with 62% saying anti-terror efforts should not
violate civil liberties and 33% giving anti-terror efforts the higher priority. Since then,
opinion has not fundamentally changed,
although the 65% who currently prioritize protecting civil liberties is down slightly from 71% in 2011.
In the short and medium run, there is no reason to create laws that compromise civil
liberties – only with certainty that non-state groups have the means to attack should
we create legal change
Fearon 3 (James D. Fearon, the Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, 10/9/3, “Catastrophic
terrorism and civil liberties in the short and long run*, https://web.stanford.edu/group/fearon-research/cgi-bin/wordpress/wpcontent/uploads/2013/10/Catastrophic-terrorism-and-civil-liberties-in-the-short-and-long-run.pdf) aj
In the short and medium run, it remains quite difficult for individuals or non-state groups to develop
or acquire nuclear weapons, and virtually impossible to do so without the active assistance of a state.
States, moreover, may have strong incentives not to let nuclear materials out of their own control.
(Nonetheless, I am terrified that North Korea’s leadership might sell nuclear bombs to the highest bidder, and the fact that something is not in
the interest of a state overall doesn’t mean that it will be smart or competent enough to prevent it from happening.) Weapons-grade
anthrax is hard to make and hard to deliver in such a way as to kill thousands (although we have seen that it
may not be necessary to kill thousands to have a big negative impact on society). This appears to be true as well for a variety of other biological
and chemical weapons that have been mentioned as horrible terrorist dangers. This means that in
the short run there is simply no
good reason to rush into changing the laws in ways that greatly compromise civil liberties . If you face a
fundamentally long-run problem, it makes more sense to think about the best feasible long-run
outcome and then work backwards to draw out implications for what to do now. How best to change the law
and law enforcement to respond to the threat of catastrophic terrorism is a great candidate, I would argue, for analysis and recommendations
by a presidential commission composed of constitutional lawyers, congressmen, and lawenforcement experts empowered to make
recommendations to relevant congressional committees. This
would be far better than the current approach, in which,
after each major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, our representatives compete with each other in
proposing legal changes to “get tough” on terrorism, the effect of which has been to run roughshod over the Constitution.
There is no thinking here about the long-run problem, only the frenzied passing of “position taking” bills,
whose actual positive impact on preventing terrorist attacks is often dubious.
Middle ground between privacy and security key
Dragu 11 (Tiberiu Dragu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at NYU, holds a PhD in Political Science from Stanford, “Is There
a Trade-off between Security and Liberty? Executive Bias, Privacy Protections, and Terrorism Prevention,” ARTICLE in AMERICAN POLITICAL
SCIENCE REVIEW · JANUARY 2011, http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tiberiu_Dragu/publication/231746561_Is_There_a_Tradeoff_between_Security_and_Liberty_Executive_Bias_Privacy_Protections_and_Terrorism_Prevention/links/02e7e52c84ffd738fc000000.pdf) aj
Almost everyone -citizens, policymakers, political pundits, and scholars- approaches the formulation of
counterterrorism policies as a balancing act between the allegedly competing values of privacy and
security (Waldron 2003). Intuitively, this would seem to be the right way to evaluate policies designed to increase national security from
terrorism. In the face of a potential large-scale terrorist attack, after all, it is unthinkable that citizens would dismiss security
concerns and thus forbid all government surveillance directed at potential terrorists, just as it is
unthinkable that they would dismiss all privacy concerns and give the government unlimited surveillance
powers. Other than in the case of these two extremes, democratic societies and their governments face inevitable tradeoffs.
“Temporary” reductions in civil liberties during times of emergency often end up being
exploited by power-hungry government officials
Dragu 11 (Tiberiu Dragu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at NYU, holds a PhD in Political Science from Stanford, “Is There
a Trade-off between Security and Liberty? Executive Bias, Privacy Protections, and Terrorism Prevention,” ARTICLE in AMERICAN POLITICAL
SCIENCE REVIEW · JANUARY 2011, http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tiberiu_Dragu/publication/231746561_Is_There_a_Tradeoff_between_Security_and_Liberty_Executive_Bias_Privacy_Protections_and_Terrorism_Prevention/links/02e7e52c84ffd738fc000000.pdf) aj
The result regarding the strategic bias of the executive agencies in charge of terrorism prevention contributes to a general understanding of the
relationship between government powers and civil liberties in times of emergencies (Rossiter 1948; Rehnquist 2000; Ackerman 2004; Ferejohn
and Pasquino 2004; Gross and Aolain 2006; Posner and Vermule 2007; Manin 2008). The very
definition of emergency powers
implies that when the emergency subsides, and a serious threat no longer exists, the powers will be
terminated and rights will be restored. However, the analysis shows that governmental enforcement
agencies lack incentive to relinquish their newly acquired powers once the emergency diminishes . To
the contrary, because they are always worse off when civil liberties are expanded, and always better off
when they are reduced, agencies seek to make the emergency reductions in civil liberties permanent.
Decreasing privacy protections makes for an increased risk of terrorism
Dragu 11 (Tiberiu Dragu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at NYU, holds a PhD in Political Science from Stanford, “Is There
a Trade-off between Security and Liberty? Executive Bias, Privacy Protections, and Terrorism Prevention,” ARTICLE in AMERICAN POLITICAL
SCIENCE REVIEW · JANUARY 2011, http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tiberiu_Dragu/publication/231746561_Is_There_a_Tradeoff_between_Security_and_Liberty_Executive_Bias_Privacy_Protections_and_Terrorism_Prevention/links/02e7e52c84ffd738fc000000.pdf) aj
Reducing privacy protections, so goes the argument, has a chilling effect on terrorism-related activities.
Reducing privacy protections might not deter true fanatics such as suicide bombers but it deters donors, fundraisers, facilitators, recruiters, and
foot soldiers. That is, it
raises the perceived costs of being associated with a terrorist group for individuals who
would otherwise willingly provide various kinds of support. In turn, the terrorist support and logistical
infrastructure is negatively affected: there are fewer supporters to disseminate propaganda, recruit
operatives, raise money, and, if the terrorist organization wants to plan an attack, facilitate
immigration, procure supplies, transfer money, forge false identities, facilitate travel, and provide safe
houses. Support and logistical networks are essential for terrorist organizations to plan and execute
large-scale attacks (Gunaratna 2004). Reducing the level of privacy protections thus increases the terrorist
organization’s costs for terrorist activities. In a liberal democracy, the tactical advantage is seemingly conceded to terrorists,
who are free to exploit privacy protections, while the authorities are constrained in their efforts to prevent terrorist attacks by those very
privacy protections. Consequently, the intuition behind the security rationale for reducing privacy protections seems simple. Because
reducing privacy protections decreases the anti-terrorist agencies’ cost of counterterrorism
intelligence efforts and increases the terrorist organization’s cost of terrorist activities, reducing
privacy protections increases security from terrorism. However, even if we accept the premises of the security rationale, I
argue that, when the anti-terrorist agency and terrorist organizations act strategically, reducing privacy
protections can lead to less security from terrorism while the anti-terrorism agency prefers reducing
privacy even if such a reduction leads to less security from terrorism.
rollback
ratchet effect
With each new attack, more invasive security measures are created. Disad turns the
case.
Balko 14 – Radley
Balko, senior writer and investigative reporter at the Huffington Post, graduate of
Indiana University, and policy analyst at the Cato Institute, 2014 ( “Was the police response to
the Boston bombing really appropriate?,” Washington Post, April 22nd , Available Online at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/04/22/the-police-response-to-the-boston-marathon-bombing/ , Accessed
June 17th 2015, J.L.)
The economist and historian Robert Higgs has written prolifically over the years about what he calls the
“ratchet effect.” In times of crisis, governments tend to expand, usually at the expense of civil liberties.
When the crisis abates, government power does, too, but never completely back to where it was before.
With each subsequent crisis, government encroaches a bit more. Higgs has documented the effect
through major wars, depressions and other national emergencies. But the effect may be particularly
pronounced and dangerous with respect to the war on terror, because as crises go, terrorism can never
completely be defeated. We’re now more than a year out from the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013.
The studies, reviews, and after-action reports have been written. Politicians and other public officials
have held hearings, cast blame and pontificated on the lessons they have learned. There have been calls
for more monitoring of foreign travelers; better information-sharing among federal, state and local
government police agencies; and the inevitable demands for more security, more surveillance and
generally more government power to prevent similar attacks in the future. We instinctively put our
faith in government to protect us in times of crisis, even when those crises are the result of the
government’s failure to protect us. We regret it later. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Gallup polling
found that 47 percent of the public was willing to sacrifice its civil liberties for security. Within two years,
that figure was down to 33 percent, and by 2012, it was at 25 percent. Those figures show why it’s
dangerous to pass new policies when the public is fearful and emotional, and why politicians are
particularly eager to do exactly that. (See the Patriot Act.) The danger here is that the Boston response
tightens the ratchet and becomes the default response to similar crises in the future. For example,
we’ve already seen other examples of wanton, indiscriminate gunfire from cops during manhunts for
fugitives suspected of killing cops,
Plan rollback – interest groups favored by changes preserve the status quo.
Bainbridge 13 – Stephen Bainbridge, Joseph Flom Visiting Professor of Law and Business at
Harvard law School and author of The New Corporate Governance in Theory and Practice, 2013
(“The Global Ware on Terror & the Ratchet Effect,” Stephen Bainbridge's Journal of Law,
Politics, and Culture, May 27th, Available online at http://www.professorbainbridge.c
om/professorbainbridgecom/2013/05/the-global-ware-on-terror-and-the-ratchet-effect.html,
accessed 6/19/15, J.L.)
Robert Higgs demonstrated that wars and other major crises typically trigger a dramatic growth in the
size of government, accompanied by higher taxes, greater regulation, and loss of civil liberties. Once the
crisis ends, government may shrink somewhat in size and power, but rarely back to pre-crisis levels. Just as a ratchet
wrench works only in one direction, the size and scope of government tends to move in only one direction—
upwards—because the interest groups that favored the changes now have an incentive to preserve the
new status quo, as do the bureaucrats who gained new powers and prestige. Hence, each crisis has the
effect of ratcheting up the long-term size and scope of government. There's a slew of domestic
restrictions on our liberties that came into place after 9/11. The TSA's security theater apparatus at airports is just the
most noticeable. As Jonathan Turley has noted: For civil libertarians, the legacy of bin Laden is most troubling
because it shows how the greatest injuries from terror are often self-inflicted. Bin Laden's twisted notion of
success was not the bringing down of two buildings in New York or the partial destruction of the Pentagon. It was how the response
to those attacks by the United States resulted in our abandonment of core principles and values in the
"war on terror." Many of the most lasting impacts of this ill-defined war were felt domestically, not
internationally. Starting with George W. Bush, the 9/11 attacks were used to justify the creation of a massive
counterterrorism system with growing personnel and budgets designed to find terrorists in the
heartland. Laws were rewritten to prevent citizens from challenging searches and expanding surveillance
of citizens. Leaders from both parties acquiesced as the Bush administration launched programs of
warrantless surveillance, sweeping arrests of Muslim citizens and the creation of a torture program.
What has been most chilling is that the elimination of Saddam and now bin Laden has little impact on
this system, which seems to continue like a perpetual motion machine of surveillance and searches.
Disad turns the case – effective anti-terror laws now mean obstacles to reversing.
Givens 13 – Austen D. Givens, a PhD student in the Department of Political Economy at King’s
College London, 2013 (“The NSA Surveillance Controversy, How the Ratchet Effect can Impact
Anti-Terrorism Laws,” Harvard Law School National Security Journal, July 2nd, available online at
http://harvardnsj.org/2013/07/the-nsa-surveillance-controversy-how-the-ratchet-effect-canimpact-anti-terrorism-laws/, accessed 6/19/15, J.L.)
*note: short reading, long reading*
The list of causes below is not meant to be exhaustive, but to show how a
constellation of variables can help to cement antiterrorism laws in place. The ratchet effect can occur because: anti-terrorism laws are effective. Antiterrorism laws may stick simply because they work. If so, then scaling back or reversing an effective anti-terrorism law
would increase a nation’s vulnerability to terrorism, pulling it back toward a condition that existed
before the law initially went into effect. This goes against national security interests, so it makes sense to leave
these laws on the books. The ratchet effect can occur because anti-terrorism laws may address multiple threats. Antiterrorism laws may come about because of a particular terrorist group or incident. But that does not necessarily mean the laws will work only
for that group, or apply only to similar types of terrorist attacks. Al-Qaeda’s attack on 9/11 spurred the creation of the USA PATRIOT Act. Yet
today the Act’s provisions can also impede domestic terrorist organizations like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front
(ELF) by facilitating intelligence sharing for law enforcement purposes. The ratchet effect can occur because it
is challenging to repeal
laws in democracies. Absent “sunset” provisions, which force certain portions of a law to expire after a pre-determined amount of time,
it can be difficult to repeal a law under normal circumstances—let alone when that law concerns
something as serious as terrorism. It requires careful political maneuvering to reverse an anti-terrorism
law because the law itself may enjoy popular support, be seen as effective, or be linked to vested
economic interests. These obstacles can promote a legal inertia that resists efforts to scale back or
reverse the law. The ratchet effect can occur because elected officials do not want to risk repealing anti-terrorism
laws. Here is a political nightmare: for whatever reason, a legislator or government executive spearheads an effort to reverse an antiterrorism law. The anti-terrorism law is repealed. Within a week, a terrorist attack occurs. Being wrong about terrorism can carry
devastating political consequences for incumbents. But being specifically identified as the one who
“turned off the alarm system” is a political death sentence. Under this scenario, even if there is no direct causal link
between the law’s repeal and the attack, the two are easily correlated because of their temporal proximity to each other. It makes no sense for
an elected official to open herself to the possibility of this scenario without a clear, compelling reason—and, even then, scaling back an antiterrorism law may still be too politically risky a proposition to entertain seriously. For these reasons, anti-terrorism laws can remain in effect
beyond the end of the crisis that brought them into existence. The ratchet effect can occur because there
is increased public
deference to government during crises. Legal scholars and political scientists have explored the effect of terrorism on public
deference to democratic governments.[10] While the specific reasons for this vary, the research overwhelmingly points toward increased trust
Popular support can provide
the political capital necessary for legislators and executives to quickly craft and implement antiterrorism laws. Over time, despite some slippage, public approval of these laws can continue—
particularly when the crisis that prompted the laws’ creation continues. The ratchet effect can occur because antiterrorism laws create a new security paradigm. An aggressive anti-terrorism law can fundamentally alter
societal approaches to terrorism. Surveillance may increase. Police powers can expand. Intelligence efforts may grow. Public
in government authorities in the immediate wake of terrorist attacks, though this can wane over time.
expectations of privacy can diminish. In the aggregate, these types of changes can represent a drastic change in a government’s approach to
terrorism, and effectively create a “new normal” level of security. Because this “new normal” is linked to the law itself, reversing the law begins
to dismantle the new security paradigm. From the public’s perspective, this might be an unacceptable option because it may increase societal
vulnerability to terrorism. Government agencies also risk losing resources—personnel, money, and political support—by returning to the status
quo ante.
psychoanalytic
( ) Psychoanalytic studies confirm our rollback args. It overcomes durable fiat.
Givens ‘13
Austen D. Givens is a PhD student in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. His forthcoming book with Nathan E. Busch,
The Business of Counterterrorism: Public-Private Partnerships in Homeland Security, will be published by Peter Lang. “The NSA Surveillance
Controversy: How the Ratchet Effect Can Impact Anti-Terrorism Laws” – Harvard Law School: National Security Journal - July 2, 2013 http://harvardnsj.org/2013/07/the-nsa-surveillance-controversy-how-the-ratchet-effect-can-impact-anti-terrorism-laws/
policymakers should beware of reflexive legislation. Terror attacks create conditions in which
emotions can run high; feelings of terror, anger, sadness, confusion, and frustration are natural consequences of
these circumstances. Behavioral psychology teaches us that human beings’ higher-order thinking skills (e.g. logic, reasoning, analysis, reflection) are
poorly integrated with baser, emotionally-rooted thinking (e.g. irrational prejudices, unreasonable fears, self-destructive desires).[11] One researcher
Second,
has gone so far as to say that the amygdala—the portion of the brain that controls reactive emotion—can hijack the higher-order parts of the brain, impeding effective decision-making in
laws passed in the immediate aftermath of terrorist attacks may be rooted more in
baser, emotionally-driven thinking than in careful, analytical, higher-order thinking. In other words, they may be mostly reflexive, not reflective. This is not to
say that all laws passed after terrorist attacks are emotionally-driven. Nor is it the case that all laws
created in these circumstances are somehow “bad” laws. But during and after terrorist attacks, leaders’ judgment of what may or may
not be good law can become clouded by emotion. Similarly, terrorist attacks can drive public support for reflexive antiterrorism legislation. And this is not an instinct that can be somehow “shut off” or “tuned out.” Legislators and citizens should be
crises.[12] Considering this, it is reasonable to suggest that
aware of this potential, and must walk a fine line between meeting immediate post-crisis needs and championing laws that will remain effective for the long haul. Third, “sunset” provisions are
prudent and reasonable. Given that anti-terrorism laws passed in the wake of terrorist attacks may be partly driven by emotion and that initial laws may prove difficult to undo, it is wise for
government leaders to include “sunset” provisions in new anti-terrorism laws. Generally “sunset” provisions allow portions of a law to expire if not renewed by a pre-determined date. In a
sense, democracies must deliver a new mandate for the law—or at least part of the law—to avoid this expiration. With “sunset” provisions in place, unwise, irrelevant, or ineffective
components of a law can be allowed to wither and die when necessary. Letting these provisions lapse requires virtually no political capital from government leaders, unlike actively changing or
removing a law, which can require a great deal. For elected officials, this means that letting part of an anti-terrorism law expire is relatively easy. Re-examining and pruning anti-terrorism laws
in this way is a healthy practice. It can head off potential abuses of particularly aggressive anti-terrorism measures and forces a continual re-thinking of anti-terrorism laws as circumstances
The recent NSA surveillance controversy highlights the relevance of the ratchet effect to broader discussions of anti-terrorism
laws. The ratchet effect can affect anti-terrorism laws generally, entrenching and expanding them over time and potentially leading
to those laws being interpreted in unexpected and undesirable ways. The USA PATRIOT Act, developed in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, has been difficult to scale back since then, and has now been interpreted in a way that at least one of the
Act’s authors did not intend. This unintended interpretation of the Act led, in part, to today’s NSA
surveillance controversy. Scholars can benefit from future explorations of the ratchet effect, which may help illuminate further why
anti-terrorism laws remain in place and how their influence can expand in unanticipated ways.
change over time.
generic
The Disad turns the case via rollback and new civil liberty violations. Status Quo
detection is key.
Clarke ‘13
(et al; This is the Final Report and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications
Technologies. President Obama ordered a blue-ribbon task force to review domestic surveillance. This report releases the
findings of that group. The report was headed by five experts – including Richard Alan Clarke, who is the former National
Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States. Other expert contributors
include Michael Joseph Morell, who was the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and served as acting director
twice in 2011 and from 2012 to 2013 and Cass Robert Sunstein, who was the Administrator of the White House Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration and is currently a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
“LIBERTY AND SECURITY IN A CHANGING WORLD” – December 12th, 2013 – Easily obtained via a google search.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F
2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdocs%2F2013-12
12_rg_final_report.pdf&ei=Db0yVdDjKIKdNtTXgZgE&usg=AFQjCNH0S_Fo9dckL9bRarVpi4M6pq6MQ&bvm=bv.91071109,d.eXY)
The September 11 attacks were a vivid demonstration of the need for information about the
activities of potential terrorists.
some information, which could have been useful, was not
collected
We
are no longer dealing with threats from firearms
but with
w
m d
including
nuclear devices and biological
agents
detailed
This was so for several reasons. First,
and other information, which could have helped to prevent the attacks, was not shared among departments. Second, the scale of damage that 21st-century terrorists can inflict is far greater than anything that their predecessors could have imagined.
and conventional explosives,
and chemical
the possibility of
eapons of
ass
estruction,
. The damage that such attacks could inflict on the nation, measured in terms of loss of life, economic and social disruption, and the consequent sacrifice of civil liberties, is
extraordinary. The events of September 11 brought this home with crystal clarity. Third, 21st-century terrorists operate within a global communications network that enables them both to hide their existence from outsiders and to communicate with one another across continents at the
speed of light. Effective safeguards against terrorist attacks require the technological capacity to ferret out such communications in an international communications grid. Fourth, many of the international terrorists that the United States and other nations confront today cannot
realistically be deterred by the fear of punishment. The conventional means of preventing criminal conduct—the fear of capture and subsequent punishment—has relatively little role to play in combating some contemporary terrorists. Unlike the situation during the Cold War, in which
the Soviet Union was deterred from launching a nuclear strike against the United States in part by its fear of a retaliatory counterattack, the terrorist enemy in the 21st-century is not a nation state against which the United States and its allies can retaliate with the same effectiveness. In
such circumstances, detection in advance is essential in any effort to “provide for the common defence.” Fifth, the threat of massive terrorist attacks involving nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons can generate a chilling and destructive environment of fear and anxiety among our
If Americans came to believe that
preventing such attacks is beyond the capacity of our government, the quality of national life would be
greatly imperiled. , if a similar
attack were to occur in the future, there would almost surely
be an impulse to increase the use of surveillance technology
despite the potentially corrosive
effects on individual freedom
nation’s citizens.
we are infiltrated by enemies we cannot identify and who have the power to bring death, destruction, and chaos to our lives on a massive scale, and that
Indeed
or even more devastating
to prevent further strikes,
and self-governance.
The U.S. has assumed a unilateral preemptive approach of maintaining fear against
terror.
Smith 07 – Haviland Smith, retired CIA station chief from Exeter & Dartmouth, University of
North Carolina Chapel Hill Analysis on U.S. Foreign Policy, 2007 (“The U.S. Response to
Terrorism: A Fundamentally Flawed Strategy,” November,
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2007/1012/s mit/smith_response.html, Accessed
6/16/15, JL)
During the Cold War, American foreign policy was built on the twin bases of containment and alliances:
containment of the Soviet Union and her allies and alliances with our friends in support of that
containment. The critical element in the success of that policy was acceptance by both sides that the nuclear
weaponry of the day would preclude any preemptive strike of one against the other. We called that MAD, or Mutual Assured
Destruction. An additional important element in that policy was the fact that our allies, and to a somewhat lesser extent the allies of the
Soviet Union, were able to exercise constraints on the policies and activities of both of the principals. Say what you will, even with a couple of
very close calls, that policy prevailed and the Cold War never turned hot. The role of the intelligence community during the Cold War, as it is (or
should be) at any given time, was to provide policy makers with finished intelligence designed to help with the decision making process.
Whether or not the collection and analytical processes succeed, all the intelligence-producing organizations in the intelligence community are
designed to provide that product. The demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the accompanying threat of Soviet nuclear weaponry brought
a close to that era. The
events of 9/11 set us on a completely different path. Since that horrible moment, we have
embarked on a totally new foreign policy of preemptive unilateralism and an equally new domestic policy of
intolerance for dissent and of creating and maintaining fear and anxiety in the American public. The
question for examination is whether or not those changes and these new policies serve us well in the ongoing struggle with radical Muslim
terrorism.A Radical Revolution in Foreign Policy Preemptive
unilateralism represents a radical revolution in foreign
policy. After a whole string of “reasons” for the attack on Iraq, we are now told that we needed to
preemptively attack Iraq because they had the “intellectual capability” to create a nuclear weapon. Is that
to be the basis for future foreign preemptions? The constraints placed on previous administrations by our Cold War
alliances have gone completely out the window. The “unilateral” part of this new policy, as mirrored in our
established refusal to listen to anyone about our plans for invading Iraq, has ruled out moderating counsel from any of our
former friends and allies, leaving us almost friendless in today’s world. As we saw in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, it
has been more important to the Bush administration to go ahead with its plans than to listen to its (former) friends and allies. Although it is
extremely difficult to sort out the true motivation behind that policy, what we have learned from the “kiss and tell” revelations of former
members of this administration is that the decision to invade Iraq had been made well before 9/11. Given
the fact that none of the
litany of “justifications” (WMD, Iraqi ties to Al-Qaida, bringing democracy to the Arabs, etc.) for the
invasion has held up to scrutiny, that decision would now appear to be based primarily on ideological
imperatives. For intelligence professionals, both active and retired, that raises the question of the role, if
any, for finished intelligence in today’s foreign policy deliberations. The Bush administration’s
disinclination to listen to counsel from the State Department, the unprecedented visits of the Vice President to CIA
analysts, the creation of the Office for Special Plans in the Pentagon to “relook” old intelligence, and the willingness to listen to
“Curveball,” a known fabricator, and Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraq National Congress, whose goal of
overthrowing the Baathists in Iraq could only be achieved through misleading the United States into war,
give a clear picture of an administration that was only interested in seeing intelligence that supported an
already settled policy decision. The only conceivably worse basis for action would be if someone in the administration were listening
to extraterrestrial voices! Many past administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have made foreign policy
decisions not only on the basis of the objective facts in the area under consideration, but also on the
basis of their domestic political needs. It is difficult, however, to recall an administration that has so blatantly ignored objective
realities as this one. As long as this is the way foreign policy is formulated, there will be little to no role for
input from the intelligence community. However imperfect intelligence may be at any given moment or on any given issue, it
does have a potentially constructive role to play in support of foreign policy. At minimum, intelligence deserves to be heard, not summarily
dismissed. Domestic Policy Problems The
administration’s domestic policy during this same period has been based
solely on ensuring the “security of the American people.” That has brought us the Patriot Acts, wireless
wiretapping, the abrogation of habeas corpus, torture, rendition, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, etc. And those
are only the things we know about! We have been given a color coded terrorist threat warning system and daily
hammering on what constitutional rights Americans have to give up to be “safe.” Most importantly, this
administration and its supporters in the Congress, the media, and the public have resorted to the worst
kinds of character assassination and name calling to maintain the atmosphere of fear and anxiety they
have so adroitly created. If you disagree with the policy they support, you are “soft on terror,”
“unpatriotic,” or, even worse, a traitor. In short, dissent is intimidated — a process never approved by
our founding fathers.
at: culture shift
Political culture has not shifted. Rollback still possible if another terror episode takes
place.
Cole ‘15
David Cole is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, a volunteer attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights,
the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. He is the author of
seven books, and his books have received multiple awards, including the American Book Award for Enemy Aliens: Double
Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. “Reining in the NSA” – The New York Review of Books – June
2nd - http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jun/02/nsa-surveillance-congress-sunset/
If Edward Snowden had not revealed the NSA’s sweeping surveillance of Americans, Congress would have simply renewed
Section 215, the USA Patriot Act provision that the NSA relied on before its expiration on June 1—as Congress had done on seven previous
occasions since 2001. But Snowden’s leaking of top secret NSA documents let Americans in on the previously secret fact that their government was collecting all of their phone data,
without regard to whether they had ever engaged in any terrorist, criminal, or even suspicious activity. As a result, Congress has now imposed restrictions on national security surveillance for
Some have seen the passage of the USA Freedom Act as reflecting a major shift in
Americans’ attitudes toward liberty and security. That is possible, but only time, and another terrorist attack, will tell.
the first time since the September 11 attacks.
What is certain when it comes to surveillance is the critical importance of both sunsets, requiring a law to be reauthorized at regular intervals, and sunshine, or transparency about how the law
is being used in practice.
Without the pending expiration of Section 215, Snowden’s revelations would not have led to
reform; Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell’s opposition to reforming the law would have been more than sufficient to block any change.
uq
AT: “N/u New Freedom Act, Section 215 was just cut”
( ) Section 215 changes are minor – did not increase terror risk at all.
Kaplan ‘15
Fred M. Kaplan is an American author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He holds a Ph.D. (1983) in political science from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1978 to 1980, he was a foreign and defense policy adviser to U.S. Congressman
Les Aspin (D, Wisconsin).His weekly "War Stories" column for Slate magazine covers international relations and U.S. foreign
policy. “The NSA Debate We Should Be Having” – Slate – June 8th http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2015/06/the_national_security_agency_s_surveillance_and_th
e_usa_freedom_act_the.2.html
Both sides are off the mark. The NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata was the subject of the first news stories based on the
trove of highly classified documents that Snowden leaked, and it stirred the biggest commotion. But in fact the metadata program never comprised more than a
tiny percentage of the agency’s vast and global surveillance net. The new law’s reform measure—to keep the metadata stored with the telecom companies,
allowing NSA access only to specified materials, and then only through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—was first proposed not by some libertarian critic but by Gen. Keith
Alexander, then-director of the NSA. Under the system that has been in effect, as authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act (or, rather, by the FISA court’s now-discredited reading of that
section), the NSA routinely collected metadata from some of the biggest cellular companies—not the contents of conversations, but the phone numbers, dates, times, and duration of the calls.
If someone inside the United States called a number linked to one of three terrorist organizations (including al-Qaida), an NSA alert system would note that fact. The NSA could then ask the
FISA Court for permission to search the database for a list of all the other numbers that the American phone had called, as well as all the numbers that those numbers had called, going back as
Under the
new reform law, called the USA Freedom Act, the NSA would no longer possess the database, so it would seek a FISA
court order to get it from the telecom companies—and the FISA court would now include a privacy advocate who could argue against relinquishing the
data. If the court sided with the NSA, what happened next would be exactly the same as before the new law passed. So, it’s not exactly a giant step in the annals of
either national-security risk or civil liberties reform—unless one of two things had been true. First, if the NSA had been abusing the process—if analysts or senior officials had
far as five years. If this search revealed a suspicious pattern, the NSA would turn the materials over to the FBI, which could seek a warrant to listen to conversations.
been searching metadata for personal, political, or vindictive purposes—the changes in custody and oversight would have a huge impact. But neither Snowden’s documents nor any
subsequent probes have uncovered any such evidence. Second, if authoritarians or worse—say, modern-day versions of Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover—were to come to power, they
could suspend the internal controls at NSA and use the agency’s vast databases to track domestic enemies or any target of their choosing. In that case, the Freedom Act would serve as a
powerful brake to oppression: Because the government would no longer possess the data, it couldn’t exploit the data. That is the real—and the intended—effect of the reform: not so much to
change the way surveillance technology is used today, but rather to limit the potential for abuse in the future. For now, surveillance through telephone metadata is pretty sparse. In 2012,
the NSA queried the database for 288 U.S. telephone numbers. As a result of those queries, the agency passed just 12 tips to the FBI.
None of those tips led to the capture of a single terrorist or the halting of a terrorist plot. In fact, according to President Obama’s independent
commission on NSA reform, the telephone metadata program has never had any impact on countering terrorism.
( ) New Freedom Act hasn’t hampers vital surveillance programs
Kaplan ‘15
Fred M. Kaplan is an American author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He holds a Ph.D. (1983) in political science from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1978 to 1980, he was a foreign and defense policy adviser to U.S. Congressman
Les Aspin (D, Wisconsin).His weekly "War Stories" column for Slate magazine covers international relations and U.S. foreign
policy. “The NSA Debate We Should Be Having” – Slate – June 8th http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2015/06/the_national_security_agency_s_surveillance_and_th
e_usa_freedom_act_the.2.html
The whole point—really, the only point—of the USA Freedom Act, and the overhaul of Section 215 telephone metadata, was to
strengthen that oversight, to erect yet another fence that the intelligence agencies have to hurdle to get access to private information. But no
one should infer from this that we’ve entered into a new era or that government surveillance and
cyberespionage have been—for better or worse—dealt a serious setback. The NSA is not in retreat, nor are its counterparts in
Russia, China, Israel, France, Iran, North Korea, and other countries. That’s not an excuse for complacency or alarm; it’s cause for vigilance, oversight—and an understanding of what these
programs are about.
( ) Section 215 doesn’t take-out uniqueness:
-
It’s okay to alter a program if counter-terror capabilities are retained. That’ll
still discourage attacks.
Lewis ‘14
James Andrew Lewis is a senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, D.C., where he writes on technology, security, and the international economy. Before
joining CSIS, he worked at the US Departments of State and Commerce as a Foreign Service officer and as a member of the
Senior Executive Service. His diplomatic experience included negotiations on military basing in Asia, the Cambodia peace
process, and the five-power talks on arms transfer restraint. Lewis received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
“Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate” - CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - STRATEGIC
TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM – December - http://csis.org/publication/underestimating-risk-surveillance-debate
The chief difference between now and the situation before 9/11 is that all of these countries have put in place much
more robust surveillance systems, nationally and in cooperation with others, including the United States, to detect and
prevent potential attacks. Another difference is that the failure of U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the opportunities created by the Arab Spring have opened a new “front”
for jihadi groups that makes their primary focus regional. Western targets still remain of interest, but are more likely to face attacks from domestic sympathizers. This could change if the wellresourced ISIS is frustrated in its efforts to establish a new Caliphate and turns its focus to the West. In addition, the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen (al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) continues to
The incidence of attacks in the United States or Europe is very low, but we do not
have good data on the number of planned attacks that did not come to fruition. This includes not just
attacks that were detected and stopped, but also attacks where the jihadis were discouraged and did not initiate an operation or press an attack
to its conclusion because of operational difficulties. These attacks are the threat that mass surveillance was created to prevent.
The needed reduction in public anti-terror measures without increasing the chances of successful attack is
contingent upon maintaining the capability provided by communications surveillance to detect, predict,
and prevent attacks. Our opponents have not given up; neither should we.
regularly plan attacks against U.S. targets.27
-
215 wasn’t eliminated and wasn’t a vital capability.
Clarke ‘13
(et al; This is the Final Report and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications
Technologies. President Obama ordered a blue-ribbon task force to review domestic surveillance. This report releases the
findings of that group. The report was headed by five experts – including Richard Alan Clarke, who is the former National
Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States. Other expert contributors
include Michael Joseph Morell, who was the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and served as acting director
twice in 2011 and from 2012 to 2013 and Cass Robert Sunstein, who was the Administrator of the White House Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration and is currently a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
“LIBERTY AND SECURITY IN A CHANGING WORLD” – December 12th, 2013 – Easily obtained via a google search.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F
2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdocs%2F2013-12
12_rg_final_report.pdf&ei=Db0yVdDjKIKdNtTXgZgE&usg=AFQjCNH0S_Fo9dckL9bRarVpi4M6pq6MQ&bvm=bv.91071109,d.eXY)
NSA believes that on at least a few occasions, information derived from the section 215 bulk telephony meta-data program has contributed to its efforts to prevent possible terrorist attacks,
either in the United States or somewhere else in the world. More often, negative results from section 215 queries have helped to alleviate concern that particular terrorist suspects are in
Our review suggests that the information contributed to terrorist
investigations by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks
and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional section 215 orders. Moreover, there is reason for
caution about the view that the program is efficacious in alleviating concern about possible terrorist connections,
given the fact that the meta-data captured by the program covers only a portion of the records of only a few telephone
service providers.
contact with co-conspirators in the United States.
AT: “Empirically False – the program was shut down for two days”
( ) 215 never expired for ONGOING investigations – the Sunset was written differently
than their authors assume.
Wittes ‘14
Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the
author of several books and a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. “On the Oddity of
the Patriot Act Sunset Provisions” – Lawfare - Monday, November 24, 2014 – This card is internally excerpting a New York Times
piece from November 19th, 2014. That piece is written by Charlie Savage - who is a Washington correspondent for The New
York Times. He is known for his work on presidential power and national security legal policy matters. He received a Pulitzer
Prize for National Reporting in 2007 for his coverage of presidential signing statements.
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/11/on-the-oddity-of-the-patriot-act-sunset-provisions/
Last week, the New York Times‘s Charlie Savage had what seems to me a pretty big, if under-discussed, scoop—or perhaps we should say that he channelled to the public a pretty big scoop by
the Patriot Act sunset provision—
doesn’t quite say what everyone—from advocates to members of Congress to the
administration itself—seems to think it says. Writes Savage: The law says that Section 215, along with another section of the Patriot Act, expires
on “June 1, 2015, except that former provisions continue in effect with respect to any particular foreign intelligence investigation that
began before June 1, 2015, or with respect to any particular offense or potential offense that began or occurred before June 1, 2015.”
Michael Davidson, who until his retirement in 2011 was the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top staff lawyer, said this meant that as long as there was an older
counterterrorism investigation still open, the court could keep issuing Section 215 orders to phone
companies indefinitely for that investigation. “It was always understood that no investigation should be different the day after the sunset than it was the
former Senate Intelligence Committee chief counsel Michael Davidson. The news, which certainly caught me unawares, is that
stated in Section 105 of this law and extended until June 1, 2015 in this one—
day before,” Mr. Davidson said, adding: “There are important reasons for Congress to legislate on what, if any, program is now warranted. But considering the actual language of the sunset
the widespread assumption by
lawmakers and executive branch officials, as well as in news articles in The New York Times and elsewhere, that the program must lapse next
summer without new legislation was incorrect.
provision, no one should believe the present program will disappear solely because of the sunset.” Mr. Davidson said
Sunset provisions were soft – they never stopped ongoing investigations.
Wittes ‘14
Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the
author of several books and a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. “On the Oddity of
the Patriot Act Sunset Provisions” – Lawfare - Monday, November 24, 2014 – This card is internally excerpting a New York Times
piece from November 19th, 2014. That piece is written by Charlie Savage - who is a Washington correspondent for The New
York Times. He is known for his work on presidential power and national security legal policy matters. He received a Pulitzer
Prize for National Reporting in 2007 for his coverage of presidential signing statements.
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/11/on-the-oddity-of-the-patriot-act-sunset-provisions/
it turns a hard-stop deadline of June 1 for new legislation into a very soft deadline.
The government has a lot of
investigations focused on counterterrorism open at any given time.
Given that the 215 program involves orders to the telephone companies to produce all metadata
records,
, the wording of the sunset would appear to allow any one of
these investigations to support continuation of metadata collection for as long as that investigation
persists.
The reason Davidson’s point matters is that
, 2015
national security
on the theory that the group of them is—as a whole—relevant to an investigation
Some of these investigations, moreover, will persist for a very long time—years and years and years. So the text, in principle, perhaps perversely seems to me to do pretty nearly what Jaffer says it would be “perverse” to read it to do—that is, bootstrap itself to
long-term, if not quite permanent, 215 authority, at least as to some broad investigations.
AT: “US is losing the war on terror”
It’s not about “winning or losing” in absolute terms. The US is doing well – and far
better than if softer intel approaches - like plan – were used.
Zenko ‘15
Micah Zenko is the Douglas Dillon fellow in the Center for Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Previously, he worked for five years at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and in Washington, DC, at the
Brookings Institution, Congressional Research Service, and State Department's Office of Policy Planning. He also previously
served as vice chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Terrorism. Zenko has published on a range of
national security issues, including articles in Foreign Affairs, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Defense and Security Analysis, and
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and op-eds in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago
Tribune, and New York Times. The author is internally quoting Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan – “CIA Director:
We’re Winning the War on Terror, But It Will Never End” - Politics, Power and Preventive Action – a blog coordinated by the
Council of Foreign Relations - April 8, 2015 - http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2015/04/08/cia-director-were-winning-the-war-onterror-but-it-will-never-end/
Last night, Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan participated in a question-and-answer session at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. The first
thirty-seven minutes consisted of an unusually probing exchange between Brennan and Harvard professor Graham Allison (full disclosure: Graham is a
former boss of mine). Most notably, between 19:07 and 29:25 in the video, Allison pressed Brennan repeatedly about whether
the United States is
winning the war on terrorism and why the number of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups has only increased since 9/11: “There seem to be more of them than
when we started…How are we doing?” Brennan replied: If I look across the board in terms of since 9/11 at terrorist organizations,
and if the United States in all of its various forms. In intelligence, military, homeland security, law enforcement, diplomacy. If we were not
as engaged against the terrorists, I think we would be facing a horrendous, horrendous environment.
Because they would have taken full advantage of the opportunities that they have had across the region… We have worked
collectively as a government but also with our international partners very hard to try and root many of them out. Might some of these actions be stimulants to
others joining their ranks? Sure, that’s a possibility. I think, though it has taken off of the battlefield a lot more terrorists, than it has put on. This statement is
impossible to evaluate or measure because the U.S. government has consistently refused to state publicly which terrorist organizations are deemed combatants,
and can therefore be “taken out on the battlefield.” However, relying upon the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism,the estimated strength of
all al-Qaeda-affiliated groups has grown or stayed the same since President Obama came into office. Of course, non-al-Qaeda-affiliated groups have arisen since
9/11, including the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which the Central Intelligence Agency estimated last September to contain up to 31,500 fighters, and Boko Haram,
which has perhaps 10,000 committed members. However, the most interesting question posed to Brennan came at the very end from a Harvard freshman who
identified himself as Julian: “We’ve been fighting the war on terror since 2001. Is there an end in sight, or should we get used to this new state of existence?
Brennan replied: It’s a long war, unfortunately. But it’s been a war that has been in existence for millennia, at the same time—the use of violence for political
purposes against noncombatants by either a state actor or a subnational group. Terrorism has taken many forms over the years. What is more challenging now is,
again, the technology that is available to terrorists, the great devastation that can be created by even a handful of folks, and also mass communication that just
proliferates all of this activity and incitement and encouragement. So you have an environment now that’s very conducive to that type of propaganda and
recruitment efforts, as well as the ability to get materials that are going to kill people. And so this is going to be something, I think, that we’re always going to have
to be vigilant about. There is evil in the world and some people just want to kill for the sake of killing…This is something that, whether it’s from this group right now
or another group, I think the ability to cause damage and violence and kill will be with us for many years to come. We just have to not kill our way out of this
because that’s not going to address it. We need to stop those attacks that are in train but we also have to address some of those underlying factors and conditions.
I’m not saying that poverty causes somebody to become a terrorist, or a lack of governance, but they certainly do allow these terrorist organizations to grow and
they take full advantage of those opportunities. To
summarize, the war on terrorism is working, compared to inaction or
other policies. But, the American people should expect it to continue for millennia, or as long as lethal technologies and mass communication remain
available to evil people.
Fight on terror on the brink = ISIS losing Tal Abyad changed the game
Damon and Tuysuz 6/23 (Arwa Damon - senior international correspondent and Gul Tuysuz –
reporter, “ISIS defeat could give coalition blueprint for success”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/22/world/arwa-damon-tal-abyad-blueprint-for-success/) //CW
Tal Abyad, Syria (CNN) ISIS
has been forced from one of its stronghold outposts, a key access point to its self-declared
capital, where it was entrenched for two years. And the defeat along a vital stretch of terrain could be a potential
blueprint for more military successes against the militants. In freshly-liberated Tal Abyad -- not far from the Syria-Turkey
border -- the scars of battle are everywhere, as are ISIS booby traps. ISIS ruled this rural landscape with impunity, fortifying it to defend a vital
frontier and a key access point to their capital. The YPG, the Kurdish fighting force, had tried and failed to capture key towns in the past. ISIS
would counter each assault with heavy weapons, car bombs and suicide bombers, each time forcing the YPG to retreat. But in the past month,
the battlefield dynamics have changed. U.S.-led coalition airstrikes pounded ISIS fighting positions,
taking out the terrorist group's armored vehicles, heavy weapons, headquarters, and other targets,
allowing the YPG to barrel through around 80 kilometers (50 miles) of ISIS territory to reach the major
prize -- Tal Abyad. The town is the gateway to a crucial border crossing with Turkey. The combination of coalition power in the air and a
committed force on the ground was so effective that ISIS fighters rapidly retreated. ISIS blew up a bridge, and put up a fierce, but brief, fight -and then drew back. The Kurdish force had estimated it would take them weeks to defeat ISIS in Tal Abyad. In the end, it happened in two days.
YPG leaders on the ground tell us that the effectiveness of the assault was thanks to direct coordination between the coalition and their upper
command. "When the coalition against ISIS was formed, we were the only force that was committed in the fight against ISIS," said Bilal Rojava,
the YPG commander overseeing the Tal Abyad front. "The coalition forces saw this and coordinated with us." That coordination began during
the battle for Kobani last fall, and has developed since. Now, the drive to Tal Abyad is scattered with the carcasses of ISIS armored vehicles and
the remains of its defensive positions. Buildings
once occupied by ISIS, the walls still etched with crude renditions
of its feared flag and Quranic inscriptions, lie abandoned. Cross-hair targets spray-painted on the walls of a former ISIS
base are peppered with bullet holes. Huge dirt berms that blocked the road have been cleared to allow vehicles to pass. There are underground
tunnels, so that ISIS fighters could move undetected, around one village we are taken through. The tunnels -- clearly dug out by heavy machines
-- are about a meter (3.2 feet) wide and high enough to easily stand in. Metal sheets form the roof, covered in a thick layer of dirt, are hard to
detect with the naked eye. But they are not thick enough to fool the thermal cameras the coalition has at its disposal. Inside Tal Abyad, ISIS'
seemingly endless supply of armaments is evident. In the back of a mosque named for former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the YPG is
clearing out an ISIS bomb-making factory. The flatbed of a truck is half-filled with artillery rounds waiting to be hauled off. There are large
artillery rounds, detonation caps, and plastic bags of white sticky powder -- a low-grade explosive. A tailor-turned-YPG weapons specialist tells
us the white powder is a key element in ISIS's notorious and unending suicide bombs. The YPG is still clearing out towns and villages from
booby-traps and mines. In one village, we hear an explosion in the distance. The local commander takes off to determine the cause, returning
to tell us that they were from explosives ISIS left behind. In Tal Abyad, a building is off limits. ISIS is known to booby trap buildings, and the YPG
commander tells us not to touch the door. Through the closed gate and hazy windows one can barely see into the guard house, but stacked
against its back wall are makeshift bombs with strands of detonation cord snaking out of them. Throughout the ruined town and surrounding
countryside, there is evidence of how well armed ISIS is. Its arsenal has been massively enhanced by battlefield gains that began in Mosul and
spanned over huge swaths of Iraq. Even the committed YPG had been struggling to beat ISIS's defenses -- until the airstrikes began. "If the
coalition strikes, and there is no force on the ground, there would be no real impact on ISIS. And if we advanced without coalition strikes, we
would not have advanced this fast," Bilal said. This is perhaps the formula the U.S. wants to implement. Backed by coalition
airstrikes, an effective and reliable partner on the ground can succeed in defeating ISIS. But the battlefield is vast, and in this complex region
with competing interests, a
blueprint for success is hardly easy to replicate.
The war on terror is on the brink — status quo surveillance solves, but removal of any
one part can cause collapse.
Hamilton 15 — Lee Hamilton, Professor of Practice and International Law at Indiana University,
Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University, J.D. from DePauw University, 2015 (“To Win
the War on Terror, We Must Win the War of Ideas,” Huffington Post, February 20th, accessible online at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-h-hamilton/to-win-the-war-on-terror-_b_6722214.html, accessed
on 6-20-15)
Clearly then, the
unpredictable danger posed by terrorism has not subsided. The fact that terrorism is
becoming increasingly decentralized makes dealing with it even more difficult. While ISIS has become
the major terrorist group, it is one of many groups engaged in deadly activities, including al-Qaeda.
The question now is: Can
we roll ISIS back? To do so, we need a more comprehensive approach and a unity of
effort that fully engages the president, Congress, our military and intelligence capabilities, and our allies
around the world.
Without doubt, we
have experienced considerable success in the fight against terror. Almost weekly we hear
of top terrorist leaders being removed by our drone and other anti-terrorism strikes. Yet somehow the
terrorists seem to recover quickly and keep coming. Our attacks, while effective, haven't quite quelled
the terrorists' momentum, which is reflected by the numbers of members and new recruits. In 2001, by one estimate, we identified
about 300 al-Qaeda members and affiliates worldwide. In 2015, there are more than 30,000 al-Qaeda fighters in Syria alone.
We should not forget the successes we've had in the fight against terror. At the same time, surveying
the current landscape suggests that the U.S. and its allies need to up their games considerably in dealing
with ISIS and other terrorist groups.
Upping our game will require that we focus more intently on several critical components of our
counterterrorism policy. Among those components is intelligence. Because it can prevent attacks,
intelligence is everyone's favorite weapon in the fight against terrorism.
Simply put, even the smallest amount of information, combined with other bits of information, can
prevent a massive attack. However, gathering meaningful intelligence has become an increasingly
formidable task, since, once again, we're not dealing with a single state. We're faced with a diffuse
threat and groups that continue to evolve, spread out and decentralize. ISIS is expanding beyond Syria
and Iraq to Libya, Egypt, Algeria and other countries.
Trend goes Neg – US just scored huge victories in the War on Terror.
S.I.N. ‘15
(Strategic Intelligence News publishes intelligence reports, geopolitics, military intelligence, and crime reports analysis. SIN
analysis are reached through the careful procedures that include conducting interviews, observation of specific intelligence
leads, and participation in work groups in intelligence analysis - “U.S. Strikes Kills Nasir al-Wuhayshi; Top Al Qaida Leader Yemen
Affiliate” – June 16th - http://www.intelligencebriefs.com/u-s-strikes-kills-nasir-al-wuhayshi-top-al-qaida-leader-yemenaffiliate/)
U.S. strikes has left a top Al Qaida commander dead. Al Qaida has confirmed Nasir al-Wuhayshi who is number 2 figure (rank) and
commander of its powerful Yemen affiliate killed in the US strikes. Nasir al-Wuhayshi was the second in
command and the deputy of the Al Qaida top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri who once also served as Osama bin Laden’s personal assistant. Al Qaida
confirmed the death of their leader in a video statement released early Tuesday, 16 June 2015 by the terror network’s media wing in the Arabian Peninsula. In the statement they also said his
The killing of Al Qaida Terror network number 2 commander is
a big blow to the affiliate terror groups such as, the Somalia based jihadist , the Al Shabaab, Al Hijra and the al
Muhajiroun of East Africa.
immediate deputy Qassim al-Rimi, has been named its official new leader.
( ) WMD attacks will inevitably be attempted. US will win. Intel gathering’s key
McDONOUGH ‘15
DOUG McDONOUGH -managing editor at Plainview Herald. Internally quoting James Olson – who has 31 years as an American
spy – “U.S. winning the war on terror” – MyPlainview.com - February 28, 2015 http://www.myplainview.com/news/article_c1881ec4-bf9b-11e4-a9b1-b342ff9491d6.html
James Olson is blunt in his assessment. "Make no mistake, our country is at war," he said
on terror, and it will be long, bloody and deadly. But America will win this
war because our best young people today are stepping forward in droves." While many of those are putting on uniforms and joining the
ranks of the nation's combat forces on the front lines, still more are going in harm's way behind the scenes as counterintelligence operatives. "We are on the front
lines in the war on terror," Olson warns. "And we will be hit again, inside our own borders. It will be a weapon of mass
destruction, and no region or sector is immune from this attack. The best way to combat this threat is
through good intelligence."
After spending 31 years as an American spy,
Thursday while keynoting the annual Plainview Chamber of Commerce banquet. "It's a war
AT: “Name an attack that the program stopped”
Our 1NC Boot ev says 50 terror attacks have been stopped. Our Lewis ev proves others
have been discouraged.
Meta-data does not need to directly stop attacks – it’s indirectly allowed for
prioritization.
Lewis ‘14
James Andrew Lewis is a senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, D.C., where he writes on technology, security, and the international economy. Before
joining CSIS, he worked at the US Departments of State and Commerce as a Foreign Service officer and as a member of the
Senior Executive Service. His diplomatic experience included negotiations on military basing in Asia, the Cambodia peace
process, and the five-power talks on arms transfer restraint. Lewis received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
“Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate” - CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - STRATEGIC
TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM – December - http://csis.org/publication/underestimating-risk-surveillance-debate
Assertions that a collection program contributes nothing because it has not singlehandedly prevented
an attack reflect an ill-informed understanding of how the United States conducts collection and analysis
to prevent harmful acts against itself and its allies. Intelligence does not work as it is portrayed in films—solitary
agents do not make startling discoveries that lead to dramatic, last-minute success (nor is technology consistently
infallible). Intelligence is a team sport. Perfect knowledge does not exist and success is the product of the efforts of teams of dedicated individuals from many agencies, using many tools and
Analysts assemble this mosaic from many
different sources and based on experience and intuition. Luck is still more important than anyone would like and the alternative to luck is acquiring more information. This
ability to blend different sources of intelligence has improved U.S. intelligence capabilities and gives us an advantage over
some opponents.
techniques, working together to assemble fragments of data from many sources into a coherent picture.
Aff demand to “name one attack the program stopped” is wrong and a poor standard.
Branda ‘14
(et al; JOYCE R. BRANDA, Acting Assistant Attorney General, BRIEF FOR THE APPELLEES - Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama –
before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal
reference to the Reporters Committee – October 2nd - https://www.eff.org/document/governments-smith-answering-brief)
Plaintiff asks the government to show more, claiming that the program is an unconstitutional means of serving the paramount need of preventing
terrorist attacks because the government has not “describe[d] a single instance” in which the program has “actually
stopped an imminent attack” or “aided . . . in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature.” Pl. Br. 33 (quoting Klayman, 957 F. Supp. 2d. at 40). The
Constitution does not require an anti-terrorism program to have demonstrably prevented a specific
terrorist attack to be reasonable. See Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 676 n.3 (“a demonstration of danger as to any particular airport or airline” is not required since “[i]t is
sufficient that the Government have a compelling interest in preventing an otherwise pervasive societal problem from
spreading”); Cassidy, 471 F.3d at 84-85; MacWade, 460 F.3d at 272. Nor is it problematic that the Section 215 program is only “one
means” among many government programs that work together to accomplish the paramount goal of countering terrorism. Pl. Br. 35. To protect
the Nation, the government employs a range of counter-terrorism tools and investigative methods in concert, which often serve
different functions in order to complement one another in the service of achieving the overarching goal of preventing attacks. Those tools rarely, however,
operate in isolation, and nothing in the Fourth Amendment’s special needs jurisprudence requires a showing that any single program is essential or itself prevented a particular
attack. The government has provided examples in which the Section 215 program provided timely and valuable
assistance to ongoing counter-terrorism investigations. See ER 74-75.
links
Link Wall
Err Neg on the link – your default assumption should be that changing intel gathering
could have big security risks.
Clarke ‘13
(et al; This is the Final Report and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications
Technologies. President Obama ordered a blue-ribbon task force to review domestic surveillance. This report releases the
findings of that group. The report was headed by five experts – including Richard Alan Clarke, who is the former National
Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States. Other expert contributors
include Michael Joseph Morell, who was the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and served as acting director
twice in 2011 and from 2012 to 2013 and Cass Robert Sunstein, who was the Administrator of the White House Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration and is currently a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
“LIBERTY AND SECURITY IN A CHANGING WORLD” – December 12th, 2013 – Easily obtained via a google search.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F
2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdocs%2F2013-12
12_rg_final_report.pdf&ei=Db0yVdDjKIKdNtTXgZgE&usg=AFQjCNH0S_Fo9dckL9bRarVpi4M6pq6MQ&bvm=bv.91071109,d.eXY)
Most of these challenges have a significant intelligence component. Policymakers cannot understand the issues, cannot make policy with regard to those
issues, and cannot successfully implement that policy without reliable intelligence. Any expert with access to open sources can provide insight on questions such as the Eurozone crisis and Japanese politics, but insights
on the plans, intentions, and capabilities of al-Qa’ida, on the status of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, and on the development of cyber
warfare tools by other nations are simply not possible without reliable intelligence. A wide range of intelligence
collectors, including NSA, have made important contributions to protecting the nation’s security. Notwithstanding recent
controversies, and the importance of significant reforms, the national security of the United States depends on the continued capacity
of NSA and other agencies to collect essential information. In considering proposals for reform, now and for the future,
policymakers should avoid the risk of overreaction and take care in making changes that could
undermine the capabilities of the Intelligence Community.
Generic
Snowden’s revealed programs deter terror
Johnson, 13 (Kevin Johnson, contributor to USA Today, June 19, 2013, “NSA director: Surveillance
foiled 50 terror plots”, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/18/nsa-surveillancesecret-programs-terror-plots/2434193/) CW
WASHINGTON — National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more
than 50 terror
threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance
programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden. More than 10 of the plots targeted
the U.S. homeland, Alexander told the House Intelligence Committee, including a plot to attack the
New York Stock Exchange. "I would much rather be here today debating this,'' Alexander told lawmakers, referring to the programs'
value, "than explaining why we were unable to prevent another 9/11'' attack. At the rare open committee hearing, Alexander and Deputy
Attorney General Jim Cole told lawmakers that both
surveillance operations — a domestic telephone tracking system
that collects records of millions of Americans and an Internet monitoring program targeting non-citizens
outside the U.S. — have been subject to rigorous oversight to guard against privacy abuses. "This isn't some
rogue operation that some guys at the NSA are operating,'' said Alexander, also an Army general. Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce described
another threat Tuesday that was neutralized by the surveillance programs:
Investigators used the phone tracking system to
identify an operative in San Diego who was providing support to terrorists in Somalia. Joyce also referred
to two disrupted plots that were disclosed last week as having been thwarted by the surveillance operations,
including a 2009 plan to bomb the New York subway system. In that case, authorities used its Internet
monitoring program to identify overseas communications involving Najibullah Zazi in Colorado, who was
later convicted in connection with the subway attack plan. "This is not a program that is off the books,''
Cole said, outlining the executive, legislative and judicial controls attached to both surveillance
operations.
Surveillance empirically prevents potential terrorist events—reported cases prove
Sullivan 13 (Sean, covered national politics for The Washington Post, political science and philosophy
graduate of Hamilton College, “NSA head: Surveillance helped thwart more than 50 terror plots,”
06/18/13, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06/18/nsa-head-surveillancehelped-thwart-more-than-50-terror-attempts /lg)
Intelligence officials said Tuesday that the government's sweeping surveillance efforts have helped thwart
"potential terrorist events" more than 50 times since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and the officials detailed two new examples
to illustrate the utility of the programs. In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, officials cited a nascent plot to blow up
the New York Stock Exchange and a case involving an individual providing financial support to an
overseas terrorist group. "In recent years, these programs, together with other intelligence, have protected the U.S. and
our allies from terrorist threats across the globe to include helping prevent the terrorist -- the potential terrorist events over 50 times
since 9/11," National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander told the committee. He said at least 10 of the plots targeted the United States. FBI
Deputy Director Sean Joyce said Tuesday that a provision in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act helped
officials monitor a "known extremist in Yemen" who was in contact with an individual in the United States. The information led to
disruption of the New York Stock Exchange plot, Joyce said. Joyce also said that the use of a FISA business record provision helped
officials with an investigation involving an individual who was communicating with an overseas terrorist. "The NSA, using the business record FISA, tipped
us off that this individual had indirect contacts with a known terrorist overseas," said Joyce. "We were able to reopen this
investigation, identify additional individuals through a legal process and were able to disrupt this terrorist activity." "So that's four cases
total that we have put out publicly," Alexander said Tuesday. The Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper recently revealed the sweeping Internet and
telephone surveillance techniques the NSA has utilized in recent years. Several
of the witnesses testifying Tuesday said the disclosure
of the surveillance programs by admitted leaker Edward Snowden had made the world a more dangerous place.
“We are now faced with a situation that because this information has been made public, we run the risk of losing these
collection capabilities,” said Robert S. Litt, general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “We’re not going to know for many
months whether these leaks in fact have caused us to lose these capabilities, but if they do have that effect, there is no doubt that they will cause our national
security to be affected.” Alexander had previously said the intelligence gathering helped in the cases of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan American who pleaded guilty to
planning suicide attacks in New York, and Pakistani American David Headley, who conducted surveillance in support of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India. Joyce
elaborated on the two previously revealed cases on Tuesday. Alexander said he would provide details of the 50 examples he cited Tuesday to lawmakers in a
classified setting on Wednesday. "Those
50 cases right now have been looked at by the FBI, CIA and other partners
within the community, and the National Counterterrorism Center is validating all the points so that you know that what we've put in there is
exactly right," said Alexander. Alexander also said that if the surveillance programs had been in place before the Sept. 11
attacks, the United States would have known that hijacker Khalid Muhammad Abdallah al-Mihdhar was in San Diego
and communicating with a known al Qaeda safehouse in Yemen. Alexander's testimony came a day after President Obama
defended his administration’s right to engage in such surveillance in an interview with PBS host Charlie Rose, saying the programs had adequate checks and
balances. The
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Obama argued, provided sufficient oversight of the National Security
Agency’s activities and said the government was “making the right trade-offs” in balancing privacy rights with national
security prerogatives. “What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone
calls, and the NSA cannot target your e-mails,” he added, before Rose interjected, “And have not.” “And have not,” Obama reiterated. “They cannot
and have not, by law and by rule, and unless they — and usually it wouldn’t be ‘they,’ it’d be the FBI — go to a court, and obtain a
warrant, and seek probable cause, the same way it’s always been, the same way when we were growing up and we were
watching movies, you want to go set up a wiretap, you got to go to a judge, show probable cause.” During the interview — which aired Monday night — the
president took pains to distinguish his national security approach from those of former president George W. Bush and former vice president Richard B. Cheney. “The
whole point of my concern, before I was president — because some people say, ‘Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s, you know, Dick
Cheney.’ Dick Cheney sometimes says, ‘Yeah, you know? He took it all lock, stock and barrel,’ ” Obama said, according to a transcript provided by PBS. “My concern
has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances?”
Privacy concerns causing difficulties in FBI ISIS search
Schleifer 6/18 (Theodore Schleifer – politics reporter “FBI director: We can't yet restrain ISIS on social
media” CNN http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/18/politics/fbi-social-media-attacks/index.html) // CW
Washington (CNN) - FBI Director James Comey said Thursday
his agency does not yet have the capabilities to limit
ISIS attempts to recruit Americans through social media. It is becoming increasingly apparent that
Americans are gravitating toward the militant organization by engaging with ISIS online, Comey said, but he
told reporters that "we don't have the capability we need" to keep the "troubled minds" at home. "Our job is to
find needles in a nationwide haystack, needles that are increasingly invisible to us because of end-to-end encryption," Comey said. "This is the
'going dark' problem in high definition." Comey said
ISIS is increasingly communicating with Americans via mobile
apps that are difficult for the FBI to decrypt. He also explained that he had to balance the desire to
intercept the communication with broader privacy concerns. "It is a really, really hard problem, but the
collision that's going on between important privacy concerns and public safety is significant enough that we
have to figure out a way to solve it," Comey said. The FBI director has previously said these apps are constantly reminding potential supporters
to carry out attacks. One of the gunmen who carried out an attack at a "Draw Mohammed" cartoon contest in Texas last month is believed to
have used Twitter to communicate with ISIS. "It's almost as if there is a devil sitting on the shoulder saying 'Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill!' all day long,"
Comey said then.
Domestic surveillance key to counter ISIS – encryption makes it necessary
Fitzgerald 6/4 (Sandy Fitzgerald – political writer, NewsMax, “FBI: 'We're Past Going Dark' Tracking
ISIS on Social Media” http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/fbi-isis-social-mediaencryption/2015/06/04/id/648650/) // CW
There are too many ways for the Islamic State (ISIS) to use encryption on various social media sites to
spread its message, U.S. officials told a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday, warning there is no way to monitor all
of the militant group's online communication. "There are 200-plus social media companies," Michael Steinbach, who heads the FBI's
counterterrorism division, told committee members, reports Fox News. "Some of these companies build their business model around end-toend encryption. There is no ability currently for us to see that." The
encryption methods allow ISIS propagandists to send
messages to as many as 200,000 people worldwide, it was pointed out during the hearing, and Steinbach warned members
that "we're past going dark in certain instances. We are dark." Part of the issue is that technology is developing faster than are laws that allow
communications to be intercepted. "The targets that are out there,
we are monitoring them very closely for any type of
action, any type of oversteps, any mobilization factors — and when we see those we're not taking a
chance," he said, referring to the case in Boston this week in which police shot and killed a man who was
allegedly plotting with a partner to kill police officers and outspoken anti-jihadist activist Pamela Geller.
In another recent case, suspects Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi were shot and killed by a security guard in
Garland, Texas, where they had plotted an attack on an event Geller was sponsoring. Special: Homeland
Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said that even a warrant or a wiretap often is not enough to stop
conspirators, as technology has gotten past that. "Even if we have coverage by, let's say, a warrant or a wiretap, they can
then jump into a message box and then to another platform that's called dark space that we can't cover
and we don't know what those communications are," said McCaul. John Mulligan, the deputy director of the National
Counterterrorism Center, further said that ISIS leaders believe "they are able to organize people solely through social media," as "they believe
they can enter into the dialogue and provide the tools, and they are not getting into very complex tools." Earlier in the day, McCaul told Fox
News that ISIS recruiters "know how to jump out of different platforms," and that he expected to hear from the FBI and other officials that
"probably the biggest concern is what we can't monitor and what we don't know and what is occurring
in the United States right now."
Plan curtails needed surveillance that has been stopping terrorism
Bergen et al 14 (Peter Bergen, David Sterman, Emily Schneider, and Bailey Cahall, contributors to
New America Foundation, January 13, 2014, “Do NSA's Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists?”,
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/do_nsas_bulk_surveillance_programs_stop_terrorists)
CW
On June 5, 2013, the Guardian broke the first story in what would become a flood of revelations regarding the extent and nature of the NSA’s
surveillance programs. Facing an uproar over the threat such programs posed to privacy, the Obama administration scrambled to defend them
as legal and essential to U.S. national security and counterterrorism. Two weeks after the first leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden
were published, President
Obama defended the NSA surveillance programs during a visit to Berlin, saying: “We know
of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States,
but, in some cases, threats here in Germany. So lives have been saved.” Gen. Keith Alexander, the
director of the NSA, testified before Congress that: “the information gathered from these programs
provided the U.S. government with critical leads to help prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in
more than 20 countries around the world.” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, said on the House floor in July that “54 times [the NSA programs]
stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe – saving real lives.”
Government intelligence programs key to combat terrorists
Sulmasy 13 (Glenn Sulmasy, Chief Academic Officer at Bryant University, Fellow for Homeland Security and National Security Law at
Center for National Policy, Law Professor at U.S. Coast Guard Academy, “Why we need government surveillance,”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/10/opinion/sulmasy-nsa-snowden/) aj
Edward Snowden's leaks of classified intelligence already have him being compared to Daniel Ellsworth of the Pentagon Papers and Bradley Manning of the
WikiLeaks fame. Snowden felt compelled to leak valuable documents about the NSA's surveillance programs. The 29-year-old was willing to give up his $200,000
job, girlfriend, home in Hawaii and his family. He boldly pronounced, "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government
to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building." The uproar
Many on the left
have been surprised that most of the same policies (now even the surveillance of U.S. citizens and phone companies) that
President George W. Bush initiated, are being used, and expanded upon, by the Obama administration.
Many on the right say it is government overreach and that Congress should have been briefed on the
broad programs. Although the cause for alarm in political or policy circles might have merit, the exercise of these authorities by the
executive branch does, in fact, appear to be legal. Once again, the war on al Qaeda is pitting national
security against America's longstanding commitment to the promotion of civil liberties and human
rights. The current threat by al Qaeda and jihadists is one that requires aggressive intelligence
collection and efforts. One has to look no further than the disruption of the New York City subway bombers (the one being touted by DNI Clapper) or
the Boston Marathon bombers to know that the war on al Qaeda is coming home to us, to our citizens, to our students,
to our streets and our subways. This 21st century war is different and requires new ways and methods of gathering information. As technology
has increased, so has our ability to gather valuable, often actionable, intelligence. However , the move toward "home-grown" terror will
necessarily require, by accident or purposefully, collections of U.S. citizens' conversations with
potential overseas persons of interest. An open society, such as the United States, ironically needs to use this
technology to protect itself. This truth is naturally uncomfortable for a country with a Constitution that prevents the federal government from
over the recent revelations about government surveillance programs has raised eyebrows and concerns across the political spectrum .
conducting "unreasonable searches and seizures." American historical resistance towards such activities is a bedrock of our laws, policies and police procedures. But
what might have been reasonable 10 years ago is not the same any longer. The constant armed struggle against the jihadists has adjusted our beliefs on what we
think our government can, and must, do in order to protect its citizens. However, when we hear of programs such PRISM, or the Department of Justice getting
phone records of scores of citizens without any signs of suspicious activities nor indications of probable cause that they might be involved in terrorist related
activities, the American demand for privacy naturally emerges to challenge such "trolling" measures or data-mining. The executive branch, although particularly
powerful in this arena, must ensure the Congress is kept abreast of activities such as these surveillance programs .
The need for enhanced
intelligence activities is a necessary part of the war on al Qaeda, but abuse can occur without ensuring the legislative branch
has awareness of aggressive tactics such as these. Our Founding Fathers, aware of the need to have an energetic, vibrant executive branch in foreign affairs, still
anticipated checks upon the presidency by the legislature. Working together, the
two branches can ensure that both legally, and by
policy, this is what the citizens desire of their government -- and that leaks such as Snowden's won't have the impact and damage
that his leaks are likely to cause. As for Snowden, regardless of how any of us feel about the national security surveillance programs at issue, he must be extradited
back to the U.S. for interviews and potential trial -- if for no other reason than to deter others from feeling emboldened to break the law in the same way in the
future.
Bulk, aggregated surveillance key to detect activity and pursue leads
Yoo 15 (John Yoo, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of the Legal Counsel of the
U.S. Department of Justice, visiting scholar at AEI, published on AEI, a nonpartisan public policy institute, “Will Congress reject the dangerous
NSA ruling by reauthorizing the Patriot Act?,” https://www.aei.org/publication/will-congress-reject-todays-dangerous-nsa-ruling-byreauthorizing-the-patriot-act/) aj
Finally, the
Court displays a deep misunderstanding of the challenges of counterterrorism policy, which
Congress understands far better. As Judge Richard Posner has recognized, an intelligence search “is a search for the
needle in a haystack.” Rather than pursue suspects who have already committed a crime and whose identity is already known,
intelligence agencies must search for clues among millions of potentially innocent connections,
communications, and links. “The intelligence services,” Posner writes, “must cast a wide net with a fine
mesh to catch the clues that may enable the next attack to be prevented.” Our government can detect terrorists
by examining phone and e-mail communications, as well as evidence of joint travel, shared assets, common histories or families, meetings, and
so on.
If our intelligence agents locate a lead, they must quickly follow its many possible links to identify
cells and the broader network of terrorists. A database of call data would allow a fast search for
possible links in the most important place — the United States, where terrorists can inflict the most damage. Most of
the calling records may well be innocent (just as most of the financial records of a suspected white-collar criminal may also be innocent), but
the more complete the database, the better our intelligence agencies can pursue a lead into the U.S.
Intelligence is key to preventing an increasing number of terror attacks. Their authors
say intel isn’t effective, it is only because the data isn’t organized
Inserra June 8, 2015 (David Inserra, David Inserra is a Research Associate for Homeland Security and
Cyber Security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy of the
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage
Foundation, “69th Islamist Terrorist Plot: Ongoing Spike in Terrorism Should Force Congress to Finally
Confront the Terrorist Threat”, The Heritage Foundation,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/06/69th-islamist-terrorist-plot-ongoing-spike-interrorism-should-force-congress-to-finally-confront-the-terrorist-threat , Accessed: 6/24/2015, RJS)
On June 2 in Boston, Usaamah Abdullah Rahim drew a knife and attacked police officers and FBI agents,
who then shot and killed him. Rahim was being watched by Boston’s Joint Terrorism Task Force as he
had been plotting to behead police officers as part of violent jihad. A conspirator, David Wright or Dawud Sharif Abdul
Khaliq, was arrested shortly thereafter for helping Rahim to plan this attack. This plot marks the 69th publicly known Islamist
terrorist plot or attack against the U.S. homeland since 9/11, and is part of a recent spike in terrorist
activity. The U.S. must redouble its efforts to stop terrorists before they strike, through the use of
properly applied intelligence tools. The Plot According to the criminal complaint filed against Wright, Rahim had originally planned
to behead an individual outside the state of Massachusetts,[1] which, according to news reports citing anonymous government officials, was
Pamela Geller, the organizer of the “draw Mohammed” cartoon contest in Garland, Texas.[2] To
this end, Rahim had purchased
multiple knives, each over 1 foot long, from Amazon.com. The FBI was listening in on the calls between
Rahim and Wright and recorded multiple conversations regarding how these weapons would be used to
behead someone. Rahim then changed his plan early on the morning of June 2. He planned to go “on vacation right here in
Massachusetts…. I’m just going to, ah, go after them, those boys in blue. Cause, ah, it’s the easiest target.”[3] Rahim and Wright had used the
phrase “going on vacation” repeatedly in their conversations as a euphemism for violent jihad. During this conversation, Rahim told Wright that
he planned to attack a police officer on June 2 or June 3. Wright then offered advice on preparing a will and destroying any incriminating
evidence. Based on this threat, Boston police officers and FBI agents approached Rahim to question him, which prompted him to pull out one of
his knives. After being told to drop his weapon, Rahim responded with “you drop yours” and moved toward the officers, who then shot and
killed him. While Rahim’s brother, Ibrahim, initially claimed that Rahim was shot in the back, video surveillance was shown to community
leaders and civil rights groups, who have confirmed that Rahim was not shot in the back.[4 ] Terrorism Not Going Away This 69th
Islamist
plot is also the seventh in this calendar year. Details on how exactly Rahim was radicalized are still
forthcoming, but according to anonymous officials, online propaganda from ISIS and other radical
Islamist groups are the source.[5] That would make this attack the 58th homegrown terrorist plot and continue the recent trend of
ISIS playing an important role in radicalizing individuals in the United States. It is also the sixth plot or attack targeting law enforcement in the
U.S., with a recent uptick in plots aimed at police. While
the debate over the PATRIOT Act and the USA FREEDOM Act
is taking a break, the terrorists are not. The result of the debate has been the reduction of U.S.
intelligence and counterterrorism capabilities, meaning that the U.S. has to do even more with less
when it comes to connecting the dots on terrorist plots.[6] Other legitimate intelligence tools and
capabilities must be leaned on now even more. Protecting the Homeland To keep the U.S. safe, Congress must take a hard
look at the U.S. counterterrorism enterprise and determine other measures that are needed to improve it. Congress should: Emphasize
community outreach. Federal grant funds should be used to create robust community-outreach capabilities in higher-risk urban areas. These
funds must not be used for political pork, or so broadly that they no longer target those communities at greatest risk. Such capabilities are key
to building trust within these communities, and if the United States is to thwart lone-wolf terrorist attacks, it must place effective community
outreach operations at the tip of the spear. Prioritize local
cyber capabilities. Building cyber-investigation
capabilities in the higher-risk urban areas must become a primary focus of Department of Homeland
Security grants. With so much terrorism-related activity occurring on the Internet, local law
enforcement must have the constitutional ability to monitor and track violent extremist activity on the
Web when reasonable suspicion exists to do so. Push the FBI toward being more effectively driven by intelligence. While the
FBI has made high-level changes to its mission and organizational structure, the
bureau is still working on integrating
intelligence and law enforcement activities. Full integration will require overcoming inter-agency
cultural barriers and providing FBI intelligence personnel with resources, opportunities, and the stature
they need to become a more effective and integral part of the FBI. Maintain essential counterterrorism
tools.Support for important investigative tools is essential to maintaining the security of the U.S. and
combating terrorist threats. Legitimate government surveillance programs are also a vital component of
U.S. national security and should be allowed to continue. The need for effective counterterrorism
operations does not relieve the government of its obligation to follow the law and respect individual
privacy and liberty. In the American system, the government must do both equally well. Clear-Eyed Vigilance The recent spike in terrorist
plots and attacks should finally awaken policymakers—all Americans, for that matter—to the seriousness of the terrorist threat. Neither
fearmongering nor willful blindness serves the United States. Congress must recognize and acknowledge the nature and the scope of the
Islamist terrorist threat, and take the appropriate action to confront it.
Online surveillance key to preventing lone wolf attacks like Charlie Hebdo or attacks in
Israel.
Ackerman 3/11/15 (Gwen Ackerman, reporter for Bloomberg, “Global Cyber Surveillance May Help
Prevent Lone Wolf Attacks”, Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-11/cybertech-can-prevent-lone-wolf-attacks-israeli-experts-say , Accessed: 6/26/2015, RJS)
Bloomberg) -- “Lone wolf”
assailants rely on online platforms and networks that can provide important
warnings to law enforcement officials if monitored properly, Israeli cyber academics and a former government official
say. The English-language jihadist online magazine Inspire is an important tool for recruiting, informing and motivating attackers who act on
their own, said Gabriel Weimann, a professor of communications at Haifa University. “Lone
wolves are not alone,” Weimann said.
can always find them hiding in a virtual pack, not in a social gathering, a mosque, or terrorist camp, but online.” The
same goes for “wolf pack” terrorists, he said, referring to small groups of people, often connected by
family ties, such as the two brothers suspected of carrying out the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris in January. “Communicating online
unites them all,” Weimann added. “Better monitoring of the Net, and chatter, and all the people who access
specific sites is a good way to identify them.” Sophisticated programs that look for quotes from jihad
vocabulary and slogans are ways to find the “wolves” before they act, he said. Deadly attacks over the past year
by Muslims in Paris, Belgium and Copenhagen, together with the expanding influence of the Islamic State group, have raised alarms
about the danger of lone wolves or “wolf packs.” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder voiced concern on CNN last month about
“You
possible lone wolf terrorist attacks in the U.S. and urged shopping malls to increase security. Rabbis Killed Since late last year, Israel has
experienced a series of attacks by Palestinians who police said acted without directives from any group. In the most recent attack on March 6,
an assailant plowed his car into four policewomen, injuring them moderately. In the deadliest lone wolf attack, two men stabbed to death four
rabbis at a Jerusalem synagogue in November, then killed a Druze Arab policeman in a gun battle. Technology used to foil financial fraud, which
gathers and analyzes big data within fractions of a second, can be adapted to identify potential lone attackers, said Gabi Siboni of the Tel Avivbased Institute for National Security Studies. “The
major intelligence challenge is creating a methodology that would
be suited to identifying spontaneous attackers ahead of time,” Siboni said. Setting Traps The New York Police
Department is already monitoring social media and the Internet to try to identify potential lone-wolf
terrorists as more and more young people become attracted to extremist movements online. Britain’s MI5
has also set up a “lone wolf” anti-terrorism unit, according to the Telegraph newspaper. In addition to tracking lone wolves
online, some counter-terrorism efforts also involve setting traps, Weimann said, without elaborating. Surveillance,
virtual or not, always raises privacy issues, but Siboni said this concern could be eased by having
software, not humans, sifting through reams of data, drilling down to an individual level only when an
alarm is raised. Cyber-Savvy Terrorists Siboni’s INSS is holding a conference in Washington on defensive cyberspace operations and
intelligence in April to allow networking among officials in industry, government and military. While Internet surveillance
techniques may be able to pinpoint some lone wolf attacks, it would be much more difficult stop a
cyber-savvy terrorist, said Rami Efrati, former head of the civilian division of Israel’s National Cyber Bureau. “The only chance to catch a
lone wolf planning an attack in cyberspace is through global information-sharing,” Efrati said. “This is critical.” Sources of information wouldn’t
necessarily need to be exposed, just suspicions, making sharing easier for governments wary of disclosing intelligence, said Efrati, now head of
Firmitas Cyber Solutions, whose technology defends critical infrastructure. Governments wary of sharing intelligence that may help stop lonewolf attacks may be more motivated to do so to prevent future attacks by Europeans who fought for Islamic State and are starting to return
home. “One thing is for sure, there is more than one method or system for cyber surveillance, and things are being developed and improved all
the time,” Weimann said.
Surveillance allows for international cooperation to combat terror.
Rotella 13 (Sebastian Rotella, senior reporter at ProPublica. An award-winning foreign correspondent
and investigative reporter, Sebastian worked for almost 23 years for the Los Angeles Times, covering
everything from terrorism to arts to the Mexican border. He served most recently as a national security
correspondent in Washington, D.C., and his previous posts include international investigative
correspondent and bureau chief in Paris and Buenos Aires, with assignments in the Middle East and
North Africa. “How the NSA’s High-Tech Surveillance Helped Europeans Catch Terrorists”,
http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-nsas-high-tech-surveillance-helped-europeans-catchterrorists , June 29, 2013, Accessed: 6/28/2015)
PARIS — In 2007, Belgian
police were keeping close watch on Malika el-Aroud, a fierce al-Qaida ideologue
whose dark eyes smoldered above her veil. The Moroccan-born Aroud had met Osama bin Laden while living in al-Qaida’s
stronghold in Afghanistan. She gained exalted status when her husband posed as a journalist to blow up the renowned Ahmed Shah Massoud,
the chief of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, just two days before the Sept. 11 attacks. Aroud later returned to Europe, remarried and started
an Islamist website that attracted a group of French and Belgian extremists. Led by her second husband, Moez Garsallaoui, half-a-dozen of
them went to Waziristan, where they joined several thousand al-Qaida fighters, including a Latino convert from Long Island, learned to make
bombs and plotted against the West with terrorist kingpins. The authorities — American, Belgian, French, Swiss, Italian, Turkish — were all over
them. U.S.
surveillance had tracked their radicalization, their emails from Pakistan, even calls made to
their mothers before they trudged through snowy Iranian mountains. An intercepted photo that
Garsallaoui sent his wife showed him holding a grenade launcher. He claimed to have killed U.S. soldiers
in Afghanistan and described his escape from a missile strike: “I came close to dying.” The militants took
precautions, changing laptops and using Internet cafes. But they were no match for top-secret, real-time
NSA intercepts. Some of the monitoring was approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “We
were inside their computers,” a source said. As debate rages in the United States about the National Security Agency’s sweeping
data-mining programs, I’ve been on a reporting trip overseas, where I’ve been talking to sources about the controversy and how differing U.S.
and European approaches to counterterrorism can complement each other. On Tuesday, NSA
Director Gen. Keith Alexander,
told a congressional committee that his agency’s surveillance programs helped stop more than 50 terror
plots in the U.S. and abroad. Five years ago, I was based in Europe covering terrorism, running from one attack or aborted plot to
another. As the Brussels investigation shows, these cases frequently combined the high-tech reach of the U.S.
counterterror apparatus with the street skills of foreign agencies. In November 2008, Pakistani and U.S. agents
swooped into Kandahar and nabbed Bryant Neal Viñas, the convert from Long Island and al-Qaida militant. He cooperated with the FBI,
admitting that he discussed an attack on the Long Island Rail Road with top al-Qaida figures. Days later, a drone strike killed Rashid Rauf, a
Pakistani-British operative who helped plan the London transport bombings and the “liquid bomb” plot to blow up planes in 2006. Three
Belgian and French militants returned home, where police arrested them after intercepts picked up menacing chatter. Viñas pleaded guilty.
Aroud went to prison, and investigators believe her second husband Garsallaoui died in the land of jihad. Other cases benefited
from close cooperation. In Germany in 2007, U.S. monitoring detected a suspect checking the draft file of an
email box at an Internet cafe in Stuttgart. Armed with that lead, German security services deployed
surveillance at numerous Internet cafes in the city. The investigation resulted in the dismantling of a
Pakistan-trained group plotting to attack U.S. military targets in Germany. As several European sources told me, if
an extremist in Marseilles was talking about nefarious activities with an extremist in Geneva over the
Internet, chances were good that U.S. intelligence agencies would find out and inform the French and
Swiss. Not because of sources on the ground, but because U.S. agencies could detect the communications through
computer servers in the United States. The reaction here to the U.S. debate has been bemused. European terrorist hunters seem
surprised that the revelation of the NSA data-monitoring programs is big news. The technological capacities of U.S. agencies
have been an integral component of dramatically improved teamwork against terrorism during the past
decade. “In the fight against terrorism, intelligence-sharing is essential,” said Jean-Louis Bruguière, who served for
more than two decades as a top French antiterror magistrate before retiring in 2007. (He declined to discuss the NSA’s role in investigations.)
“Cooperation
with American services has always been trusting and excellent.”
Intelligence is key and privacy violations are minimal.
Hughes and Gorman 13 (Siobhan Hughes and Siobhan Gorman, “NSA Director Says Data Programs
Foiled Plots”, The Wall Street Journal,
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324688404578541582428920860 , June 12, 2013,
Accessed: 6/29/2015, RJS)
WASHINGTON—The
director of the National Security Agency, defending his agency after days of furor over
secret data-surveillance programs, said those government efforts had prevented dozens of terrorist
attacks in recent years. Testifying before a Senate committee, Army Gen. Keith Alexander didn't
elaborate on the attacks that were stopped, other than to tie them to two well-known foiled 2009 plots.
He said he would brief senators privately on Thursday and would push to make available more details about attacks that were foiled. His
comments marked a clear campaign by the Obama administration to justify the surveillance programs
after revelations last week exposed how the NSA uses classified orders from a secret court to amass the
phone records of tens of millions of Americans. Those disclosures came from leaks engineered by Edward Snowden, a 29year-old former NSA contractor who said in an interview published Wednesday that he is seeking asylum in Hong Kong. In his Senate
appearance Wednesday, Gen. Alexander, who joined the agency in 2005 and was a key executor of former President George W. Bush's
warrantless-surveillance program, emphasized that NSA
workers go to great lengths to respect the privacy of
American citizens. "We have great people working under extremely difficult conditions to ensure the
security of this nation and protect our civil liberties and privacy," Gen. Alexander said. "It's a very deliberate
process," he said. "We don't get to look at the data. We don't get to swim through the data." He said much of
the system needs to remain classified, but he said he would push to make public orders by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
in response to requests by senators. On
the track record in terror investigations, Gen. Alexander said that "it's
dozens of terrorist events that these have helped prevent." DOCUMENTS NSA Director's Prepared Remarks RELATED
ARTICLE How the NSA Got So Smart So Fast Man Behind Leaks Is Still in Hong Kong Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.) led Wednesday's
Appropriations Committee hearing on cybersecurity programs. ENLARGE Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.) led Wednesday's Appropriations
Committee hearing on cybersecurity programs. ASSOCIATED PRESS He at
first appeared to imply that the NSA phonerecords program alone had allowed the agency to stop attacks. He later elaborated that a separate
program involving collection of Internet records belonging to foreigners, called Prism, was also involved
in the disruption of potential terror plots. Gen. Alexander mentioned two cases that relied on data from
the secret NSA programs to foil attacks: the 2009 New York City subway bombing plot by Najibullah Zazi,
and a plot against a Danish newspaper by American David Coleman Headley the same year. Officials
previously have cited the case of Mr. Zazi. Gen. Keith Alexander testifies in front of lawmakers on Wednesday, stating that the NSA is
"deeply committed" to the protection of privacy rights and that "dozens" of terror events have been
curbed in their efforts. Photo: AP Some senators emphasized concerns over the programs' privacy implications for Americans' personal
information. "The American public is fearful that in this massive amount of data that you get that there is the ability of the federal government
to synthesize that data and learn something more than maybe what was ever contemplated by the Patriot Act," Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.)
said. Added Sen. Tom Udall (D., N.M.): "It's very, very difficult I think for us to have a transparent debate about secret programs approved by a
secret court issuing secret court orders based on secret interpretations of the law." Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), another civil-liberties advocate,
asked why someone such as Mr. Snowden would have been able to have access to classified information. Gen. Alexander replied: "Some of
these folks have tremendous skills to operate networks." He added that Mr. Snowden's ability to obtain those documents had uncovered a
significant security problem and said intelligence agencies are taking an across-the-board look at the issue. "I have grave concerns about that—
the access that he had," he said. The Senate Appropriations Committee hearing had been called to examine U.S. cybersecurity programs, but
the hearing veered toward the weeklong controversy as senators got their first chance to ask questions publicly about the two NSA programs.
Gen. Alexander acknowledged that the leaks had forced the administration to provide details about sensitive programs and that they will need
to provide additional information to justify the programs' value.
Domestic k2 Foriegn
Domestic data mining and metadata solve foreign terror intelligence
Ahmed 14 (Nafeez, British author, investigative journalist, and international security scholar, “How the Pentagon Exploits ISIS to Kill
Surveillance Reform and Re-Occupy Iraq,” Counterpunch Weekend Edition September 26th-28th,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/26/how-the-pentagon-exploits-isis-to-kill-surveillance-reform-and-re-occupy-iraq/) aj
If Minerva research is not really about addressing a non-existent gap in assessing threats in the Middle East, what is it about? According to
Fitzgerald, as reported by Tucker: “In
contrast to data-mining system development or intelligence analysis,
Minerva-funded basic research uses rigorous methodology to investigate the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of
phenomena such as influence, conflict escalation and societal resilience.” The reality is different. As my detailed
investigation showed, including my interviews with senior US intelligence experts, Minerva is attempting to develop new tools
capable of assessing social movements through a wide range of variables many of which can be
derived from data-mining of social media posts, as well as from analysis of private metadata – all
informed by sociological modeling with input from subject-area social science experts. Contrary to Fitzgerald’s
statement to Tucker, and to information on the Minerva website, private Minerva email communications I disclosed in the Guardian showed
that the
data-mining research pursued at Arizona State University would be used by the Pentagon “to
develop capabilities that are deliverable quickly” in the form of “models and tools that can be integrated
with operations.” Prof Steve Corman, a principal investigator for the ASU project on ‘radical and counter radical Muslim discourses’, told
his ASU research staff that the Pentagon is looking to “feed results” into “applications.” He advised them to shape research results “so they
[DoD] can clearly see their application for tools that can be taken to the field.”
DOD surveillance can detect terrorist activities
Ahmed 14 (Nafeez, British author, investigative journalist, and international security scholar, “How the Pentagon Exploits ISIS to Kill
Surveillance Reform and Re-Occupy Iraq,” Counterpunch Weekend Edition September 26th-28th,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/26/how-the-pentagon-exploits-isis-to-kill-surveillance-reform-and-re-occupy-iraq/) aj
Pentagon spokesperson: Minerva research needed to predict groups like ISIS. According to Tucker, the US
Department of Defense’s Minerva “program managers feel that the rise of IS, and the intelligence
community’s inability to anticipate it, imbues their work with a timely importance.” He quotes Fitzgerald who
tells him: “Recent security issues such as the emergence of terror groups like ISIS… highlight the type of
critical knowledge gaps that Minerva research aims to address.” Big Data, writes Tucker, has provided an ideal
opportunity to innovate new ways of predicting the future. “It’s an excellent time for data-driven social science research,” he observes. “But is
the military the best outfit to fund it at its most innovative?”
Citing a speech last week by CIA director John Brennan,
Tucker points out that the sort of research being supported by Minerva is about closing “a big gap” in
“intent intelligence” – the capacity to predict human intent. The elephant in the room, however, is that the US
intelligence community did anticipate the rise of IS. There is now mounting evidence in the public record that President Obama had been
warned of a major attack on Iraq by IS extremists.
Domestic surveillance key to counter ISIS – encryption makes it necessary
Fitzgerald 6/4 (Sandy Fitzgerald – political writer, NewsMax, “FBI: 'We're Past Going Dark' Tracking
ISIS on Social Media” http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/fbi-isis-social-mediaencryption/2015/06/04/id/648650/) // CW
There are too many ways for the Islamic State (ISIS) to use encryption on various social media sites to
spread its message, U.S. officials told a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday, warning there is no way to monitor all
of the militant group's online communication. "There are 200-plus social media companies," Michael Steinbach, who heads the FBI's
counterterrorism division, told committee members, reports Fox News. "Some of these companies build their business model around end-toend encryption. There is no ability currently for us to see that." The
encryption methods allow ISIS propagandists to send
messages to as many as 200,000 people worldwide, it was pointed out during the hearing, and Steinbach warned members
that "we're past going dark in certain instances. We are dark." Part of the issue is that technology is developing faster than are laws that allow
communications to be intercepted. "The targets that are out there,
we are monitoring them very closely for any type of
action, any type of oversteps, any mobilization factors — and when we see those we're not taking a
chance," he said, referring to the case in Boston this week in which police shot and killed a man who was
allegedly plotting with a partner to kill police officers and outspoken anti-jihadist activist Pamela Geller.
In another recent case, suspects Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi were shot and killed by a security guard in
Garland, Texas, where they had plotted an attack on an event Geller was sponsoring. Special: Homeland
Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said that even a warrant or a wiretap often is not enough to stop
conspirators, as technology has gotten past that. "Even if we have coverage by, let's say, a warrant or a wiretap, they can
then jump into a message box and then to another platform that's called dark space that we can't cover
and we don't know what those communications are," said McCaul. John Mulligan, the deputy director of the National
Counterterrorism Center, further said that ISIS leaders believe "they are able to organize people solely through social media," as "they believe
they can enter into the dialogue and provide the tools, and they are not getting into very complex tools." Earlier in the day, McCaul told Fox
News that ISIS recruiters "know how to jump out of different platforms," and that he expected to hear from the FBI and other officials that
"probably the biggest concern is what we can't monitor and what we don't know and what is occurring
in the United States right now."
Bulk Programs
Plan limits bulk collection programs. That increases terror risk. Claims that “bulk
programs haven’t stopped an attack” are naïve.
Lewis ‘14
James Andrew Lewis is a senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, D.C., where he writes on technology, security, and the international economy. Before
joining CSIS, he worked at the US Departments of State and Commerce as a Foreign Service officer and as a member of the
Senior Executive Service. His diplomatic experience included negotiations on military basing in Asia, the Cambodia peace
process, and the five-power talks on arms transfer restraint. Lewis received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
“Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate” - CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - STRATEGIC
TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM – December - http://csis.org/publication/underestimating-risk-surveillance-debate
NSA carried out two kinds of signals intelligence programs: bulk surveillance to support counterterrorism and collection to support U.S. national security interests. The debate over surveillance unhelpfully conflated the two
assertions that a collection program is useless because it has not
by itself prevented an attack reflect unfamiliarity with intelligence. Intelligence does not work as it is
portrayed in films—solitary agents do not make startling discoveries that lead to dramatic, last-minute
success. Success is the product of the efforts of teams of dedicated individuals from many agencies, using many tools and techniques, working together to assemble
fragments of data from many sources into a coherent picture. In practice, analysts must simultaneously explore many possible scenarios. A collection program contributes by not
only what it reveals, but also what it lets us reject as false. The Patriot Act Section 215 domestic bulk telephony metadata program
provided information that allowed analysts to rule out some scenarios and suspects. The consensus view from interviews
with current and former intelligence officials is that while metadata collection is useful, it is the least useful of the collection programs available to the intelligence community. If there was one
surveillance program they had to give up, it would be 215, but this would not come without an increase in risk. Restricting metadata collection will make it harder to
identify attacks and increase the time it takes to do this.
programs. Domestic bulk collection for counterterrorism is politically problematic, but
Meta Data (ISIS Specific)
US using metadata to combat ISIS social media strategy
Labott 6/19 (Elise Labott - Global affairs correspondent “State Department report: ISIS breaking new
ground as new leader in terror groups” CNN http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/politics/isis-report-statedepartment-terror/index.html) // CW
The U.S. also recognized ISIS' prowess in using social media to spread its message and recruit followers, noting the
group "has been adroit at using the most popular social and new media platforms (YouTube, Facebook and Twitter) to disseminate its messages
broadly." ISIS' initial publication of online
propaganda is followed by near instantaneous reposting, follow-up
links and translations into additional languages, the report found, adding that the groups' members
answered real-time questions from would be members about how to join the group. The report called the
Syrian civil war a "significant factor" for many of last year's terrorist attacks worldwide. Despite the standing up of a worldwide anti-ISIS
coalition and a UN Security Council resolution making the travel of foreign fighters to and from conflict zones illegal, more than 16,000 foreign
terrorist fighters traveled to Syria in 2014, according to the report — most of them to join ISIS. "The rate of foreign terrorist fighter travel to
Syria ... exceeded the rate of foreign fighters who traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any point in the last 20
years," the report said. Weak and failed governments were blamed for providing an "enabling environment" for the emergence of extremist
radicalism and violence — not only in Syria and Iraq, but also in Yemen and Libya, where jihadi groups have flourished. The
U.S. is
"deeply concerned" about the growth of ISIS beyond Syria and Iraq and the birth of self-proclaimed affiliates, the
report found, particularly in Libya, Egypt and Nigeria. It acknowledged questions remain about the meaning of such affiliates - whether they
represent a command relationship or the groups simply share "merely opportunistic relationships" with ISIS. Although al-Qaida's leadership has
been weakened, the report said the group "continued to serve as a focal point of inspiration" for its worldwide network of affiliates, such as
AQAP in Yemen, al-Nusra Front in Syria and al-Shabaab in Somalia. The report also warned about the increase in so-called "lone wolf" attacks
last year, citing attacks in Canada in October and Sydney, Australia, although it was difficult to assess whether attacks were directed or simply
inspired by ISIS or al Qaeda and its affiliates. "These attacks may presage a new era in which centralized leadership of a terrorist organization
matters less, group identity is more fluid and violent extremist narratives focus on a wider range of alleged grievances and enemies with which
lone actors may identify and seek to carry out self-directed attacks," the report found. The U.S. has working
to "shift" it's
counterterrorism strategy to more effectively partner with countries where terrorist networks have a foothold, the report said.
The US has assembled a sixty-plus nation global coalition to stop ISIS advances on the ground, counter
its messaging and stem the flow of foreign fighters and financing.
Phone Meta-Data
Phone Meta-Data key to check attacks on the homeland.
Shea ‘14
At the time of this testimony, Teresa Shea was the director of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and
decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. Ms. Shea graduated from the Georgia Institute
of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. She earned her Master of Science Degree in Electrical
Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Shea is a graduate of the National Security Studies Leadership Program at the
Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She also attended the Intelligence Community Program at the Kellogg School of
Management. Ms. Shea joined the NSA workforce in 1984 as an Electrical Engineer where she developed technical solutions to
SIGINT requirements. Since then she has served as project engineer, program manager, technical director, and line manager in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate and its predecessor organizations. Ms. Shea participated in the NSA Graduate Fellowship
Program and was selected to be a Director’s Fellow. Since her tour as a Director’s Fellow, Ms. Shea has served in multiple
management positions. Ms. Shea was the Chief of Tailored Access Operations group within the Data Acquisition organization in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before The US District Court for THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
– December 20th – This cite is a bit tricky to find – it was submitted within the addendum section of Acting Assistant Attorney
General Branda’s Amicus Brief in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her
testimony concludes with “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my
knowledge”. Jan 23rd - It is towards the bottom of a lengthy addendum section – https://www.eff.org/document/governmentssmith-answering-brief
One of the greatest challenges the U.S. faces in combating international terrorism and preventing potentially catastrophic terrorist
attacks on our country is identifying terrorist operatives and networks, particularly those operating within the
U.S. Detecting and preventing threats by exploiting terrorist communications has been, and continues to be, one of the tools in this
effort. It is imperative that we have the capability to rapidly detect any terrorist threat inside the U.S. 7. One
method that the NSA has developed to accomplish this task is analysis of metadata associated with telephone calls
within, to, or from the U.S. The term "telephony metadata" or "metadata" as used here refers to data collected under the program that are about telephone calls—such
6.
as the initiating and receiving telephone numbers, and the time and duration of the calls—but does not include the substantive content of those calls or any subscriber identifying information.
By analyzing telephony metadata based on telephone numbers associated with terrorist activity, trained expert intelligence analysts can
work to determine whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with individuals in the U.S. 9. Foreign
8.
terrorist organizations use the international telephone system to communicate with one another between numerous countries ail over the world, including calls to and from the U.S. When
The most analytically significant terrorist-related
communications are those with one end in the U.S., or those that are purely domestic, because those communications
are particularly likely to identify suspects in the U.S. whose activities may include planning attacks against the
homeland.
they are located inside the U.S., terrorist operatives also make domestic U.S. telephone calls.
The NSA metadata collection is curtailing terror
Bradbury, 14 (Steven G. Bradbury, contributor to Washington Post, Jan 3rd 2014, “Don’t limit the
NSA’s effectiveness”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-limit-the-nsaseffectiveness/2014/01/03/c876bdc8-73dc-11e3-9389-09ef9944065e_story.html) CW
Metadata means transactional records of communications, not the content of messages. For telephone calls, it reveals
what phone numbers have called other numbers and the time and duration of the calls. Phone companies generate these records for billing
purposes.¶ Most courts
have held that no search warrant is required to obtain records like these, as they don’t
give the government access to anyone’s private communications. Regulatory and law enforcement agencies often use
subpoenas to collect transactional records to preserve them in a database for later searching as part of an authorized investigation.¶
That’s what the NSA does — though the volume of metadata it collects is far greater, commensurate with the importance of its
mission to protect the nation from foreign attack. The NSA collects telephone metadata under a court
order approved by the federal judges who sit on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.¶ While the
volume of data is vast, the NSA’s access to it is strictly limited under the court’s order. There is no “data
mining” or random trolling through the database for suspicious patterns. It may be accessed only when
the government has reasonable suspicion that a particular phone number is used by terrorists; that
“seed” number is then tested against the database to discover connections. The NSA is permitted to analyze
patterns of connections two to three “hops” out from the seed number.¶ Only a tiny fraction of the total
data is ever reviewed by analysts, but the NSA must have the largest available field of data to find the
relevant connections. The agency aggregates the data from several companies, converts the information
into an efficiently searchable format and retains it for five years to enable historical analysis. By
revealing patterns of connections to suspected terrorist numbers, this program provides a unique tool
for discovering previously unknown phone numbers that may be used by terrorist cells operating
within the United States.¶ In defending the review group’s report, Morell acknowledged that if this
metadata program had been in place before September 2001, “it would likely have prevented 9/11.” He
said that the program “has the potential to prevent the next 9/11.”
Meta-data vital to check terror attacks - 9-11 proves.
Shea ‘14
At the time of this testimony, Teresa Shea was the director of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and
decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. Ms. Shea graduated from the Georgia Institute
of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. She earned her Master of Science Degree in Electrical
Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Shea is a graduate of the National Security Studies Leadership Program at the
Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She also attended the Intelligence Community Program at the Kellogg School of
Management. Ms. Shea joined the NSA workforce in 1984 as an Electrical Engineer where she developed technical solutions to
SIGINT requirements. Since then she has served as project engineer, program manager, technical director, and line manager in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate and its predecessor organizations. Ms. Shea participated in the NSA Graduate Fellowship
Program and was selected to be a Director’s Fellow. Since her tour as a Director’s Fellow, Ms. Shea has served in multiple
management positions. Ms. Shea was the Chief of Tailored Access Operations group within the Data Acquisition organization in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before The US District Court for THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
– December 20th – This cite is a bit tricky to find – it was submitted within the addendum section of Acting Assistant Attorney
General Branda’s Amicus Brief in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her
testimony concludes with “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my
knowledge”. Jan 23rd - It is towards the bottom of a lengthy addendum section – https://www.eff.org/document/governmentssmith-answering-brief
The telephony metadata collection program was specifically developed to assist the U.S, Government in detecting such
communications between known or suspected terrorists who are operating outside of the U.S. and who are communicating
with others inside the U.S., as well as communications between operatives who are located within the U.S. 11. Detecting and linking these types of
communications was identified as a critical intelligence gap in the aftermath of the September 11,2001
attacks. One striking example of this gap is that, prior to those attacks, the NSA intercepted and transcribed seven calls
made by hijacker Khaiid al-Mihdhar, then living in San Diego, California, to a telephone identifier associated
with an al Qaeda safe house in Yemen. The NSA intercepted these calls using overseas signals
intelligence capabilities, but those capabilities did not capture the calling party's telephone number
identifier. Because they lacked the U.S. telephone identifier, NSA analysis mistakenly concluded that al-Mihdhar was overseas and not in California. Telephony metadata of the
type acquired under this program, however, would have included the missing information and might have permitted NSA
10.
intelligence analysts to tip FBI to the fact that al-Mihdhar was calling the Yemeni safe house from a U.S.
telephone identifier. 12. The utility of analyzing telephony metadata as an intelligence tool has long been recognized. As discussed below,
experience also shows that telephony metadata analysis in fact produces information pertinent to FBI counterterrorism
investigations, and can contribute to the prevention of terrorist attacks.
( ) Yes, Meta-data has checked specific terror attacks. It also exposes broader terror
cells.
Shea ‘14
At the time of this testimony, Teresa Shea was the director of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and
decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. Ms. Shea graduated from the Georgia Institute
of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. She earned her Master of Science Degree in Electrical
Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Shea is a graduate of the National Security Studies Leadership Program at the
Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She also attended the Intelligence Community Program at the Kellogg School of
Management. Ms. Shea joined the NSA workforce in 1984 as an Electrical Engineer where she developed technical solutions to
SIGINT requirements. Since then she has served as project engineer, program manager, technical director, and line manager in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate and its predecessor organizations. Ms. Shea participated in the NSA Graduate Fellowship
Program and was selected to be a Director’s Fellow. Since her tour as a Director’s Fellow, Ms. Shea has served in multiple
management positions. Ms. Shea was the Chief of Tailored Access Operations group within the Data Acquisition organization in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before The US District Court for THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
– December 20th – This cite is a bit tricky to find – it was submitted within the addendum section of Acting Assistant Attorney
General Branda’s Amicus Brief in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her
testimony concludes with “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my
knowledge”. Jan 23rd - It is towards the bottom of a lengthy addendum section – https://www.eff.org/document/governmentssmith-answering-brief
The value of telephony metadata collected under Section 215 is not hypothetical. While many specific instances of the Government's use of
telephony metadata under Section 215 remain classified, a number of instances have been disclosed in declassified materials. 56. An illustration of the particular value of the bulk
metadata program under Section 215—and a tragic example of what can occur in its absence—is the case of 9/11 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, which I have
described above. The Section 215 telephony metadata collection program addresses the information gap that existed at the time of
the al-Mihdhar case. It allows the NSA to rapidly and effectively note these types of suspicious contacts and, when appropriate, to tip them to the FBI for follow-on analysis or
action. 57. Furthermore, once an identifier has been detected, the NSA can use bulk telephony metadata along with other data sources to
quickly identify the larger network and possible coconspirators both inside and outside the U.S. for further investigation by the FBI with the goal of
preventing future terrorist attacks.
55.
Meta-data key – their “alternatives” would hamper the counter-terror ops of several
agencies, not just NSA.
Shea ‘14
At the time of this testimony, Teresa Shea was the director of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and
decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. Ms. Shea graduated from the Georgia Institute
of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. She earned her Master of Science Degree in Electrical
Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Shea is a graduate of the National Security Studies Leadership Program at the
Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She also attended the Intelligence Community Program at the Kellogg School of
Management. Ms. Shea joined the NSA workforce in 1984 as an Electrical Engineer where she developed technical solutions to
SIGINT requirements. Since then she has served as project engineer, program manager, technical director, and line manager in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate and its predecessor organizations. Ms. Shea participated in the NSA Graduate Fellowship
Program and was selected to be a Director’s Fellow. Since her tour as a Director’s Fellow, Ms. Shea has served in multiple
management positions. Ms. Shea was the Chief of Tailored Access Operations group within the Data Acquisition organization in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before The US District Court for THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
– December 20th – This cite is a bit tricky to find – it was submitted within the addendum section of Acting Assistant Attorney
General Branda’s Amicus Brief in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her
testimony concludes with “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my
knowledge”. Jan 23rd - It is towards the bottom of a lengthy addendum section – https://www.eff.org/document/governmentssmith-answering-brief
58. As the case examples in the FBI declaration accompanying this declaration demonstrate, Section 215 bulk telephony metadata is a resource not only in isolation, but also for investigating
metadata program enables
NSA intelligence analysts to evaluate potential threats that it receives from or reports to the FBI in a more complete manner
than if this data source were unavailable. 59. Section 215 bulk telephony metadata complements other
counterterrorist-related collection sources by serving as a significant enabler for NSA intelligence analysis. It assists the NSA in
threat leads obtained from other SIGINT collection or partner agencies. This is especially true for the NSA-FBI partnership. The Section 215 telephony
applying limited linguistic resources available to the counterterrorism mission against links that have the highest probability of connection to terrorist targets. Put another way, while Section
215 does not contain content, analysis of the Section 215
metadata can help the NSA prioritize for content analysis communications of non-U.S. persons which it
acquires under other authorities. Such persons are of heightened interest if they are in a communication network with persons located in the U.S. Thus, Section 215 metadata can provide the
so that the U.S. Government gains the best possible understanding of terrorist target
actions and intentions. 60. Reliance solely on traditional, case-by-case intelligence gathering methods, restricted to
known terrorist identifiers, would significantly impair the NSA's ability to accomplish many of the aforementioned
objectives. 61. Without the ability to obtain and analyze bulk metadata, the NSA would lose a tool for detecting
communication chains that link to identifiers associated with known and suspected terrorist operatives, which can lead to the identification of
previously unknown persons of interest in support of anti-terrorism efforts both within the U.S. and abroad. Having the bulk
means for steering and applying content analysis
telephony metadata available to query is part of this effort, as there is no way to know in advance which numbers will be responsive to the authorized queries. 62. The bulk metadata allows
Any other means that might be used to
attempt to conduct similar analyses would require multiple, time-consuming steps that would frustrate
needed rapid analysis in emergent situations, and could fail to capture some data available through bulk
metadata analysis. 63. If the telephony metadata are not aggregated and retained for a sufficient period of time, it will not be possible for the NSA to detect chains of communications
retrospective analyses of prior communications of newly discovered terrorists in an efficacious manner.
that cross different providers and telecommunications networks. But for the NSA's metadata collection, the NSA would need to seek telephonic records from multiple providers whenever a
the Government could not
achieve the aforementioned benefits of Section 215 metadata collection through alternative means. 65. The use of
more targeted means of collection—whether through subpoenas, national security letters ("NSLs"), or pen-register and trap-and-trace ("PR/TT") devices
authorized under the FISA— solely of records directly pertaining to a terrorism subject would fail to permit the comprehensive and retrospective analyses detailed
above of communication chains that might, and sometimes do, reveal previously unknown persons of interest in terror ism
investigations. Targeted inquiries also would fail to capture communications chains and overlaps that can be of investigatory significance, because targeted inquiries would
need to inquire arose, and each such provider may not maintain records in a format that is subject to a standardized query. 64. Thus,
eliminate the NSA's ability to collect and analyze metadata of communications occurring at the second "hop" from a terrorist suspect's initial "seed"; rather, they would only reveal
communications directly involving the specific targets in question. In other words, targeted inquiries would capture only one "hop." As a result, the Government's ability to discover and
analyze communications metadata revealing the fact that as-yet unknown identifiers are linked in a chain of communications with identified terrorist networks would be impaired. 66. In sum,
any order immediately barring the Government from employing the Section 215 metadata collection program would
deprive the Government of unique capabilities that could not be completely replicated by other means, and as a result would
cause an increased risk to national security and the safety of the American public.
Phone Meta-data key to boost terror detection.
Shea ‘14
At the time of this testimony, Teresa Shea was the director of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and
decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. Ms. Shea graduated from the Georgia Institute
of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. She earned her Master of Science Degree in Electrical
Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Shea is a graduate of the National Security Studies Leadership Program at the
Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She also attended the Intelligence Community Program at the Kellogg School of
Management. Ms. Shea joined the NSA workforce in 1984 as an Electrical Engineer where she developed technical solutions to
SIGINT requirements. Since then she has served as project engineer, program manager, technical director, and line manager in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate and its predecessor organizations. Ms. Shea participated in the NSA Graduate Fellowship
Program and was selected to be a Director’s Fellow. Since her tour as a Director’s Fellow, Ms. Shea has served in multiple
management positions. Ms. Shea was the Chief of Tailored Access Operations group within the Data Acquisition organization in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before The US District Court for THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
– December 20th – This cite is a bit tricky to find – it was submitted within the addendum section of Acting Assistant Attorney
General Branda’s Amicus Brief in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her
testimony concludes with “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my
knowledge”. Jan 23rd - It is towards the bottom of a lengthy addendum section – https://www.eff.org/document/governmentssmith-answering-brief
the bulk collection of telephony metadata under Section 215 has an important value to NSA intelligence
analysts tasked with identifying potential terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland, in support of FBI, by enhancing their
ability to detect, prioritize, and track terrorist operatives and their support networks both in the U.S. and abroad. By applying the FISC-ordered RAS standard to
47. Among other benefits,
telephone identifiers used to query the metadata, NSA intelligence analysts are able to: (i) detect domestic identifiers calling foreign identifiers associated with one of the foreign terrorist
organizations and discover identifiers that the foreign identifiers are in contact with; (ii) detect foreign identifiers associated with a foreign terrorist organization calling into the U.S. and
discover which domestic identifiers are in contact with the foreign identifiers; and (iii) detect possible terrorist-related communications occurring between communicants located inside the
though the NSA possesses a number of sources of information that can each be used to provide separate and independent
indications of potential terrorist activity against the U.S. and its interests abroad, the best analysis occurs when NSA intelligence analysts can
consider the information obtained from each of those sources together to compile and disseminate to the FBI as complete
a picture as possible of a potential terrorist threat. While telephony metadata is not the sole source of information available to NSA
counterterrorism personnel, it provides a component of the information NSA intelligence analysts rely upon to execute this
threat identification and characterization role.
U.S. 48. Al
“Specific Selector/SST”
“Specific Selector” Link. The Original USA Freedom Bill goes too far – limits key
counter-terror operations
Mascaro ‘14
Lisa Mascaro – winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She covers Congress for the LA Times. She is an economics and political science
graduate of UC Santa Barbara, she also studied in Budapest, Hungary. “House passes NSA reform bill limiting collection of phone data” – LA
Times – 5/21/14, http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-nsa-reforms-legislation-20140522-story.html
the changes were intended to meet the shared goal of the president and
Congress to clip the vast collection of bulk "metadata," while ensuring against new directives that would
impede routine investigations or efforts to combat terrorism. Administration officials argued in the closed discussions, often held in the
third-floor Capitol suite of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), that the bill's language originally approved by the judiciary and intelligence committees
was drafted too narrowly and could limit non-bulk data collection operations. "There was no effort to
soften the ban on bulk collection," said National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden. "Our engagement was to ensure that
the language of the USA Freedom Act would not have any unintended consequences for routine
individual investigations." Under the proposed legislation, the Justice Department and intelligence agencies would no
longer be allowed to collect from telephone companies vast amounts of so-called metadata, including the times and lengths of calls but
not the contents of conversations. Instead they would need to narrow searches by making "specific selection" requests
based on certain criteria. The bill would also require the government to seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court order for
any such requests — with an exception for emergencies that would allow data collection up to seven days before approval must be sought. But at the request of the White
House, the definition of "specific selection" was changed. Initially, a search would have been required to
uniquely describe a "person, entity or account." The White House complained that the definition was too narrow and
would impede even routine investigations. The new language more broadly defines "specific selection"
as a "discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address or device."
The White House insisted Wednesday that
Storage, Super minimization
Plan “super-minimizes” data storage. But, historical analysis key to check sleeper cells
Shea ‘14
At the time of this testimony, Teresa Shea was the director of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and
decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. Ms. Shea graduated from the Georgia Institute
of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. She earned her Master of Science Degree in Electrical
Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Shea is a graduate of the National Security Studies Leadership Program at the
Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She also attended the Intelligence Community Program at the Kellogg School of
Management. Ms. Shea joined the NSA workforce in 1984 as an Electrical Engineer where she developed technical solutions to
SIGINT requirements. Since then she has served as project engineer, program manager, technical director, and line manager in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate and its predecessor organizations. Ms. Shea participated in the NSA Graduate Fellowship
Program and was selected to be a Director’s Fellow. Since her tour as a Director’s Fellow, Ms. Shea has served in multiple
management positions. Ms. Shea was the Chief of Tailored Access Operations group within the Data Acquisition organization in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before The US District Court for THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
– December 20th – This cite is a bit tricky to find – it was submitted within the addendum section of Acting Assistant Attorney
General Branda’s Amicus Brief in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her
testimony concludes with “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my
knowledge”. Jan 23rd - It is towards the bottom of a lengthy addendum section – https://www.eff.org/document/governmentssmith-answering-brief
when the NSA performs a contact-chaining query on a terrorist associated telephone identifier, it is able to detect not only
the further contacts made by that first tier of contacts, but the additional tiers of contacts, out to the maximum number of permitted "hops" from the
original identifier. The collected metadata thus holds contact information that can be immediately accessed as new terrorist-associated telephone
50. Specifically,
identifiers are identified. Multi-tiered contact chaining identifies not only the terrorist's direct associates but also indirect associates, and, therefore provides a more complete picture of those
Another advantage of the metadata collected in this matter is that it is
historical in nature, reflecting contact activity from the past. Given that terrorist operatives often lie dormant for extended
periods of time, historical connections are critical to understanding a newly identified target, and metadata may contain
links that are unique, pointing to potential targets that may otherwise be missed.
who associate with terrorists and/or are engaged in terrorist activities. 51.
Data must be Aggregated
Individual company data can’t solve – multi-company data must be aggregated
Shea ‘14
At the time of this testimony, Teresa Shea was the director of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and
decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. Ms. Shea graduated from the Georgia Institute
of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. She earned her Master of Science Degree in Electrical
Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Shea is a graduate of the National Security Studies Leadership Program at the
Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She also attended the Intelligence Community Program at the Kellogg School of
Management. Ms. Shea joined the NSA workforce in 1984 as an Electrical Engineer where she developed technical solutions to
SIGINT requirements. Since then she has served as project engineer, program manager, technical director, and line manager in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate and its predecessor organizations. Ms. Shea participated in the NSA Graduate Fellowship
Program and was selected to be a Director’s Fellow. Since her tour as a Director’s Fellow, Ms. Shea has served in multiple
management positions. Ms. Shea was the Chief of Tailored Access Operations group within the Data Acquisition organization in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before The US District Court for THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
– December 20th – This cite is a bit tricky to find – it was submitted within the addendum section of Acting Assistant Attorney
General Branda’s Amicus Brief in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her
testimony concludes with “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my
knowledge”. Jan 23rd - It is towards the bottom of a lengthy addendum section – https://www.eff.org/document/governmentssmith-answering-brief
An advantage of bulk metadata analysis as applied to telephony metadata, which is interconnected in nature, is that it
enables the Government to quickly analyze past connections and chains of communication. Unless the
data is aggregated, it may not be feasible to detect chains of communications that cross communication
networks. The ability to query accumulated telephony metadata significantly increases the NSA's ability to rapidly
detect persons affiliated with the identified foreign terrorist organizations who might otherwise go undetected.
49.
Meta-data must be aggregated. Alternatives hamper counter-terror efforts.
Shea ‘14
At the time of this testimony, Teresa Shea was the director of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and
decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. Ms. Shea graduated from the Georgia Institute
of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. She earned her Master of Science Degree in Electrical
Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Shea is a graduate of the National Security Studies Leadership Program at the
Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She also attended the Intelligence Community Program at the Kellogg School of
Management. Ms. Shea joined the NSA workforce in 1984 as an Electrical Engineer where she developed technical solutions to
SIGINT requirements. Since then she has served as project engineer, program manager, technical director, and line manager in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate and its predecessor organizations. Ms. Shea participated in the NSA Graduate Fellowship
Program and was selected to be a Director’s Fellow. Since her tour as a Director’s Fellow, Ms. Shea has served in multiple
management positions. Ms. Shea was the Chief of Tailored Access Operations group within the Data Acquisition organization in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before The US District Court for THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
– December 20th – This cite is a bit tricky to find – it was submitted within the addendum section of Acting Assistant Attorney
General Branda’s Amicus Brief in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her
testimony concludes with “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my
knowledge”. Jan 23rd - It is towards the bottom of a lengthy addendum section – https://www.eff.org/document/governmentssmith-answering-brief
If the telephony metadata are not aggregated and retained for a sufficient period of time, it will not be possible for the NSA
to detect chains of communications that cross different providers and telecommunications networks. But for the NSA's
metadata collection, the NSA would need to seek telephonic records from multiple providers whenever a need
to inquire arose, and each such provider may not maintain records in a format that is subject to a
standardized query. 64. Thus, the Government could not achieve the aforementioned benefits of Section 215
metadata collection through alternative means.
63.
Vigilance
Terrorists’ perception of surveillance effectively deters terrorist communication – the
plan makes effective regrouping more successful
Rascoff 14 (Samuel J. Rascoff, Associate Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Center on Law and Security, New York University School of Law,
“COUNTERTERRORISM AND NEW DETERRENCE,” http://www.nyulawreview.org/sites/default/files/pdf/NYULawReview-89-3Rascoff_0.pdf2014)
An open question - an answer to which requires more empirical data - is whether the government's prosecution of
relatively amateur would-be terrorists based on stings is likely to be effective in deterring better-trained
terrorists. n109 But it bears remembering that the viability [*855] of the deterrence-based account of stings does not
depend on who is prosecuted. The mere fact of prosecution can alter terrorists' perceptions of future
success by implying a pervasive surveillance network n110 facilitated by technology. n111 As Alex Wilner
observed of Canadian counterterrorism, the fact that the country's "intelligence community clearly has the means and the tools
to uncover plots expeditiously" creates an "overwhelming perception ... that terrorists are unlikely to evade Canada's
watchful eye." n112 In sum, the meaning of a sting operation and subsequent trial must include the strategic benefits of revealing the fact of
undercover surveillance as well as the normative costs implied by widespread
surveillance. n113 This in turn illustrates the [*856]
complicated relationship between transparency and secrecy entailed by new deterrence. C. Psychology and Strikes New deterrence
also enriches understanding of the role of fear and emotion in counterterrorism. Terrorism aims at
communicating vulnerability and sowing distrust; violent attacks are, in a sense, means to bring about these more intangible objectives. n114
(Thus, building sufficient social resiliency to withstand terrorist attacks, as new deterrence counsels, deprives terrorists of an important goal,
even when an attack succeeds. n115) But fear n116 and distrust are also part of the counterterrorism repertoire. n117 Inevitably this fact raises
serious [*857] normative issues. First is the foundational question of what it means for the state to manage terrorist risk through the potentially
widespread, deliberate employment of fear. n118 Rich sociological and historical literature attest to the emotional costs of aggressive national
security tactics. n119 Second is a concern about the distribution of fear and whether the government considers race and religion when
employing it. n120 My central point here, however, is not normative so much as conceptual: Whereas policymakers, lawyers, and the general
public often define counterterrorism as the sum of so many violent interventions, new
deterrence reminds us that
counterterrorism also operates in a psychological register. Unlike traditional deterrence, which conveys its
message through fear of being caught and punished, new deterrence relies on a wider and subtler range of official
modalities that go to the likelihood of terrorist success. For example, the government may aim to
demoralize an adversary by telegraphing the state's overwhelming might. The state might do so by "spreading
false or exaggerated rumors of the [*858] existence of sting operations," n121 sowing a sense of distrust
within a cell by implying that one among them is on an official payroll, or even conveying an image of officials as
irrational and prone to unmeasured violence. n122
Detection
( ) Meta-data boost terror detection – it’s a vital complimentary tool.
Shea ‘14
At the time of this testimony, Teresa Shea was the director of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and
decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. Ms. Shea graduated from the Georgia Institute
of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. She earned her Master of Science Degree in Electrical
Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Shea is a graduate of the National Security Studies Leadership Program at the
Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She also attended the Intelligence Community Program at the Kellogg School of
Management. Ms. Shea joined the NSA workforce in 1984 as an Electrical Engineer where she developed technical solutions to
SIGINT requirements. Since then she has served as project engineer, program manager, technical director, and line manager in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate and its predecessor organizations. Ms. Shea participated in the NSA Graduate Fellowship
Program and was selected to be a Director’s Fellow. Since her tour as a Director’s Fellow, Ms. Shea has served in multiple
management positions. Ms. Shea was the Chief of Tailored Access Operations group within the Data Acquisition organization in
the Signals Intelligence Directorate. Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama – before The US District Court for THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
– December 20th – This cite is a bit tricky to find – it was submitted within the addendum section of Acting Assistant Attorney
General Branda’s Amicus Brief in the matter of Smith v. Obama – before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her
testimony concludes with “I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my
knowledge”. Jan 23rd - It is towards the bottom of a lengthy addendum section – https://www.eff.org/document/governmentssmith-answering-brief
metadata program complements information that the NSA collects via other means and is
valuable to NSA, in support of the FBI, for linking possible terrorist-related telephone communications that occur between
communicants based solely inside the U.S. 54. As a complementary tool to other intelligence authorities, the NSA's access to telephony
metadata improves the likelihood of the Government being able to detect terrorist cell contacts within the U.S.
With the metadata collected under Section 215 pursuant to FISC orders, the NSA has the information necessary to perform the call chaining that can enable NSA intelligence
analysts to obtain a much fuller understanding of the target and, as a result, allow the NSA to provide FBI with a more
complete picture of possible terrorist-related activity occurring inside the U.S.
53. Furthermore, the Section 215
Communication-Based Surveillance
Communication-based Counter-Terror Ops key. It’s more effective than alternate
forms of counter-terrorism.
Lewis ‘14
James Andrew Lewis is a senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, D.C., where he writes on technology, security, and the international economy. Before
joining CSIS, he worked at the US Departments of State and Commerce as a Foreign Service officer and as a member of the
Senior Executive Service. His diplomatic experience included negotiations on military basing in Asia, the Cambodia peace
process, and the five-power talks on arms transfer restraint. Lewis received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
“Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate” - CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - STRATEGIC
TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM – December - http://csis.org/publication/underestimating-risk-surveillance-debate
America’s size and population make it is easy to disappear into the seams of this sprawling society. Government
surveillance is, with one exception and contrary to cinematic fantasy, limited and disconnected. That exception is
communications surveillance, which provides the best and perhaps the only national-level solution to find and
prevent attacks against Americans and their allies. Some of the suggestions for alternative approaches to surveillance, such as the
recommendation that NSA only track “known or suspected terrorists,” reflect both deep ignorance and
wishful thinking. It is the unknown terrorist who will inflict the greatest harm.
Surveillance of communication info is key to check terror risks
Clarke ‘13
(et al; This is the Final Report and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications
Technologies. President Obama ordered a blue-ribbon task force to review domestic surveillance. This report releases the
findings of that group. The report was headed by five experts – including Richard Alan Clarke, who is the former National
Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States. Other expert contributors
include Michael Joseph Morell, who was the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and served as acting director
twice in 2011 and from 2012 to 2013 and Cass Robert Sunstein, who was the Administrator of the White House Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration and is currently a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
“LIBERTY AND SECURITY IN A CHANGING WORLD” – December 12th, 2013 – Easily obtained via a google search.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F
2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdocs%2F2013-12
12_rg_final_report.pdf&ei=Db0yVdDjKIKdNtTXgZgE&usg=AFQjCNH0S_Fo9dckL9bRarVpi4M6pq6MQ&bvm=bv.91071109,d.eXY)
threats facing the United States and our allies are numerous and significant, and they will remain so well into the future. These threats
include international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and cyber espionage and warfare. A robust foreign
intelligence collection capability is essential if we are to protect ourselves against such threats. Because our adversaries
The national security
operate through the use of complex communications technologies, the National Security Agency, with its impressive capabilities and
talented officers, is indispensable to keeping our country and our allies safe and secure.
Expansive Domestic Communication Surveillance is key to check terror risks.
Small ‘8
MATTHEW L. SMALL. Small wrote this paper as part of studies at the United States Air Force Academy. This paper was
completed with guidance from Dr. Damon Coletta – a professor at the US Air Force Academy. He holds a Ph.D. in Political
Science from Duke and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard. This paper was also completed with guidance from Dr. Gary
Donato – who is a Lecturer of Global Studies at Bentley University. – “His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic Surveillance, Civil
Liberties and Executive Power during Times of National Crisis” – 2008 – available at:
http://cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small.pdf
soon after the terrorist attack of September 11th, 2001, President Bush authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless wiretaps on the
communications of American citizens. The agency monitored communications from phone numbers of suspected al Qaeda
affiliates (Risen and Lichtblau 2005). The calls that the NSA monitored originated in the United States and ended overseas but still involved American citizens. Bush asserted that it was necessary to move quickly to gain
information on other suspected terrorist and/or terrorist activities (Risen and Lichtblau 2005). Officials close to the president claimed these actions successful in
averting terrorist attacks as in the case of Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker and naturalized citizen who intended to bring down
the Brooklyn Bridge (Risen and Lichtblau 2005). Similar to the warrantless wiretaps, President Bush authorized the collection of phone records of millions of Americans from major phone companies such as
Very
AT&T and Verizon (USA Today [Washington], 11 May 2006). The records contain the communications of suspected terrorists or terrorist affiliates within the US. Even though these appear to be the under the same issue concerning
In light of historical precedence, legislation enacted at the time, and the nature of the threat the US faces, President Bush’s
actions are more than justified. From Washington on, presidents have invaded citizens’ privacy by authorizing surveillance of communications.
the right to privacy, each act must be approached separately.
Washington did not provide detailed accounts of his domestic surveillance to the Continental Congress, nor did Lincoln ask the permission of Congress to intercept wire communications within the US. Instead, each president
assumed it as part of their powers as Commander-in-Chief and protectors of the rule of law. In comparison, Bush’s actions are actually restrained. At the least he is recognizing the existence of legislation restraining the use of
wiretaps and attempting to fit the urgent need for information within its confines.14 In Woodrow Wilson’s case, Congress actually gave him the power to essentially search and seize international communication. Presidents from
Harry S. Truman to Lyndon B. Johnson authorized the warrantless monitoring of communications by the NSA and FBI to combat dissension and subversion by Communist sympathizers. Although illegal, presidents even used the CIA
Terrorists can come in all forms and can
easily manifest within the United States. Intercepting communications serves as one of the best and
only ways to prevent these attacks from occurring. Herein lays the justification for legislative expansion of executive
power.
to carry out many of these same activities. President Bush simply followed the same course of action as his predecessors, a logical course considering the nature of the threat.
Eliminate bulk collection
Plan goes beyond the status quo and ELMINATES bulk collection. That boosts the risk
of terror episodes
Lewis ‘14
James Andrew Lewis is a senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, D.C., where he writes on technology, security, and the international economy. Before
joining CSIS, he worked at the US Departments of State and Commerce as a Foreign Service officer and as a member of the
Senior Executive Service. His diplomatic experience included negotiations on military basing in Asia, the Cambodia peace
process, and the five-power talks on arms transfer restraint. Lewis received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
“Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate” - CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - STRATEGIC
TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM – December - http://csis.org/publication/underestimating-risk-surveillance-debate
What is left out of this picture (and from most fictional portrayals of intelligence analysis) is the number of false leads the analysts
must pursue, the number of dead ends they must walk down, and the tools they use to decide that something is a false lead or dead
end. Police officers are familiar with how many leads in an investigation must be eliminated through legwork and query before an accurate picture emerges. Most leads are
wrong, and much of the work is a process of elimination that eventually focuses in on the most probable
threat. If real intelligence work were a film, it would be mostly boring. Where the metadata program contributes is in eliminating possible
leads and suspects. This makes the critique of the 215 program like a critique of airbags in a car—you
own a car for years, the airbags never deploy, so therefore they are useless and can be removed. The weakness
in this argument is that discarding airbags would increase risk. How much risk would increase and whether other considerations outweigh
this increased risk are fundamental problems for assessing surveillance programs. With the Section 215 program, Americans gave up a portion of their privacy in exchange for decreased risk.
Eliminating 215 collection is like subtracting a few of the random pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. It decreases the
chances that the analysts will be able to deduce what is actually going on and may increase the time it takes to do this. That means
there is an increase in the risk of a successful attack. How much of an increase in risk is difficult to determine, but this is crucial for assessing the
value of domestic surveillance programs.
Stricter Court review
Stricter Court review Link. Plan imposes stricter law enforcement warrants on intel
agencies. That slows counter-terror operations to the point of failure.
Yoo, 13
John Yoo. Alma mater: Harvard University (B.A. 1989), Yale Law School (J.D. 1992). Yoo has been a professor at the University of
California, Berkeley, School of Law since 1993. “Ending NSA Surveillance is not the answer”. National Review - 8/16/13 www.nationalreview.com/corner/356027/ending-nsa-surveillance-not-answer-john-yoo
We should be careful not to put the NSA in an impossible position. Of course, we should be vigilant against the administrative state in all of its
tangled tendrils, especially its collection of taxes (the IRS scandal) and enforcement of the laws (Obama’s refusal to enforce Obamacare and immigration law). The problem here, however, is
we are placing these kinds of domestic law-enforcement standards on a foreign intelligence function. With
domestic law enforcement, we want the Justice Department to monitor one identified target (identified because other evidence gives probable
cause that he or she has already committed a crime) and to carefully minimize any surveillance so as not to intrude on privacy interests. Once we
impose those standards on the military and intelligence agencies, however, we are either guaranteeing failure or we must
accept a certain level of error. If the military and intelligence agencies had to follow law-enforcement standards, their mission
would fail because they would not give us any improvement over what the FBI could achieve anyway. If the intelligence community is to detect future terrorist attacks through
that
analyzing electronic communications, we are asking them to search through a vast sea of e-mails and phone-call patterns to find those few which, on the surface, look innocent but are actually
covert terrorist messages. If we give them broader authority, we would have to accept a level of error that is inherent in any human activity. No intelligence agency could perform its mission of
protecting the nation’s security without making a few of these kinds of mistakes. The question is whether there are too many, not whether there will be any at all. Domestic law enforcement
makes these errors too. Police seek warrants for the wrong guy, execute a search in the wrong house, arrest the wrong suspect, and even shoot unarmed suspects. We accept these mistakes
because we understand that no law-enforcement system can successfully protect our communities from crime with perfection. The question is the error rate, how much it would cost to
Consider those questions in the context of the NSA
surveillance program. The more important question is not the top of the fraction but the bottom — not just how many mistakes occurred, but how many records were searched
overall. If there were 2,000 or so mistakes, as the Washington Post suggests, but involving billions of communications, the error rate is well less than 1
percent. Without looking at the latest figures, I suspect that is a far lower error rate than those turned in by domestic police on searches and arrests. To end the NSA’s
efforts to intercept terrorist communications would be to willfully blind ourselves (disregard) to the most valuable
intelligence sources on al-Qaeda (now that the president won’t allow the capture and interrogation of al-Qaeda leaders). The more useful question is whether there
is a cost-effective way to reduce the error rate without detracting from the effectiveness of the program, which, by General Keith Alexander’s accounting, has been high. Increasing
judicial oversight might reduce errors — though I am dubious — but in a way that would seriously slow down the speed of the
program, which is all-important if the mission is to stop terrorists. And perhaps Congress should think about ways to remedy any privacy
reduce it, the impact on the effectiveness of the program, and the remedies we have for mistakes.
violations in the future. But to end the program because it does not have an error rate of zero is to impose a demand on the NSA that no other government program, foreign or domestic,
military or civilian, could survive.
Stricter legal standards
Court action and stricter standards create legal uncertainty – hampering the
government’s counter-terror interests.
Branda ‘14
(et al; JOYCE R. BRANDA, Acting Assistant Attorney General, BRIEF FOR THE APPELLEES - Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama –
before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal
reference to the Reporters Committee – October 2nd – “She” is not gendered language in this instance – as the particular
plaintiff identified as a “she”. https://www.eff.org/document/governments-smith-answering-brief)
Plaintiff does not address how she has a privacy interest in business records produced pursuant to congressionally
authorized judicial orders. She does, however, argue that she has a privacy interest in telephony metadata, and
that Smith is distinguishable. Pl. Br. 15-26. Those arguments do not withstand analysis. First, plaintiff suggests
that it “obvious[ly]” makes a difference that “[t]he surveillance in Smith continued for three days,” whereas under
the Section 215 program the government obtains and retains business records containing telephony metadata over a longer time
period. Pl. Br. 16. But the greater time over which metadata may be collected does not validly distinguish Smith, which held that
individuals lack a privacy interest in any of the telephony metadata voluntarily transmitted to a telephone company
because the company’s customers “voluntarily convey[] those numbers to the telephone company” and because “‘a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he
voluntarily turns over to third parties.’” California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 41 (1988) (quoting Smith, 442 U.S. at 743-44). That holding did not depend on the number of days the pen
any other rule would inject needless uncertainty into an area in which certainty is crucial
to enable government personnel to implement these rules in the field. See, e.g., Atwater, 532 U.S. at 347.
register operated, and
Secrecy/Open Courts
State secrets are vital to preventing terrorism — open-proceedings reveal critical
national intelligence information.
Barnsby 12 — Robert Barnsby, Associate Professor of Law at West Point University, Former Lecturer in
Law at Williams and Mary College, J.D. from the U.S. Army General and Staff College, 2012 (“So Long and
Thanks for All the Secrets: A Response to Professor Telman,” University of Alabama Law Review, Vol. 63,
accessible online via subscribing institution to Lexis-Nexus, accessed on 6-20-15)
A. The Impossibility of Un-Ringing the Bell
Obviously, if
discovery reveals state secrets, a result which the entire rule is designed to prevent, then discovery cannot
proceed (i.e., if it does, and sensitive information is released, we cannot unring the bell). Indeed, "it would be absurd to
accept an interpretation" of SSP that results in the government "possessing the legal authority" to assert
the SSP during litigation "but lacking the legal authority" to assert the SSP during discovery in
anticipation of the very same litigation. Significant and critical intelligence vulnerabilities can result
when "other critical, sensitive means of gathering intelligence," including "specifics on the means and
methods of intelligence collection... [the list of] nations involved in supporting U.S. efforts at combating terrorism, [and the actual
names] of informants," are revealed in court.
One needs to look no further than the first World Trade Center bombing case in the 1990s for a perfect
example of the damage done to national security through the course of normal litigation. In that instance,
trial discovery and the concomitant public airing of important intelligence information put al Qaeda on
notice of United States intelligence on its network and, specifically, led Osama bin Laden to go into hiding.
Through normal discovery rules requiring the government to put defendants on notice regarding unindicted co-conspirators, "al Qaeda
acquired valuable intelligence from the [conspiracy trial of ten al Qaeda terrorists in 1995]." n98 As former
Attorney General Michael Mukasey stated in a recent Wall Street Journal article, "bin Laden knew not only that [the United States] knew about
him but also who else they knew about." In this way, al Qaeda gathered extremely valuable information from the 1995 trials; having access to
this intelligence clearly did not hurt the terror group's ability to inflict the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001. Again, this is something
we may be willing to accept in our system--as the 1995 trials were
public--but at the same time can clearly be a
vulnerability to our national defense. If, however, the government is not allowed to protect national
security-related information through the SSP in its current form, the situation will be exacerbated. In
particular, bad actors and weak states can make up for deficiencies in their intelligence-gathering abilities
by gaining "secrets" from the government's inability to invoke the SSP.
In the current armed conflict, the
adversary represents a significant threat to the United States and its citizens.
Indications and warnings of hostile activity are huge aspects of intelligence. The 9/11 attacks were a U.S.
intelligence failure in this regard. Put simply: when you advertise the subject matter at which you are looking, you
will tip off to potential adversaries the importance of possessing this same knowledge. Revealing
information in open court can, therefore, risk the lives of those fighting in ongoing hostilities. Without
getting into any classified areas of discussion, Foreign Intelligence Services (FIS) are continually monitoring our sources, methods, location,
personnel, technology, scientific data, and economic information at all times.
As the landmark 1976 Senate Committee Report on Intelligence Activities and Rights of Americans, known as the Church Report, noted, "[a]
tension between order and liberty is inevitable in any society. A Government must protect its citizens
from those bent on engaging in violence and criminal behavior . . . and other hostile foreign intelligence
activity." Perhaps we will be fortunate, and no information will be revealed during civil litigation. But there is no reason to take this chance,
particularly during times of armed conflict when our nation's security--and the safety of the individuals in this great nation--depends on it. As
foremost academicians acknowledge, "the conflict with Al Qaeda and its affiliates may last decades." n102 Several
aspects of
intelligence and, by extension, warfighting, will be affected if the government is unable to put an end to
litigation through the SSP. These effects include not only the actual information revealed in the litigation, which may help enemy
efforts, but also several other less readily apparent effects, which may result without continued use of the SSP in its current form. It is these
second- and third-order effects to which this paper now turns.
Any release of information of the sort involved in Jeppesen Dataplan will have a chilling effect on informants or the
entities with whom they are cooperating. Neither they, nor other individuals or the countries for whom they work will want to
work with us. Courts have themselves recognized that "[e]ven a small chance [of risked outing] . . . could . . .
cause sources to 'close up like a clam.'" Relatedly, we need to protect those who do business with our intelligence agencies-particularly those who follow the laws and regulations overseeing their activities--or they will never have any incentive to do business with us.
Additionally, coordination with host
nation forces is increasingly required for our intelligence collection
efforts. These efforts will be undermined if sources and techniques are revealed. Thankfully, to this point, the
majority of these collaborative efforts with other nations and their intelligence agencies have generally
worked, as evidenced by the astounding accomplishment of ultimately locating and killing Osama bin
Laden in 2011.
Deference
Deference is vital to national security — courts empirically fail to protect national
interest.
Allen 08 — John M. Allen, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Suffolk, J.D. from the
University of Suffolk, 2008 (“Expanding Law Enforcement Discretion: How the Supreme Court's PostSeptember 11th Decisions Reflect Necessary Prudence,” University of Suffolk Law Review, Vol. 41,
accessible via subscribing institution to Lexis-Nexus, accessed on 6-20-15)
III. Analysis
A. Prevention Becomes the Norm
The September 11th attacks demonstrated the importance of improving national security. Changes followed in almost every area of
government; defense spending surged, the government established the Department of Homeland Security to act as federal overseer of national
security, Congress created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to ensure the sharing of intelligence across agencies, Congress also
founded the Transportation Security Administration to implement more effective airline security procedures, and state and local governments
instituted emergency measures and greater security procedures. The devastation of the September 11th attacks also led courts to scrutinize
cases involving law enforcement and national security. Although many of the cases did not directly address terrorism issues, they did consider
constitutional concerns regarding search warrants, evidentiary issues, and broader police discretion pertaining to homeland defense and
security. As evidenced by Moussaoui's unsearched laptop, the nation's rigid obedience to legal restraints and civil liberties is strong. Rigid
adherence to these legal precedents, however, prevents the discovery of invaluable information or may hinder time-sensitive investigations.
The use of the criminal justice system alone to handle terrorism's potential for disaster is unworkable.
The current tension concerns proactively preventing terrorism without compromising personal liberties.
In instances where national security demands an exception, the Supreme Court recognized that
constitutional protections may yield to more effective measures of prevention.
B. Supreme Court Case Review Grants Greater Latitude to Law Enforcement
Following the September 11th attacks, the Supreme Court considered cases involving immigration, border
searches, home searches, searches authorized by warrant, alien and enemy combatant detention, and suspicionless searches of categorized
individuals. The
looming threat of terrorism and the attacks of September 11th influenced the Court's
decisions demonstrating their respect for law enforcement interests and personal liberties. The Court's
decisions afforded greater flexibility for law enforcement officers to exercise more subjective discretion
with regard to security, protection, and policing issues. The Court supported the subjective judgments of law enforcement
officers and valued their training and experience while appreciating larger national security concerns. Giving up some liberties in this
troubling time, however, does not have to be a dreadful reality but is instead a necessary step in
establishing measures to maintain America's freedom and national security. The Supreme Court's
reformation in thinking demonstrates a change in perspective that now permits certain laws to directly
reflect the current political realities. Overemphasis on individual privacy will unduly constrain law
enforcement because the United States needs effective policies to prevent future terrorism and avoid
reversion back to the restraining procedures that inhibit antiterrorism measures. The need for these
changes in critical law enforcement sectors is necessary to ensure greater national protection against
future attacks.
Moussaoui's laptop was afforded protection beyond necessary constitutional mandates. Given the current status of America's national security,
the reasonableness of the necessity to search his laptop is apparent in hindsight. Changes
in the Supreme Court's attitude
toward law and enforcement were necessary following the security threats presented by recent terrorist
attacks.
Deference decreases the risk of terror — executive decision making is vital to national
security.
Yoo and Ku 06 — John Yoo, Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkley,
Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Insititute, J.D. from Yale University — Julian Ku, Maurice A.
Deane Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law, J.D. from Yale University, 2006 (“Hamdan v.
Rumsfeld: The Functional Case for Foreign Affairs Deference to the Executive Branch,” Constitutional
Commentary, Vol. 23, accessible online at
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1508&context=facpubs, accessed on 619-15)
The Case for Deference
Congress is confident that it can predict the enemy's strategies and tactics, a rule based delegation makes little sense. Finally, the
costs of
errors in war are extremely high. Delegation by strict rule will produce higher rates of error than a
standard. Given the lives that could be lost and the damage to national security that could be suffered
from mistaken policies, it seems clear that the area of war requires delegations which provide the
executive branch with broad discretion.
Hamdan, by contrast, applies the opposite principle. It imposes a requirement that Congress act through rules when it attempts to delegate its
powers in war to the President. It effectively rejected the standards approach exemplified by the AUMF and Hamdi. The Court's clear statement
rule, however, does not appear to promote any specific policy which is explained as being more important or valuable than flexibility in
wartime. As William Eskridge and Philip Frickey have observed, clear statement rules embody policy choices by the Court, such as the rule of
lenity's protection for criminal defendants. If anything, they have argued, in past cases the Court had applied clear statement rules to protect
the executive's prerogatives in managing foreign affairs. Hamdan
fails to explain what policy value is enhanced by
reversing this rule to impose a clear statement rule on wartime policy, and why that value outweighs the
benefits of flexibility in war decisions.
Hamdan does not bode well for the United States's ability to wage war effectively. It increases the
costs of conducting hostilities by making it more difficult for the President and Congress to cooperate.
Congress may enumerate powers more specifically, but at the cost of flexibility-presidential ability to
shape decisions to the circumstances at hand will be constrained. Or, as it did in the Military Commissions Act of 2006,
Congress may largely restore the President's discretion to run military commissions, but it will do so at the cost in time and energy of
developing and enacting complicated legislation. Indeed, without
congressional action, Hamdan would have simply
resulted in blocking war crimes trials altogether, leaving enemy combatants detained for the duration of
the conflict.
*Hamdan=Hamdan v. Rumsfeld — Supreme Court ruling on a 5-4 that an executive court marshal in Guantanamo was illegitimate —
breaking the deference doctrine.
PRISM
PRISM key to fighting terror
Carafano, 13 (James J. Carafano, Ph.D, he is Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at
The Heritage Foundation, Aug 6th 2013, “PRISM is Essential to U.S. Security in War Against Terrorism”,
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2013/8/prism-is-essential-to-us-security-in-waragainst-terrorism ) CW
"Our
intelligence professionals must be able to find out who the terrorists are talking to, what they
are saying, and what they're planning," said the president. "The lives of countless Americans depend on
our ability to monitor these communications."¶ He added that he would cancel his planned trip to Africa unless assured
Congress would support the counterterrorism surveillance program.¶ The president was not Barack Obama. It was George W. Bush, in
2008, pressing Congress to extend and update reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). He was speaking directly to the
American public, in an address broadcast live from the Oval Office.¶ How times have changed.¶ Back then, the President of the United States
willingly led the fight for the programs he thought necessary to keep the nation safe. Now, our president sends underlings to make the case. ¶
In distancing himself from the debate over PRISM (the foreign intelligence surveillance program made
famous by the world-travelling leaker Edward Snowden), President Obama followed the precedent he
established in May at the National Defense University.¶ There, he spoke disdainfully of drone strikes, the authorization to use military force
against terrorists, and the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay. All three are essential components of his counterterrorism strategy.¶ In
distancing himself from his own strategy, Obama hoped to leave the impression that he is somehow above it all. He has dealt with the Snowden
case the same way. When asked while traveling in Africa if he would take a role in going after the leaker, the president replied "I shouldn't have
to."¶ The White House's above-it-all attitude sends seriously mixed messages to the American people, who are trying to figure if the
government's surveillance programs are legal and appropriate.¶ Congress has not been much better.¶ The
authority for PRISM is in
FISA Section 702. Congress debated these authorities in 2007 and again when the program was
reauthorized in 2008.¶ Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., surely remembers the controversy. He wrote President Bush: "There
is no crisis that should lead you to cancel your trip to Africa. But whether or not you cancel your trip, Democrats stand ready to negotiate a final
bill, and we remain willing to extend existing law for as short a time or as long a time as is needed to complete work on such a bill." Evidently,
Reid must have felt the authorities granted under Section 702 received a full and sufficient hearing.¶ Most current
members of Congress were seated under the dome during the 2008 debates. They had every opportunity not just to read the law, but to be
briefed on the program by intelligence officials before voting on the bill. For them to act shocked at the scope of the program today rings about
as hollow as Obama's expressed disdain for the operations he oversees.¶ The reality is that Congress and the administration share responsibility
for these programs. If they want to change or modify them, who's stopping them?¶ If changes are made, however, they should to be made for
the right reason. Leaders must never compromise our security for political expediency.¶ At
least 60 Islamist-inspired terrorist plots
have been aimed at the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks. The overwhelming majority have been thwarted
thanks to timely, operational intelligence about the threats. Congress should not go back to a pre-/11
set of rules just to appeal to populist sentiment.¶ Congress and the White House have an obligation to
protect our liberties and to safeguard our security -- in equal measure. Meeting that mission is more
important than winning popularity polls.
FISA Courts
FISA Courts are too slow for modern counter-terror operations.
CFR ‘13
(The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a United States nonprofit organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S.
foreign policy and international affairs. Its membership has included senior politicians, more than a dozen Secretaries of State,
CIA directors, bankers, lawyers, professors, and senior media figures – December 18, 2013 – Modified for potentially
objectionable language - http://www.cfr.org/intelligence/us-domestic-surveillance/p9763)
The Bush administration maintained that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was an outdated
law-enforcement mechanism that was too time-consuming given the highly fluid, modern threat
environment. Administration officials portrayed the NSA program as an "early warning system" (PDF) with "a military nature that requires
speed and agility." Moreover, the White House stressed that the program was one not of domestic surveillance but of monitoring terrorists abroad, and
publicly referred to the operation as the "Terrorist Surveillance Program." Opponents of the program referred to it as "domestic spying."
FISA courts move too slowly to effectively detect terrorism — warranting makes terror
attacks extremely likely.
Yoo 14 — John Yoo, Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkley, Fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute, 2014 (“The Legality of the National Security Administration’s Bulk
Collection Program,” Journal of Law and Policy, Summer, accessible online via subscribing institution to
Lexis-Nexus, accessed on 6-21-15)
As the United States fought the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and continues to pursue al Qaeda groups in the Middle East and Africa, it captured
al Qaeda laptops, cell phones, financial documents, and the other signs of modern high-tech life. This gave intelligence officers information on
dozens or hundreds of e-mail addresses, telephones, bank and credit account numbers, and residential and office addresses used by their
network. To
exploit this, U.S. intelligence services must follow those leads as fast as possible, before the
network of al Qaeda operatives can migrate to a new leader. An e-mail lead can disappear as fast as it
takes someone to open a new e-mail account.
FISA, and the law enforcement mentality it embodies, creates several problems. FISA requires "probable cause" to
believe that someone is an agent of a foreign power before one can get a warrant to collect phone calls
and e-mails. An al Qaeda leader could have a cell phone with 100 numbers in its memory, ten of which
are in the United States and thus require a warrant. Would a FISA judge have found probable cause to think
the users of those ten numbers are al Qaeda too? Probably not. Would our intelligence agencies even immediately
know who was using those numbers at the time of captured al Qaeda leader's calls? The same is true of his e-mail, as to which it will not be
immediately obvious what addresses are held by U.S. residents.
In our world of rapidly shifting e-mail addresses, multiple cell phone numbers, and Internet
communications, FISA imposes slow and cumbersome procedures on our intelligence and law
enforcement officers. These laborious checks are based on the assumption that we remain within the
criminal justice system, and look backwards at crimes in order to conduct prosecutions, rather than within the
national security system, which looks forward in order to prevent attacks on the American people. FISA requires a lengthy review
process, in which special FBI and DOJ lawyers prepare an extensive package of facts and law to present
to the FISC. The Attorney General must personally sign the application, and another highranking national
security officer, such as the President's National Security Advisor or the Director of the FBI, must certify
that the information sought is for foreign intelligence. Creating an existing database of numbers that can
be quickly searched can allow the government to take advantage of captured al Qaeda numbers abroad,
before the cells within the United States break their contacts.
TSA
The TSA combats terror
DHS, 14 (Website of Department of Homeland Security, Sep 10th 2014, “Preventing Terrorism and
Enhancing Security”, http://www.dhs.gov/preventing-terrorism-and-enhancing-security ) CW
Secure Flight: Fulfilling a key 9/11 Commission recommendation, DHS
fully implemented Secure Flight in 2010, in which
TSA prescreens 100 percent of passengers on flights flying to, from, or within the United States against
government watchlists before travelers receive their boarding passes. Prior to Secure Flight, airlines were
responsible for checking passengers against watchlists. Through Secure Flight, TSA now vets over 14 million passengers
weekly.¶ Enhanced Explosives Screening: Prior to 9/11, limited federal security requirements existed for cargo or baggage screening.
Today, TSA screens 100 percent of all checked and carry-on baggage for explosives. Through the Recovery Act
and annual appropriations, TSA has accelerated the deployment of new technologies to detect the next
generation of threats, including Advanced Imaging Technology units, Explosive Detection Systems, Explosives Trace Detection units,
Advanced Technology X-Ray systems, and Bottled Liquid Scanners.¶ Strengthening Surface Transportation Security¶ Visible Intermodal
Prevention and Response Teams: TSA has 25 multi-modal Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) Teams working
in
transportation sectors across the country to prevent or disrupt potential terrorist planning activities. Since
the VIPR program was created in 2008, there have been over 17,700 operations performed.¶ Baseline Surface Transportation Security
Assessments: Since 2006, TSA has completed more than 190 Baseline Assessments for Security Enhancement for transit, which provides a
comprehensive assessment of security programs in critical transit systems.
DOD
DOD surveillance can detect terrorist activities
Ahmed 14 (Nafeez, British author, investigative journalist, and international security scholar, “How the Pentagon Exploits ISIS to Kill
Surveillance Reform and Re-Occupy Iraq,” Counterpunch Weekend Edition September 26th-28th,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/26/how-the-pentagon-exploits-isis-to-kill-surveillance-reform-and-re-occupy-iraq/) aj
Pentagon spokesperson: Minerva research needed to predict groups like ISIS. According to Tucker, the US
Department of Defense’s Minerva “program managers feel that the rise of IS, and the intelligence
community’s inability to anticipate it, imbues their work with a timely importance.” He quotes Fitzgerald who
tells him: “Recent security issues such as the emergence of terror groups like ISIS… highlight the type of
critical knowledge gaps that Minerva research aims to address.” Big Data, writes Tucker, has provided an ideal
opportunity to innovate new ways of predicting the future. “It’s an excellent time for data-driven social science research,” he observes. “But is
the military the best outfit to fund it at its most innovative?”
Citing a speech last week by CIA director John Brennan,
Tucker points out that the sort of research being supported by Minerva is about closing “a big gap” in
“intent intelligence” – the capacity to predict human intent. The elephant in the room, however, is that the US
intelligence community did anticipate the rise of IS. There is now mounting evidence in the public record that President Obama had been
warned of a major attack on Iraq by IS extremists.
Freedom Act
FREEDOM Act revisions exacerbate terror
West 6/3 (Angus West, reporter, Media Equalizer, “Boston terror cases cited as evidence for USA Freedom Act,”
http://mediaequalizer.com/angus-west/2015/06/boston-terror-cases-cited-as-evidence-for-usa-freedom-act) aj
Two Boston terrorism cases were cited as evidence by Republicans that revisions in the USA Freedom
act undermine US security. Boston’s ongoing terrorism investigation of Usaamah Rahim, who was shot to death by police in
Roslindale Tuesday and was suspected of ties with ISIS, and the Tsarnaev case were cited by Republicans who want the National
Security Agency (NSA) phone-data gathering program continued as proof NSA needs continued access to
metadata on Americans’ phone records — not new limits under the USA Freedom Act. President Obama
signed the USA Freedom Act after the US Senate passed the bill 67-32 Tuesday, providing the NSA with
the green light to resume an anti-terror surveillance program but only with a court order and individual
warrants. Although two unfortunate events made Boston central in this debate over how the government should balance surveillance and
security, Republicans said the Boston cases showed that the program is needed. “You can’t hide from the fact that this program
enabled us to thwart terror attacks here and abroad, and that this program (was used) to figure out
whether the Tsarnaev brothers had an international connection that directed that horrific event at that marathon,”
said U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. U.S. Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who also
sits on the committee, referenced the ongoing investigation of Usaamah Rahim’s case, saying that others would be ready “to take up arms, or
to create a bomb, or to pick up a knife and bring harm to Americans in the name of support for jihad.”“We just see more and more references
to these types of attacks,” Coats added. “Unfortunately we are at a period of time where one of the methods that we have to try to stop these
threats is no longer in operation.”
at: turns
Muslim Coop
Spikes in hate crime are net worse — terror attacks inflame the general public and law
enforcement, creating violence and bigotry that isolate Muslim communities.
The idea that Muslim communities won’t cooperate is a media lie that reinforces
bigotry and violence against Muslim communities. The affirmative uses Muslim
communities as a means to their privacy.
Pasha 09 — Kamran Pasha, Attorney and contributor to the Huffington Post, MBA from Dartmouth
College, J.D. from Dartmouth College, M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from Dartmouth College, 2009
(“The Big Lie About Muslim Silence on Terrorism,” The World Post, May 21st, accessible online at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kamran-pasha/the-big-lie-about-muslim_b_188991.html, accessed on
6-18-15)
There is a real political agenda inside the media itself to keep Islam as the enemy, and to portray
mainstream Muslims as a fifth column inside America. The idea that your Muslim neighbors are silently
supporting Bin Laden sells newspapers. It captures the attention of viewers of the nightly news. And it
furthers the ambitions of politicians who need a rallying point to get votes. As a Muslim and a patriot I don't
know what more to do except continue telling the truth every time I get the opportunity. But I ask my nonMuslim friends this question. How would you feel if your community was being falsely portrayed as being
sympathetic to murderers by the media? How would you feel if every single thing you do to condemn and fight such criminals is
intentionally ignored? What would you conclude about the character and motivation of people that continue to spread a lie against millions of
your fellow human beings? If
you can take a moment to consider, you might get a sense of the true burden your
Muslim neighbors carry. The world wants us to be the monsters. When we condemn and fight the
monsters, no one notices or cares. It's like the army telling a soldier who has just survived a hellish
firefight that he was never in the war in the first place, and condemning him for his cowardice. It would
be a formula for despair for most people. And yet what is remarkable is that Muslim groups continue to
patiently work against terrorism in accordance with their faith, even though they receive no credit for
their deeds. They are secure that everything is in the hands of God. And, as the Holy Qur'an says, that the light of truth will never be put
out by the mouths of liars. Last year, I attended the Pilgrimage to Mecca, a powerful, life-changing event that I
chronicled on my personal blog at blog.kamranpasha.com One of the most remarkable stories that I
heard when I was there was the tale of Abraham, who Muslims believe founded the first settlement at
Mecca with his son Ishmael. The Angel Gabriel appeared to him and told Abraham to climb a mountain
and call mankind to God. Abraham was incredulous, and responded that there was no one in the barren
desert valley except him and his family. Who would hear the call? And Gabriel smiled and said: "Just call
mankind to the truth. God will make sure it is heard." In response to this article, the new meme is being
promulgated: "Muslims condemn terrorism, but it's all talk! Sure, Muslims say they condemn terrorism,
but there's no action!" Where do I begin to respond to this kind of nonsense? There are 1. 5 billion
Muslims living their lives in peace, trying to put food on the table for their families. Over six million of
them live here in America as patriotic citizens. They work hard, pay their taxes, and have ZERO contact
with the criminal underworld where these terrorists breed. I have never, ever met a terrorist in real life
(it is ridiculous that I even have to say this). If I met one, I would turn him in to the authorities, as would every other Muslim I know. Since I
don't have access to this shadowy underworld, I live my life on the surface in broad daylight, working in my community to promote interfaith
cooperation, peace and prosperity. It
is that grassroots effort that Muslims do to promote good in this world that
receives ZERO coverage in the media. I could list every single good thing I and other Muslims have ever
done to make the world a better, safer place, but people who hold this attitude don't care. It will never
be enough. If I listed 1 million positive things Muslims are doing in their daily lives today on this planet, they would respond: "Why can't you
name a billion things you've done? See, you're not doing enough!" So I ask those who are outraged at this supposed Muslim inaction: "What
have YOU done to defeat racism in this world?" List
every single thing you have ever done to fight the Ku Klux Klan.
List it here, right now. Times, dates and hyperlinks please. The response would be that I am crazy -- average Americans
have nothing to do with the KKK, and don't need to justify their daily actions in support of righteousness to me or anyone else. But that same
common sense response is rejected when a Muslim uses it. The
terrorists are a few thousand criminals (less than 0.01% of the
Muslim population). They act in secret, in a shadowy underworld that is more like the Mafia than a public
organization that holds meetings and takes minutes. Asking Muslims to list how they are fighting AlQaeda is like asking a pizza store owner what he is doing to destroy the Mafia. Muslims fight these
monsters by publicly denouncing them, leading lives as law-abiding citizens, helping their communities,
and trying to educate people about the loving and harmonious values of true Islam.
Our internal link outweighs the turn — even if populations don’t cooperate with small
scale investigations — only surveillance can reveal the large scale, coordinated attacks
that can cause extinction.
Muslim leaders do cooperate on investigations — they’ve helped a huge number and
the trend is increasing.
Ibish 10 — Hussein Ibish, Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Michigan State University, Senior Fellow
of the American Task Force on Palestine, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of
Massachusetts, M.A. in Communication from Emerson College, 2010 (“American Muslims and terrorism:
silence or deafness?,” Ibish Blog, May 8th, accessible online at
http://ibishblog.com/2010/05/08/american_muslims_and_terrorism_silence_or_deafness/, accessed
on 6-18-15)
The idea that Muslims, especially Muslim leaders, in the United States and around the world, do not condemn terrorism has
been one of the most persistent accusations in the post-9/11 era. Perhaps the most prominent and early of these
attacks came from Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer who, in November 2001, asked "after Sept. 11, where were
the Muslim theologians and clergy, the imams and mullahs, rising around the world to declare that Sept.
11 was a crime against Islam? Where were the fatwas against Osama bin Laden? The voices of high
religious authority have been scandalously still. And what of Muslim religious leaders in America?" This
alleged silence, it is implicitly or explicitly suggested, is in order to hide actual support for terrorism, and is a
feature of the extremism and/or simply the lying inherent to Arab culture or built into Islam as a faith, according to Islamophobic
discourse. Krauthammer‘s false accusation severed as a model for hundreds of similar tendentious questions over the following years,
which remain impervious to all efforts to answer or address them, as my recent TV appearances again demonstrated. In fact, of course, there
had been a considerable outcry of condemnation around the Muslim world and particularly in the
United States from the Muslim community, not only of the most recent outrage and 9/11, but of almost
all the major terrorist acts in between. Yet once alleged, the question has persisted and never been resolved. The question
continues to be routinely posed to Muslim-Americans: “why is your community silent about terrorism?” It has all the
qualities of a trap question, in which answering invites one to accept self-defeating premises, a little like
a politician being asked when he intends to stop beating his wife. The answer, of course, is that the Muslim-
American community is not silent about terrorism. Many public figures in this community, and all prominent national
Muslim and Arab-American organizations, have been at great pains for many years to make this clear. All have continued to
denounce terrorism, even to the point of organizing fatawa condemning terrorism in all its forms. Various
websites including University of Michigan professor Juan Cole’s blog "Informed Comment” and various other websites (here, here, here and
here, for example) have long ago posted lists of condemnations from Muslim religious and other institutions around the world against
terrorism, and specifically the 9/11 attacks. Yet
all of this has been, in some quarters at least, to little or no avail,
since the myth of silence still carries tremendous weight in American political culture and is widely
believed. Many of the more hostile critics of the Muslim community, for example, rejected a fatwa
organized and promoted in 2005 by numerous leading American Muslim organizations that condemned terrorism in the name of
Islam on the spurious grounds that its rejection of attacks on innocent civilians was a ruse. These rejections generally claim that,
“the fatwa never defines ‘innocent lives’ and condemns killing someone “unjustly,’” suggesting that the
condemnation was a linguistic game and did not represent any serious effort to reject terrorism on religious
grounds. Steven Emerson dismissed it as, “it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are
moderate.” Similarly, Walid Phares, among many others, critiqued a fatwa rejecting terrorism issued in 2008 by the Darool-Uloom Deoband on
the grounds that, “Usama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, and to some extent Hassan Nasrallah, all claim that innocence is relative.” Robert
Spencer dismissed the universal condemnation by American Muslim organizations of extremist converts arrested in New York City for planning
violent attacks in 2009 as little more than “a tried-and-true tactic.” Obviously,
more needs to be said and done to combat
violent tendencies among Muslim extremists by religious authorities, but the refusal to acknowledge
worthy efforts in this regard and dismiss positive developments as meaningless and disingenuous
suggests a political and emotional investment in the idea that mainstream Muslims do not or even
cannot oppose terrorism and violence. That said, I do think more could and needs to be done, especially by
religious leaders. But there are very positive signs. The senior-most Saudi Ulema Council of clerics last month adopted a
thoroughgoing decision descriptively defining terrorism and criminalizing its financing. Interestingly, its definition of "terrorism" was broad in a
manner very reminiscent of the FBI definition, which encompasses everything from 9/11 style acts to vandalism. And in March a highly
respected British Imam, Sheikh Tahir ul-Qadr, issued the longest, most detailed and most thoroughgoing fatwa against terrorism and suicide
bombing yet written. So the
trend is most certainly in the right direction.
AT: Arab-American Relations, Intel Coop turn
Even if Arab-American communities are frustrated with Fed policy, it doesn’t mean
they don’t cooperate with Federal investigations.
Miller ‘6 Joel – holds a Ph.D. Sociology from Surrey University; and M.Sc. Social Research Methods (Awarded Distinction)
from Surrey University; and a B.A. (Hons) Human Sciences, Oxford University, UK. Visiting Professor at The Institute of
Criminology, University of Malaga, Spain; and Senior Research Associate, Vera Institute of Justice - “LAW ENFORCEMENT &
ARAB AMERICAN COMMUNITY RELATIONS AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 Technical Report” - June 2006 http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/Arab_American_technical_report.pdf
Relations between Arab American communities and law enforcement agencies overall fell into two qualitative categories. Toward local police agencies,
Arab Americans reported a fair amount of good will, even in
jurisdictions where the two have little interaction. Where departments acted on this good will, evidence indicates that their efforts have already paid dividends in the form of reduced tension and improved rates of reporting.
perceptions of federal law enforcement, on the other hand, were less positive. Even though most of the FBI field offices
in the study had reached out to Arab American communities, many Arab Americans remained fearful and
suspicious of federal efforts. Despite the challenges enumerated above, our research also found that
both community members and law enforcement respondents want to improve relations. In fact, a select number of police
departments have already implemented promising practices to do so, such as providing police officers with cultural sensitivity training relevant to
Community
their work, recruiting Arab American officers, and establishing police-community liaisons. However, more jurisdictions could benefit from these and similar undertakings, including, for example, creating clearly defined policies for
such efforts
can lead not only to increased dialogue but also to meaningful partnerships that, consistent with community policing philosophy,
better address concerns about local and national security.
dealing with issues relevant to immigrant communities, conducting consistent outreach to Arab communities, and demonstrating cultural awareness during community interactions. Where adopted,
Their turn is a myth – it’s complete hype to suggest that Muslim Americans aren’t
already cooperating with law enforcement.
M.P.A.C. ’11 The Muslim Public Affairs Council is a public service agency working for the civil rights of American Muslims,
for the integration of Islam into American pluralism, and for a positive, constructive relationship between American Muslims
and their representatives. Since 1988, MPAC has worked diligently to promote a vibrant American Muslim community and
enrich American society through exemplifying the Islamic values of Mercy, Justice, Peace, Human Dignity, Freedom, and
Equality for all. Over the years, MPAC has built a reputation as a consistent and reliable resource for government and media,
and is trusted by American Muslims as an authentic, experienced voice. “Muslim Americans and Law Enforcement
Partnerships” - Muslim Public Affairs Council website – Feb 11th - http://www.mpac.org/programs/government-relations/dcnews-and-views/muslim-americans-and-law-enforcement-partnerships.php
a dangerous myth of “Muslim silence” on
terrorism persists. Anti-Muslim pundits have gone as far as to accuse Muslim Americans of being a “fifth column” or enemy within our nation, and even claim the community
sympathizes and harbors violent extremists. This myth-laden discourse has reached such a fever pitch that officials such as Rep. Peter
King (R-NY) are now planning Congressional hearings examining the “non-cooperation” of Muslim Americans with law
enforcement, and their supposed failure to tackle extremists’ ideology. The fact is that law enforcement officials and security
experts have been tackling this issue head-on alongside the Muslim American community. . Earlier this week, MPAC
Despite the enormous effort to separate mainstream Islam and Muslims from bin Ladin’s extremism and violence,
hosted a briefing on Capitol Hill to discuss law enforcement engagement with Muslim American communities. The forum’s featured experts were CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen,
former National Security Council Director Roger Cressey, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and MPAC Government and Policy Analyst Alejandro Beutel.
AT: “New Technology for searches will solve the Terror Disad”
Aff’s call for a new technology is bad – makes counter-terror less effective.
Branda ‘14
(et al; JOYCE R. BRANDA, Acting Assistant Attorney General, BRIEF FOR THE APPELLEES - Amicus Brief for Smith v. Obama –
before the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “Amici” means “friend of the court” and – in this context - is legal
reference to the Reporters Committee – October 2nd - https://www.eff.org/document/governments-smith-answering-brief)
injunction against the program, even one limited to telephony
metadata about plaintiff, would be burdensome. It would require the government to develop a new capability to
In addition, the declarations in the record establish that a preliminary
segregate metadata associated with plaintiff’s call records from the rest of the information, and remove that metadata from each new batch of metadata received on a daily basis (assuming
Those tasks could consume considerable resources, and any
technological solution could degrade the program’s overall effectiveness by eliminating or cutting off
potential call chains that might otherwise reveal connections between individuals associated with
terrorist activity. SER 27. Moreover, requiring the government to refrain from collecting and to destroy records regarding plaintiff’s calls, as her motion for a preliminary
the government received any in the first place). SER 27.
injunction requests, SER 2, would be irreversible, and hence is improper preliminary injunctive relief, because it would grant plaintiff full relief on the merits prematurely. See Dorfmann v.
Boozer, 414 F.2d 1168, 1173 n.13 (D.C. Cir. 1969).
impact core
bio
1nc
Bioterror attacks cause extinction – the difficulties of developing a biological weapon
Mhyrvold ‘13 Nathan, Began college at age 14, BS and Masters from UCLA, Masters and PhD, Princeton “Strategic
Terrorism: A Call to Action,” Working Draft, The Lawfare Research Paper Series Research paper NO . 2 – 2013
most of the classic bioweapons are based on
1960s and 1970s technology because the 1972 treaty halted bioweapons development efforts in the
United States and most other Western countries. Second, the Russians, although solidly committed to biological weapons long after the treaty deadline, were never on the
As horrible as this would be, such a pandemic is by no means the worst attack one can imagine, for several reasons. First,
the science and technology of molecular biology have made enormous advances,
utterly transforming the field in the last few decades . High school biology students routinely perform
cutting edge of biological research. Third and most important,
molecular-biology manipulations that would have been impossible even for the best superpower-funded
program back in the heyday of biological-weapons research. The biowarfare methods of the 1960s and
1970s are now as antiquated as the lumbering mainframe computers of that era. Tomorrow’s terrorists
will have vastly more deadly bugs to choose from . Consider this sobering development: in 2001, Australian researchers working on mousepox, a nonlethal virus that infects mice
(as chickenpox does in humans), accidentally discovered that a simple genetic modification transformed the virus.10, 11 Instead of producing mild symptoms, the new virus killed 60% of even those mice already immune to the
naturally occurring strains of mousepox. The new virus, moreover, was unaffected by any existing vaccine or antiviral drug. A team of researchers at Saint Louis University led by Mark Buller picked up on that work and, by late
Buller’s variation on mousepox was 100% lethal, although his team of investigators also devised combination vaccine and antiviral
the genetically altered virus is no longer
contagious. Of course, it is quite possible that future tinkering with the virus will change that property, too.
Strong reasons exist to believe that the genetic modifications Buller made to mousepox would work for other poxviruses and
possibly for other classes of viruses as well. Might the same techniques allow chickenpox or another poxvirus that infects humans to be turned into a 100%
lethal bioweapon, perhaps one that is resistant to any known antiviral therapy? I’ve asked this question of experts many
times, and no one has yet replied that such a manipulation couldn’t be done. This case is just one
example. Many more are pouring out of scientific journals and conferences every year. Just last year, the journal Nature published a controversial study done at the University of
2003, found a way to improve on it:
therapies that were partially effective in protecting animals from the engineered strain.12, 13 Another saving grace is that
Biotechnology is
advancing so rapidly that it is hard to keep track of all the new potential threats . Nor is it clear that anyone is even trying. In addition
to lethality and drug resistance, many other parameters can be played with, given that the infectious power of
an epidemic depends on many properties, including the length of the latency period during which a person
is contagious but asymptomatic. Delaying the onset of serious symptoms allows each new case to spread to more
people and thus makes the virus harder to stop. This dynamic is perhaps best illustrated by HIV , which is very difficult to
Wisconsin–Madison in which virologists enumerated the changes one would need to make to a highly lethal strain of bird flu to make it easily transmitted from one mammal to another.14
The balancing factor is that HIV can take years
to progress to AIDS , which can then take many more years to kill the victim. What makes HIV so dangerous is that infected people have
transmit compared with smallpox and many other viruses. Intimate contact is needed, and even then, the infection rate is low.
A virus
genetically engineered to infect its host quickly, to generate symptoms slowly —say, only after weeks or months—and to spread
easily through the air or by casual contact would be vastly more devastating than HIV . It could silently
penetrate the population to unleash its deadly effects suddenly. This type of epidemic would be almost
impossible to combat because most of the infections would occur before the epidemic became obvious. A
lots of opportunities to infect others. This property has allowed HIV to claim more than 30 million lives so far, and approximately 34 million people are now living with this virus and facing a highly uncertain future.15
technologically sophisticated terrorist group could develop such a virus and kill a large part of humanity with it. Indeed,
terrorists may not have to develop it themselves: some scientist may do so first and publish the details. Given the rate at which
biologists are making discoveries about viruses and the immune system, at some point in the near future,
someone may create artificial pathogens that could drive the human race to extinction. Indeed, a detailed
species-elimination plan of this nature was openly proposed in a scientific journal. The ostensible purpose of that particular
research was to suggest a way to extirpate the malaria mosquito , but similar techniques could be directed toward humans .16 When
I’ve talked to molecular biologists about this method, they are quick to point out that it is slow and easily detectable and could be fought with biotech remedies. If you challenge them to come up with improvements to the
suggested attack plan, however, they have plenty of ideas.
Modern biotechnology will soon be capable, if it is not already, of bringing about
the demise of the human race— or at least of killing a sufficient number of people to end high-tech
civilization and set humanity back 1,000 years or more. That terrorist groups could achieve this level of technological sophistication may seem far-fetched, but keep
in mind that it takes only a handful of individuals to accomplish these tasks. Never has lethal power of this potency been accessible to so few, so easily. Even more dramatically than nuclear proliferation, modern biological science
has frighteningly undermined the correlation between the lethality of a weapon and its cost, a fundamentally stabilizing mechanism throughout history. Access to extremely lethal agents—lethal enough to exterminate Homo
sapiens—will be available to anybody with a solid background in biology, terrorists included.
yes extinction
Extinction
Makhan Saikia 14, researcher at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, was an
Assistant Professor at the Symbiosis School of Economics, Challenges of Globalization, Journal
of Politics & Governance, Vol. 3, No. 1
The unique feature of invisibility of the biological weapons make them the worst predators. Their ability
to disseminate fear and cause chaos amongst the victims has a much more grim effect than a bomb attack. By
impinging on the Governing bodies from the roots and snatching away every viable option to control them from the
authorities, has made this type of terrorist attack the best innovation brought out of the evil side of the humanity. In
order to fight back the horrifying potential of a biological weapon global preparedness and individual response capabilities are
the only viable option that come our way at this point of time. This transition of the anti-humane weapons from concrete metal objects to
undetectable micro-organisms has quite detrimental effects which need to be dealt [with] effectively and intelligently
in order to save life on this Earth.
Bioterror causes extinction
Matheny 7 [Jason, research associate with the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, where his work focuses on technology
forecasting and risk assessment - particularly of global catastrophic risks and existential risks.[1] He previously worked for the World Bank, the
Center for Biosecurity, the Center for Global Development, and on national security projects for the US government. He is a Sommer Scholar
and PhD candidate in Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University. He holds an MPH from Johns Hopkins, an MBA from Duke University, and
a BA from the University of Chicago, Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins
University, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction,” http://www.physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/pmpmta/Mahoney_extinction.pdf]
Of current extinction risks, the most severe may be bioterrorism. The knowledge needed to engineer a
virus is modest compared to that needed to build a nuclear weapon; the necessary equipment and
materials are increasingly accessible and because biological agents are self-replicating, a weapon can
have an exponential effect on a population (Warrick, 2006; Williams, 2006). 5 Current U.S. biodefense efforts are
funded at $5 billion per year to develop and stockpile new drugs and vaccines, monitor biological agents and emerging diseases, and strengthen the capacities of local
health systems to respond to pandemics (Lam, Franco, & Shuler, 2006). There is currently no independent body assessing the risks of
high-energy physics experiments. Posner (2004) has recommended withdrawing federal support for such
experiments because the benefits do not seem to be worth the risks.
yes feasible
Synthetic biology makes bioterror inevitable- creates means and motive
Rose, 14 -- PhD, recognized international biodefense expert [Patrick, Center for Health & Homeland
Security senior policy analyst & biosecurity expert, National Defense University lecturer, and Adam
Bernier, expert in counter-terrorism, "DIY Bioterrorism Part II: The proliferation of bioterrorism through
synthetic biology," CBRNePortal, 2-24-14, www.cbrneportal.com/diy-bioterrorism-part-ii-theproliferation-of-bioterrorism-through-synthetic-biology/, accessed 8-16-14]
In Part I of this series, we examined how the advancement of synthetic
biology has made bio-engineering accessible to the
mainstream biological community. Non-state actors who wish to employ biological agents for ill intent are sure to be
aware of how tangible bio-weapons are becoming as applications of synthetic biology become more
affordable and the probability of success increases with each scientific breakthrough. The willingness of non-state actors to engage in biological attacks is not
a new concept; however, the past biological threat environment has been subdued compared to that of conventional or even chemical terrorism. The frequency
and deadliness of biological attacks has, thankfully, been limited; much of which can be attributed to the technical complexity or apparent ineptitude of the
perpetrators developing biological weapons. Despite
the infrequency and ineffectiveness of biological attacks in the last four
decades, the threat may be changing with the continued advancement of synthetic biology applications.
Coupled with the ease of info rmation sharing and a rapidly growing do-it-yourself-biology (DIYbio)
movement (discussed in Part I), the chances of not only , more attacks , but
potentially
more deadly ones will
inevitably increase .¶ During the last half century terrorist organizations have consistently had an interest in using
biological weapons as a means of attacking their targets, but only few have actually made a weapon and used it. The attraction is that terrorist activities with
biological weapons are difficult to detect and even more difficult to attribute without a specific perpetrator claiming responsibility. Since 1971 there have been
more than 113,113 terrorist attacks globally and 33 of them have been biological. The majority of bio-terrorism incidents recorded occurred during the year 2001
(17 of the 33); before 2001 there were 10 incidents and since 2001 there were 6 (not counting the most recent Ricin attacks). The lack of a discernable trend in use
of bio-terrorism does not negate the clear intent of extremist organizations to use biological weapons. In fact, the capacity to harness biological weapons more
effectively today only increases the risk that they will successfully be employed. ¶
The landscape is changing : previously the instances where
biological attacks had the potential to do the most harm (e.g., Rajneeshees cult’s Salmonella attacks in 1984, Aum Shinri Kyo’s Botulinum toxin, and Anthrax attacks
in the early 90’s) included non-state actors with access to large amounts of funding and scientists. Funding and a cadre of willing scientists does not guarantee
success though. The
assertion was thus made that biological weapons are not only expensive, they require
advanced technical training to make and are even more difficult to effectively perpetrate acts of terrorism with. While it is
difficult to determine with certainty whether the expense and expertise needed to create biological weapons has acted as a major deterrent for groups thinking of
obtaining them, many experts would argue that the cost/expertise barrier makes the threat from biological attacks extremely small. This assertion is supported by
the evidence that the vast majority of attacks have taken place in Western countries and was performed by Western citizens with advanced training in scientific
research.¶ In
the past decade the cost/expertise assertion has become less accurate. Despite the lack of biological
attacks, there are a number of very dangerous and motivated organizations that have or are actively
pursuing biological weapons. The largest and most outspoken organization has been the global Al Qaeda network, whose leaders have frequently and
passionately called for the development (or purchase) of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The principal message from Al Qaeda Central and
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has included the call to use biological WMDs to terrorize Western nations. Al Qaeda has had a
particular focus on biological and nuclear weapons because of their potential for greatest harm. Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Anwar al-Awlaki have all
called for attacks using biological weapons, going so far as to say that Muslims everywhere should seek to kill Westerners wherever possible and that obtaining
WMDs is the responsibility of all Muslims. Before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda had spent significant funds on building a bio-laboratory and had
begun collecting scientists from around the world; however, the Afghanistan invasion and subsequent global War on Terrorism is thought to have disrupted their
capabilities and killed or captured many of their assets. Despite the physical setbacks, this disruption
does not appear to have changed
the aggressive attitude towards obtaining WMDs (e.g., more recently U.S. Intelligence has been concerned
about AQAP attempting to make Ricin).¶ The emergence of synthetic biology and DIYbio has increased
the likelihood that Al Qaeda will succeed in developing biological WMDs. The low cost and
significantly reduced level of necessary expertise may change how many non-state actors view
bio logical weapons as a worthwhile investment. This is not to say that suddenly anyone can make a
weapon or that it is easy. To the contrary making an effective biological weapon will still be difficult,
only much easier and cheaper than it has been in the past.¶ The rapid advancements of synthetic
bio logy could be a game changer , giving organizations currently pursuing biological weapons more
options, and encouraging other organizations to reconsider their worth. Because the bar for attaining
bio logical weapons has been lowered and is likely to continue to be lowered
as more advances in biological
technology are made, it is important that the international community begin to formulate policy that protects advances in science that acts to prevent the
intentional misuse of synthetic biology. Disregard
for this consideration will be costly. A successful attack with a
potent biological weapon, where no pharmaceutical interventions might exist, will be deadly and the
impact of such an attack will reverberate around the globe because biological weapons are not bound
by international borders.
yes motive
Al-Qaeda is gearing up for bioterror attacks – disrupting groups key
Obwale 12 [David, Clinical and Experimental Medicine graduate, University College London Clinical
and Experimental Medicine graduate, 8/5/12, The Observer, “Ebola a potential bio-terror weapon,”
http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20215:ebola-a-potentialbio-terror-weapon&catid=37:guest-writers&Itemid=66, accessed 9/3/12, JTF]
Ebola has capabilities of biological weaponization with catastrophic consequences, especially due to the
fact that it lacks adequate and effective vaccines and therapeutics that would counter any prospective
mass attacks. Its zoonotic origin, distribution route and exposure in the tropical climatic conditions
conceal its incubation and concurrence in these belligerent conditions.¶ Also, Ebola, being highly contagious, presents an
adaptability factor likely to be exploited by biological terrorists willing to be infected by these bio-hazardous agents. The
terrorists would then have to deliberately transport themselves into their targeted areas during the incubation
period in order to initiate person-to-person transmission, either by secretion contact or airborne dissemination.¶ The relatively
low production cost, that only entails human contact and enormous availability of willing volunteers,
which already exists amongst Al Qaeda radicals, poses a threat of unprecedented scale. Al Qaeda and
its extremist networks have already carried out numerous terrorist attacks around the globe. Needless to say, arming
themselves with Ebola, as a highly effective weapon, would lend them the capacity to unleash a high-impact attack
causing mass civilian casualties.¶ Proliferation of the Ebola virus for bioterrorism may also arise from the way
biological specimens are stored, which is unique to agents of viral hemorrhagic fevers. Most virological laboratories are not
specialized and equipped adequately for rapid diagnosis and appropriate examination of the Ebola samples. The
storage of Ebola virus samples requires maximum security in the specimen laboratories.¶ This has resulted into the
monopoly by some reference laboratories dealing with scientific repositories’ management. This raises the issues of sharing
specimens and the illicit use of these infectious agents which can stream into the possible risk of
bioterrorism during diagnostic research and procedures.
yes likely
Bioterrorism is coming and will have deadly consequences- we’re not prepared to deal
with an attack
Vicinanzo 15 (Amanda, senior editor @ Homeland Security Today, “Biological Terrorist Attack On US An 'Urgent And Serious Threat',”
4/23/15, http://www.hstoday.us/briefings/daily-news-analysis/single-article/biological-terrorist-attack-on-us-an-urgent-and-seriousthreat/0ce6ebf3524d83c537b1f4f0cc578547.html /lg)
In the wake of the recent Ebola crisis, the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications convened a hearing
. “The risk of a biological terrorist attack to America is an urgent and
serious threat. A bioattack could cause illness and even kill hundreds of thousands of people, overwhelm
our public health capabilities, and create significant economic, societal and political consequences,” said
subcommittee chairman Martha McSally (R-Ariz). “Our nation’s capacity to prevent, respond to, and mitigate the impacts of
biological terror incidents is a top national security priority.” Bioterrorist threat from ISIL and other terrorist organizations In her opening
Wednesday to examine US preparedness for a bioterrorist attack
statement, McSally expressed concern over the possibility that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other jihadi terrorist organizations could conduct a biological attack on
ISIL is better resourced, more brutal, and more organized than any terrorist group to date,” McSally
said. “We know that they have an interest in using chemical and biological weapons.” Last year, Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper warned the Syrian government might have advanced beyond the research and development
stage and may have a restricted capacity to manufacture weaponized disease agents. Counterterrorism
officials have worried for years since the conflict in Syria began that ISIL may be able to get a hold of
these biological weapons. Moreover, last year, a laptop belonging to a Tunisian jihadist reportedly
recovered from an ISIL hideout in Syria contained a hidden trove of secret plans, including instructions
for weaponizing the bubonic plague and a document discussing the advantages of a biological attack.
“The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human
casualties can be huge,” stated a document found on the laptop. In October, jihadists and supporters of ISIL stepped up
discussions on jihadist social media websites about the possibility and ease of using Ebola, as well as
other virulent pathogens and poisons, as weapons against the US and the West, according to reports by
the Middle East Media Research Institute. Jim Talent, former Senator from Missouri and former vicechair of The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and
Terrorism, testified that the threat of a bioattack is “one of the greatest and gravest” facing the nation.
American soil. “
Talent said that at the end of 2008, the 9/11 Commission issued the report, World at Risk, which addressed the threat posed by nuclear and biological weapons. Talent and former Sen. Bob
terrorists have acquired bio-weapons in the past, and that it’s likely
easier for them to secure a bio-weapon than a nuclear weapon. The report stated, “We accept the validity of
current intelligence estimates about the current rudimentary nature of terrorist capabilities in the area
of biological weapons but caution that the terrorists are trying to upgrade their capabilities and could do
so by recruiting skilled scientists. In this regard, the biological threat is greater than the nuclear; the
acquisition of deadly pathogens, and their weaponization and dissemination in aerosol form, would
entail fewer technical hurdles than the theft of production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium and
its assembly into an improvised nuclear device.” In addition, bio-weapons can be easily transported,
stockpiled, can cause more deaths than a tactical nuclear weapon, and, depending on the biological
agent used, the terrorists could launch an attack and escape the area before the authorities even knew
that an attack had occurred, according to Talent. And he's not alone. Seasoned and veteran
counterterrorism officials agree that jihadi organizations appear to have a greater interest in acquiring
and using biological and radiological weapons, and that Al Qaeda is known to have experimented with
trying to weaponize a number of highly virulent pathogens. In 2005, Homeland Security Today first reported that Al Qaeda had worked on
Graham (D-Fla.) gave the biothreat greater emphasis, knowing that
plans to send squads of "bio-martyrs" who would deliberately infect themselves with a human transmittable strain of bird flu once such a strain become a human contagion or a human
transmissible form clandestinely bio-engineering to be easily passed between humans, and then to spread the virus as widely around the world as they could by traveling on one international
flight after another, officials said at the time. During the height of the Ebola outbreak, intelligence surfaced indicating that jihadi organizations were discussing doing the same thing with the
With a long enough period of sanctuary where terrorists can plan, recruit and get together the
necessary lab facilities and experts, they can isolate and weaponize. According to Talent, there are now
areas, including in Iraq and Syria, where jihadists have the time and sanctuary to develop these
weapons. Although an attack using biological agents or weapons is a low probability, high consequence event, “When you keep running risk and the
risk continues to grow, even gradually, eventually the bullet is in the chamber,” Talent said. On August 14, 2013, Homeland
Ebola virus.
Security Today Editor-in-Chief Anthony Kimery and former CIA WMD counterterrorism unit chief Charles Faddis appeared in "Biopocalypse," an episode of the SyFy Channel TV series, "Joe
Rogan Questions Everything." The segment dealt with bio-terrorism, designer-hybrid pathogenic threats and unregulated DIY-bio genetics labs from out of which could emerge unregulated
designer/hybrid pathogens. US response to Ebola outbreak highlights lack of bio preparedness The recent Ebola outbreak—the deadliest in history—has claimed the lives of over 10,000 and
infected over 26,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). With no cure and a mortality rate as high as 90 percent, the Ebola epidemic serves as a grim reminder
that even with the advent of modern medicine, the spread of deadly infectious diseases is not relegated to history. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been criticized for its slow
response in the early months of the outbreak. Recently, WHO admitted to boggling the Ebola response, and released a list of lessons learned as well as suggested reforms for moving forward.
"The Ebola outbreak that started in December 2013 became a public health, humanitarian and socioeconomic crisis with a devastating impact on families, communities and affected
the United
States also mishandled the Ebola outbreak, calling into question US bio preparedness, both for terrorism
and pandemics or other emerging infectious diseases. McSally stated that bureaucracy, as well as a leadership vacuum, prevented an effective
countries,” WHO said in a statement. “It also served as a reminder that the world, including WHO, is ill-prepared for a large and sustained disease outbreak.” Like WHO,
response to the crisis. “Even after the Ebola response we cannot seem to identify the federal official who has the responsibility and authority to coordinate the dozen or so senior officials with
responsibility for biological preparedness and defense,” McSally said. “It’s just baffling.” Earlier this month, Homeland Security Today reported that the post-9/11 Commission Blue Ribbon
that the government does not have a good answer to the question of who
would be in charge if America was beset by a biological or chemical weapons attack. "The federal
government has stated that a public health disaster or pandemic is one of the top strategic threats our
country faces," said Dr. Kenneth Bernard, a former biodefense official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "Yet, we were still largely unprepared
for the Ebola outbreak this year. We're not managing our leadership properly." Panel co-chair Tom Ridge said a
“leadership vacuum” plagues response efforts – especially the response to a large-scale, mass casualty
biological or chemical attack, which most public health and emergency public health authorities agree
the US isn't prepared for handling or mitigating. "Biological and chemical threats are among the most sinister our nation faces," Ridge said.
"Terrorist groups have voiced their desire to obtain and use biological and chemical weapons. The Ebola crisis
Study Panel on Biodefense arrived at the consensus
revealed significant gaps in US public health and medical preparedness. We must consider our current ability to defend against such threats and provide for the health and welfare of our
citizens." The Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense plans to issue recommendations for changes to US law and policy later this year. In addition to lack of leadership, the US has also failed to
effectively manage and oversee its inventory of pandemic preparedness supplies, including protective equipment and antiviral drugs. In October, Homeland Security Today reported that by
failing to implement controls to monitor its stockpiles, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot be certain whether it has too little, too much or ineffective supplies for its
personnel, especially those who will be needed on the front lines of a large-scale mass casualty attack or event. For example, the stockpile contained 4,982 bottles of hand sanitizer, 84 percent
of which is expired, and the Transportation Security Administration’s stock of pandemic protective equipment included about 200,000 respirators that are beyond the 5-year usability
guaranteed by the manufacturer. The glut in supplies means millions of dollars wasted on unnecessary drugs and equipment that need to be replaced in order to be continuously prepared.
During a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said, "We spent millions of dollars for a pandemic ... We don't know the inventory, we don't
know who's got it, and we don't know who's gonna get it.” Moreover, according to Talent, the lack of sufficient medical countermeasures (MCMs) in our Strategic National Stockpile, and the
lack of a system to quickly develop and produce MCMs during a crisis is the number one concern in US preparedness for a bio attack. Talent stated, “The recent Ebola virus outbreak
highlighted that unless countermeasures are immediately available, including diagnostics tests that can be used by clinicians who are evaluating suspected cases, therapeutics to treat cases
and vaccines to protect health care workers and others at risk, we are left with fairly primitive means to respond to and contain such events.” However, “The list of bio-threat agents for which
we should have diagnostics tests, therapeutics and vaccines for is about a dozen. To date, our stockpile contains countermeasures for only three or four,” Talent said. Public health and
emergency preparedness As the largest port of entry in the US, New York City activated “a highly detailed, coordinated and expensive multiagency and multijurisdictional effort” in response to
increasing cases of Ebola in West Africa last year. Preparedness efforts included development of detailed plans for disease surveillance by the health department, investigation of hundreds of
suspect cases, extensive staff training at each of its eleven hospitals to be prepared to receive and screen individuals potentially exposed to the disease, and the designation and readying of
Bellevue Hospital as the primary New York City Ebola treatment center. New York City also engaged the community by distributing over 100,000 “Am I at Risk?” palm cards and holding over
115 public events to discuss public health concerns. Marisa Raphael, deputy commissioner of the Office of Emergency Planning and Response for the NYC Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene, testified that federal funding played a critical role in the success of the city’s response to the Ebola crisis. Raphael also stated, “The greatest danger to our progress is the decline in
federal emergency preparedness funding.” Homeland Security Today reported just last week that, as Western counterterrorism and intelligence officials worry about the increasing potential
for an Islamist jihadist group or inspired individual to carry out a chemical, biological or radiological mass casualty attack in the United States, combined federal, state and local public health
spending has fallen below pre-recession levels at $75.4 billion in 2013 -- or $239 per person ($218 adjusted for inflation)ilynina compared to $241 per person in 2009, according the new Trust
for America’s Health (TFAH) report, Investing in America's Health: A State-by-State Look at Public Health Funding and Key Health Facts. Adjusting for inflation, TFAH said, “public health
spending was 10 percent lower in 2013 than in 2009. Public health and emergency preparedness funding for New York City has decreased 35 percent from its peak in Fiscal Year 2005, which
has led to a 47 percent reduction in our public health preparedness and response workforce. Raphael said, “The erosion of a skilled, dedicated workforce including epidemiologists, laboratory
technicians, and preparedness planners threatens to compromise our ability to detect and respond to disease outbreaks.” As Homeland Security Today earlier reported, the federal funding
cuts have not affected New York alone. “
We cannot afford to let our guard down. We must remain vigilant in preparing for any potential mass casualty
event. Yet, year after year, we see less and less funds going to the people who and departments that are responsible for preparing for a public health emergency,” TFAH Deputy Director Rich
Hamburg told Homeland Security Today. Although New York demonstrated a high level of public health and emergency preparedness during the Ebola crisis, other large US cities remain vastly
unprepared. Many do not access to the amount of funding or resources granted to New York. But beyond New York, hospitals in most major metropolitan cities are inadequately prepared for
a surge of people infected with a highly contagious pathogen, a problem Homeland Security Today has reported since 2004.
Bioterror is coming now---wide range of motivational factors and new technical
capabilities ensure CBRN use
Asal et al. 12—Professor in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany–SUNY—AND Gary Ackerman, Member of the
National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland—AND R. Karl Rethemeyer, Professor in the
Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany–SUNY (Victor, “Connections Can Be Toxic: Terrorist Organizational Factors and the Pursuit of
CBRN Weapons,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 35, Issue 3, Taylor & Francis)
A recent survey of over 120 books, journal articles, monographs, and government reports
dealing with CBRN terrorism10 revealed that there are a disproportionate number of studies and
publications dealing with the potential for terrorists to attain a CBRN weapons capability and the
response to the consequences of a CBRN attack, as opposed to the terrorists’ motivations for using CBRN weapons. Within
that portion of the literature that does delve into aspects of intentionality, the closest thing to a consensus among scholars is the following set of
assertions: 1. There is a wide variety of motivational incentives that might make the acquisition and/or use of
CBRN weapons attractive to terrorists. These range from (a) ideological or psychological imperatives,
such as an apocalyptic worldview or a fetishistic relationship toward technology, to (b) operational or
instrumental objectives, such as the ability to inflict mass casualties or contaminate large areas, to perhaps most importantly, (c) the
singularly tremendous psychological effects exerted on targeted societies by CBRN agents. There are also a host of
corresponding disincentives to using these weapons,11 including possible alienation of supporters and the lack of certainty in the scope of consequences relative to conventional weapons such as high explosives. 2. Many
terrorist organizations have considered CBRN use. There is sufficient evidence to conclude that a
multiplicity of terrorist organizations and individuals representing different backgrounds and espousing
different ideologies have either considered using CBRN weapons or have attempted to acquire a CBRN
weapons capability. This includes, among others, terrorist organizations and individuals motivated by ethnonationalist, Marxist, right-wing, animal rights, and religious causes. 3. Technical and knowledge-sharing
innovations are making it easier for terrorist entities to achieve a CBRN capability, which could facilitate
the decision to pursue these weapons. The prospects for acquiring a CBRN capability are increasing, both as a
result of technological advances and the diffusion of knowledge. The Internet, access to technical schools and
universities, and the spread of “dualuse” technologies into many countries are major contributors.12
These dynamics facilitate terrorists’ awareness of CBRN weapons and provide new opportunities to
acquire them, which might shift their weapons selection calculus toward CBRN.
The State of the Literature
Bioterror is likely – expert consensus
Deutch, 05 - Former Director CIA and Deputy Secretary of Defense (John, “Meeting the Bioterrorism
Challenge”, Senate Testimony, 5-11,
http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/deutch/policy/72MeetingBioterroism2005.pdf)
I base my views on my experience as Director of Central Intelligence and Deputy Secretary of Defense in the
first Clinton administration, as a member of President George H.W. Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, as chairman of the Commission on the Organization
of the Government to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, and from the mid-seventies, my service on many Defense Science Board and other government
advisory committees, that addressed various aspects of the weapons of mass destruction threat.
My views align closely with most who
have studied the threat of bioterrorist and our biodefense preparedness. At the World Economic Conference this January I served on a panel
with Majority Leader Frist, a member of this subcommittee, that addressed bioterrorism and I believe our views on this important subject are quite similar. My
assessment of the threat is as follows: o Terrorist
groups with international reach, such as al Qaeda, have shown interest in biological
weapons. The technology for producing biological agents and dispersal mechanisms is well known and
easily within the capacity of terrorist organizations. Thus the threat is real. o We are fortunate that the
United States, our allies, and our deployed military forces have not yet been subject to a large-scale biological attack.
The likelihood of an attack, our vulnerability to an attack, and the need to prevent catastrophic
consequences, means that biodefense deserves to be a national priority. o Despite the many warning, and some progress
by the various involved government agencies, including Health and Human Services (HHS) and its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National
Institutes of Health, (NIH), and the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), our
territory, citizens, agriculture and livestock remain
unacceptably vulnerable to a catastrophic biological agent attack. State and local government cannot possibly deal with these
events without significant technical and financial help from the federal government. o In the near term, the agents of greatest concern are anthrax and smallpox. In
the longer term, it
is entirely possible that new classes of pathogens will be developed based on modern molecular biology
and biotechnology techniques that will be more virulent and more difficult to detect and to treat.
at: contained
Bioterror spreads – defense fails
Metcalfe 13 (John Metcalfe, Staff Writer for Atlantic Cities, 7/24/2013, "Cities Might Not Be as
Prepared as They Think for a Bioterrorism Attack", www.defenseone.com/threats/2013/07/cities-mightnot-be-prepared-they-think-bioterrorism-attack/67352/)
Imagine that a
small group of terrorists deliberately infect themselves with smallpox and then walk around London, spreading it to
the populace. How much could the terrible disease proliferate before the world realized something was amiss? This unsettling question is at the heart of
new computer model showing how a bioterrorism attack in one city could quickly become the world's
problem. Scientists started off with the hypothetical release of smallpox in London, New York, Paris and
other major cities, then simulated how travelers would carry the virus to a host of other countries. Their conclusion: In
the best-case scenario, smallpox could spread to two to four nations before doctors managed to diagnose it. Still ahead would lie the monumental task of
quarantining the infected, distributing vaccines and tracing the source of the outbreak. Previous research into bioterrorism have indicated that Western cities, with
their protocols and vaccines, are pretty well prepared to handle a biological attack, says Alessandro Vespig-nani, a computer and health-sciences professor at
Boston's Northeastern University. But in a paper in this month's Scientific Reports (don't worry, it was vetted for international-security issues), he and his fellow
researchers argue that the assumption of local readiness is missing the big picture. "The problem is that
most of those studies don't consider the global dimensions of the event," Vespig-nani says. "Before you even
realize there is an outbreak, it might already be in other places. That changes the game." One major danger: From
London, the smallpox might spread to countries that don't have the health infrastructure of the Western
world. In these places it could become potent pandemics that might wash over into still more nations. And that's not only possible for attacks in cities near the
less-developed corners of the world. No matter what metropolis a bioterrorist targets for harm, the dispersion of
disease unfolds more or less the same way, at least according to the computer model. Vespig-nani says there are two big things that people
should take away from these findings. The first is that governments and international health organizations, whether it be WHO, the CDC or whoever, need
to develop contingency plans for a pandemic that originates from afar. "They need to think about sharing resources," he says. The second is that
wanna-be terrorists playing with pathogenic agents ought to consider that a biological attack is a double-edged sword. "They think they're going to
affect only the area that they target. But quickly and easily, it will spread all over the world," perhaps even right
back to their own motherland. "Using these kinds of weapons, there is no winner, for sure."
at: quarantine
Air travel means their quarantine defense doesn’t apply
OCC ’10 [Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, August 5, 2010, Global Security,
“Country Reports on Terrorism 2009,”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2010/c-rprt-terrorism_2009-04.htm, accessed 10/2/12, JTF]
Bioterrorism, another deadly threat, is the deliberate dispersal of pathogens through food, air, water, or living
organisms to cause disease. The 2009 Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism concluded that it is more likely that terrorists would be able to
acquire and use biological agents than nuclear weapons due to the difficulty in controlling the proliferation of biotechnologies and biological agent information. If properly
produced and released, biological agents can kill on a massive scale and, if terrorists use a pathogen that
can be transmitted from person to person, the disease could quickly spread through commercial air travel
across oceans and continents before authorities realize their nations have been attacked.
nuclear
1nc
Successful acquisition causes nuclear spoofing – extinction
Barrett et al. 13—PhD in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University, Fellow in the
RAND Stanton Nuclear Security Fellows Program, and Director of Research at Global Catastrophic Risk
Institute—AND Seth Baum, PhD in Geography from Pennsylvania State University, Research Scientist at
the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, and Executive Director of Global Catastrophic Risk Institute—
AND Kelly Hostetler, BS in Political Science from Columbia and Research Assistant at Global Catastrophic
Risk Institute (Anthony, 24 June 2013, “Analyzing and Reducing the Risks of Inadvertent Nuclear War
Between the United States and Russia,” Science & Global Security: The Technical Basis for Arms Control,
Disarmament, and Nonproliferation Initiatives, Volume 21, Issue 2, Taylor & Francis)
War involving significant fractions of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, which are by far the largest
of any nations, could have globally catastrophic effects such as severely reducing food production for
years, 1 potentially leading to collapse of modern civilization worldwide, and even the extinction of humanity. 2
Nuclear war between the United States and Russia could occur by various routes, including accidental or
unauthorized launch; deliberate first attack by one nation; and inadvertent attack. In an accidental or unauthorized launch or detonation,
system safeguards or procedures to maintain control over nuclear weapons fail in such a way that a
nuclear weapon or missile launches or explodes without direction from leaders. In a deliberate first attack, the attacking
nation decides to attack based on accurate information about the state of affairs. In an inadvertent attack, the attacking nation mistakenly concludes that it is under attack and launches
nuclear weapons in what it believes is a counterattack. 3 (Brinkmanship strategies incorporate elements of all of the above, in that they involve intentional manipulation of risks from
otherwise accidental or inadvertent launches. 4 ) Over the years, nuclear strategy was aimed primarily at minimizing risks of intentional attack through development of deterrence capabilities,
For purposes of deterrence, both U.S.
and Soviet/Russian forces have maintained significant capabilities to have some forces survive a first
attack by the other side and to launch a subsequent counter-attack. However, concerns about the extreme
disruptions that a first attack would cause in the other side's forces and command-and-control
capabilities led to both sides’ development of capabilities to detect a first attack and launch a counterattack before suffering damage from the first attack. 5 Many people believe that with the end of the Cold
War and with improved relations between the United States and Russia, the risk of East-West nuclear war
was significantly reduced. 6 However, it also has been argued that inadvertent nuclear war between the
United States and Russia has continued to present a substantial risk. 7 While the United States and Russia are not
actively threatening each other with war, they have remained ready to launch nuclear missiles in response
to indications of attack. 8 False indicators of nuclear attack could be caused in several ways. First, a wide range of events have already been mistakenly interpreted as
indicators of attack, including weather phenomena, a faulty computer chip, wild animal activity, and control-room training tapes loaded at the wrong time. 9 Second, terrorist
groups or other actors might cause attacks on either the United States or Russia that resemble some kind of
nuclear attack by the other nation by actions such as exploding a stolen or improvised nuclear bomb, 10
especially if such an event occurs during a crisis between the United States and Russia. 11 A variety of nuclear
terrorism scenarios are possible. 12 Al Qaeda has sought to obtain or construct nuclear weapons and to
use them against the United States. 13 Other methods could involve attempts to circumvent nuclear weapon launch control safeguards or exploit holes in their security. 14
It has long been argued that the probability of inadvertent nuclear war is significantly higher during U.S.–Russian
crisis conditions, 15 with the Cuban Missile Crisis being a prime historical example. It is possible that U.S.–Russian relations will significantly deteriorate in the future, increasing
nuclear tensions. There are a variety of ways for a third party to raise tensions between the United States and Russia,
making one or both nations more likely to misinterpret events as attacks. 16
and numerous measures also were taken to reduce probabilities of accidents, unauthorized attack, and inadvertent war.
yes nuke terror
Threat of nuclear terrorism is high
Bunn 13 (Matthew, Valentin Kuznetsov, Martin B. Malin, Yuri Morozov, Simon Saradzhyan, William H.
Tobey, Viktor I. Yesin, and Pavel S. Zolotarev. "Steps to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism." Paper, Belfer Center
for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, October 2, 2013, Matthew Bunn.
Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School andCo-Principal Investigator of
Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs. • Vice Admiral Valentin Kuznetsov (retired Russian Navy). Senior research fellow at the Institute
for U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Senior Military Representative of the
Russian Ministry of Defense to NATO from 2002 to 2008. • Martin Malin. Executive Director of the
Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. • Colonel Yuri
Morozov (retired Russian Armed Forces). Professor of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences and
senior research fellow at the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
chief of department at the Center for Military-Strategic Studies at the General Staff of the Russian
Armed Forces from 1995 to 2000. • Simon Saradzhyan. Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs, Moscow-based defense and security expert and writer from 1993 to
2008. • William Tobey. Senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs and director of the U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism, deputy administrator for
Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration from 2006 to
2009. • Colonel General Viktor Yesin (retired Russian Armed Forces). Leading research fellow at the
Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and advisor to commander of
the Strategic Missile Forces of Russia, chief of staff of the Strategic Missile Forces from 1994 to 1996. •
Major General Pavel Zolotarev (retired Russian Armed Forces). Deputy director of the Institute for U.S.
and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the Information and Analysis Center
of the Russian Ministry of Defense from1993 to 1997, section head - deputy chief of staff of the Defense
Council of Russia from 1997 to 1998., 10/2/2013, “Steps to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism:
Recommendations Based on the U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment”,
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/23430/steps_to_prevent_nuclear_terrorism.html)
In 2011, Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute
published “The U.S. – Russia Joint Threat Assessment on Nuclear Terrorism.” The assessment
analyzed the means, motives, and access of would-be nuclear terrorists, and concluded that the threat of
nuclear terrorism is urgent and real. The Washington and Seoul Nuclear Security Summits in 2010 and
2012 established and demonstrated a consensus among political leaders from around the world that
nuclear terrorism poses a serious threat to the peace, security, and prosperity of our planet. For any country, a
terrorist attack with a nuclear device would be an immediate and catastrophic disaster, and the negative effects
would reverberate around the world far beyond the location and moment of the detonation. Preventing
a nuclear terrorist attack requires international cooperation to secure nuclear materials, especially among those states producing nuclear materials and
I. Introduction
for U.S. and Canadian Studies
weapons. As the world’s two greatest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia have the greatest experience and capabilities in securing nuclear materials and plants and, therefore, share
a special responsibility to lead international efforts to prevent terrorists from seizing such materials and plants. The depth of convergence between U.S. and Russian vital national interests on
the issue of nuclear security is best illustrated by the fact that bilateral cooperation on this issue has continued uninterrupted for more than two decades, even when relations between the
two countries occasionally became frosty, as in the aftermath of the August 2008 war in Georgia. Russia and the United States have strong incentives to forge a close and trusting partnership
to prevent nuclear terrorism and have made enormous progress in securing fissile material both at home and in partnership with other countries. However, to meet the evolving threat posed
by those individuals intent upon using nuclear weapons for terrorist purposes, the United States and Russia need to deepen and broaden their cooperation. The 2011 “U.S. - Russia Joint Threat
Assessment” offered both specific conclusions about the nature of the threat and general observations about how it might be addressed. This report builds on that foundation and analyzes the
existing framework for action, cites gaps and deficiencies, and makes specific recommendations for improvement. “The U.S. – Russia Joint Threat Assessment on Nuclear Terrorism” (The 2011
Nuclear terrorism is a real and urgent threat. Urgent actions are required to reduce the risk. The risk is driven
by the rise of terrorists who seek to inflict unlimited damage, many of whom have sought justification
for their plans in radical interpretations of Islam; by the spread of information about the decades-old
technology of nuclear weapons; by the increased availability of weapons-usable nuclear materials; and
by globalization, which makes it easier to move people, technologies, and materials across the world. •
Making a crude nuclear bomb would not be easy, but is potentially within the capabilities of a technically
sophisticated terrorist group, as numerous government studies have confirmed. Detonating a stolen nuclear weapon would
report executive summary): •
likely be difficult for terrorists to accomplish, if the weapon was equipped with modern technical safeguards (such as the electronic locks known as Permissive Action Links, or PALs).
Terrorists could, however, cut open a stolen nuclear weapon and make use of its nuclear material for a bomb
of their own. • The nuclear material for a bomb is small and difficult to detect, making it a major
challenge to stop nuclear smuggling or to recover nuclear material after it has been stolen. Hence, a primary focus in
reducing the risk must be to keep nuclear material and nuclear weapons from being stolen by continually improving their security, as agreed at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in
Al-Qaeda has sought nuclear weapons for almost two decades. The group has repeatedly
attempted to purchase stolen nuclear material or nuclear weapons, and has repeatedly attempted to
recruit nuclear expertise. Al-Qaeda reportedly conducted tests of conventional explosives for its nuclear
program in the desert in Afghanistan. The group’s nuclear ambitions continued after its dispersal following the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Recent writings from top al-Qaeda leadership are focused on justifying the mass slaughter of civilians,
including the use of weapons of mass destruction, and are in all likelihood intended to provide a formal
religious justification for nuclear use. While there are significant gaps in coverage of the group’s activities, al-Qaeda appears to have been frustrated thus far in
April 2010. •
acquiring a nuclear capability; it is unclear whether the the group has acquired weapons-usable nuclear material or the expertise needed to make such material into a bomb. Furthermore,
there
is no sign the group has abandoned its nuclear ambitions. On the contrary, leadership statements as recently as
2008 indicate that the intention to acquire and use nuclear weapons is as strong as ever.
pressure from a broad range of counter-terrorist actions probably has reduced the group’s ability to manage large, complex projects, but has not eliminated the danger. However,
Risk of nuclear terror is high – escalates and turns the case
Dvorkin, 12
(Major General (retired) Vladimir Z. Dvorkin is doctor of technical sciences, professor, and senior fellow
at the Center for International Security of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of
the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Center participates in the working group of the U.S.-Russia
Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism, Harvard Belfer Center, “What Can Destroy Strategic Stability:
Nuclear Terrorism Is a Real Threat”,
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/22333/what_can_destroy_strategic_stability.html,
September 21, 2012, ak.)
There is growing concern in the world about the threat of nuclear terrorism. There are sufficient grounds for such concerns even
though there has been so far no direct evidence of international terrorist organizations conducting work to build improvised nuclear devices. We can assume from
statements by certain terrorist organizations affiliated with al-Qaeda that they seek to acquire such devices for propaganda effect only. Hundreds
of
scientific papers and reports have been published on nuclear terrorism. International conferences have
been held on this threat with participation of Russian organizations, including IMEMO and the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies.
Recommendations on how to combat the threat have been issued by the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe, Pugwash
Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Russian-American Elbe Group, and other organizations. The UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention
for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism in 2005 and cooperation among intelligence services of leading states in this sphere is developing. At the same
time, these efforts fall short for a number of reasons, partly because various
acts of nuclear terrorism are possible. Dispersal of
radioactive material by detonation of conventional explosives (“dirty bombs”) is a method that is most accessible for
terrorists. With the wide spread of radioactive sources, raw materials for such attacks have become much
more accessible than weapons-useable nuclear material or nuclear weapons. The use of “dirty bombs” will not cause many immediate casualties,
but it will
result into long-term radioactive contamination, contributing to the spread of panic and socioeconomic destabilization. Severe consequences can be caused by sabotaging nuclear power plants, research
reactors, and radioactive materials storage facilities. Large cities are especially vulnerable to such attacks. A large
city may host dozens of research reactors with a nuclear power plant or a couple of spent nuclear fuel storage facilities and dozens of large radioactive materials
storage facilities located nearby. The past few years have seen significant efforts made to enhance organizational and physical aspects of security at facilities,
especially at nuclear power plants. Efforts have also been made to improve security culture. But these efforts
do not preclude the possibility
that well-trained terrorists may be able to penetrate nuclear facilities. Some estimates show that sabotage of a
research reactor in a metropolis may expose hundreds of thousands to high doses of radiation. A formidable
part of the city would become uninhabitable for a long time. Of all the scenarios, it is building an improvised nuclear device by
terrorists that poses the maximum risk. There are no engineering problems that cannot be solved if
terrorists decide to build a simple “gun-type” nuclear device. Information on the design of such devices, as well as
implosion-type devices, is available in the public domain. It is the acquisition of weapons-grade uranium that presents the sole serious obstacle.
Despite numerous preventive measures taken, we cannot rule out the possibility that such materials can be bought on
the black market. Theft of weapons-grade uranium is also possible. Research reactor fuel is considered to
be particularly vulnerable to theft, as it is scattered at sites in dozens of countries. There are about 100 research reactors in the world that run on
weapons-grade uranium fuel, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A terrorist “gun-type” uranium bomb can have
a yield of least 10-15 kt, which is comparable to the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion
of such a bomb in a modern metropolis can kill and wound hundreds of thousands and cause serious
economic damage. There will also be long-term sociopsychological and political consequences. The vast
majority of states have introduced unprecedented security and surveillance measures at transportation and other largescale public facilities after the terrorist attacks in the United States, Great Britain, Italy, and other countries. These measures have proved
burdensome for the countries’ populations, but the public has accepted them as necessary. A nuclear terrorist attack will
make the public accept further measures meant to enhance control even if these measures significantly
restrict the democratic liberties they are accustomed to. Authoritarian states could be expected to adopt
even more restrictive measures. If a nuclear terrorist act occurs, nations will delegate tens of thousands
of their secret services’ best personnel to investigate and attribute the attack. Radical Islamist groups are
among those capable of such an act. We can imagine what would happen if they do so, given the anti-Muslim
sentiments and resentment that conventional terrorist attacks by Islamists have generated in developed
democratic countries. Mass deportation of the non-indigenous population and severe sanctions would
follow such an attack in what will cause violent protests in the Muslim world. Series of armed clashing
terrorist attacks may follow. The prediction that Samuel Huntington has made in his book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order” may come true. Huntington’s book clearly demonstrates that it is not Islamic extremists that are the cause of the Western world’s problems. Rather
there is a deep, intractable conflict that is rooted in the fault lines that run between Islam and
Christianity.
Impact is probable
Dahl 13 (Fredrik, Reuters, covers mainly nuclear-related issues, including Iran's dispute with the West
over its atomic plans. I previously worked in Tehran, Iran, between 2007-2010, and have also been
posted to Belgrade, Sarajevo, London, Brussels, Helsinki and Stockholm during two decades with
Reuters, 7/1/2013, "Governments warn about nuclear terrorism threat",
www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/01/us-nuclear-security-idUSBRE96010E20130701)
More action is needed to prevent militants acquiring plutonium or highly-enriched uranium that could
be used in bombs, governments agreed at a meeting on nuclear security in Vienna on Monday, without deciding on any
concrete steps. A declaration adopted by more than 120 states at the meeting said "substantial progress" had
been made in recent years to improve nuclear security globally, but it was not enough. Analysts say radical groups could
theoretically build a crude but deadly nuclear bomb if they had the money, technical knowledge and materials needed. Ministers
remained "concerned about the threat of nuclear and radiological terrorism ... More needs to be done to further
strengthen nuclear security worldwide", the statement said. The document "encouraged" states to take various measures such as minimizing the use of highlyenriched uranium, but some diplomats said they would have preferred firmer commitments. Many countries regard nuclear security as a sensitive political issue
that should be handled primarily by national authorities. This was reflected in the statement's language. Still, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which hosted the conference, said the agreement was "very robust" and represented a major step forward. RADICAL GROUPS'
"NUCLEAR AMBITIONS" Amano earlier warned the IAEA-hosted conference against
a "false sense of security" over the danger
of nuclear terrorism. Holding up a small lead container that was used to try to traffic highly enriched uranium in
Moldova two years ago, the U.N. nuclear chief said it showed a "worrying level of knowledge on the part of the
smugglers". "This case ended well," he said, referring to the fact that the material was seized and arrests were made. But he added: " We cannot be
sure if such cases are just the tip of the iceberg." Obtaining weapons-grade fissile material - highly enriched uranium or plutonium - poses
the biggest challenge for militant groups, so it must be kept secure both at civilian and military facilities, experts say. An apple-sized amount of plutonium in a
nuclear device and detonated in a highly populated area could instantly kill or wound hundreds of thousands of people, according to the Nuclear Security
Governance Experts Group (NSGEG) lobby group. But experts say a so-called "dirty
bomb" is a more likely threat than a nuclear
bomb. In a dirty bomb, conventional explosives are used to disperse radiation from a radioactive source, which can be found in hospitals or other places that are
generally not very well protected. More than a hundred incidents of thefts and other unauthorized activities
involving nuclear and radioactive material are reported to the IAEA every year, Amano said. "Some material
goes missing and is never found," he said. U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said al Qaeda was still likely to be trying to
obtain nuclear material for a weapon. "Despite the strides we have made in dismantling core al Qaeda
we should expect its adherents ... to continue trying to achieve their nuclear ambitions," he said.
Nuclear terrorism is feasible---high risk of theft and attacks escalate
Vladimir Z. Dvorkin 12 Major General (retired), doctor of technical sciences, professor, and senior
fellow at the Center for International Security of the Institute of World Economy and International
Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Center participates in the working group of the U.S.Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism, 9/21/12, "What Can Destroy Strategic Stability: Nuclear
Terrorism is a Real Threat,"
belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/22333/what_can_destroy_strategic_stability.html
Hundreds of scientific papers and reports have been published on nuclear terrorism. International conferences have been held on this threat
with participation of Russian organizations, including IMEMO and the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies. Recommendations on how to
combat the threat have been issued by the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe, Pugwash Conferences on
Science and World Affairs, Russian-American Elbe Group, and other organizations. The UN General Assembly adopted the International
Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism in 2005 and cooperation among intelligence services of leading states in this
sphere is developing.¶ At the same time, these
efforts fall short for a number of reasons, partly because various
acts of nuclear terrorism are possible. Dispersal of radioactive material by detonation of conventional
explosives (“dirty bombs”) is a method that is most accessible for terrorists. With the wide spread of
radioactive sources, raw materials for such attacks have become much more accessible than weaponsuseable nuclear material or nuclear weapons. The use of “dirty bombs” will not cause many immediate casualties, but it
will result into long-term radioactive contamination, contributing to the spread of panic and socioeconomic destabilization.¶ Severe consequences can be caused by sabotaging nuclear power plants,
research reactors, and radioactive materials storage facilities. Large cities are especially vulnerable to
such attacks. A large city may host dozens of research reactors with a nuclear power plant or a couple
of spent nuclear fuel storage facilities and dozens of large radioactive materials storage facilities
located nearby. The past few years have seen significant efforts made to enhance organizational and physical aspects of security at
facilities, especially at nuclear power plants. Efforts have also been made to improve security culture. But these
efforts do not preclude the possibility that well-trained terrorists may be able to penetrate nuclear
facilities.¶ Some estimates show that sabotage of a research reactor in a metropolis may expose
hundreds of thousands to high doses of radiation. A formidable part of the city would become
uninhabitable for a long time.¶ Of all the scenarios, it is building an improvised nuclear device by terrorists that
poses the maximum risk. There are no engineering problems that cannot be solved if terrorists decide
to build a simple “gun-type” nuclear device. Information on the design of such devices, as well as
implosion-type devices, is available in the public domain. It is the acquisition of weapons-grade uranium that presents the
sole serious obstacle. Despite numerous preventive measures taken, we cannot rule out the possibility that such materials can be
bought on the black market. Theft of weapons-grade uranium is also possible. Research reactor fuel is
considered to be particularly vulnerable to theft, as it is scattered at sites in dozens of countries. There
are about 100 research reactors in the world that run on weapons-grade uranium fuel, according to the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).¶ A terrorist “gun-type” uranium bomb can have a yield of
least 10-15 kt, which is comparable to the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion of
such a bomb in a modern metropolis can kill and wound hundreds of thousands and cause serious
economic damage. There will also be long-term sociopsychological and political consequences.¶ The vast
majority of states have introduced unprecedented security and surveillance measures at transportation and other large-scale public facilities
after the terrorist attacks in the United States, Great Britain, Italy, and other countries. These measures have proved burdensome for the
countries’ populations, but the public has accepted them as necessary. A
nuclear terrorist attack will make the public accept
further measures meant to enhance control even if these measures significantly restrict the democratic
liberties they are accustomed to. Authoritarian states could be expected to adopt even more restrictive
measures.¶ If a nuclear terrorist act occurs, nations will delegate tens of thousands of their secret services’ best
personnel to investigate and attribute the attack. Radical Islamist groups are among those capable of
such an act. We can imagine what would happen if they do so, given the anti-Muslim sentiments and resentment that
conventional terrorist attacks by Islamists have generated in developed democratic countries. Mass
deportation of the non-indigenous population and severe sanctions would follow such an attack in what
will cause violent protests in the Muslim world. Series of armed clashing terrorist attacks may follow.
The prediction that Samuel Huntington has made in his book “The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order” may come true. Huntington’s book clearly demonstrates that it is not Islamic extremists that are the
cause of the Western world’s problems. Rather there is a deep, intractable conflict that is rooted in the fault lines that run between Islam and
Christianity. This is especially dangerous for Russia because these fault lines run across its territory. To sum it
up, the political leadership of Russia has every reason to revise its list of factors that could undermine strategic stability. BMD does not deserve
to be even last on that list because its effectiveness in repelling massive missile strikes will be extremely low. BMD systems can prove useful
only if deployed to defend against launches of individual ballistic missiles or groups of such missiles. Prioritization of other destabilizing
factors—that could affect global and regional stability—merits a separate study or studies. But even without them I can conclude that nuclear
terrorism should be placed on top of the list. The
threat of nuclear terrorism is real, and a successful nuclear terrorist
attack would lead to a radical transformation of the global order. All of the threats on the revised list must become a
subject of thorough studies by experts. States need to work hard to forge a common understanding of these threats and develop a strategy to
combat them.
Nuclear weapons are possible – most qualified
Allison 12 (Graham, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon
Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School, "Living in the Era of Megaterror", Sept 7,
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/22302/living_in_the_era_of_megaterror.html)
Forty years ago this week at the Munich Olympics of 1972, Palestinian terrorists conducted one of the most dramatic terrorist attacks of the 20th century. The
kidnapping and massacre of 11 Israeli athletes attracted days of around-the-clock global news coverage of Black September’s anti-Israel message. Three decades
later,
on 9/11, Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 individuals at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, announcing a new era of
megaterror. In an act that killed more people than Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, a band of terrorists headquartered in ungoverned Afghanistan demonstrated that
individuals and small groups can kill on a scale previously the exclusive preserve of states. Today,
how many people can a small group of
terrorists kill in a single blow? Had Bruce Ivins, the U.S. government microbiologist responsible for the 2001
anthrax attacks, distributed his deadly agent with sprayers he could have purchased off the shelf, tens of
thousands of Americans would have died. Had the 2001 “Dragonfire” report that Al Qaeda had a small
nuclear weapon (from the former Soviet arsenal) in New York City proved correct, and not a false alarm, detonation of that bomb
in Times Square could have incinerated a half million Americans. In this electoral season, President Obama is claiming credit,
rightly, for actions he and U.S. Special Forces took in killing Osama bin Laden. Similarly, at last week’s Republican convention in Tampa, Jeb Bush praised his brother
for making the United States safer after 9/11. There can be no doubt that the thousands of actions taken at federal, state and local levels have made people safer
from terrorist attacks. Many are therefore attracted to the chorus of officials and experts claiming that the “strategic defeat” of Al Qaeda means the end of this
chapter of history. But we should remember a deeper and more profound truth. While
applauding actions that have made us safer
from future terrorist attacks, we must recognize that they have not reversed an inescapable reality: The
relentless advance of science and technology is making it possible for smaller and smaller groups to kill
larger and larger numbers of people. If a Qaeda affiliate, or some terrorist group in Pakistan whose name readers have never heard,
acquires highly enriched uranium or plutonium made by a state, they can construct an elementary
nuclear bomb capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people. At biotech labs across the United States and
around the world, research scientists making medicines that advance human well-being are also capable of making
pathogens, like anthrax, that can produce massive casualties. What to do? Sherlock Holmes examined crime scenes using a
method he called M.M.O.: motive, means and opportunity. In a society where citizens gather in unprotected movie theaters, churches, shopping centers and
stadiums, opportunities for attack abound. Free societies are inherently “target rich.” Motive to commit such atrocities poses a more difficult challenge. In all
societies, a percentage of the population will be homicidal. No one can examine the mounting number of cases of mass murder in schools, movie theaters and
elsewhere without worrying about a society’s mental health. Additionally, actions we take abroad unquestionably impact others’ motivation to attack us. As Faisal
Shahzad, the 2010 would-be “Times Square bomber,” testified at his trial: “Until the hour the U.S. ... stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the
Muslims ... we will be attacking U.S., and I plead guilty to that.” Fortunately, it is more difficult for a terrorist to acquire the “means” to cause mass casualties.
Producing highly enriched uranium or plutonium requires expensive industrial-scale investments that only states will make. If all fissile material can be secured to a
gold standard beyond the reach of thieves or terrorists, aspirations to become the world’s first nuclear terrorist can be thwarted. Capabilities for producing
bioterrorist agents are not so easily secured or policed. While more has been done, and much more could be done to further raise the technological barrier, as
knowledge advances and technological capabilities to make pathogens become more accessible, the means for bioterrorism will come within the reach of terrorists.
One of the hardest truths about modern life is that the same advances in science and technology that
enrich our lives also empower potential killers to achieve their deadliest ambitions. To imagine that we can escape
this reality and return to a world in which we are invulnerable to future 9/11s or worse is an illusion. For as far as the eye can see, we will live in an era
of megaterror.
Threat is real - most qualified
Us Russia Joint Threat Assessment May 11
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Joint-Threat-Assessment%20ENG%2027%20May%202011.pdf
ABOUT THE U.S.-RUSSIA JOINT THREAT ASSESSMENT ON NUCLEAR TERRORISM The U.S.-Russia Joint
Threat Assessment on Nuclear Terrorism is a collaborative project of Harvard University’s Belfer Center
for Science and International Affairs and the U.S.A. and Canada Studies Institute of the Russian Academy
of Sciences led by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen and Pavel Zolotarev. Authors: • Matthew Bunn. Associate
Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Co-Principal Investigator of Project on
Managing the Atom at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. • Colonel
Yuri Morozov (retired Russian Armed Forces). Professor of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences and
senior fellow at the U.S.A and Canada Studies Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, chief of
department at the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, 1995–2000. • Rolf Mowatt-Larssen.
Senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, director of
Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy, 2005–2008. • Simon Saradzhyan.
Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Moscow-based
defense and security expert and writer, 1993–2008. • William Tobey. Senior fellow at Harvard
University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and director of the U.S.-Russia Initiative
to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism, deputy administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the U.S.
National Nuclear Security Administration, 2006–2009. • Colonel General Viktor I. Yesin (retired Russian
Armed Forces). Senior fellow at the U.S.A and Canada Studies Institute of the Russian Academy of
Sciences and advisor to commander of the Strategic Missile Forces of Russia, chief of staff of the
Strategic Missile Forces, 1994–1996. • Major General Pavel S. Zolotarev (retired Russian Armed Forces).
Deputy director of the U.S.A and Canada Studies Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and head
of the Information and Analysis Center of the Russian Ministry of Defense, 1993–1997, deputy chief of
staff of the Defense Council of Russia, 1997–1998. Contributor: • Vladimir Lukov, director general of
autonomous non-profit organization “Counter-Terrorism Center.”
The expert community distinguishes pathways terrorists might take to the bomb (discussed in detail in the next
section of the report). One is the use of a nuclear weapon that has been either stolen or bought on the black
market. The probability of such a development is very low, given the high levels of physical security (guards, barriers, and the like) and technical security
(electronic locks and related measures) of modern nuclear warheads. But we cannot entirely rule out such a scenario, especially if we
recall the political instability in Pakistan, where the situation could conceivably develop in a way that would increase the chance that
terrorist groups might gain access to a Pakistani nuclear weapon A second pathway is the use of an
improvised nuclear device built either by terrorists or by nuclear specialists that the terrorists have
secretly recruited, with use of weapons-usable fissile material either stolen or bought on the black
market.1 The probability of such an attack is higher than using stolen nuclear warheads, because the acceleration of technological
progress and globalization of information space make nuclear weapons technologies more accessible
while the existence of the nuclear black market eases access of terrorists to weapons-usable fissile
materials. A third pathway is the use of an explosive nuclear device built by terrorists or their accomplices with fissile material that they produced
themselves—either highly enriched uranium (HEU) they managed to enrich, or plutonium they managed to produce and reprocess. Al-Qaeda and associated groups
appear to have decided that enriching uranium lies well beyond the capabilities that they would realistically be able to develop. A
fourth pathway is
that terrorists might receive a nuclear bomb or the materials needed to make one from a state. North
Korea, for example, has been willing to sell its missile technology to many countries, and transferred its plutonium
production reactor technology to Syria, suffering few consequences as a result. Transferring the means to make a nuclear bomb to a terrorist group,
however, would be a dramatically different act, for the terrorists might use that capability in a way that could provoke retaliation that would result in the
destruction of the regime. A
far more worrisome transfer of capability from state to group could occur without
the witting cooperation of the regime. A future A.Q. Khan-type rogue nuclear supplier network operating out of North Korea or
out of a future nuclear-armed Iran could potentially transfer such a capability to a surrogate group and/or sell it for
profit to the highest bidder. Global trends make nuclear terrorism a real threat. Although the international community
has recognized the dangers of nuclear terrorism, it has yet to develop a comprehensive strategy to lower the risks of nuclear terrorism. Major barriers include
complacency about the threat and the adequacy of existing nuclear security measures; secrecy that makes it difficult for states to share information and to
cooperate; political disputes; competing priorities; lack of funds and technical expertise in some countries; bureaucratic obstacles; and the sheer difficulty of
preventing a potentially small, hard-to-detect team of terrorists from acquiring a small, hard-to-detect chunk of nuclear material with which to manufacture a crude
bomb. These barriers must not be allowed to stand in the way of the panhuman universal priority of preventing this grave threat from materializing. If current
approaches toward eliminating the threat are not replaced with a sense of urgency and resolve, the
where, and on what scale the first act of nuclear terrorism occurs .
question will become not if, but when,
Nukes feasible – HEU is uniquely vulnerable and catastrophic attack
Kuperman ’13 (Alan J. Kuperman, Ph.d., Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs @ UT
Austin, Coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project, Nuclear Terrorism and Global
Security, 2013)
Global commerce in nuclear weapons-usable, highly enriched uranium (HEU) -ostensibly for non-weapons
purposes - poses significant risks of nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation.1 The international community first
recognized these dangers in the 1970s and, ever since, has taken progressive action to minimize and secure such trade Much has been accomplished, but much
more could be done, given that the vast majority of non-weapons HEU commerce persists. This
ongoing usage also hinders adoption and
implementation of a major international arms-control agreement - the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) - intended to cap
nuclear-weapons arsenals by prohibiting the production of 1IKU (and plutonium) for weapons. So long as stales may claim to require
additional HEU for non-weapons purposes, which could be diverted to weapons, the FMCT has a loophole that
undermines its intent and thereby its attractiveness to some potential signatories. For all these reasons, this book
explores the prospects and challenges of a total, global phase-out of I1EU commerce. This introductory chapter starts by reviewing the dangers of HEU commerce
and the international steps already taken towards a phase-out. Next, it provides an overview of remaining global, non-weapons HEU use. Following that, it explains
the scope, organization, and methodology of the book's studies, and summarizes the findings. The chapter closes with policy recommendations to promote and
accelerate a global HEU phase-out Past
Efforts: Commendable But Inadequate The HEU used in non-weapons
applications is often identical to, and in some cases even more optimized for nuclear weapons, than that
contained in military arsenals. By definition, "HEU" is enriched lo at least 20 percent in the fissile isotope U-235 that sustains a chain reaction. As indicated in Figure
1.1, this distinguishes it from natural uranium, which contains less than one percent U-235, and from the low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel for nuclear energy plants
that typically is enriched to less than 5 percent. (Hnrichment is a process that preferentially selects the fissile isotope U-235 from the rest of the uranium, which is
composed mainly of U-238 that hinders a chain reaction.) The Hiroshima atom bomb utilized uranium enriched lo an average of 80 percent. The
HEU in
most of today's nuclear weapons has enrichment of 90 to 93 percent. The HEU for non-weapons
applications is typically drawn from identical stocks and so has the same weapons-grade enrichment,
whether used as fuel for nuclear research reactors, in targets to produce medical isotopes, in critical assemblies to model
nuclear reactors, or for other purposes. In at least one application, the fuel for U.S. (and reportedly also UK) naval propulsion reactors, the non-weapons
HKU has been enriched to 97 percent, even higher than typical for nuclear weapons. (As the stockpile of such "super-grade" HEU is exhausted, these naval reactors
will be converted to fuel of weapons-grade HEU, which ironically is slightly less enriched.) Compared
to the other main fissile material in
military arsenals, plutonium. HEU is much easier for terrorists or states to make into a nuclear weapon.
Its low spontaneous neutron-emission rate permits a gun-type design - much simpler than the implosion design required for
plutonium - and its low radiation level represents little danger to those handling it. The resulting threat wras famously summed up by Manhattan Project physicist
Luis Alvarez in his memoirs: With
modern weapons-grade uranium ... terrorists, if they had such material, would have a
good chance of setting off a high-yield explosion simply by dropping one half of the material onto the
other half ... Even a high school student could make a bomb in short order.2 Hundreds of nuclear
weapons could be made with the HEU used today for non-weapons purposes. The amount required for one bomb
depends on several factors including the enrichment level and weapon design The simplest design, a gun type-weapon, works by
slamming two sub-critical masses together to form a super-critical mass. A "reflector" around the
outside of the assembly reduces the critical mass by reflecting back in neutrons, which otherwise would
escape, to help sustain the chain reaction. A 1998 study by Los Alamos National Laboratory' reports the critical mass of various 1-IKU
spheres, as summarized in Figure 1.2. // indicates thai the critical mass is less than 20 kg for 9-1%-enriched HEU surrounded by a 4-inch reflector of natural
uranium? This critical mass could be reduced by use of a more sophisticated reflector, but up to two critical masses would be required to optimize the yield of a
gun-type weapon. Accordingly, 20 kg of HEU may be considered.
A nuclear attack in the US is possible – preventing group organization is key
Neely 13 (Meghan, 21 March 2013, “Doubting Deterrence of Nuclear Terrorism,” CSIS, http://csis.org/blog/doubting-deterrence-nuclearterrorism)
The risk that terrorists will set off a nuclear weapon on U.S. soil is disconcertingly
high. While a terrorist organization may experience difficulty constructing nuclear weapons facilities, there is significant concern that terrorists can
obtain a nuclear weapon or nuclear materials. The fear that an actor could steal a nuclear weapon or
Assessing the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism
fissile material and transport it to the United States has long-existed. It takes a great amount of time and resources (including territory) to
construct centrifuges and reactors to build a nuclear weapon from scratch. Relatively easily-transportable nuclear weapons, however, present
one opportunity to terrorists. For example, exercises similar to the recent Russian movement of nuclear
weapons from munitions depots to storage sites may prove attractive targets. Loose nuclear materials
pose a second opportunity. Terrorists could use them to create a crude nuclear weapon similar to the
gun-type design of Little Boy. Its simplicity – two subcritical masses of highly-enriched uranium – may
make it attractive to terrorists. While such a weapon might not produce the immediate destruction seen at
Hiroshima, the radioactive fall-out and psychological effects would still be damaging. These two opportunities for terrorists differ
from concerns about a “dirty bomb,” which mixes radioactive material with conventional explosives. According to Gary Ackerman of the National Consortium for the Study
of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, the number of terrorist organizations that would detonate a nuclear weapon is
probably small. Few terrorist organizations have the ideology that would motivate nuclear weapons acquisition. Before we breathe a sigh of relief,
we should recognize that this only increases the “signal-to-noise ratio”: many terrorists might claim to
want to detonate a nuclear weapon, but the United States must find and prevent the small number of groups
that actually would. Transportable nuclear weapons and loose fissile materials grant opportunities to
terrorists with nuclear pursuits. How should the United States seek to undercut the efforts of the select few with a nuclear intent?
yes obtain
Terrorists can obtain materials – assumes their defense
Lempke 15 Maciej Lempke, M.A in Security Studies from Georgetown, Georgetown Security Studies
Review, January 23, 2015, “Nuclear Terrorism: How to Respond?”,
http://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2015/01/23/nuclear-terrorism-how-to-respond/
The threat of nuclear terrorism should not be underestimated. The main reason for concern is not only
the possibility of a terrorist group acquiring a nuclear device, but also the inability of responding to such
an attack. This issue should be addressed by policymakers who ought to be ready for all possible contingencies in an event of a nuclear terrorist attack.
Governments should be aware of the best available options for responding to a nuclear terrorist attack, as inaction in these circumstances would not be a viable
alternative. Nuclear
terrorism is officially viewed as one of the greatest threats to a state’s security.[1] A
number of policymakers and academics argue that despite the technological difficulties surrounding the
construction of a nuclear device, a determined terrorist group is capable of acquiring and transporting
one across state borders.[2] Many indicate that once possessing the appropriate means, the transfer of
nuclear material and assembly of a gun-type nuclear device made from highly enriched uranium is relatively
straightforward.[3] This has been supported by a number of studies examining what it would take to build a nuclear weapon
by a non-state actor.[4] A scenario presented by Jeffrey Lewis and Peter Zimmerman revealed that with an estimated budget of 10 million
dollars and a highly skilled team of 19 people, the engineering work required to construct a nuclear
device could be easily done – particularly since most of the essential parts are available online.[5]
Terrorists have capabilities to get nuclear reactors
Kuperman, 13 (Alan J. Kuperman, contributor to CNN, Aug 26th 2013, “How U.S. nuclear reactors are
vulnerable to terrorists”, http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/26/how-u-s-nuclearreactors-are-vulnerable-to-terrorists/ ) CW
Nearly a dozen years after the al Qaeda strikes of September 11, 2001, America’s
nuclear power plants – and civilian research facilities with
still not required to protect against a maximum credible terrorist attack of this scale. It
is time for policymakers to act, if they want to prevent disaster. The vulnerability to a terrorist strike was a key finding of a yearlong study that I co-authored, as part of a larger interdisciplinary project at the University of Texas at Austin, under a contract for the Office of the Secretary of
bomb-grade uranium – are
Defense (which has no responsibility for the final contents of the study). The good news is that America’s military-related nuclear facilities, operated by the
Departments of Defense and Energy, are generally much better protected. The
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has also modestly
raised security requirements at civilian facilities, which have bolstered their protective measures.
Disturbingly, however, nuclear power plants still must protect against only five or six attackers (according to published reports), less than one-third the number who
engaged in attacks on 9/11. Nor are these existing facilities required to withstand the impact of a commercial airliner, as hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Unlike the Navy’s nuclear assets, civilian reactors adjacent to large bodies of water are not required to deploy floating barriers to defend against ship-borne attacks.
Nuclear utilities are not even required to protect against rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles with armor-piercing ammunition, weapons that are possessed
by many terrorist organizations.
America’s nuclear power plants, and their pools of used fuel, are thus vulnerable
to realistic terrorist attacks that could disable cooling systems, trigger meltdowns, and release massive
amounts of radiation, as occurred at Chernobyl in 1986 and more recently at Japan’s Fukushima reactors.
loose nukes
Yes loose nukes---Ukraine crisis destroys US-Russian cooperation
Matthew Bunn is a professor at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs and is co-principal investigator with the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom. He is a
former adviser on nonproliferation in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where
he focused on control of nuclear weapons and materials, “The Real Nuclear Nightmare When It Comes
to U.S.-Russian Ties,” 1/24/’15, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-real-nuclear-nightmare-whenit-comes-us-russian-ties-12102
In the dark days at
the turn of the year, all but a few bits of U.S.-Russian cooperation to strengthen nuclear
security in Russia came to a halt. No longer, for now at least, will U.S. experts work with counterparts at major
Russian nuclear facilities to implement better means to prevent insiders from stealing fissile material, or
to improve accounting, so a theft would be quickly detected. The crisis in Ukraine, adding to issues that have chilled
relations with Moscow for years, provoked a deep freeze in U.S.-Russian relations. A two-decade era in which the
United States and Russia worked together to dismantle and secure the deadly legacies of the Cold War
appears to have drawn almost entirely to a close. The danger of nuclear bomb material falling into
terrorist hands will be higher as a result of this downturn in cooperation – putting U.S., Russian, and global
security at greater risk.
Russian insider threat is real
Matthew Bunn is a professor at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs and is co-principal investigator with the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom. He is a
former adviser on nonproliferation in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where
he focused on control of nuclear weapons and materials, “The Real Nuclear Nightmare When It Comes
to U.S.-Russian Ties,” 1/24/’15, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-real-nuclear-nightmare-whenit-comes-us-russian-ties-12102
But nuclear
security is never “finished.” It must be constantly improving in the face of evolving threats.
There are still weaknesses in nuclear security in Russia that thieves could exploit – particularly corrupt
insiders who understand how security systems work. And no one knows whether Russia will devote the
resources necessary to sustain the levels of security that are now in place. The insider threat is real: in
2012, for example, the director and two of the deputy directors of one of Russia’s largest plutonium and highly
enriched uranium facilities were arrested for millions of dollars’ worth of corruption (though not stealing nuclear material).
isis
1nc-isis da
US using metadata to combat ISIS social media strategy
Labott 6/19 (Elise Labott - Global affairs correspondent “State Department report: ISIS breaking new
ground as new leader in terror groups” CNN http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/politics/isis-report-statedepartment-terror/index.html) // CW
The U.S. also recognized ISIS' prowess in
using social media to spread its message and recruit followers, noting the group "has
been adroit at using the most popular social and new media platforms (YouTube, Facebook and Twitter) to disseminate its messages broadly." ISIS' initial
publication of online
propaganda is followed by near instantaneous reposting, follow-up links and translations
into additional languages, the report found, adding that the groups' members answered real-time
questions from would be members about how to join the group. The report called the Syrian civil war a "significant factor" for
many of last year's terrorist attacks worldwide. Despite the standing up of a worldwide anti-ISIS coalition and a UN Security Council resolution making the travel of
foreign fighters to and from conflict zones illegal, more than 16,000 foreign terrorist fighters traveled to Syria in 2014, according to the report — most of them to
join ISIS. "The rate of foreign terrorist fighter travel to Syria ... exceeded the rate of foreign fighters who traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or
Somalia at any point in the last 20 years," the report said. Weak and failed governments were blamed for providing an "enabling environment" for the emergence of
extremist radicalism and violence — not only in Syria and Iraq, but also in Yemen and Libya, where jihadi groups have flourished. The
U.S. is "deeply
concerned" about the growth of ISIS beyond Syria and Iraq and the birth of self-proclaimed affiliates, the report found, particularly
in Libya, Egypt and Nigeria. It acknowledged questions remain about the meaning of such affiliates - whether they represent a command relationship or the groups
simply share "merely opportunistic relationships" with ISIS. Although al-Qaida's leadership has been weakened, the report said the group "continued to serve as a
focal point of inspiration" for its worldwide network of affiliates, such as AQAP in Yemen, al-Nusra Front in Syria and al-Shabaab in Somalia. The report also warned
about the increase in so-called "lone wolf" attacks last year, citing attacks in Canada in October and Sydney, Australia, although it was difficult to assess whether
attacks were directed or simply inspired by ISIS or al Qaeda and its affiliates. "These attacks may presage a new era in which centralized leadership of a terrorist
organization matters less, group identity is more fluid and violent extremist narratives focus on a wider range of alleged grievances and enemies with which lone
actors may identify and seek to carry out self-directed attacks," the report found. The U.S. has working
to "shift" it's counterterrorism
strategy to more effectively partner with countries where terrorist networks have a foothold, the report said. The US has assembled a sixtyplus nation global coalition to stop ISIS advances on the ground, counter its messaging and stem the
flow of foreign fighters and financing.
Social Media k2 ISIS home front strategy – need domestic surveillance to curtail terror
Sanchez 6/5 (Ray Sanchez –reporter, CNN, “ISIS exploits social media to make inroads in U.S.”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/04/us/isis-social-media-recruits/) // CW
Using social media as well as encrypted online communications beyond the reach of law enforcement
surveillance, the terror organization is increasingly reaching new sympathizers and encouraging attacks
such as the one foiled in Boston, officials said. "The foreign terrorist now has direct access into the United States like never before," Michael Steinbach, assistant
director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, told the House Homeland Security Committee this week. At least one of the men connected to the plot to behead
conservative blogger Pamela Geller and kill officers in Massachusetts was being encouraged online by people overseas connected to ISIS, two U.S. officials with
knowledge of the investigation said Thursday. The officials, however, cautioned that the exact ties are difficult to know. 'Thousands of messages' Rep. Michael
McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said communications with ISIS first brought Rahim to the attention of law enforcement. "He
was being investigated by the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force after communicating with and
spreading ISIS propaganda online," McCaul said. An estimated 3,400 Westerners have traveled to join ISIS in its
quest to establish an Islamist state in Iraq and Syria, according to counterterrorism officials. At least 200 Americans
have gone or attempted to travel to Syria. But even a rough estimate of the number of sympathizers on U.S. soil is hard to discern. "There
are thousands of messages being put out into the ethersphere and they're just hoping that they land on an individual who's susceptible to that type of terrorist
propaganda," said John Carlin, the assistant attorney general heading the Justice Department's national-security division. "They just need to be right once to get a
terrorist attack inside the United States."
ISIS has the most sophisticated propaganda machine of any terrorist
organization, a global communications strategy that has stumped counterterrorism officials while
making significant inroads among U.S. sympathizers. "How many of those followers are actually in the United States, in your
estimate?" McCaul asked at this week's hearing. "There's hundreds, maybe thousands," Steinbach replied. "It's a challenge to get a full understanding of just how
many of those passive followers are taking action."
ISIS grid attack coming soon – just a question of when
Logan 14 (Scott, foreign affairs journalist specializing in foreign terrorism, “Experts warn of ISIS attack on US power grid,” KBOI2,
http://www.kboi2.com/news/local/power_grid-273650641.html) aj
A congressional review found the US electric grid is already under continuous cyber assault. But, now Dr.
Peter Pry, a former CIA officer and head of the task force on National and Homeland Security, says the
grid faces an "imminent" attack by ISIS, the increasingly powerful Mideast terror group. And Pry says ISIS wouldn't even
have to come into the United States. He says the wealthy terrorists could hire gangs in Mexico, such as
the Knights Templar who have already knocked out power in 11 Mexican cities using conventional
weapons. A Congressional commission estimated that within 12 months of a national blackout upward of 90
percent of the American population would die from disease, lack of food and resources, and major
societal change." And what makes the grid so vulnerable is that it's so open and obvious, which experts
say makes it ideal for an attack. Robin Rice, Idaho Power corporate security manager, released the following statement: “We
continually assess, improve and update our network to protect our systems from potential threats. Grid security is a collaborative effort
between electric utilities and governmental agencies. As part of its obligation to serve the public, Idaho Power has always made reliability a
priority. This is done in part through: mandatory reliability standards and guidelines, including both cyber and physical security measures; a
focus by utilities on preparation, threat identification, prevention, response and recovery efforts; and through industry and government spare
equipment programs.”
EMP and Grid Attack cause mass extinction
Landsbaum 14 (Mark Landsbaum – staff columnist, Orange County Register, 9/6/14 “Mark
Landsbaum: Attack on power grid could bring dark days” http://www.ocregister.com/articles/emp633883-power-attack.html) // CW
Don’t take my word for it. Ask Peter Pry, former CIA officer and one-time House Armed Services Committee staffer, who served on a congressional commission
investigating such eventualities. “There
is an imminent threat from ISIS to the national electric grid and not just to a
single U.S. city,” Pry warns. He points to a leaked U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report in March that said a coordinated terrorist
attack on just nine of the nation’s 55,000 electrical power substations could cause coast-to-coast
blackouts for up to 18 months. Consider what you’ll have to worry about then. If you were uncomfortable watching looting and riots on TV last
month in Ferguson, Mo., as police stood by, project such unseemly behavior nationwide. For 18 months. It’s likely phones won’t be reliable, so you won’t
have to watch police stand idly by. Chances are, police won’t show up. Worse, your odds of needing them will be
excruciatingly more likely if terrorists attack the power grid using an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) burst
of energy to knock out electronic devices. “The Congressional EMP Commission, on which I served, did an extensive study of this,” Pry says.
“We discovered to our own revulsion that critical systems in this country are distressingly unprotected. We calculated that, based on current
realities, in the first year after a full-scale EMP event, we could expect about two-thirds of the national
population – 200 million Americans – to perish from starvation and disease, as well as anarchy in the
streets.” Skeptical? Consider who is capable of engineering such measures before dismissing the likelihood. In his 2013 book, “A Nation Forsaken,” Michael
Maloof reported that the 2008 EMP Commission considered whether a hostile nation or terrorist group could attack
with a high-altitude EMP weapon and determined, “any number of adversaries possess both the ballistic
missiles and nuclear weapons capabilities,” and could attack within 15 years. That was six years ago.
“North Korea, Pakistan, India, China and Russia are all in the position to launch an EMP attack against
the United States now,” Maloof wrote last year. Maybe you’ll rest more comfortably knowing the House intelligence authorization bill passed in May
told the intelligence community to report to Congress within six months, “on the threat posed by man-made electromagnetic pulse weapons to United States
interests through 2025, including threats from foreign countries and foreign nonstate actors.” Or, maybe that’s not so comforting. In
2004 and again in
2008, separate congressional commissions gave detailed, horrific reports on such threats. Now,
Congress wants another report. In his book, Maloof quotes Clay Wilson of the Congressional Research Service, who said, “Several
nations, including reported sponsors of terrorism, may currently have a capability to use EMP as a
weapon for cyberwarfare or cyberterrorism to disrupt communications and other parts of the U.S.
critical infrastructure.” What would an EMP attack look like? “Within an instant,” Maloof writes, “we will have no idea what’s happening all around us,
because we will have no news. There will be no radio, no TV, no cell signal. No newspaper delivered. “Products won’t flow into the nearby Wal-Mart.
The big trucks will be stuck on the interstates. Gas stations won’t be able to pump the fuel they do have. Some police officers
and firefighters will show up for work, but most will stay home to protect their own families. Power lines
will get knocked down in windstorms, but nobody will care. They’ll all be fried anyway. Crops will wither in the fields until
scavenged – since the big picking machines will all be idled, and there will be no way to get the crop to market anyway. “Nothing that’s been
invented in the last 50 years – based on computer chips, microelectronics or digital technology – will
work. And it will get worse.”
yes grid attack
Expertise of Knights Templar drug cartel and similarity to EMP attacks exponentially
increases the probability and effects of an ISIS attack
WND 14 (WorldNetDaily, independent news company, August 31 , 2014, “EXPERT: 'IMMINENT' ISIS THREAT TO U.S. POWER GRID,
st
http://www.wnd.com/2014/08/expert-imminent-isis-threat-to-u-s-power-grid/) aj
ISIS terrorists pose an “imminent” threat to the U.S. electric grid with the capacity to coordinate a
devastating assault on our nation’s infrastructure, warned a leading homeland security and terrorism expert in a radio interview
Sunday. Dr. Peter Pry, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Task Force on National and
Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, both congressional advisory boards.
He also served on the Congressional EMP Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, and the House Armed Services Committee. “There is
an imminent threat from ISIS to the national electric grid and not just to a single U.S. city,” said Pry. Pry was
speaking on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s AM 970 The Answer. Outlining the threat, Pry recalled a leaked U.S. Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission report divulged this past March that coordinated terrorist attacks on just
nine of the nation’s 55,000 electrical power substations could provoke coast-to-coast blackouts for up to
18 months. Such an attack would mirror the devastating impact of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP)
attack without the need for any nuclear device or delivery system. The chances of a major electrical
outage across America are now surging. Get your autographed copy of “A Nation Forsaken” which probes this crucial issue. The
congressional EMP Commission previously estimated that within 12 months of a nationwide blackout, upwards of 90 percent of the U.S. population could possibly
die from disease, lack of food and resources and larger societal breakdown. Speaking to Klein’s audience, Pry
pointed specifically to the
possibility of ISIS immediately hiring Mexican extremists such as the Knights Templar drug cartel,
which last year successfully utilized guns and Molotov cocktails to attack numerous Mexican power
stations, leaving 11 towns without electricity. “Now those guys are just across our southern border,”
stated Pry. Pry continued: “That means that ISIS doesn’t have to actually come to the United States on those U.S.
passports. You know, Obama is always talking about how he’s got a phone. Well, ISIS has got a
telephone, too. All they’ve got to do is contact the Knights Templar, wire these guys $10 million, I mean
they’ll do anything for money. And say, ‘Hey, go across that open U.S. border and take out the electric
grid in Arizona, or New Mexico, or Minnesota or New York. Or the entire nation.’” Pry surmised such an attack on the
U.S. power grid “wouldn’t be difficult for them.” “There are … open-source computer models where you can figure out
which are those nine critical transformer substations where if attacked would take down the whole
national power grid,” he said. “So something like that could be arranged. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen next
week.” Pry pointed out ISIS allies in al-Qaida last June attacked power lines in Yemen that left the entire nation
without power for a day. He took issue with a statement last week from former deputy director of the CIA Mike Morell who said it would take ISIS two
to three years to develop the capacity to carry out a 9/11-style attack. Morell stated that “over the long term – two and a half, three years – we need to worry about
a 9/11-style attack by ISIS.” Countered Pry: “I don’t think that’s true at all. You know, because they
can hire these criminal gangs that are
south of our porous border. Or criminal gangs that are already present here.” “We also have Muslim
terror cells already in this country that would be willing to do anything for money and it’s very easy to
attack the electrical grid,” he added. Pry also warned of rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea passing ISIS a
nuclear device and delivery system, such as a SCUD missile, to launch an actual EMP attack.
“Grid jihad” motivates members of ISIS to commit attacks there
Gaffney 9/3 (Frank, Founder and President of the Center for Security Policy, a DC think tank, he also served as the Assistant Secretary of
Defense for International Security Policy during the Reagan administration, “Grid Jihad,”
https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2014/09/03/grid-jihad/) aj
The beheading yesterday of a second American journalist, Steven Sotloff, suggests a lot more of such barbaric
depravity is coming at the hands of jihadists trying to impose worldwide their supremacist Islamic
shariah code. But what if such terrorists try to decapitate our country – especially if, in the process, they could achieve the near-term death of millions of us?
National security experts convening today at the National Press Club in Washington worry that’s just what the jihadists have in mind should
the Islamic State’s next target prove to be our highly vulnerable electric grid. If we are to prevent more
– and far worse – acts of violence at the hands of these global jihadists, we had better make it our
explicit purpose to defeat them all, by securing our people and our grid.
ISIS has electrical grid capabilities – partnership with Knights of Templars
Dedard 14 (Paul Dedard – Washington reporter, 9/3/14, Washington Examiner, “New ISIS threat:
America's electric grid; blackout could kill 9 of 10” http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/new-isisthreat-americas-electric-grid-blackout-could-kill-9-of-10/article/2552766) // CW
Former top
government officials who have been warning Washington about the vulnerability of the
nation’s largely unprotected electric grid are raising new fears that troops from the jihadist Islamic State
are poised to attack the system, leading to a power crisis that could kill millions. “Inadequate grid
security, a porous U.S.-Mexico border, and fragile transmission systems make the electric grid a target for ISIS,” said Peter Pry, one of the
nation’s leading experts on the grid. Others joining Pry at a press conference later Wednesday to draw attention to the potential threat
said that if just a handful of the nation’s high voltage transformers were knocked out, blackouts would
occur across the country. “By one estimate, should the power go out and stay out for over a year, nine out of
10 Americans would likely perish,” said Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington. At the afternoon
press conference, Gaffney dubbed the potential crisis the "grid jihad." A lack of electricity would shut off water systems, impact
city transportation services and shutdown hospitals and other big facilities. Fresh and frozen foods also
would be impacted as would banks, financial institutions and utilities. Pry provided details of recent attacks on electricity
systems and said that ISIS could easily team with Mexican drug cartels to ravage America. He told Secrets, for example, that the Knights Templar drug gang blacked
“The Knights Templars and
other criminal gangs in Mexico will do anything for money, and ISIS, the richest terrorist organization in
history, has hundreds of millions of dollars at its disposal,” said Pry. “ISIS could hire one of the Mexican
cartels, or one of their criminal gangs already in the U.S., or activate jihadist terror cells already in the
U.S., and inflict a multi-state blackout immediately, within days or weeks. Perhaps even a nationwide
blackout,” Pry explained to Secrets. “I am not saying it is likely they will do so. But given the capabilities and objectives of ISIS and
our obvious vulnerabilities, it would be foolish to ignore the threat to the grid, to regard the threat as
unlikely. Our planning should be based on imminent asymmetrical threats, and not assume that another 9/11 large-scale attack is years away,” he added. The
out the electric grid of the Mexican state of Michoacan in 2013 to provide cover for killing those fighting the drug trade.
Texas Department of Public Safety recently said they believe there is evidence that ISIS plans an attack. Pry, Gaffney and others have been pushing Congress to
protect the electric grid from attacks including terrorists, assaults by U.S. foes like North Korea and even sun spots that can zap unprotected transformers with
electromagnetic pulse. Congress is looking at legislation to protect the grid via the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.
ISIS has EMP capabilities
Landsbaum 14 (Mark Landsbaum – staff columnist, Orange County Register, 9/6/14 “Mark Landsbaum:
Attack on power grid could bring dark days” http://www.ocregister.com/articles/emp-633883-powerattack.html) // CW
Don’t take my word for it. Ask Peter Pry, former CIA officer and one-time House Armed Services Committee staffer, who served on a congressional commission
investigating such eventualities. “There
is an imminent threat from ISIS to the national electric grid and not just to a
single U.S. city,” Pry warns. He points to a leaked U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report in March that said a coordinated terrorist
attack on just nine of the nation’s 55,000 electrical power substations could cause coast-to-coast
blackouts for up to 18 months. Consider what you’ll have to worry about then. If you were uncomfortable watching looting and riots on TV last
month in Ferguson, Mo., as police stood by, project such unseemly behavior nationwide. For 18 months. It’s likely phones won’t be reliable, so you
won’t
have to watch police stand idly by. Chances are, police won’t show up. Worse, your odds of needing them will be
excruciatingly more likely if terrorists attack the power grid using an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) burst
of energy to knock out electronic devices. “The Congressional EMP Commission, on which I served, did an extensive study of this,” Pry says.
“We discovered to our own revulsion that critical systems in this country are distressingly unprotected. We calculated that, based on current
realities, in the first year after a full-scale EMP event, we could expect about two-thirds of the national
population – 200 million Americans – to perish from starvation and disease, as well as anarchy in the
streets.” Skeptical? Consider who is capable of engineering such measures before dismissing the likelihood. In his 2013 book, “A Nation Forsaken,” Michael
Maloof reported that the 2008 EMP Commission considered whether a hostile nation or terrorist group could attack
with a high-altitude EMP weapon and determined, “any number of adversaries possess both the ballistic
missiles and nuclear weapons capabilities,” and could attack within 15 years. That was six years ago.
“North Korea, Pakistan, India, China and Russia are all in the position to launch an EMP attack against
the United States now,” Maloof wrote last year. Maybe you’ll rest more comfortably knowing the House intelligence authorization bill passed in May
told the intelligence community to report to Congress within six months, “on the threat posed by man-made electromagnetic pulse weapons to United States
interests through 2025, including threats from foreign countries and foreign nonstate actors.” Or, maybe that’s not so comforting. In
2004 and again in
2008, separate congressional commissions gave detailed, horrific reports on such threats. Now,
Congress wants another report. In his book, Maloof quotes Clay Wilson of the Congressional Research Service, who said, “Several
nations, including reported sponsors of terrorism, may currently have a capability to use EMP as a
weapon for cyberwarfare or cyberterrorism to disrupt communications and other parts of the U.S.
critical infrastructure.” What would an EMP attack look like? “Within an instant,” Maloof writes, “we will have no idea what’s happening all around us,
because we will have no news. There will be no radio, no TV, no cell signal. No newspaper delivered. “Products won’t flow into the nearby Wal-Mart.
The big trucks will be stuck on the interstates. Gas stations won’t be able to pump the fuel they do have. Some police officers
and firefighters will show up for work, but most will stay home to protect their own families. Power lines
will get knocked down in windstorms, but nobody will care. They’ll all be fried anyway. Crops will wither in the fields until
scavenged – since the big picking machines will all be idled, and there will be no way to get the crop to market anyway. “Nothing that’s been
invented in the last 50 years – based on computer chips, microelectronics or digital technology – will
work. And it will get worse.”
yes US attack
ISIS is going to attack the US
Morell 15 (Michael, former deputy director of the CIA, “ISIS Is a Danger on U.S. Soil,” 5/14/15, http://time.com/3858354/isis-is-a-dangeron-u-s-soil/ lg)
Second, ISIS
is attracting young men and women to travel to Syria and Iraq to join its cause. At this writing, at
least 20,000 foreign nationals from roughly 90 countries have gone to Syria and Iraq to join the fight.
Most have joined ISIS. This flow of foreigners has outstripped the flow of such fighters into Iraq during the war there a decade ago. And there are more
foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq today than there were in Afghanistan in the 1980s working to drive the Soviet Union out of that country. These foreign
nationals are getting experience on the battlefield, and they are becoming increasingly radicalized to ISIS’s
cause. There is a particular subset of these fighters to worry about. Somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 jihadist wannabes have
traveled to Syria and Iraq from Western Europe, Canada, Australia and the U.S. They all have easy access
to the U.S. homeland, which presents two major concerns: that these fighters will leave the Middle East
and either conduct an attack on their own or conduct an attack at the direction of the ISIS leadership. The
former has already happened in Europe. It has not happened yet in the U.S.–but it will. In spring 2014, Mehdi Nemmouche, a young
Frenchman who went to fight in Syria, returned to Europe and shot three people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels. The third threat is that ISIS is
building a following among other extremist groups around the world. The
allied exaltation is happening at a faster pace than alQaeda ever enjoyed. It has occurred in Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan. More will follow. These groups, which are already dangerous, will become
even more so. They will increasingly target ISIS’s enemies (including us), and they will increasingly take on
ISIS’s brutality. We saw the targeting play out in early 2015 when an ISIS-associated group in Libya killed an American in an attack on a hotel in Tripoli
frequented by diplomats and international businesspeople. And we saw the extreme violence play out just a few weeks after that when another ISIS-affiliated group
ISIS’s message is radicalizing young men and
women around the globe who have never traveled to Syria or Iraq but who want to commit an attack to
demonstrate their solidarity with ISIS. These are the so-called lone wolves. Even before May 4, such an ISIS-inspired attack
had already occurred in the U.S.: an individual with sympathies for ISIS attacked two New York City
police officers with a hatchet. Al-Qaeda has inspired such U.S. attacks–the Fort Hood shootings in late 2009 that killed 13 and the Boston Marathon
bombing in spring 2013 that killed five and injured nearly 300. The attempted attack in Texas is just the latest of these. We can expect more of
these kinds of attacks in the U. S. Attacks by ISIS-inspired individuals are occurring at a rapid pace
around the world–roughly 10 since ISIS took control of so much territory. Two such attacks have occurred in Canada, including the October 2014 attack on
in Libya beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. And fourth, perhaps most insidiously,
the Parliament building. And another occurred in Sydney, in December 2014.
TSA data – ISIS plans attack on the US
Winter 15 (Jana, investigative news reporter, “TSA WARNS OF POSSIBLE ISIS ATTACK ON U.S. SOIL,” 4/25/15,
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/25/u-s-intel-community-warns-isis-attack-u-s-soil/ lg)
The
Transportation Security Administration has issued a classified warning about a potential attack by the
Islamic State over the weekend against a target in the United States. The Intercept reviewed a notice of the classified alert,
which was sent out Friday afternoon by TSA’s Transportation Security Operations Center. A source, who reviewed the classified intelligence warning,
described the threat as very general, with no specifics about location or type of attack — just the timing. The alert
covers a 48-hour period that began late Friday afternoon. The essence of the warning, according to a source, is that “ISIS plans an
attack on U.S. soil.” In response, the TSA deployed its Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams, or VIPR for short, to various locations. The VIPR
teams have expanded in recent years, moving beyond airports to train stations and other busy transportation sites. The warning appears
significant in that it demonstrates that the U.S. intelligence community is now taking seriously the
potential of ISIS to attack targets on U.S. soil, something the group has not yet done. ISIS has made
broad threats against the United States in the past, but up to now, ISIS attacks on U.S. targets have been
limited to Americans in Iraq and Syria.
grid vulnerable
Terror attacks on the electrical grid can devastate the US
DHS 15 (The Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) works to reduce risks within and across
all critical infrastructure sectors by partnering with law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community and coordinating
efforts among Federal, state, local, and tribal governments and control systems owners, operators, and vendors. Additionally,
ICS-CERT collaborates with international and private sector Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) to share control
systems-related security incidents and mitigation measures. “Cyber Attacks: The New WMD Challenge to the Interagency” 1/15
http://thesimonscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/IAJ-6-2-Spring-2015-48-57.pdf /lg)
A cyber attack that successfully shuts down the electrical grid for prolonged periods over a large geographic area may have WMD like consequences. The
vulnerability of the national electric grid to cyber attack is not a new revelation. The electric grid is the U.S. technological center of gravity. Transnational
extremists and nation-states whose aims are to disrupt or destroy U.S. civil society have many ways to
attack this U.S. center of gravity. In particular, the vulnerability of the electric grid industrial control systems
(ICS) to cyber attacks and other critical infrastructures has given U.S. adversaries a relatively easy way to
disrupt or destroy U.S. civil society. The outages could severely disrupt the delivery of essential services
such as communications, food, water, waste water removal, health care, and emergency response.
Moreover, cyber attacks—unlike traditional threats to the electric grid such as extreme weather—are
unpredictable and more difficult to anticipate, prepare for, and defend against. The Department of Homeland
Security’s (DHS) Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) works across the interagency “to reduce risks within and across all critical
infrastructure sectors by partnering with law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community and coordinating efforts among Federal, state, local, and tribal
governments and control systems owners, operators, and vendors. Additionally, ICSCERT collaborates with international and private sector Computer Emergency
Response Teams (CERTs) to share control systemsrelated security incidents and mitigation measures.”4 In 2012, the ICS-CERT responded to 198 cyber incidents.
More than 41 percent of these incidents involved the energy sector, particularly electricity.5 Thwarting these attacks will require effective information sharing
among interagency partners and state and local agencies working over a dispersed area, in addition to close collaboration with private sector entities.
US grid vulnerable – Congressional study
Viebeck 3/25 (Elise Vieback, reporter at The Hill, “Power grid attacked every four days, review finds,”
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/236885-power-grid-attacked-every-four-days) aj
Parts of the U.S. power grid are attacked online or in person every four days, according to an analysis of
federal energy records. The finding raises questions about the electrical system’s physical and cyber defenses at a time of rising threats. USA
Today, which analyzed federal data and surveyed more than 50 electric utilities, described the power
grid as vulnerable to a major outage that could affect millions. While a cyberattack has not yet caused a major loss of power, the
mechanisms guarding the grid undergo small hacks multiple times a week, the paper reported. " There are probes that happen all the time,”
Scott Aronson, senior director of national security for the Edison Electric Institute, told the paper.
“Adversaries are essentially looking for weaknesses in a network. I've heard people say millions [of attacks occur] a day.” Available federal data points to a rise in
cyberattacks against the energy sector, though the definition of “attack” is fuzzy and may not include smaller incidents. The
Department of
Homeland Security was alerted to 151 energy-related “cyber incidents” in 2013, up from 111 in 2012
and 31 in 2011, USA Today reported. A sophisticated team of hackers could find ways to disable major pieces of the U.S. grid through targeted attacks of
critical nodes, experts said. Power plants are also seen as highly vulnerable to physical violence. Critical equipment is often
protected only be a chain-link fence and a few security cameras, and suspects have never been identified in the hundreds of attacks on electrical infrastructure that
have taken place since 2011, the paper reported.
yes recruitment
ISIS recruits Americans
Bacon 15 (John, staff writer @ USA today, “Homegrown terror threat grows,” 4/17/15,
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=19&sid=6b1f392b-ca99-4a6a-b453362bd5d577fd%40sessionmgr4004&hid=4207&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=f5h&AN=J0E427548487915 /lg)
An Ohio man is accused of training with Islamic militants abroad and returning to the USA in the hopes
of carrying out a deadly assignment — the latest suspected terrorist wannabe to be nabbed by federal authorities. Abdirahman Sheik
Mohamud, 23, trained in Syria to handle weapons and explosives, engage in hand-to-hand combat and break into houses, a federal indictment says. He was
instructed by a cleric to return to the USA and commit an act of mass destruction, the indictment says. Authorities say
Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is one of several antiAmerican terrorist hopefuls who returned to
the U.S. with a murderous mission. In the past year, dozens of Americans have sought to join the Islamic State,
also called ISIL or ISIS. The indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury in Columbus, refers to several "private conversations" between Mohamud and his
brother, Abdifatah Aden, that discuss Mohamud's plans to join a terrorist group. His brother had joined Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al-Qaeda, the indictment
says. "Identifying
and neutralizing the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters who return to the United
States is one of the National Security Division's highest priorities," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin
says in a statement. Mohamud is the second Ohio man to be arrested this year in connection with a plot.
Christopher Cornell, an alleged ISIL sympathizer from Green Township, was arrested after buying two semiautomatic ri- fles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Increased recruitment poses major threat
Klausen 14 (Jytte, founder of the Western Jihadism Project, which tracks the activity of Islamic extremists in the West, interview w/ Hari
Sreenivasan, “What threat do ‘lone wolf’ terrorists pose to America’s national security?,” 10/26/14, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/threatlone-wolf-terrorists-pose-americas-national-security/ lg)
HARI SREENIVASAN: During the past week, there
have been at least three separate attacks launched by what are
referred to as lone wolf terrorists, who are often inspired by propaganda from groups like ISIS. Last Monday in
Quebec, a man who had converted to Islam and had become radicalized purposely crashed his car into two soldiers, killing one of them, before he was shot dead.
Two days later, another gunman with a similar story killed a soldier standing guard at a war memorial in Ottawa. He later raced into the Parliament building, before
being shot dead. Then Thursday, in Queens, New York, a man who had posted comments sympathetic to the jihadists used a hatchet to attack four rookie police
officers posing for a picture on the street. He, too, was shot dead. Today, on the Sunday talk shows, the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees
commented on the attacks. CHARLIE ROSE: What
kind of threat does that pose to our own national security? REP. MIKE
and getting worse. SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: These attacks and the multiplicity of attacks in 2014
show that their propaganda is having some effect. HARI SREENIVASAN: For more about all this, we are joined now from Boston by Jytte
ROGERS: Huge,
Klausen. She is a professor at Brandeis University and the Founder of the Western Jihadism Project, which tracks the activity of Islamist extremists in the West. So, I
want to ask, what is behind these lone wolf attacks? JYTTE KLAUSEN: Well, we call them lone
wolves, but, in most cases, they have been
connected to networks and peer groups and militants for some time. And they carry out the attacks by
themselves, but they are not actually lone wolves, in the sense that they had just become radicalized off the Internet or something like that. It — of course,
there are exceptions to this general rule. But, right now, there is a call out from the Islamic State group, sometimes referred to as ISIL,
to carry out attacks on — on people who represent the Western states. HARI SREENIVASAN: OK. So we are also hearing more
frequently about the sympathizers in the West who are lured to go and fight for ISIS. What are the reasons for that? JYTTE KLAUSEN: Well, one reason is that have
been able to go. ISIS, or ISIL, has invited them. There
were many Westerners who tried to go and fight for al-Qaida in Iraq
in the previous insurgency in Iraq, and they weren’t welcome. But ISIL has been pursuing a colonization strategy in
Syria for some time. And so, in the course of 2013, they started inviting Westerners to come and settle.
And there were many Westerners who thought it was a very attractive proposition to walk around the streets of the — the Syrian cities that they refer to as the
liberated zones and police the local Muslim population in those places. So they were very attracted to the idea of getting control and being the big man or big
woman on the block. HARI SREENIVASAN: OK. Well, once they get there, the story might change a bit. As your research tracks, there is actually a much higher
mortality ratio of the Westerners who go in there. Oftentimes, they are used as suicide bombers, because they are not really much more good to ISIL or ISIS? JYTTE
KLAUSEN: Yes, that is correct. But, in 2013, the mortality rates weren’t so high. They have really picked up since the start of this year. And we are now picking up
evidence of people who want to come home and have had regrets. But, at the same time, even as that is happening, there are also new people who are leaving. So,
there are — by my count, based on estimates from the different Western governments, there
have been around 3,000 Westerners who
have, at one point in time, gone off and joined the extremist jihadist groups. HARI SREENIVASAN: What happens when
they come back? Is there evidence to show that they are more likely to launch an attack at their home in the West? JYTTE KLAUSEN: There is evidence of that. But
there are also some coming back who are exhibiting signs of having had regrets, particularly amongst some of the younger groups, the women, some of the
teenagers who had taken off. But they are by no means the only stream that has gone off. There
are very hardened folks who have gone
off, to people who have been experienced from previous insurgencies. A Boston man named Ahmad Abousamra,
who went both to Pakistan and to Yemen and took off to Syria — to Syria in 2006, is now believed to be in charge of the social media
operations on behalf of ISIL. And so we should be careful not to draw too fast conclusions about what sort of threat these people present when they
come back. And, for sure, we know, from previous experiences with insurgencies and Westerners going off, that
having had the experience of learning how to carry out violence, shooting a gun and putting together a bomb, they will
come back, and they will try to carry out violence here.
nuclear
ISIS could get a nuclear weapon
RT, 5/31/15 – News Agency, cites Indian Defense Minister and statistics from the Nuclear Threat Initiative nuclear materials security
index (“India warns ISIS could get nukes from Pakistan”, 5/31/15 http://rt.com/news/263681-isis-get-nukes-pakistan/
India is concerned that Islamic State militants (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) could get their hands on a nuclear weapon from its
regional foe and fellow nuclear power Pakistan. Indian Defense Minister Rao Inderjit voiced the concerns at the sidelines of the
Shangri-La regional security conference in Singapore on Saturday. "With the rise of ISIS in West Asia, one is afraid to an extent
that perhaps they might get access to a nuclear arsenal from states like Pakistan,” he said, as cited by Bloomberg.
Earlier this month, IS said in its propaganda magazine Dabiq it could obtain a nuke from “states like Pakistan.” " The Islamic State has billions of
dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilāyah [official] in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through
weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region," the article read. Although even the article says the scenario is “far-fetched”
and political analysts regard the possibility as unlikely. Pakistan as well as India rank poorly in terms of nuclear security. According
to the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) nuclear materials security index, out of 25 countries Pakistan comes
22nd while India is 23rd. Terrorism, the majority driven by Islamic extremism, has killed more than 55,000 people in Pakistan since 2001, which has given rise to
concerns about the security of its nuclear arsenal. Pakistan is also one of the few countries that is increasing its nuclear
arsenal. US think tank the Council on Foreign Relations believes it has 100-120 warheads compared to India’s 90-100 and is developing a nuclear submarine
capable of carrying nuclear missiles. The Pakistani nuclear program began in the early 1970s in response to India developing its own atomic weapons, and in 1998
they successfully tested five nuclear devices becoming the seventh nuclear power in the world.
cyber
1nc cyber
Escalates to nuclear war
Fritz 09 Jason Fritz, Bond University IR Masters, July 2009, “Hacking Nuclear Command and Control”,
http://www.icnnd.org/latest/research/Jason_Fritz_Hacking_NC2.pdf
This paper will analyse the threat of cyber terrorism in regard to nuclear weapons. Specifically, this research will use open source knowledge to identify the
structure of nuclear command and control centres, how those structures might be compromised through computer network operations, and how doing so would fit
access to command and control centres is obtained, terrorists
could fake or actually cause one nuclear-armed state to attack another, thus provoking a nuclear
response from another nuclear power. This may be an easier alternative for terrorist groups than building or acquiring a nuclear weapon or dirty
within established cyber terrorists’ capabilities, strategies, and tactics. If
bomb themselves. This would also act as a force equaliser, and provide terrorists with the asymmetric benefits of high speed, removal of geographical distance, and
a relatively low cost. Continuing difficulties in developing computer tracking technologies which could trace the identity of intruders, and difficulties in establishing
an internationally agreed upon legal framework to guide responses to computer network operations, point towards an inherent weakness in using computer
networks to manage nuclear weaponry. This is particularly relevant to reducing the hair trigger posture of existing nuclear arsenals . All computers which are
connected to the internet are susceptible to infiltration and remote control. Computers
which operate on a closed network may also
be compromised by various hacker methods, such as privilege escalation, roaming notebooks, wireless
access points, embedded exploits in software and hardware, and maintenance entry points. For example, email spoofing targeted at individuals who have access to a closed network, could lead to the installation
of a virus on an open network. This virus could then be carelessly transported on removable data storage between the open and closed network.
Information found on the internet may also reveal how to access these closed networks directly. Efforts by
militaries to place increasing reliance on computer networks, including experimental technology such as
autonomous systems, and their desire to have multiple launch options, such as nuclear triad capability, enables
multiple entry points for terrorists. For example, if a terrestrial command centre is impenetrable, perhaps isolating one nuclear armed
submarine would prove an easier task. There is evidence to suggest multiple attempts have been made by hackers to
compromise the extremely low radio frequency once used by the US Navy to send nuclear launch approval to submerged submarines. Additionally, the alleged
Soviet system known as Perimetr was designed to automatically launch nuclear weapons if it was unable to establish communications with Soviet leadership. This
was intended as a retaliatory response in the event that nuclear weapons had decapitated Soviet leadership; however it did not account for the possibility of cyber
terrorists blocking communications through computer network operations in an attempt to engage the system. Should a warhead be launched, damage could be
further enhanced through additional computer network operations. By using proxies, multi-layered attacks could be engineered. Terrorists could remotely
commandeer computers in China and use them to launch a US nuclear attack against Russia. Thus Russia would believe it was under attack from the US and the US
would believe China was responsible. Further, emergency response communications could be disrupted, transportation could be shut down, and disinformation,
Disruptions in communication and
the use of disinformation could also be used to provoke uninformed responses. For example, a nuclear strike between
such as misdirection, could be planted, thereby hindering the disaster relief effort and maximizing destruction.
India and Pakistan could be coordinated with Distributed Denial of Service attacks against key networks, so they would have further difficulty in identifying what
happened and be forced to respond quickly. Terrorists could also knock out communications between these states so they cannot discuss the situation.
Alternatively, amidst the confusion of a traditional large-scale terrorist attack, claims of responsibility and
declarations of war could be falsified in an attempt to instigate a hasty military response. These false claims could be
posted directly on Presidential, military, and government websites. E-mails could also be sent to the media and foreign governments using the IP addresses and e-
A sophisticated and all encompassing combination of traditional terrorism and cyber
terrorism could be enough to launch nuclear weapons on its own, without the need for compromising
command and control centres directly.
mail accounts of government officials.
yes extinction
Cyber war escalates
Tilford 12 (27 July 2012, Robert, Writer for The Examiner, http://www.examiner.com/article/cyber-attackers-could-easily-shut-down-theelectric-grid-for-the-entire-east-coa)
Cyber attackers could all too easily shut down the electric grid for the entire east coast, the west coast,
and the middle part of our country”, said Senator Grassley on July 26, 2012. “Any one attack could leave dozens
of major cities and tens of millions of Americans without power. We know, because we were shown in a room here in the Capitol, how an
“
attack could take place and what damage it would do, so we know this is not just make believe”, he said. So what would a cyber attack look like anyway? The Senator explained:
“Without ATMs or debit card readers, commerce would immediately grind to a halt. My daughter, who lives here in the DC area, lost
power when the storm hit. They waited for a number of hours, and then they took all the food out of their freezer, they gave away what they could, and they threw the rest away. And that
was the way it was all over. Their power was out for about a week, and it made it very difficult. They are fortunate enough to have a basement, and the heat wasn’t oppressive down there.
Without refrigeration, food would rot on the shelves, the freezers would have to be emptied, and
people could actually go hungry. Without gas pumps, transportation arteries would clog with
abandoned vehicles. Without cell phones or computers, whole regions of the country would be cut off from
communication and families would be unable to reach each other. Without air conditioning and without
lifesaving technology and the service of hospitals and nursing homes, the elderly and sick would become
much sicker and die. Most major hospitals have backup power, but it is only for a limited amount of time. It depends on
how much fuel they can store, and that is very limited”, Senator Grassley said. The devastation that the Senator describes is truly unimaginable. To make matters worse a cyber
attack that can take out a civilian power grid, for example could also cripple the U.S. military. The senator notes that is that
the same power grids that supply cities and towns, stores and gas stations, cell towers and heart
monitors also power “every military base in our country.” “Although bases would be prepared to
weather a short power outage with backup diesel generators, within hours, not days, fuel supplies would run out”, he said.
Which means military command and control centers could go dark. Radar systems that detect air threats
to our country would shut Down completely. “Communication between commanders and their troops would also go silent. And many weapons systems
would be left without either fuel or electric power”, said Senator Grassley. “So in a few short hours or days, the mightiest military in the
world would be left scrambling to maintain base functions”, he said. We contacted the Pentagon and officials
confirmed the threat of a cyber attack is something very real. Top national security officials—including
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Director of the National Security Agency, the Secretary of Defense,
and the CIA Director— have said, “preventing a cyber attack and improving the nation’s electric grids is among the most
urgent priorities of our country” (source: Congressional Record). So how serious is the Pentagon taking all this? Enough
to start, or end a war over it, for sure (see video: Pentagon declares war on cyber attacks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kVQrp_D0kY&feature=relmfu ).
A cyber attack today against the US could very well be seen as an “Act of War” and could be met with a “full scale” US
military response. That could include the use of “nuclear weapons”, if authorized by the President.
Miscalc, draws in major powers, collapses nuclear deterrence
Cimbala 11, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn State University–Brandywine, served as a consultant for various US
government agencies and private contractors, (Stephen J. "Nuclear Crisis Management and “Cyberwar”Phishing for Trouble?," Strategic Studies
Quarterly, Spring, www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/2011/spring/cimbala.pdf)
Notwithstanding the preceding disclaimers, information warfare has the potential to attack or disrupt successful crisis
management on each of four dimensions. First, it can muddy the signals being sent from one side to the other in a crisis.
This can be done deliberately or inadvertently. Suppose one side plants a virus or worm in the other’s communications
networks.19 The virus or worm becomes activated during the crisis and destroys or alters information. The
missing or altered information may make it more difficult for the cyber victim to arrange a military attack. But
destroyed or altered information may mislead either side into thinking that its signal has been correctly interpreted when it has not. Thus, side A may intend to signal “resolve” instead of
“yield” to its opponent on a particular issue. Side B, misperceiving a “yield” message, may decide to continue its aggression, meeting unexpected resistance and causing a much more
Infowar can also destroy or disrupt communication channels necessary for successful
crisis management. One way it can do this is to disrupt communication links between policymakers and
military commanders during a period of high threat and severe time pressure. Two kinds of unanticipated problems, from the
standpoint of civil-military relations, are possible under these conditions. First, political leaders may have predelegated limited authority for
nuclear release or launch under restrictive conditions; only when these few conditions obtain, according to the protocols of predelegation, would
military commanders be authorized to employ nuclear weapons distributed within their command. Clogged, destroyed, or disrupted communications
could prevent top leaders from knowing that military commanders perceived a situation to be far more
desperate, and thus permissive of nuclear initiative, than it really was. During the Cold War, for example,
disrupted communications between the US National Command Authority and ballistic missile
submarines, once the latter came under attack, could have resulted in a joint decision by submarine
officers to launch in the absence of contrary instructions. Second, information warfare during a crisis will almost
certainly increase the time pressure under which political leaders operate. It may do this literally, or it
may affect the perceived timelines within which the policymaking process can make its decisions. Once either side sees parts of its
command, control, and communications (C3) system being subverted by phony information or extraneous cyber noise, its sense of panic at the possible
loss of military options will be enormous. In the case of US Cold War nuclear war plans, for example, disruption of even portions of
the strategic C3 system could have prevented competent execution of parts of the SIOP (the strategic nuclear war plan). The SIOP
depended upon finely orchestrated time-on-target estimates and precise damage expectancies against various classes of targets. Partially misinformed or disinformed
networks and communications centers would have led to redundant attacks against the same target sets and, quite
possibly, unplanned attacks on friendly military or civilian installations. A third potentially disruptive
effect of infowar on nuclear crisis management is that it may reduce the search for available alternatives to the few
and desperate. Policymakers searching for escapes from crisis denouements need flexible options and
creative problem solving. Victims of information warfare may have a diminished ability to solve
problems routinely, let alone creatively, once information networks are filled with flotsam and jetsam. Questions to operators will be poorly posed, and
responses (if available at all) will be driven toward the least common denominator of previously programmed standard operating procedures. Retaliatory systems that
depend on launch-on-warning instead of survival after riding out an attack are especially vulnerable to reduced time cycles
and restricted alternatives: A well-designed warning system cannot save commanders from misjudging the situation under the constraints of time and information
dangerous situation to develop.
imposed by a posture of launch on warning. Such a posture truncates the decision process too early for iterative estimates to converge on reality. Rapid reaction is inherently unstable because
it cuts short the learning time needed to match perception with reality.20 The propensity to search for the first available alternative that meets minimum satisfactory conditions of goal
21 In civil-military command and control systems
under the stress of nuclear crisis decision making, the first available alternative may quite literally be the
last; or so policymakers and their military advisors may persuade themselves. Accordingly, the bias toward prompt and adequate solutions is
strong. During the Cuban missile crisis, a number of members of the presidential advisory group
continued to propound an air strike and invasion of Cuba during the entire 13 days of crisis deliberation.
Had less time been available for debate and had President Kennedy not deliberately structured the discussion in a way that forced alternatives to the surface,
the air strike and invasion might well have been the chosen alternative.22 Fourth and finally on the issue of crisis
management, infowar can cause flawed images of each side’s intentions and capabilities to be conveyed to the
other, with potentially disastrous results. Another example from the Cuban crisis demonstrates the possible side effects of simple misunderstanding and
noncommunication on US crisis management. At the most tense period of the crisis, a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft got off
course and strayed into Soviet airspace. US and Soviet fighters scrambled, and a possible Arctic
confrontation of air forces loomed. Khrushchev later told Kennedy that Soviet air defenses might have interpreted the U-2 flight as a prestrike reconnaissance
mission or as a bomber, calling for a compensatory response by Moscow.23 Fortunately Moscow chose to give the United States the
benefit of the doubt in this instance and to permit US fighters to escort the wayward U-2 back to Alaska.
attainment is strong enough under normal conditions in nonmilitary bureaucratic organizations.
Why this scheduled U-2 mission was not scrubbed once the crisis began has never been fully revealed; the answer may be as simple as bureaucratic inertia compounded by noncommunication
down the chain of command by policymakers who failed to appreciate the risk of “normal” reconnaissance under these extraordinary conditions. Further Issues and Implications The outcome
Despite the best efforts of crisis participants,
the dispute may degenerate into a nuclear first use or first strike by one side and retaliation by the
of a nuclear crisis management scenario influenced by information operations may not be a favorable one.
other. In that situation, information operations by either, or both, sides might make it more difficult to limit the
war and bring it to a conclusion before catastrophic destruction and loss of life had taken place. Although there
are no such things as “small” nuclear wars, compared to conventional wars, there can be different kinds of “nuclear” wars in terms of their proximate causes and consequences.24
Possibilities include a nuclear attack from an unknown source; an ambiguous case of possible, but not
proved, nuclear first use; a nuclear “test” detonation intended to intimidate but with no immediate
destruction; and a conventional strike mistaken, at least initially, for a nuclear one. As George Quester has noted: The
United States and other powers have developed some very large and powerful conventional warheads, intended for destroying the hardened underground bunkers that may house an enemy
bunker-buster” bombs radiate a sound signal when they are used and
an underground seismic signal that could be mistaken from a distance for the signature of a small
nuclear warhead.25 The dominant scenario of a general nuclear war between the United States and the
Soviet Union preoccupied Cold War policymakers, and under that assumption concerns about escalation
control and war termination were swamped by apocalyptic visions of the end of days. The second
nuclear age, roughly coinciding with the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, offers a more complicated menu of nuclear
possibilities and responses.26 Interest in the threat or use of nuclear weapons by rogue states, by aspiring regional hegemons, or by terrorists abetted by the possible
command post or a hard-sheltered weapons system. Such “
spread of nuclear weapons among currently nonnuclear weapons states stretches the ingenuity of military planners and fiction writers. In addition to the world’s worst characters engaged in
there is also the possibility of backsliding in political conditions, as between the United
States and Russia, or Russia and China, or China and India (among current nuclear weapons states). Politically unthinkable
conflicts of one decade have a way of evolving into the politically unavoidable wars of another—World
War I is instructive in this regard. The war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 was a reminder that local
conflicts on regional fault lines between blocs or major powers have the potential to expand into worse.
nuclear threat of first use,
Extinction
Guterl 12 Guterl, executive editor – Scientific American, 11/28/’12
(Fred, “Armageddon 2.0,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) The
world lived for half a century with the constant specter of nuclear
war and its potentially devastating consequences. The end of the Cold War took the potency out of this
Armageddon scenario, yet the existential dangers have only multiplied. Today the technologies that pose some of the
biggest problems are not so much military as commercial. They come from biology, energy production, and the information
sciences -- and are the very technologies that have fueled our prodigious growth as a species. They are far more seductive than nuclear
weapons, and more difficult to extricate ourselves from. The technologies we worry about today form the
basis of our global civilization and are essential to our survival. The mistake many of us make about the darker aspects of our hightech civilization is in thinking that we have plenty of time to address them. We may, if we're lucky. But it's more likely that we have less time than we think.
There may be a limited window of opportunity for preventing catastrophes such as pandemics, runaway climate
change, and cyber attacks on national power grids. Emerging diseases. The influenza pandemic of 2009 is a case in point. Because of rising
prosperity and travel, the world has grown more conducive to a destructive flu virus in recent years, many public health officials believe. Most people probably
remember 2009 as a time when health officials overreacted. But in truth, the 2009 virus came from nowhere, and by the time it reached the radar screens of health
officials, it was already well on its way to spreading far and wide. "H1N1 caught us all with our pants down," says flu expert Robert G. Webster of St. Jude Children's
Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Before it became apparent that the virus was a mild one, health officials must have felt as if they were staring into the
abyss. If the virus had been as deadly as, say, the 1918 flu virus or some more recent strains of bird flu, the result would have rivaled what the planners of the 1950s
expected from a nuclear war. It would have been a "total disaster," Webster says. "You wouldn't get the gasoline for your car, you wouldn't get the electricity for
your power, you wouldn't get the medicines you need. Society as we know it would fall apart." Climate change. Climate is another potentially urgent risk. It's easy to
think about greenhouse gases as a long-term problem, but the current rate of change in the Arctic has alarmed more and more scientists in recent years. Tim
Lenton, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter in England, has looked at climate from the standpoint of tipping points -- sudden changes that are not reflected
in current climate models. We may already have reached a tipping point -- a transition to a new state in which the Arctic is ice-free during the summer months.
Perhaps the most alarming of Lenton's tipping points is the Indian summer monsoon. Smoke from household fires, and soot from automobiles and buses in crowded
cities, rises into the atmosphere and drifts out over the Indian Ocean, changing the atmospheric dynamics upon which the monsoon depends -- keeping much of the
sun's energy from reaching the surface, and lessening the power of storms. At the same time, the buildup of greenhouse gases -- emitted mainly from developed
countries in the northern hemisphere -- has a very different effect on the Indian summer monsoon: It makes it stronger. These two opposite influences make the
fate of the monsoon difficult to predict and subject to instability. A small influence -- a bit more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and a bit more brown haze -could have an outsize effect. The Indian monsoon, Lenton believes, could be teetering on a knife's edge, ready to change abruptly in ways that are hard to predict.
What happens then? More than a billion people depend on the monsoon's rains. Other tipping points may be in play, says Lenton. The West African monsoon is
potentially near a tipping point. So are Greenland's glaciers, which hold enough water to raise sea levels by more than 20 feet; and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,
which has enough ice to raise sea levels by at least 10 feet. Regional tipping points could hasten the ill effects of climate change more quickly than currently
projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Computer hacking. The computer industry has already made it possible for computers to handle a
variety of tasks without human intervention. Autonomous computers, using techniques formerly known as artificial intelligence, have
begun to
exert control in virtually every sphere of our lives. Cars, for instance, can now take action to avoid collisions. To do this, a car has to
make decisions: When does it take control? How much braking power should be applied, and to which wheels? And when should the car allow its reflex-challenged
driver to regain control? Cars that drive themselves, currently being field tested, could hit dealer showrooms in a few years. Autonomous
computers
can make our lives easier and safer, but they can also make them more dangerous. A case in point is Stuxnet, the computer worm designed
by the US and Israel to attack Iran's nuclear fuel program. It is a watershed in the brief history of malware -- the Jason Bourne of computer code, designed
for maximum autonomy and effectiveness. Stuxnet's creators gave their program the best training possible: they stocked it with detailed technical knowledge that
would come in handy for whatever situation Stuxnet could conceivably encounter. Although the software included rendezvous procedures and communication
codes for reporting back to headquarters, Stuxnet
was built to survive and carry out its mission even if it found itself cut
off. The uranium centrifuges that Stuxnet attacked are very similar in principle to the generators that power the
US electrical grid. Both are monitored and controlled by programmable-logic computer chips. Stuxnet cleverly caused the uranium centrifuges to throw
themselves off-balance, inflicting enough damage to set the Iranian nuclear industry back by 18 months or more. A similar piece of malware
installed on the computers that control the generators at the base of the Grand Coulee Dam would likewise cause
them to shake, rattle, and roll -- and eventually explode. If Stuxnet-like malware were to insinuate itself into a few hundred power generators in the
United States and attack them all at once, the damage would be enough to cause blackouts on the East and West Coasts. With such widespread
destruction, it could take many months to restore power to the grid. It seems incredible that this should be so, but the
worldwide capacity to manufacture generator parts is limited. Generators generally last 30 years, sometimes 50, so normally
there's little need for replacements. The main demand for generators is in China, India, and other parts of rapidly
developing Asia. That's where the manufacturers are -- not in the United States. Even if the United States, in crisis mode, put full diplomatic
pressure on supplier nations -- or launched a military invasion to take over manufacturing facilities -- the capacity to ramp up production
would be severely limited. Worldwide production currently amounts to only a few hundred generators per year. The consequences of
going without power for months, across a large swath of the United States, would be devastating. Backup
electrical generators in hospitals and other vulnerable facilities would have to rely on fuel that would be in high demand.
Diabetics would go without their insulin; heart attack victims would not have their defibrillators; and sick people would have no place to go. Businesses would run
out of inventory and extra capacity. Grocery
stores would run out of food, and deliveries of all sorts would virtually cease (no gasoline
for trucks and airplanes, trains would be down). As we saw with the blackouts caused by Hurricane Sandy, gas stations couldn't pump gas
from their tanks, and fuel-carrying trucks wouldn't be able to fill up at refueling stations. Without power, the economy would virtually cease, and if
power failed over a large enough portion of the country, simply trucking in supplies from elsewhere would not be adequate to cover
the needs of hundreds of millions of people. People would start to die by the thousands, then by the tens of thousands, and
eventually the millions. The loss of the power grid would put nuclear plants on backup, but how many of those systems would fail, causing
meltdowns, as we saw at Fukushima? The loss in human life would quickly reach, and perhaps exceed, After eight to 10
days, about 72 percent of all economic activity, as measured by GDP, would shut down, according to an analysis by Scott Borg, a
cybersecurity expert.
yes motive
Cyber-threat is high
Jordain Carney 14, Staff @ National Journal, “Defense Leaders Say Cyber is Top Terror Threat,” 1-6-14,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/defense-leaders-say-cyber-is-top-terror-threat-20140106,
DOA: 8-13-14, y2k
Defense officials see cyberattacks as the greatest threat to U.S. national security, according to a survey released
Monday. Forty-five percent of respondents to the Defense News Leadership Poll named a cyberattack as the single greatest
threat—nearly 20 percentage points above terrorism, which ranked second. The Defense News Leadership Poll, underwritten by United Technologies,
surveyed 352 Defense News subscribers, based on job seniority, between Nov. 14 and Nov. 28, 2013. The poll targeted senior
employees within the White House, Pentagon, Congress, and the defense industry. "The magnitude of the
cyber problem, combined with declining budgets, will challenge the nation for years to come," said Vago Muradian, the editor of Defense
News. It's not the first time cyber has ranked at or near the top of a list of security concerns. Seventy percent of Americans called a cyberattack from another
country a major threat in a Pew Research Center survey released last month. Defense Department officials, for their part, have warned about the increasing threat.
FBI Director James Comey, Rand Beers, the then-acting secretary for the Homeland Security Department, and
Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, each voiced their concerns before Congress last year. And House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., called it the "largest national security threat to the face the U.S.
that we are not even close to being prepared to handle as a country."
goes nuclear
Cyber attacks are likely and lead to nuclear weapon use (laundry list)
Lu 15 (U.S. Army Major Quan Hai T. Lu is the Deputy Chief of Systems Vulnerability & Assessment at the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency. He served as a company commander with the 82d Airborne Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He holds a M.S. degree in nuclear engineering and is a Countering WMD Graduate Fellow at National Defense University.
“Cyber Attacks: The New WMD Challenge to the Interagency” 5/15 http://thesimonscenter.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/IAJ-6-2-Spring-2015-48-57.pdf /lg)
The methods and means may be different, but a cyber attack on chemical facilities, biological research labs, nuclear power plants, and the nuclear command and
control nodes is, in important ways, effectively equivalent to an adversary using WMD. Cyber
attacks causing an explosion at a chemical
factory and releasing toxic industrial chemicals/toxic industrial materials (TICS/TIMS) into the surrounding environment
may have the same physical and psychological effects as chemical weapons. Similarly, cyber attacks on nuclear
power plants that cause a reactor meltdown and release harmful radioactive material may cause
psychological and economic impacts similar to a radiological dispersal device (RDD). Genetic information for biological weapons stolen
through cyber attacks from bioresearch facilities may accelerate adversaries’ ability to acquire or develop biological WMDs. Insider cyber attacks on
nuclear command and control systems may result in an unintentional detonation of a nuclear weapon or
the disablement, disruption, and destruction of critical systems during a national emergency. The approaches
and devices are nontraditional, but cyber attacks on chemical, biological, nuclear power, and military nuclear
command and control facilities can have effects comparable to those of a WMD. Cyber attacks on other
U.S. critical infrastructure can also cause mass damage and casualties. For example, an attack on the power
grid that stops the supply of power for a long time over a wide area may cause a humanitarian crisis. Cyber
attacks on commerce may cause hundreds of billions of dollar in damages, hurting people at every
socioeconomic level. Cyber attacks on one or more nodes in the complex system of infrastructures that
sustains the U.S. may massively disrupt—or perhaps destroy—the conduct of U.S. civil society. Indeed,
damages resulting from a successful cyber attack on critical infrastructure can be worse than some WMD attacks. The cyber threat is not lurking
somewhere over a distant horizon; it is here. News reports about a security breach or cyber attacks occur daily. Everything is connected to
the internet or is in the process of being connected, and a cyber attack on these interconnected systems has the potential for WMD-like consequences. Millions of
electronic devices transformed U.S. civil society into a world economic and military superpower in the latter half of the twentieth century. Trillions of devices—from
planes, trains, and automobile to thermostats, smart watches, and everything in between— are increasingly getting connected to the internet. Because of the
comprehensive nature of the cyber threat, the interagency cannot ignore the possible WMD-like consequences that a cyber attack could pose. Technology
is
advancing at an exponential rate, rendering traditional defensive measures or even simple legislation
remedies to protect U.S. interests inadequate to the threat. Even if adequate, both are liable to become obsolete before they can
be effectively implemented. A defensive posture alone is inadequate to protect the U.S. against cyber attacks
because the U.S. cannot defend everywhere at all times. A determined adversary will only need to find one weakness and
concentrate its resources to conduct a successful cyber attack. Hence, interagency partners—and not just the Department of Defense—must consider their
respective roles in both cyber-defensive and cyber-offensive operations.
Cyber attacks escalate nuclear war fast
Austin 13 (Greg Austin, PhD in IR, director of policy innovation at the EastWest Institute, “Costs of
American Cyber Superiority” August 6, 2013, China-US Focus)
The NSA Prism program exists because it is technologically possible and there have been no effective restraints on
its international targeting. This lack of restraint is especially important because the command and control of
strategic nuclear weapons is a potential target both of cyber espionage and offensive cyber operations.
The argument here is not to suggest a similarity between the weapons themselves, but to identify correctly the very close
relationship between cyber operations and nuclear weapons planning. Thus the lack of restraint in cyber
weapons might arguably affect (destabilize) pre-existing agreements that constrain nuclear weapons
deployment and possible use. The cyber superiority of the United States, while legal and understandable, is now a cause of
strategic instability between nuclear armed powers. This is similar to the situation that persisted with
nuclear weapons themselves until 1969 when the USSR first proposed an end of the race for the technological frontier of
potential planetary devastation. After achieving initial capability, the U.S. nuclear missile build up was not a rational military response to each step increase in Soviet
military capability. It was a race for the technological frontier – by both sides – with insufficient recognition of the consequences. This conclusion was borne out by a
remarkable Top Secret study commissioned in 1974 by the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Dr James Schlesinger. By the time it was completed and submitted in 1981, it
assessed that the nuclear arms build-up by both sides was driven – not by a supposed tit for tat escalation in capability of deployed military systems – but rather by
an unconstrained race for the technological limits of each side’s military potential and by its own military doctrinal preferences. The decisions of each side were not
for the most part, according to this now declassified study, a direct response to particular systems that the other side was building. In 1969, the
USSR acted
first to propose an end to the race for the technological frontier of nuclear weapons because it knew it was losing the
contest and because it knew there was political sentiment in the United States and in its Allied countries
that supported limitations on the unbridled nuclear fetish. As we ponder the American cyber industrial
complex of today, we see a similar constellation of opposition to its power emerging. This constellation
includes not just the political rivals who see they are losing in cyber space (China and Russia), but nervous allies who
see themselves as the likely biggest victims of the American race for cyber superiority, and loyal American military
commanders who can see the risks and dangers of that quest. It is time for the United States to take stock of the collateral damage
that its quest for cyber military power, including its understandable quest for intelligence superiority over the terrorist enemy, has
caused amongst its allies. The loss has not yet been seen at the high political level among allies, in spite of several pro forma requests for information
from countries such as Germany. The loss of U.S. credibility has happened more at the popular level. Around the
world, once loyal supporters of the United States in its war on terrorism had a reasonable expectation to be
treated as faithful allies. They had the expectation, perhaps naïve, that privacy was a value the Americans shared with them. They did not
expect to be subject to such a crude distinction (“you are all non-Americans now”). They did not want to know that
their entire personal lives in cyber space are now recoverable – should someone so decide – by the running of a bit of software in the NSA. After the Prism
revelations, so many of these foreign citizens with an internationalist persuasion and solidarity for the United States now feel a little betrayed. Yet, in the long run,
the most influential voice to end the American quest for cyber military superiority may come from its own armed forces. There are military
figures in the
United States who have had responsibility for nuclear weapons command and control systems and who, in
private, counsel caution. They advocate the need to abandon the quest for cyber dominance and pursue a strategy
of “mutual security” in cyber space – though that has yet to be defined. They cite military exercises where the Blue
team gets little or no warning of Red team disruptive cyber attack on systems that might affect critical
nuclear command and control or wider war mobilization functions. Strategic nuclear stability may be at
risk because of uncertainty about innovations in cyber attack capability. This question is worth much more attention.
critical infrastructure/spillover
A cyber attack causes a domino effect that damages critical infrastructure
Menarshi 15- (Harel, fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Herzliya
Interdisciplinary Center, “Critical Infrastructures and their Interdependence in a Cyber Attack –The Case
of the U.S.” 3/15, http://www.inss.org.il/uploadImages/systemFiles/5_Menashri_Baram.pdf /lg)
There is a link between the infrastructures in industrialized countries like the U.S. and the infrastructures in other countries, and at times they are dependent upon
each other. The
global economy and trade relations between countries rely on electronic communications
that facilitate ties, commercial transactions, and transmission of information and knowledge around the
world at almost the speed of light. In many countries, technological progress – mainly in the field of communications – enables giant international corporations
to operate and maintain this infrastructure. American corporations also invest resources in the infrastructures and economies of other countries. The global
economy depends on a constant supply of energy resources. For example, the Chinese economy depends on a supply of energy
resources from the Persian Gulf. The introduction of critical infrastructures into all industrial sectors (such as water, energy, transportation, and the like) is
accompanied by major long-term investments. Construction of these infrastructures takes many years, and therefore the management, monitoring, and control
system for these infrastructures (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, SCADA), which are based on programmed industrial controllers, are infrequently revised,
unlike the prevailing frenetic and rapid time spans in the current cyber world. Accordingly, an assessment of the durability of infrastructure systems is also based on
conservative models which, despite the time that has passed since they were developed, are still valid and relevant. According to the model set forth by Steven
Rinaldi,6 when
countries share common infrastructures, for example electricity, water, and gas, an attack
on the infrastructure of one country is liable to affect the infrastructure of the other country. Clearly,
the U.S. infrastructures and economy are liable to suffer devastating damage if the infrastructure and
economies of other countries linked to them are attacked. Together with the interdependency between
countries, there is also mutual interdependence between infrastructures within the same country. An
attack on one infrastructure is liable to cause a chain reaction or domino effect, in which infrastructures
are damaged one after another.
A cyber attack decimates a laundry list of critical infrastructure
Menarshi 15- (Harel, fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Herzliya
Interdisciplinary Center, “Critical Infrastructures and their Interdependence in a Cyber Attack –The Case
of the U.S.” 3/15, http://www.inss.org.il/uploadImages/systemFiles/5_Menashri_Baram.pdf /lg)
Infrastructure that produces electricity depends on a resource supplied through other infrastructure, such as oil or gas. An attack on the oil or gas infrastructure will
affect the electrical infrastructure. 2. An attack on financial infrastructures, such as a stock exchange and banks, is liable to damage other infrastructures that
require a flow of cash for their activity. Obviously, other scenarios
of damage to public order due to economic problems are
also possible. 3. An attack on the U.S. railway infrastructure is liable to have a severe effect on trade in
the U.S. and its economy, and could cause food shortages in various regions throughout the country
within a few days. 4. An attack on power plants or the transforming of electricity during peak periods is
liable to cause a chain reaction in which additional power plants stop functioning. Such an event occurred in the U.S.
in August 2003, when an operational malfunction in a transforming plant resulting from negligence caused a crash in electricity production and supply systems. This
was the worst power blackout in the history of North America – residents of the northeastern U.S. and Canada were cut off from the electricity grid for many hours
and even days.7 5. An
attack on electrical infrastructure is liable to have an immediate effect on other national
and municipal infrastructures: hospitals, industrial production, and damage to communications and
transportation systems, mainly on land, but also certain air transportation systems. 6. An attack on the traffic system in a busy traffic lane will cause a
transportation chain reaction that will affect other systems whose activity depends on transportation infrastructures.
environment
Data processing is high vulnerable – cyber attack risks environmental degradation
Drobny 13 (Chuck, president and chief executive officer of Houston-based GlobaLogiX. He previously served as vice president of
operations, overseeing all the company’s field service shops and staff. Before joining GlobaLogix in 2006, Drobny was chief operating officer of
Boatracs, where he implemented communication and vessel management technology and software solutions for customers ranging from river
towboats to offshore supply vessels and North Atlantic fishing boats. In previous positions, Drobny managed engineering operations and
maintenance on Ingram Barge Company’s fleet of 4,000 barges, and provided engineering analysis as a Mobil Oil representative. Drobny holds a
bachelor’s in engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and a master’s in business management from the University of
Cincinnati., “Cyber Security Strategy Key To SCADA,” 7/13 http://www.aogr.com/web-exclusives/exclusive-story/cyber-security-strategy-key-toscada, /lg)
Four Major Weaknesses SCADA’s
complexity indicates how much can go wrong electronically if an oil and gas
company’s systems are hacked or compromised. Of four major weaknesses, one involves having no security on the local
area network (LAN). Frequently, a wireless network in the field, similar to ones in offices, is used to communicate with
individual sensors. Also, some networks have open protocols, which allow anyone to access that LAN. Both are examples of LANs having no security, no
virus scanning, and no perimeter defense. Second, fire walls typically are the sole security provision. Many companies
have a single-source fire wall at their network operations or data center, essentially functioning as a perimeter defense to
scan incoming data packets. However, when a large volume of data is entering, the fire wall (which is only a filter and is not an
impenetrable blockade) can be overwhelmed by too much volume or by too much complexity or sophistication. As a practical matter, a fire
wall, as a filtering mechanism, only views each data packet and figuratively says a packet is either okay or not okay. The third weakness is multiple
access points in a LAN to network. Virtually every flowmeter and processor in the field has open protocols for
COM, USB or serial ports, which allow access into that network. Unfortunately, many are legacy access points created years ago
when cyber security concerns were neither appreciated nor apparent. Generally, companies do not retrofit old equipment or older
mechanisms, because economics do not justify retrofits that do not improve operations. The fourth
weakness is a lack of physical security. This shortcoming often is evident when people can walk into an office unnoticed, sit at a computer
monitor and unobtrusively access the system. Although some companies do have good security with locked doors or
restricted access to programs, personnel do leave doors unlocked and access readily available–aside from
stolen laptops, tablets and mobile devices, which afford hackers remote access to a company’s systems. Today’s increased access for employees often becomes a
higher incidence of vulnerabilities. In other words, vulnerabilities have become a numbers game, with security policies that too often are not rigorously enforced or
even in place. Serious Potential Risks When these kinds of security weaknesses are allowed to go virtually unchecked, multiple risks hang over companies. These
include the most devastating and grievous: risks to human life. With
the industry’s numerous remote locations, risks to individuals
public is involved when operations are near populous
areas. Anytime a safety system potentially can be compromised, ramifications for disaster are tilted
easily toward injuries or loss of life because systems that fail are not fundamentally benign, but have tremendous stored kinetic energy. The
consequences can be huge, anytime an alarm does not sound or a valve does not close because a system has been hacked
remotely. Another risk of compromised systems is to the environment. Even a small spill is not
innocuous if, for example, it infiltrates a water table or part of an aquifer. Worse, some risks could go
unremediated simply because they went unnoticed. Third, risks to a company’s reputation can be severe
and immediate, but also difficult to cleanse or repair over a long period. A company’s image, which may have been built up
carefully over decades with customers, vendors and the public, can be exceptionally sullied. As a consequence, it hurts recruitment
because previously likely candidates may have become disillusioned with what the company appears to
stand for. Fourth is the risk to physical assets and lost production resulting from cyber sabotage. Perhaps ironically, production loss tends to account for the
primarily occur with company personnel. Other times, however, the
smallest percentage, since once the loss is experienced and attributed to malware, a company is obligated to shut down its other operations where malware also
may have struck. However, various
other unaffected systems may have to be shut down also on the basis of
diligence, which is where revenue loss does occur and begins growing. Damage potential creates the
management quandary. If a company has a field where data are compromised and a pad goes bad, does management assume that only the one
observed pad is bad? Or should the entire network be shut down? Incidents such as this have shown that company profit margins for an entire quarter actually have
eroded through one significant attack and what had to be done to stave off human or property disasters.
chemical industry
Cyber attacks exploit chemical facilities and result in the release of dangerous
chemicals
Lu 15 (U.S. Army Major Quan Hai T. Lu is the Deputy Chief of Systems Vulnerability & Assessment at the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency. He served as a company commander with the 82d Airborne Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He holds a M.S. degree in nuclear engineering and is a Countering WMD Graduate Fellow at National Defense University.
“Cyber Attacks: The New WMD Challenge to the Interagency” 5/15 http://thesimonscenter.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/IAJ-6-2-Spring-2015-48-57.pdf /lg)
Chemical facilities share the same cybernetwork commonalities as other U.S. critical infrastructures. Their industrial control systems have
the same network vulnerabilities that can be exploited by adversaries. From 2006 to 2009, the Government
Accountability Office found a 400 percent increase in cyber attacks on chemical facilities.6 The ubiquitous
reliance on TICs/TIMs and their proximity to the civilian population make the chemical industry a target
for terrorist hackers. A recent study found that one in three American schoolchildren attend school within the danger zone of a hazardous chemical
facility. Some 19.6 million children in public and private schools in forty-eight states are within the
vulnerability zone of at least one chemical facility, according to data the facilities provided to the Environmental Protection Agency.7 In
2006, Congress established the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program to help regulate high-risk chemical facilities. However, in 2013, a massive
chemical explosion that killed 15 people and injured another 226 at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, showed that the speed with which Arthur D. Simons
Center for Interagency Cooperation, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Features | 51 the DHS is able to inspect high-risk chemical plants is inadequate.8 A cyber
attack on chemical facilities designed to release TICs/TIMs is no different in effect than using chemicals
in warfare or terrorist attacks. In fact, the effect might be greater, as the affected population is likely to
be almost entirely unprotected. For example, hydrogen cyanide gas released from a deliberately staged industrial fire may cause severe
respiratory distress to an unsuspecting civilian population. Hydrazine released in an improvised explosive device can cause skin burns and blisters. To take a
historical example, the 1984 methyl
isocyanate accident in Bhopal, India, killed thousands and injured over a
hundred thousand civilians.9 The triggering and dispersal method may be different, but the consequence
of releasing TICs/TIMs could result in the same WMD-like consequences.
satellites thread
Cyber-attacks jam environmental satellites—empirics prove
Johnson 11 Nicole, Information Technology Reporter at Federal Times, “Cyber attacks targeted U.S.
satellites,” 10/28/11, http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20111028/IT01/110280301/lg)
Cyber hackers "achieved all steps required to command" a NASA satellite, which put the satellite at risk
of being destroyed or damaged, according to a draft report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The Terra EOS AM-1
satellite, used to study climate and environmental changes, experienced nine or more minutes of
interference in October 2008, according to the draft report, obtained by Federal Times. The report also notes an earlier
incident in June 2008 when the NASA satellite experienced two or more minutes of interference. The report did not say explicitly that the hackers were
Chinese, but it said the techniques of the hackers "appear consistent with authoritative Chinese military
writings." A final version of the report will be sent to Congress on Nov. 16. NASA spokesman Trent Perrotto confirmed that there was a "suspicious event" with
the spacecraft in the summer and fall of 2008, but no data was manipulated. Perrotto said no commands were successfully sent to the
satellite, but NASA could not say whether hackers gained command of the satellite. NASA notified the Defense
Department of the incidents, he said. DoD is responsible for investigating any attempted interference with satellite operations. The draft report noted that
hackers did not issue commands to the satellite, but the interference "poses numerous potential
threats." For example: • Access to a satellite‘s controls could allow an attacker to damage or destroy the
satellite. • The attacker could deny or manipulate the satellite‘s transmission. • An attacker could reveal
the satellite‘s capabilities or information, such as imagery, gained through its sensors. The U.S.
Geological Survey was also a victim of cyber attacks, the report said.
Environmental Satellites solve warming
Lewis 10 (Director and Senior Fellow, Technology and Public Policy Program – CSIS, Ladislaw: Senior
Fellow, Energy and National Security Program – CSIS, Zheng: Congressional Staffer - Salary Data (James,
Sarah O. Ladislaw, Denise E. Zheng, 6/10, “Earth Observation for Climate Change,”
http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdf /lg)
Climate change will have pervasive and unavoidable effects on economic and national security. Managing these consequences and mitigating them when possible
are new and difficult tasks for governments. Progress in mitigating and adapting to climate change will require the world’s countries to agree to coordinate their
actions. Reaching such agreement will be no easy task. That said, climate
change offers a unique opportunity for the United
States to engage other nations in pursuing common interests and addressing future challenges. Not only is
the United States well positioned to lead on this issue because of its significant space and scientific capacity, it also faces global expectations
that it should shoulder the leadership burden for climate change. A commitment to building the space
and information infrastructure needed to manage climate change could demonstrate the U.S.
leadership, based on competence and advancing the global good, that the world respects and admires. Operationalization is the next step
for dealing with climate change—to make the data and knowledge generation by satellites and science
easier to use in policymaking. Operationalization requires a new approach. Climate change has largely been an issue of science. The existing
vehicles for international cooperation and data sharing are aimed at the scientific community. Effective
global management of climate requires a new approach with three integrated elements—space,
networks, and collaboration. Our belief is that a concerted effort to analyze and share data from the many
national efforts could significantly advance our understanding of the risks and causes of climate change,
better measure the effects of mitigation policies, and guide planning on how to adapt to changes in the environment. Achieving such a concerted effort will require
coordination must occur on several different levels if it is to have a meaningful effect. The first—the
collection and measurement of
relevant data—depends largely on satellites. Without the proper data, it would be very difficult to
develop and aggregate a global picture of climate change and its nature and pace. It would be difficult to measure
the effects of mitigation efforts, determine when or whether policies are effective, or predict when and how climate effects will affect local
communities. The second level is to expand the analysis and sharing of information. In some ways, we are only in the early stages of developing a global enterprise
for assessing climate change. Much
of the research and analysis conducted thus far has been focused on
understanding the nature and pace of climate change, forecasting future changes in Earth’s natural
systems based on changes in different variables, and substantiating theories about how human efforts
to reduce the effects of climate change might actually have some effect. More work is needed in each area to
improve our understanding and update it as the natural environment continues to change. Finally, data must move from the scientific community to the policy
community—to governments and policymakers—if data are to guide change. While the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tailored analysis to meet
policymakers’ needs in the hopes of reaching a global consensus for action, the challenge today is to extend and strengthen connections between the science and
policy communities. A coordinated multinational effort to better inform the policy process can change this. Our belief is that a concerted effort to analyze and share
data from the many national efforts could significantly advance our understanding of the risks and causes of climate change, better measure the effects of
mitigation, and guide planning on adapting to changes in the environment. To this end, our recommendations follow: The
U.S. approach to climate
change policy needs to inform decisionmakers and planners in both government and the private sector
by providing understandable metrics and analyses of the effectiveness of, and compliance with,
mitigation programs and adaption plans. The customers for this should include federal agencies, state and local governments, private sector
users, and other nations. To better serve the national interest, the United States should increase its Earth observation
capabilities—especially space-based sensors for carbon monitoring—to improve our ability to
understand the carbon cycle and to inform any future international agreement. This means that until these capabilities
are adequate for monitoring climate change, investment in Earth observation satellites should take precedence over
other space programs. Increased spending on earth observation satellites specifically designed for climate change should be maintained until the
current capability shortfall is eliminated.
navy thread
Cyberattacks devastate the navy- leaves ships stranded
Breaking Defense 12 (“Navy Warships Brace For Cyber Attacks” 1/10/12,
http://breakingdefense.com/2012/01/navy-warships-brace-for-cyber-attacks/ lg)
Cyberwarfare remains the preeminent threat to U.S. naval forces around the world, Vice Adm. Richard Hunt,
commander of naval surface forces, said today. The Navy, along with the rest of the Pentagon and U.S. government, are constantly pursuing ways to fortify
government networks from cyberattacks. Many
of these attacks are allegedly launched by China or their allies across
the globe. Aside from protecting its key networks, Navy leaders are also looking at ways to keep the fleet combat ready in the wake of a
cyberattack. Hunt stressed maintaining the readiness and resilience of Navy warships, even if critical communication networks are clipped due to a cyberattack. One
strategy Hunt and other Navy leaders are exploring is extending how long a ship can sustain itself at sea without resupply. If
a cyberattack cripples a
ship's navigation and communications systems, it is essentialy on its own. A ship's crew can survive and
fight without resupply or support for only a finite amount of time. Since there is no guarantee when that
isolated ship will be able to reestablish comms with the rest of the fleet, service leaders want to stretch how long that
vessel can fend for itself in contested waters, Hunt explained. "We need to find a way to work around that," he added.
Cyberattacks destroy the navy- bases depend on the electrical grid
Ewing 10 -(Phillip, staff writer “Cyber boss says base utilities are vulnerable” 9/23/10
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/09/navy-cyber-hearing-vulnerabilities-092310w/ lg)
Naval bases are “very vulnerable” to computer attacks that could target the power plants or water
works that serve them, the Navy’s top cyber boss acknowledged Thursday, vowing that Pentagon and fleet officials are coming up with a solution.
Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, head of the Navy’s network-focused 10th Fleet, made the concession in an
appearance before a House Armed Services Committee panel that met to hear how the military services are preparing for the oft-discussed new era of “cyber
warfare.” He was responding to a question from Rep.
James Langevin, D-R.I., who said that the U.S. electrical grid itself
was generally vulnerable to cyber attacks. “These systems you discuss are very vulnerable to attack,”
McCullough said. So far, Navy commanders have begin to ask Navy Installations Command to pick out critical
points in base support networks. “Do we have a plan for an alternative power source, water source?” McCullough said. “A lot of this is
single-source into a base, and if you take that away, while you have some limited backup power
generation, it’s very limited for things such as water, sewer and so forth.” McCullough said he and his counterparts — he
appeared with the top cyber commanders of the other three military services — were aware of the
vulnerabilities, and he said they work with the Department of Homeland Security “to get at the root issue, and we’re working in that direction.” As Pentagon
commanders determine which of their myriad agencies is responsible for defending which computer networks, Langevin said he didn’t want
them to lose sight of the reality that they could be hurt by attacks outside of their purview. He cited a 2007 example in which
engineers at the Idaho National Laboratory demonstrated they could use a computer attack to destroy
an electrical generator in a power plant. “I hope we can pay particular attention to this,” Langevin said. “One of the
vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure is the threat to the electric grid. So many of our bases depend on
local power systems, many of them off-base, and if they’re not secure, then clearly our bases are not
going to be secure.”
energy sector
Cyber attack on a US gas system hurts the economy
Lu 15 (U.S. Army Major Quan Hai T. Lu is the Deputy Chief of Systems Vulnerability & Assessment at the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency. He served as a company commander with the 82d Airborne Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He holds a M.S. degree in nuclear engineering and is a Countering WMD Graduate Fellow at National Defense University.
“Cyber Attacks: The New WMD Challenge to the Interagency” 5/15 http://thesimonscenter.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/IAJ-6-2-Spring-2015-48-57.pdf /lg)
U.S. petroleum and gas systems are also vulnerable to cyber attacks. Vulnerabilities exploited in
petroleum and gas facilities abroad presage possible similar exploitations in U.S. facilities. For example, the
data-destruction attacks on Saudi Aramco and on Qatar’s RasGas gas company in 2013 represent a major shift
from cyber spying on oil and gas companies to more widespread destruction of their operations.10 In June
1982, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was alleged to have caused a Siberian pipeline to explode with a so-called
logic bomb. The target was a Soviet pipeline and the resulting explosion was detected by U.S. early warning satellites.11 The covert operation
sabotaged the pipeline’s control systems with malicious code. Even though the attack caused no direct casualties, harm came to
the Soviet economy.12 Coupled with the Soviet’s weak economy and U.S. military build-up, one could argue that the cyber attack contributed to
the fall of the Soviet Union. More recently and closer to home, in March 2012, the DHS reported ongoing cyber intrusions
among U.S. natural gas pipeline operators.13 A successful cyber attack on the U.S. petroleum and gas
distribution and production system could cause significant harm to the U.S. economy.
health care
An attack on a hospital would result in massive death and privacy violations- turns
case
Lu 15 (U.S. Army Major Quan Hai T. Lu is the Deputy Chief of Systems Vulnerability & Assessment at the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency. He served as a company commander with the 82d Airborne Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He holds a M.S. degree in nuclear engineering and is a Countering WMD Graduate Fellow at National Defense University.
“Cyber Attacks: The New WMD Challenge to the Interagency” 5/15 http://thesimonscenter.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/IAJ-6-2-Spring-2015-48-57.pdf /lg)
On August 18, 2014, one of the largest U.S. hospital groups reported that it was the victim of a cyber
attack from China. Personal data including Social Security numbers belonging to 4.5 million patients were
stolen in the largest cyber attack recorded to date by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.14 Hospitals are soft targets where
a cyber attack can cause a lot of damage easily. A cyber attack can shut down an entire hospital network
by threatening information security, system functionality, or device operation. For example, a patient receiving
chemotherapy for cancer attends a therapy session where an automated pump administers the prescribed chemo. A cyber attack causes the routine automated
procedure to spike the dose of the chemo into the patient’s system, causing irreversible harm. The malfunction of one of the pumps puts in question the reliability
of the remaining pumps. Meanwhile, the
cyber attack also disrupts or halts normal hospital operations. New patients
cannot be admitted and current patients’ information is inaccessible. Now imagine similar cyber attacks
occurring during or as part of a mass casualty event. The complex attack would cause mass fatalities.
nuclear reactors
A cyber attack on a nuclear reactor causes mass death, economic despair, and info
theft- turns case
Lu 15 (U.S. Army Major Quan Hai T. Lu is the Deputy Chief of Systems Vulnerability & Assessment at the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency. He served as a company commander with the 82d Airborne Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He holds a M.S. degree in nuclear engineering and is a Countering WMD Graduate Fellow at National Defense University.
“Cyber Attacks: The New WMD Challenge to the Interagency” 5/15 http://thesimonscenter.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/IAJ-6-2-Spring-2015-48-57.pdf /lg)
Cyber attacks that result in release of significant amounts of radioactive material may cause
psychological and economic impact similar to that of an RDD. The number of cyber attacks on nuclear
power plants is increasing at an alarming rate.15 Radiological dispersal— whether from a bomb or a power plant explosion—
may have the potential to cause significant loss of life, radiation casualties, lasting psychological
trauma, and extensive property damage and contamination that will have lasting effects. Radiation
released into the environment likewise has the potential for great harm. Even if a cyber attacker’s objective is not to cause
physical harm per se, the attacker still could inflict economic catastrophe on a populace worried with the “How
clean is clean?” problem in the aftermath of a radiological release. Moreover, cyber attacks not calculated to cause
physical harm could still result in the theft of proprietary information that could be used in later attacks. An
increase number of attacks with few or no effects may simply be a case of hackers perfecting their skill
or probing for vulnerabilities as they wait for a more opportune time to inflict substantial damage. The
motives for attacks are elusive and have as many possible permutations as there are attackers. The rationale for why a disaster has yet to occur from a cyber attack
is just as elusive. Nevertheless, the
already known certainties surrounding possible cyber attacks against nuclear
reactors require the interagency apparatus to confront the cyber threat vigorously.
nuclear weapon enterprise
Cyber attack would damage US weapon systems, hampering nuclear command and
control
Lu 15 (U.S. Army Major Quan Hai T. Lu is the Deputy Chief of Systems Vulnerability & Assessment at the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency. He served as a company commander with the 82d Airborne Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He holds a M.S. degree in nuclear engineering and is a Countering WMD Graduate Fellow at National Defense University.
“Cyber Attacks: The New WMD Challenge to the Interagency” 5/15 http://thesimonscenter.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/IAJ-6-2-Spring-2015-48-57.pdf /lg)
U.S. Air Force General Robert Kehler, former Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, stated in a 2013 Senate hearing that he was very concerned with the
cyberrelated attacks on the U.S. nuclear command and control ( NC2)
and weapon system.16 Much of the NC2 system is analogous to the systems
that control nuclear power plants. Even though the point-to-point and hard-wired nature of the system makes it resilient to external cyberattacks, the system is
still vulnerable to insider attacks. A possible indirect effect of a cyber attack is the theft of nuclear
weapons designs that, in turn, can advance an adversary’s capability to threaten the U.S. For example, in
April, 2013, the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory was successfully hacked and
several megabytes of data were stolen.17 The computer systems at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
are under continuous cyber attacks. The NNSA experiences nearly six million hacking attempts daily,
thousands of which are categorized as “successful.” Even without causing significant damage, the NNSA
has already expended nearly $150 million just to identify and mitigate cyber attacks.18 Cyber attacks can
also indirectly impact NC2 and U.S. weapon systems. The ability to maintain communication between
the President and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) installations, nuclear ballistic submarines (SSBNs), and nuclear
bombers relies on a series of networks that are vulnerable to cyber attacks. The system relies on a
communication and electrical backbone that a catastrophic cyber attack could disrupt or destroy for a
prolonged period and thus have a profound effect on the U.S. ability to conduct its nuclear command
and control.
water/food/ag
Cyber attack would devastate water, food, and agricultural systems
Lu 15 (U.S. Army Major Quan Hai T. Lu is the Deputy Chief of Systems Vulnerability & Assessment at the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency. He served as a company commander with the 82d Airborne Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He holds a M.S. degree in nuclear engineering and is a Countering WMD Graduate Fellow at National Defense University.
“Cyber Attacks: The New WMD Challenge to the Interagency” 5/15 http://thesimonscenter.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/IAJ-6-2-Spring-2015-48-57.pdf /lg)
The risk to the U.S. posed by cyber attacks with the intention to harm consumer confidence in the U.S.
food, water, and the agricultural system can cause severe damage and have large economic impact. In
theory, cyber attacks on the food, water, and agricultural system are less costly and have a lower
technology threshold than traditional WMD. Targets are more vulnerable, and the impact from a successful
cyber attack may be more significant. The cost, lower technology barrier, and vulnerability of targets
may make cyber attacks against the U.S. food, water, and agriculture system more likely than other
kinds of WMD threats, thus requiring special interagency attention to protect against such attacks. Similar to other U.S. critical infrastructure, the water
and wastewater utilities rely on a network of computers and automated data acquisition and control systems to operate and monitor them. The delivery of
potable water to hundreds of millions of people has become, like many other conveniences, routine. Prolonged
interference in the delivery of the water or removal of wastewater may precipitate a severe
environmental issue. A cyber attack that interferes with the purification process—either leaving the water under or
over treated—may result in contaminated water being delivered to the local population and cause a
significant public health problem. A cyber attack that interferes with the distribution of water or
wastewater removal could likewise lead to an overflow of sewage in public waterways and drainage
systems. An attack in a drought-stricken area may exacerbate the problem and have tremendous
economic implications. Successful cyber attacks that interrupt or halt the delivery of potable water or
removal of wastewater for prolonged periods over a wide geographic area may have WMD-like
consequences. The future of food and agriculture is in automation via large-scale robotics. Envision dozens or hundreds of robots with thousands of digital
sensors monitoring, predicting, cultivating, and extracting crops from the land. The automation also produces meats genetically designed and grown from test
tubes— completely independent of a living animal. Working with little or no human intervention, the automated system feeds the hundreds of millions.
Implementation of the systems on a limited scale is already underway.19 Now imagine a
cyber attack that alters the genetic makeup of
the meat to sicken the consumer or to destroy the crops. The cyber attacks would starve millions. The
growing reliance on the automated systems—all vulnerable to cyber attacks—has the potential of
producing mass damage and disruption to U.S. civil society.
at: defenses
Defenses are insufficient
Pew 14 Pew Research Center, citing a slew of experts, October 29, 2014, “Cyber Attacks Likely to
Increase”, http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/29/cyber-attacks-likely-to-increase/
‘Yes’ respondents theme 2) Security is generally not the first concern in the design of Internet applications. It
seems as if the world will only
wake up to these vulnerabilities after catastrophe occurs. Patrick Tucker, futurist and author of The Naked Future: What Happens
In a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? said, “Today, cities around the world use supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems to manage water,
sewage, electricity, and even traffic lights. Independent
analysis has found that these systems suffer from 25 different
security vulnerabilities. That’s bad enough, but then consider how human error and incompetence makes these
common systems even less secure. Many of the IT managers that use these systems haven’t changed
the manufacturer-installed security codes. As writers Indu B. Singh and Joseph N. Pelton have pointed out in The Futurist magazine, that
failure to take even the most basic security precautions leaves these systems open to remote hacking.”
Stuart Umpleby, a systems theory expert and professor at George Washington University wrote, “In addition to cyber attacks there are threats from individuals who
have access (e.g., Manning, Snowden, Bernie Madoff, Steven Cohen). Digital equipment is vulnerable to solar flares and EMP (electromagnetic pulse). There can be
overlooked or underestimated design flaws (e.g., the Y2K bug, Long Term Capital Management, financial derivatives, or the change in the Glass-Steagall Act).
Possible solutions: 1. Decentralization can stop cascade effects. However, decentralization plus connection can lead to vulnerabilities since no one is in charge. 2.
Oversight and regulation. However, technical regulation requires highly skilled people and the private sector pays higher salaries. Firms also try to keep secrets. In
finance the banks are now in a position to write the rules that regulate them. Big banks are getting bigger. So far losses in the billions have been due to financial and
political design flaws more than technical design flaws.” Elena Kvochko, manager for IT industry at an international organization based in New York, noted, “The
possibility of a widespread cyber attack on national critical infrastructure is a major concern for many
governments. The scope and the consequences of such attacks may be different for different nations. However, a large portion of
critical infrastructure facilities still rely on software and technology created decades ago and which
has not been upgraded. The level of sophistication of adversaries generally progresses much faster,
therefore, it is important to implement adequate measures to ensure a proper protection of critical assets and capabilities.” An executive for a major national news
organization in the US wrote, “The
government and the private sector are responding too slowly to this threat.
We’ve already seen the US Chamber of Commerce hacked, allegedly by the Chinese. We’ve seen numerous ‘botnet’ attacks on financial institutions that have
rendered their sites unusable for hours at a time. And, at
the moment, there’s little political will to impose minimal
cybersecurity standards even on ‘essential’ businesses, such as electric utilities, telecommunications
companies and financial institutions. Some Obama administration officials have warned of a coming ‘Cyber Pearl
Harbor.’ Still, the public and many businesses seem sanguine about this possibility.”
Systems are highly vulnerable – the threat will only get worse
Pew 14 Pew Research Center, citing a slew of experts, October 29, 2014, “Cyber Attacks Likely to
Increase”, http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/29/cyber-attacks-likely-to-increase/
‘Yes’ respondents theme 1) Internet-connected systems
are inviting targets. The Internet is a critical infrastructure for national defense
tools already exist to
mount cyber attacks now and they will improve in coming years—but countermeasures will evolve, too. Joe Kochan, chief
operating officer for US Ignite, a company developing gigabit-ready digital experiences and applications, wrote, “Cyber attacks will become a
pillar of warfare and terrorism between now and 2025. So much of a country’s infrastructure—commerce, finance,
energy, education, health care—will be online, and gaining control of or disrupting a country’s online
systems will become a critical goal in future conflicts.” Mark Nall, a program manager for NASA, responded, “Current threats include
activities, energy resources, banking/finance, transportation, and essential daily-life pursuits for billions of people. The
economic transactions, power grid, and air traffic control. This will expand to include others such as self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, and building
infrastructure. In addition to current methods for thwarting opponents, growing use of strong artificial intelligence to monitor and diagnose itself, and other
systems will help as well.” Geoff Livingston on the future of cyber attacks Geoff Livingston, author and president of Tenacity5 Media, responded, “Cyberwar
is
the battlefield of now. Don’t kid yourself. Battlefields in Sudan, Afghanistan, and Syria are real, but there is a new battlefield and every day wars are
won and lost between individuals, businesses, and countries. The Pentagon and China’s military are regularly engaged in digital spats. We really have no idea how
deep this goes, but we are much closer to William Gibson’s vision in the seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer than any of us would like to admit.” Herb Lin, chief
scientist for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board at the National Research Council of the US National Academies of Science, replied, “More likely is
cyber sabotage of individual enterprises. On a large scale, cyber
attacks may be combined with kinetic attacks and the
combination may cause large-scale damage.” Christian Huitema, a distinguished engineer with Microsoft, observed, “We are already
witnessing the theft of trade secrets, with impact well worth tens of billions of dollars. We are also seeing active development of cyber weapons by many world
powers. Historically, such new weapons are always used at least once or twice before nations realize it is too dangerous and start relying on diplomacy.” Stewart
Baker, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson, a Washington law firm, wrote, “Cyberwar
just plain makes sense. Attacking the power grid
or other industrial control systems is asymmetrical and deniable and devilishly effective. Plus, it gets
easier every year. We used to worry about Russia and China taking down our infrastructure. Now we have to worry about Iran and
Syria and North Korea. Next up: Hezbollah and Anonymous.”
Stuxnet was the tip of the iceberg
Pew 14 Pew Research Center, citing a slew of experts, October 29, 2014, “Cyber Attacks Likely to
Increase”, http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/29/cyber-attacks-likely-to-increase/
‘Yes’ respondents theme 3) Major
cyber attacks have already happened, for instance the Stuxnet worm and attacks in nations
where mass opposition to a regime has taken to the streets. Similar or worse attacks are a given. A notable number of respondents cited
Stuxnet and other acts against various populations as evidence that cyber attacks were now integrated into national military and
intelligence strategies. The Stuxnet computer worm, according to a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, infected the
software of at least 14 industrial sites in Iran several years ago. A worm is not like a computer virus, which must be installed—unwittingly—by a user in order to
work. Instead, a worm spreads on its own among computers once it has been introduced to a network. In the case of Stuxnet the worm targeted computer systems
tied to production of Iran’s nuclear program and helped destroy as many as a fifth of the centrifuges. Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher of MIT Technology
Review, wrote, “Oh, sure it is possible. Although not at your defined level, there has already been a ‘Pearl Harbor’ event: the Stuxnet computer worm that was used
to attack Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Do
we really believe that the infrastructure of a major industrial power will not
be so attacked in the next twelve years? The Internet is an insecure network; all industrialized nations
depend on it. They’re wide open.” Stowe Boyd, lead researcher for GigaOM Research, said, “A bellicose China might ‘cyber invade’ the military
capabilities of Japan and South Korea as part of the conflict around the China Sea, leading to the need to reconfigure their electronics, at huge cost. Israel and the
United States have already created the Stuxnet computer worm to damage Iran’s nuclear refinement centrifuges, for example. Imagine a world dependent on
robotic farm vehicles, delivery drones, and AI-managed transport, and how one country might opt to disrupt the spring harvest as a means to damage a neighboring
opponent.” Judith Perrolle, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston, wrote, “The US government’s series of cyber attacks on citizens, economic entities,
and governments around the world has already done this. People have died from faulty equipment producing gas pipeline explosions and from drone bombings of
civilians. US companies have lost billions worth of business as foreign customers no longer trust their products and services. One way to counter such attacks is by
diplomacy and respect for international law, especially by the United States. As one of my students once titled a paper on Stuxnet: ‘People who live in electronic
houses shouldn’t throw worms.’ A second line of defense is to design computer and information systems to be more secure. Our current systems are incredibly
vulnerable, by design. US cyber security efforts seem dedicated to breaking into computer systems, not securing them.” Maurice Vergeer, an assistant professor at
Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, replied, “It probably will. Estonia was one of the first countries that suffered a major cyber attack some years ago.
If an agency can create something like Stuxnet to sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities, it’s a question of
time for another agency to come up with another piece of malware to sabotage essential infrastructure.
The problem is that because of the Internet of things, this is even more likely because most computers
and machines will be connected to the Internet. Even when security is tight, the human factor is
probably the weakest link.”
at: rid
Rid is wrong --- lack of bureaucratic friction increases the risk
Junio 13 (Tim, Cybersecurity predoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and
Cooperationat Stanford University and PhD Candidate in Polisci @ UPenn and MA in IR from Johns
Hopkins and develops new cyber capabilities at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, “How
Probable is Cyber War? Bringing IR Theory Back In to the Cyber Conflict Debate” 06 Feb 2013, Journal of
Strategic Studies Volume 36, Issue 1, pages 125-133)
Two recent articles in the pages of this journal contribute to an important debate about how information technology (IT) influences international politics.1 Thomas
Rid and Adam Liff argue that cyber ‘war’ has never happened and probably will not happen. A fundamental
problem with these articles is that Rid and Liff do not commit to a theoretical framework regarding the causes of war.
Doing so yields an opposite conclusion: international relations theory identifies many mechanisms
that may cause violent escalation with cyber weapons. This brief response article explains why cyber war is
sufficiently probable to merit serious attention from scholars and practitioners, and proposes a theoretical research agenda. First,
domestic political factors – such as states' command and control over cyber operations – must be problematized. The principalagent approach demonstrates how variation in incentives and preferences may make militaries more
likely to favor cyber attack than other kinds of bureaucracies. This matters in societies with poor civilian control over the
military. Second, the unique material qualities of IT must be evaluated alongside traditional mechanisms that
cause war. For instance, the attribution problem and computational complexity in modeling cyber operations may increase the
odds of inadvertent cyber war by causing states to retaliate against the wrong targets or miscalculate
the potential costs and gains of attacking. What is Cyber War? (Again…) Rid and Liff do not define cyber war the same way, and there is no
disciplinary consensus. Rid, Liff, and this author at least agree on the following: cyber war is a coercive act involving computer network attack. Network attack
means information is disrupted, degraded, or destroyed. ‘Coercive’ means using force to change or preserve a political status quo. A point of contention is lethality,
which Rid believes is necessary for cyber ‘war’.2 This is an extreme and undesirable requirement, particularly because (as Rid himself points out) non-lethal cyber
attacks may be more costly than conventional warfare.3 It is important to note that Rid focuses on network attack, whereas Liff considers a broader conflict
process. This response addresses both. The central point
of Rid's article is that it is difficult to cause lethal effects with
cyber weapons, and that politically motivated, instrumental cyber attack has never killed anyone.4 While the empirics of his article
are sound – he describes recent cyber attacks accurately – Rid never explains what causes war or makes war more or less
likely. The arguments in his article are exclusively definitional, and do not directly support his title's assertion
that ‘Cyber War Will Not Take Place.’ Liff does better from a theoretical point of view; he links his article to the bargaining approach to war.5
He does an excellent job of offering counterpoints to four arguments about why cyber attack may increase the probability of war. However, Liff never establishes
why his reasonable views are more plausible than their alternatives. This is because he is not explicit about assumptions that are necessary for his arguments to
hold, nor about the circumstances under which those assumptions break down. For example, Liff
argues that private information may make
war less likely because states poorly estimate the gains from cyber attack.6 Although Liff is right to point out that ambiguity in cyber operations is
important, he is wrong to assume the causal arrow points in one direction. Ambiguity can make war more or less likely, because it
may lead states to overestimate their potential gains, overestimate their stealth, and/or underestimate
their adversary's skill. Finally, it must be recognized that any future war is a low probability event. Crafting claims that particular conflict scenarios are
improbable is rather unimpressive; what is important to understand is the potential cost and probability of cyber war relative to other kinds of conflict. Causes of
Cyber War The noted problems in the Rid and Liff articles could have been avoided by drawing on structured theoretical approaches that are common to the study
of the causes of all kinds of warfare. What would such an approach look like? This response lacks the space to fully develop one, but recommends a way forward.
Literally dozens of arguments have been advanced in the political science discipline regarding the causes of war, and very many of these offer reasons to believe
cyber war is plausible or even probable.7 An approach, advanced in James Fearon's modern classic ‘Rationalist Explanations for War,’ is to list assumptions that
create an ideal condition in which war should never happen.8 One way to structure scientific inquiry regarding the probability of cyber war is to examine how the
unique material qualities of IT affect each of the assumptions. Table 1 offers a cursory version of such an analysis to identify priority areas for further study. Among
a large number of revealed paths to cyber war, one – principal-agent problems involving the bureaucracies that conduct cyber operations – is detailed here to
demonstrate the plausibility of specific mechanisms and what follow-on empirical work should look like. Principal-Agent Problems Rid and Liff appear to
assume that states are unitary rational actors (URAs), and do not explain the domestic political
processes whereby states make foreign policy choices. Empirically and theoretically, it is important to relax the URA
assumption and problematize who has formal and actual release authority over cyber weapons. The principal-agent
approach, for instance, works from the premise that individuals and organizations often vary in their incentives and
preferences, which could make war beneficial for some at the cost of others.9 This and related thinking inform how
scholars study other military technologies, such as nuclear weapons. Scott Sagan points out that although unauthorized nuclear war is improbable, it is sufficiently
probable that people should worry a great deal about command and control (C2) issues.10 Many anecdotes echo Sagan's work. For example, a Russian general was
asked during the Cold War about his backup plan in the event he could not open the safe containing his nuclear launch codes. His answer was that he would bash
the safe open with a sledgehammer he kept nearby!11 Consideration
sledgehammers – is
of how bureaucracies do what they do – like keeping emergency nuclear war
of critical importance to the cyber C2 question. Although controlling large organizations is a core function of militaries, the
conduct of cyber operations is different from other kinds of activity in a way that greatly magnifies the ‘strategic corporal’ problem. This is because constant
cyber operations other than war decrease the bureaucratic friction that normally alerts superiors to aberrant behavior.
In the case of nuclear weapons, a long chain of events is required before unauthorized activities occur.
Someone probably would notice a crazed general using his sledgehammer on the launch codes safe, turning keys, fueling missiles, and so on. In contrast, it is a core
function of cyber bureaucrats to access adversary networks constantly, and to develop push-button solutions to minimize lags during war. Furthermore, if the
perception that cyber weapons are non-lethal comes to be widely perceived (as Rid would prefer), it
is reasonable to conclude that the
threshold for their use will be lower than other kinds of weapons – even if the cost of cyber attacks is
greater.
at: us = best
US edge doesn’t solve attacks
Messmer 10 (Ellen – Network World, “'Cyber War' author: U.S. needs radical changes to protect
against attacks” April 7, 2010, Network World)
In his new book, Cyber War, Richard Clarke says nations
are building up their online armies and weapons largely far from
public view, increasing the danger of a deliberate or accidental cyberwar, which in turn could trigger
violent conflicts across the globe. "Cyber war has already begun," Clarke writes. "In anticipation of hostilities,
nations are already preparing the battlefield.' They are hacking into each other's networks and
infrastructures, laying in trapdoors and logic bombs -- now, in peacetime. This ongoing nature of
cyberwar, the blurring of peace and war, adds a dangerous new dimension of instability." The United States, he says, has a weak
cyber-defense posture and should make radical changes, such as regulating ISPs to be able to play a role, under government supervision, in defending the country
should a serious cyberattack strike. Is the U.S. the nation most vulnerable to cyberattack? Clarke, turning 60 this year, served as special advisor to the president for
cyber security in 2001 and now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School for Government and works at Good Harbor Consulting. He tapped Robert Knake, international
affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, with a specialty studying cyberwar, as co-author of the new book, expected out April 20. (See exclusive excerpt
here.) But Cyber War at heart is Clarke's passionate view on the dangers lurking just below the surface and what steps might be taken to prevent cyberwar. With a
background decades ago in nuclear arms control and espionage in the Cold War, he compares that era with today's secretive world of military cyber commands
operating over the Internet where attacks, such as disruptive denial-of-service attacks, break-ins and dangerous Trojans that could steal or alter data, are
extremely difficult to trace back to their source. "The force that prevented nuclear war -- deterrence -- does not work
well in cyber war," Clarke says. "The entire phenomenon of cyber war is shrouded in such government secrecy that it makes the Cold War look like a time
of openness and transparency." With considerable detail, Clarke and Knake render vivid accounts of how significant waves of cyberattacks in
the past few years have hit Estonia, Georgia, South Korea and the United States, among other places, and why some in
particular bear the hallmarks of state-sponsored efforts to disrupt an adversary's Internet-based banking, media and government resources. It's known that the
United States, China, Russia, North Korea, Israel, France and others have established cyber military structures to serve as both offense and defense in any cyber
conflict. But though
the United States likely has the best cyberwar capabilities in the world, "that offensive
prowess cannot make up for the weaknesses in our defensive position," Clarke contends. Because the United
States is the most Internet-dependent and automated in terms of supply chain, banking, transportationcontrol systems and other modern facilities, it's also the most vulnerable to cyberattack, Clarke argues. And
the military's dependence on the Internet also means it would be vulnerable to disruptions of it. "The
U.S. military is no more capable of operating without the Internet than Amazon.com would be," Clarke says.
"Logistics, command and control, fleet positioning -- everything down to targeting -- all rely on software
and other Internet-related technologies." On the other hand, he sees China with an advantage because its military aims to guard both
enterprise and government resources, plus the Chinese government basically controls the Chinese Internet outright in many ways. "The Chinese
government has both the power and the means to disconnect China's slice of the Internet from the rest
of the world, which they may very well do in the event of a conflict with the United States," he writes The United States has
made the U.S. Cyber Command responsible for defending Department of Defense systems and the Department of Homeland Security responsible for defending
civilian government agencies in any cyberattack. But Clarke sees a "cyber gap" in protecting business networks, including banking systems and the electric grid.
Electric power grids are a central source of concern for Clarke because he believes that countries are secretly
placing logic bombs -- malicious software hidden away that could be activated to cause power failures -- in each other's power grids.
These logic bombs (Clarke's book fails to provide us with concrete examples) might be activated as an act of cyberwar, but
might just as easily go off in different scenarios, such as by mistake or by a hacker discovering them and triggering
them. Logic bombs bringing down power grids could inordinately harm civilians through massive loss of electrical supply, and this is a topic that needs to be
publicly addressed, Clarke says. He also argues it's time the United States consider establishing international treaties aimed at banning cyberwar against civilian
infrastructures. Clarke writes: "The main reason for a ban on cyber war against civilian infrastructures is to defuse the current (silent but dangerous) situation in
which nations are but a
few keystrokes away from launching crippling attacks that could quickly escalate into a large-scale cyber
war, or even a shooting war. The logic bombs in our grid, placed there in all likelihood by the Chinese military, and similar weapons
the U.S. may have or may be about to place in other nations' networks, are as destabilizing as if secret agents had strapped
explosives to transmission towers, transformers and generators.
pyro
Pyro-terror is akin to a WMD and devastates the economy- this card is on fire!
Somers 15 (Scott, Senior Fellow with the GW Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. He served two terms as District 6 Councilmember and was Vice
Mayor in Mesa, Arizona. He chaired the National League of Cities steering committee on Public Safety and Crime Prevention, where he led the development and
advocacy of national municipal policy involving homeland security and domestic preparedness. Dr. Somers is actively involved in national domestic preparedness
efforts. He has served on the National Homeland Security Consortium, the SAFECOM Executive Committee, the FirstNet Public Safety Advisory Council, and the
National EMS Advisory Council. He currently volunteers on the American Red Cross Scientific Advisory Council, Preparedness and Disaster Health sub‐council, and is
a public safety issue advisor for Representative Matt Salmon (AZ‐CD5). Dr. Somers received a Ph.D. in public administration from Arizona State University. His work
focuses on the organizational structures and processes that lead to resilience in unstable operational environments. Several of his homeland security‐ related
refereed journal articles have appeared in Public Administration Review, the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, and Public Works Management and
Policy. Papers he has written on the healthcare system’s response to WMD events are published as book chapters in the Homeland Security Handbook (CRC Press)
and 21st Century Management (Sage). Dr. Somers lectures regularly and has worked with international organizations on promoting continuity planning among small
to mid‐sized businesses for better global supply chains. In addition to his political and academic background, Somers has nearly 20 years of operational experience
with the Phoenix Fire Department serving as a hazardous materials specialist for FEMA Arizona Task Force 1, responding to domestic natural disasters and national
security events. “How California’s Drought Exacerbates the Terrorism Threat,” May 2015,
http://cchs.gwu.edu/sites/cchs.gwu.edu/files/downloads/CCHS%20Commentary_2015_3.pdf, /lg)
The drought has also created tinderbox conditions increasing the potential for a terrorist to set severe
wildland fires near populated areas and critical infrastructure. Fire as a tool of warfare is well documented. While there is no direct evidence of a terrorist
group having employed wildfire as a weapon, fire has been promoted as a simple and potentially effective way to inflict fear and
cause considerable damage. In 2012, an issue of Inspire magazine surfaced on jihadi Internet forums
detailing how to construct an “ember bomb” to target forested areas of the U.S. This spurred the DHS Office of Intelligence
and Analysis and eight state or local agencies to issue a joint report raising awareness of terrorist interests in utilizing wildfire as
a tactic against the Homeland to cause casualties, economic damage, and resource depletion.8 The Lebanese
militant group, Hezbollah, used wildfire as a military strategy – as well as economic and psychological attack –
during its 2006 conflict with Israel. Militants fired Katyusha rockets igniting numerous fires in the Naftali mountain range. The wildfires were part of a
diversionary tactic to draw resources away from battles in south Lebanon. More than 10,000 acres were burned causing considerable
damage to forests and grazing fields. Four years later, during the Mount Carmel Fire, a wave of suspicious fires struck Israel and the West Bank. The motivation for these attacks was not determined, but they caused
confusion and drew scarce resources away from fire suppression efforts. The Jewish National Fund estimates that it will take 50 years to
restore the forests.9 10 Only about 7 percent of Israel is forested, yet fire has been used as an effective terror tactic against the Israeli people. By comparison, the Carlton Complex Fire in Washington State in 2014 destroyed 322
homes and consumed 256,000 acres, an area larger than the 247,000 acres comprising all Israeli forests. In 2012 alone, wildfires burned 9.3 million acres of land in the U.S., more acreage than the entire State of Israel itself. The
National Association of State Foresters claims that some 72,000 U.S. communities are exposed to wildfire. The 2015 Wildfire Hazard Risk Report by CoreLogic estimates that 1.1 million homes fall into the highest wildfire risk
The exposure of U.S. communities to wildfire makes pyro‐terrorism a
potentially potent weapon for economic warfare and mass destruction. One military officer wrote in his
2005 thesis: “An opportunistic terrorist can unleash multiple fires creating a conflagration potentially
equal to a multi‐megaton nuclear weapon.”12 William Scott, a former National Security Agency official, called
pyro‐terrorism “an extremely high‐leverage weapon of mass effect.”13 Armed with a rudimentary
understanding of fire behavior, weather, and topography, a pyro‐terrorist can set fires that inflict
significant damage. Dry vegetation from the lack of rain is increasing the frequency, severity, and damage caused by wildfires. The drought is also depleting natural water supplies used for firefighting. In San
category with a reconstruction value of more than $268 billion.11
Diego County, which has a history of severe wildfires, Bartlett Lake is down to less than 6 percent capacity from its 2006 level of 96 percent. Sutherland has dropped to 8.4 percent and Morena is nearly dry at 3.2 percent.14
The negative economic effect of wildfire has often been underestimated. Damage assessments tend to
focus on the direct costs of fire suppression and property loss. A study by San Diego State University
reassessed the economic impact of the 2003 San Diego wildfires and concluded the fire cost $2 billion
more than originally estimated.15 Additional losses included $365 million in lost business, $10 million in medical costs, $47 million in watershed mitigation, and $147.3 million in infrastructure
damage. Lost economic activity was conservatively estimated at 10 percent regional gross productivity. This was
based on the destruction of 24 commercial buildings, a $32.5 million drop in tourism, and 5,000 affected jobs. Wildfire can threaten critical infrastructure,
especially the electrical grid, causing damage to poles, transmission lines, and generating stations. Direct
flame impingement is not necessary to disrupt power systems. Dense smoke and particulate matter
from fires can ionize the air creating an electrical pathway between lines tripping circuits and
threatening wide‐scale outages. The threat to the electrical grid has a cascading effect on other
infrastructure. On September 8, 2011, a transmission line tripped due to high temperatures, starting a chain of events
that cut power to portions of Arizona, California, and Mexico. All of San Diego lost power. The outage
snarled traffic during rush hour; flights and public transportation were disrupted; schools and businesses
closed; water and sewage pumping stations lost power resulting in contaminated beaches and unsafe
drinking water. The National University System Institute for Policy Research conservatively estimated
losses to the local economy of $97 to $118 million as a result of the blackout.16 While not caused by a
fire, this incident foretells pyro‐terrorism’s potential for large‐scale social disruption and economic
damage.
Generic
at: Terror Risk Exaggerated
The Terror Talk and Terror exaggeration K’s can be true and still not eliminate our
impact. Some exaggeration takes place – but the risk is real.
Lewis ’14 James Andrew Lewis is a senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., where he writes on technology, security, and the international
economy. Before joining CSIS, he worked at the US Departments of State and Commerce as a Foreign Service officer and as a
member of the Senior Executive Service. His diplomatic experience included negotiations on military basing in Asia, the
Cambodia peace process, and the five-power talks on arms transfer restraint. Lewis received his Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago. “Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate” - CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - STRATEGIC
TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM – December - http://csis.org/publication/underestimating-risk-surveillance-debate
The phrase “terrorism” is overused, and the threat of terrorist attack is easily exaggerated, but that does
not mean this threat it is nonexistent. Groups and individuals still plan to attack American citizens and the citizens of allied countries.
The dilemma in assessing risk is that it is discontinuous. There can be long periods where no activity is
apparent, only to have the apparent calm explode in an attack. The constant, low-level activity in planning and preparation in Western countries is not
apparent to the public, nor is it easy to identify the moment that discontent turns into action. There is general agreement that as terrorists splinter into regional groups, the risk of attack increases. Certainly, the threat to Europe
The messy U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and (soon) Afghanistan contributes to
an increase in risk.24 European authorities have increased surveillance and arrests of suspected militants as the Syrian conflict lures hundreds of Europeans. Spanish counterterrorism police say they have
broken up more terrorist cells than in any other European country in the last three years.25 The chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence , who
is better placed than most members of Congress to assess risk, said in June 2014 that the level of terrorist activity
was higher than he had ever seen it.26 If the United States overreacted in response to September 11, it now risks overreacting to the leaks with potentially fatal consequences. A
simple assessment of the risk of attack by jihadis would take into account a resurgent Taliban, the power of lslamist groups in
North Africa, the continued existence of Shabaab in Somalia, and the appearance of a powerful new force, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Al Qaeda, previously
the leading threat, has splintered into independent groups that make it a less coordinated force but more difficult target. On the positive
from militants returning from Syria points to increased risk for U.S. allies.
side, the United States, working with allies and friends, appears to have contained or eliminated jihadi groups in Southeast Asia.
Terror risk not exaggerated – new developments mean risks have not diminished
Lewis ’14 James Andrew Lewis is a senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., where he writes on technology, security, and the international
economy. Before joining CSIS, he worked at the US Departments of State and Commerce as a Foreign Service officer and as a
member of the Senior Executive Service. His diplomatic experience included negotiations on military basing in Asia, the
Cambodia peace process, and the five-power talks on arms transfer restraint. Lewis received his Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago. “Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate” - CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - STRATEGIC
TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM – December - http://csis.org/publication/underestimating-risk-surveillance-debate
echoes of September 11 have faded and the fear of attack has diminished. We are reluctant to accept
terrorism as a facet of our daily lives, but major attacks—roughly one a year in the last five years—are regularly planned against
U.S. targets, particularly passenger aircraft and cities. America’s failures in the Middle East have spawned new, aggressive
terrorist groups. These groups include radicalized recruits from the West—one estimate puts the number
at over 3,000—who will return home embittered and hardened by combat. Particularly in Europe, the next few years will see an influx of jihadis joining the
existing population of homegrown radicals, but the United States itself remains a target.
The
Biases cut both ways – civil libertarians tend to underestimate the terror risk
Lewis ’14 James Andrew Lewis is a senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., where he writes on technology, security, and the international
economy. Before joining CSIS, he worked at the US Departments of State and Commerce as a Foreign Service officer and as a
member of the Senior Executive Service. His diplomatic experience included negotiations on military basing in Asia, the
Cambodia peace process, and the five-power talks on arms transfer restraint. Lewis received his Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago. “Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate” - CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES - STRATEGIC
TECHNOLOGIES PROGRAM – December - http://csis.org/publication/underestimating-risk-surveillance-debate
If the risk of attack is increasing, it is not the right time to change the measures the United States has
put in place to deter another 9/11. If risk is decreasing, surveillance programs can be safely reduced or eliminated. A more complicated analysis would ask if the United States went too far
after 9/11 and the measures it put in place can be reduced to a reasonable level without increasing risk. Unfortunately, precise metrics on risk and effectiveness do not
exist,12 and we are left with the conflicting opinions of intelligence officials and civil libertarians as to what makes
effective intelligence or counterterrorism programs. There are biases on both sides, with intelligence officials usually preferring more information to less and civil
libertarians can be prone to wishful thinking about terrorism and opponent intentions.13
at: “neg authors use poor methods”
Our authors use good methods
Boyle 8 (Michael J., School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews, and John Horgan,
International Center for the Study of Terrorism, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State
University, April 2008, “A Case Against Critical Terrorism Studies,” Critical Studies On Terrorism, Vol. 1,
No. 1, p. 51-64)
One of the tensions within CTS concerns the issue of ‘policy relevance’. At the most basic level, there
are some sweeping generalizations
made by CTS scholars, often with little evidence. For example, Jackson (2007c) describes ‘the core terrorism scholars’ (without explicitly
saying who he is referring to) as ‘intimately connected – institutionally, financially, politically, and ideologically – with a state hegemonic project’ (p. 245).
Without giving any details of who these ‘core’ scholars are, where they are, what they do, and exactly
who funds them, his arguments are tantamount to conjecture at best. We do not deny that
governments fund terrorism research and terrorism researchers, and that this can influence the
direction (and even the findings) of the research. But we are suspicious of over-generalizations of this count on two
grounds: (1) accepting government funding or information does not necessarily obviate one’s
independent scholarly judgment in a particular project; and (2) having policy relevance is not always a
sin. On the first point, we are in agreement with some CTS scholars. Gunning provides a sensitive analysis of this problem, and calls on CTS advocates to come to
terms with how they can engage policy-makers without losing their critical distance. He recognizes that CTS can (and should) aim to be policy-relevant, but perhaps
CTS aims
to whisper into the ear of the prince, but it is just a different prince . Gunning (2007a) also argues that research
should be assessed on its own merits, for ‘just because a piece of research comes from RAND does not
invalidate it; conversely, a “critical” study is not inherently good’ (p. 240). We agree entirely with this. Not all sponsored or
contract research is made to ‘toe a party line’, and much of the work coming out of official government agencies or affiliated
government agencies has little agenda and can be analytically useful. The task of the scholar is to retain one’s
sense of critical judgment and integrity, and we believe that there is no prima facie reason to assume
that this cannot be done in sponsored research projects. What matters here are the details of the research – what is the purpose
to a different audience, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society than just governments and security services. In other words,
of the work, how will it be done, how might the work be used in policy – and for these questions the scholar must be self-critical and insistent on their intellectual
autonomy. The scholar must also be mindful of the responsibility they bear for shaping a government’s response to the problem of terrorism. Nothing
– not
the source of the funding, purpose of the research or prior empirical or theoretical commitment –
obviates the need of the scholar to consider his or her own conscience carefully when engaging in
work with any external actor. But simply engaging with governments on discrete projects does not
make one an ‘embedded expert’ nor does it imply sanction to their actions. But we also believe that the study of
political violence lends itself to policy relevance and that those who seek to produce research that
might help policy-makers reduce the rates of terrorist attack are committing no sin, provided that they retain their
independent judgment and report their findings candidly and honestly. In the case of terrorism, we would go further to argue that being policy relevant is in some
instances an entirely justifiable moral choice. For example, neither of us has any problem producing research with a morally defensible but policy relevant goal (for
example, helping the British government to prevent suicide bombers from attacking the London Underground) and we do not believe that engaging in such work
tarnishes one’s stature as an independent scholar. Implicit
who engage with it. Such
in the CTS literature is a deep suspicion about the state and those
a suspicion may blind some CTS scholars to good work done by those associated with the state. But to
assume that being ‘embedded’ in an institution linked to the ‘establishment’ consists of being captured by a state hegemonic project is too simple. We do not
believe that scholars studying terrorism must all be policy-relevant, but equally we do not believe that being policy relevant should always be interpreted as writing
a blank cheque for governments or as necessarily implicating the scholar in the behaviour of that government on issues unrelated to one’s work. Working for the US
government, for instance, does not imply that the scholar sanctions or approves of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The
assumption that those
who do not practice CTS are all ‘embedded’ with the ‘establishment’ and that this somehow gives the
green light for states to engage in illegal activity is in our view unwarranted, to say the very least.
not hype
Even K-hack critics of security practices concede terrorism’s worse---threatens
extinction
Derrida 3 - Jacques Derrida, Directeur d’Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in
Paris, and Professor of Philosophy, French and Comparative Literature at the University of California,
Irvine, 2003, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, p. 98-99
Why is this
threat signaled by the “end of the Cold War”? Why is it worse than the “Cold War” itself? Like the
formation of Arab Muslim terrorist networks equipped and trained during the Cold War, this threat represents the residual consequence of both the Cold War and
the passage beyond the Cold War. On the one hand, because
of the now uncontrollable proliferation of nuclear capability it is
difficult to measure the degrees and forms of this force, just as it is difficult to delimit the responsibility for this proliferation, a point we cannot pursue here. On the
other hand, and here we touch upon what is worse than the Cold War, there
can now no longer be a balance of terror, for there is no
longer a duel or standoff between two powerful states (U.S.A., -USSR) involved in a game theory in which both states are capable of neutralizing the other’s nuclear
power through a reciprocal and organized evaluation of the respective risks. From
now on, the nuclear threat, the “total” threat, no longer
comes from a state but from anonymous forces that are absolutely unforeseeable and incalculable. And
since this absolute threat will have been secreted by the end of the Cold War and the “victory” of the U.S. camp, since it threatens what is
supposed to sustain world order, the very possibility of a world and of any world- -wide effort [mondialisation] (international
law, a world market, a universal language, and so on), what is thus put at risk by this terrifying autoimmunitary logic is nothing less than
the existence of the world, of the worldwide itself. There is no longer any limit to this threat that at once looks for its antecedents or its resources in
the long history of the Cold War and yet appears infinitely more dangerous, frightening, terrifying than the Cold War. And there are, in fact, countless signs that this
threat is accelerating and confirming the end of this Cold War, hastening the at least apparent reconciliation of two equally frightened enemies. When
Bush
axis of evil,” we ought both to smile at and denounce the religious connotations,
the childish stratagems, the obscurantist mystifications of this inflated rhetoric. And yet there is, in fact, and from every quarter, an
absolute “evil” whose threat, whose shadow, is spreading. Absolute evil, absolute threat, because what is at stake is
nothing less than the mondialisation or the worldwide movement of the world, life on earth and elsewhere, without
remainder.
and his associates blame “the
Our ev is epistemologically rigorous
Boyle 08 Michael J. Boyle, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews, and John
Horgan, International Center for the Study of Terrorism, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State
University, Critical Studies On Terrorism, April 2008, “A Case Against Critical Terrorism Studies,” Vol. 1,
No. 1, p. 51-64, Taylor and Francis
Jackson (2007c) calls for the development of an explicitly CTS on the basis of what he argues preceded it, dubbed ‘Orthodox Terrorism Studies’. The latter, he
suggests, is characterized by: (1) its poor methods and theories, (2) its state centricity, (3) its problemsolving orientation, and (4) its institutional and intellectual
links to state security projects. Jackson argues that the major defining characteristic of CTS, on the other hand, should be ‘a skeptical attitude towards accepted
terrorism “knowledge”’. An
implicit presumption from this is that terrorism scholars have laboured for all of
these years without being aware that their area of study has an implicit bias, as well as definitional
and methodological problems. In fact, terrorism scholars are not only well aware of these problems, but
also have provided their own searching critiques of the field at various points during the last few decades (e.g. Silke 1996, Crenshaw 1998,
Gordon 1999, Horgan 2005, esp. ch. 2, ‘Understanding Terrorism’). Some of those scholars most associated with the critique of empiricism implied in
‘Orthodox Terrorism Studies’ have also engaged in deeply critical examinations of the nature of sources,
methods, and data in the study of terrorism. For example, Jackson (2007a) regularly cites the handbook produced by Schmid and
Jongman (1988) to support his claims that theoretical progress has been limited. But this fact was well recognized by the authors; indeed, in the introduction
of the second edition they point out that they have not revised their chapter on theories of terrorism from the first edition, because the failure to
address persistent conceptual and data problems has undermined progress in the field. The point of their handbook was to sharpen and make more
comprehensive the result of research on terrorism, not to glide over its methodological and definitional failings (Schmid and Jongman 1988, p. xiv). Similarly,
Silke’s (2004) volume on the state of the field of terrorism research performed a similar function, highlighting
the shortcomings of the field, in particular the lack of rigorous primary data collection. A non-reflective community of scholars does
not produce such scathing indictments of its own work.
homeland attack
There is a risk of an attack on the homeland.
Bradner ’15 Eric Bradner - Politics reporter for CNN. Former President, Society of Professional Journalists, Indiana Pro
chapter – “GOP senator: U.S. 'certainly vulnerable' to ISIS” – CNN – May 10th - http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/10/politics/isisron-johnson-us-threat/index.html
The United States is "certainly vulnerable" to becoming a new front line in the fight against ISIS, Sen. Ron Johnson said Sunday. The
Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee told CNN's Jim Sciutto on "State of the Union" Sunday that attacks inspired by ISIS, like one
against a provocative cartoon contest in Texas a week ago, are allowing the group to convey a "winner's
message."
High Propensity for an attack on the homeland
Bradner ’15 Eric Bradner - Politics reporter for CNN. Former President, Society of Professional Journalists, Indiana Pro
chapter – “GOP senator: U.S. 'certainly vulnerable' to ISIS” – CNN – May 10th - http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/10/politics/isisron-johnson-us-threat/index.html
Two other experts said the threat of ISIS now is greater than what al Qaeda posed to the United States at the
time of the 9/11 attack. "We're in much more serious circumstances today than we were after 9/11," said Tom Ridge, who served as secretary of
Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.