Plan
In the absence of an individually-tailored warrant obtained via use of a specific
selector term, federal intelligence agencies should cease collection of domestic phone,
internet, email, and associated electronic records. This should include ending the
monitoring of United States persons under Sections 214 and 215 of the USA PATRIOT
Act; Executive Order 12333; and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.
Advantage 1: HUMINT
The squo relies Big Data surveillance. That means info overload & less HUMINT.
Volz, 14
(Dustin, The National Journal, “Snowden: Overreliance on Mass Surveillance Abetted Boston Marathon Bombing: The former
NSA contractor says a focus on mass surveillance is impeding traditional intelligence-gathering efforts—and allowing terrorists
to succeed”, October 20, 2014, ak.)
Edward Snowden on Monday suggested
that if the National Security Agency focused more on traditional
intelligence gathering—and less on its mass-surveillance programs—it could have thwarted the 2013
Boston Marathon bombings. The fugitive leaker, speaking via video to a Harvard class, said that a
preoccupation with collecting bulk communications data has led to resource constraints at U.S.
intelligence agencies, often leaving more traditional, targeted methods of spying on the back burner. "We
miss attacks, we miss leads, and investigations fail because when the government is doing its 'collect it
all,' where we're watching everybody, we're not seeing anything with specificity because it is impossible to
keep an eye on all of your targets," Snowden told Harvard professor and Internet freedom activist Lawrence Lessig. "A good
example of this is, actually, the Boston Marathon bombings." Snowden said that Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were pointed out by
Russian intelligence to U.S. officials prior to the bombings last year that killed three and left hundreds wounded, but
that such actionable intelligence was largely ignored. He argued that targeted surveillance on known
extremists and diligent pursuit of intelligence leads provides for better counterterrorism efforts than
mass spying. "We didn't really watch these guys and the question is, why?" Snowden asked. "The reality of that is
because we do have finite resources and the question is, should we be spending 10 billion dollars a year on
mass-surveillance programs of the NSA to the extent that we no longer have effective means of traditional
[targeting]?" Anti-spying activists have frequently argued that bulk data collection has no record of
successfully thwarting a terrorist attack, a line of argument some federal judges reviewing the NSA's programs have also used
in their legal reviews of the activities. Snowden's suggestion—that such mass surveillance has not only failed to directly stop
a threat, but actually makes the U.S. less safe by distracting resource-strapped intelligence officials from
performing their jobs—takes his criticism of spy programs to a new level. "We're watching everybody that we have no
reason to be watching simply because it may have value, at the expense of being able to watch specific people
for which we have a specific cause for investigating, and that's something that we need to look carefully
at how to balance," Snowden said.
Big Data kills human-intel – which is key to overall US operations.
Margolis ‘13
Gabriel Margolis – the author presently holds a Master of Arts (MA) in Conflict Management & Resolution from UNC
Wilmington and in his final semester of the program when this article was published in the peer-reviewed journal Global
Security Studies . Global Security Studies (GSS) is a premier academic and professional journal for strategic issues involving
international security affairs. All articles submitted to and published in Global Security Studies (GSS) undergo a rigorous, peerreviewed process. From the article: “The Lack of HUMINT: A Recurring Intelligence Problem” - Global Security Studies - Spring
2013, Volume 4, Issue 2http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Margolis%20Intelligence%20(ag%20edits).pdf
The United States has accumulated an unequivocal ability to collect intelligence as a result of the technological advances of the 20th
century. Numerous methods of collection have been employed in clandestine operations around the world
including those that focus on human, signals, geospatial, and measurements and signals intelligence. An infatuation
with technological methods of intelligence gathering has developed within many intelligence organizations, often
leaving the age old practice of espionage as an afterthought. As a result of the focus on technical methods, some of
the worst intelligence failures of the 20th century can be attributed to an absence of human intelligence. The
21st century has ushered in advances in technology have allowed UAVs to become the ultimate technical intelligence gathering
platform; however human intelligence is still being neglected. The increasing reliance on UAVs will make
the United States susceptible to intelligence failures unless human intelligence can be properly
integrated. In the near future UAVs may be able to gather human level intelligence, but it will be a long time before classical espionage is a
thing of the past.
HUMINT key to success to counter state and non-state threats.
Wilkinson ‘13
Kevin R. Wilkinson – United States Army War College. The author is a former Counterintelligence Company Commander, 205th
Military Intelligence Battalion. This thesis paper was overseen by Professor Charles D. Allen of the Department of Command
Leadership and Management. This manuscript is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Strategic
Studies Degree. The U.S. Army War College is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States
Association of Colleges and Schools – “Unparalleled Need: Human Intelligence Collectors in the United States Army” - March
2013 - http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA590270
In the twenty-first century, the role of HUMINT is more important than ever. As employed during the Cold War, a
significant portion of intelligence was collected using SIGINT and GEOINT methods. The COE assessment now discerns a hybrid threat encompassing both
conventional and asymmetric warfare, which is difficult to obtain using SIGINT and GEOINT alone. Unlike
environmental conditions
other intelligence collection disciplines,
such as weather or terrain do not hinder HUMINT collectors.12 HUMINT collection played a key role
during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. OIF was initially a force-on-force ground war using traditional maneuver forces. After six months of
conventional
conflict and on the verge of defeat, the Iraqi armed forces, with the assistance of insurgents, employed asymmetrical warfare . The
continuation of conventional warfare paired with the asymmetric threat created a hybrid threat. HUMINT is effective when
countering a conventional threat that consists of large signatures, such as discerning troop movement. However, it becomes
invaluable when presented with an asymmetrical threat that entails a smaller signature, such as focusing
on groups of insurgents, which other intelligence collection disciplines cannot solely collect on.
Nuclear use is coming. HUMINT key to stay-ahead of these risks.
Johnson ‘9
Dr. Loch K. Johnson is Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. He is editor of the journal "Intelligence
and National Security" and has written numerous books on American foreign policy. Dr. Johnson served as staff director of the
House Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight from 1977 to 1979. Dr. Johnson earned his Ph.D. in political science from the
University of California at Riverside. "Evaluating "Humint": The Role of Foreign Agents in U.S. Security" Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the ISA's 50th ANNUAL CONVENTION "EXPLORING THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE", New York
Marriott Marquis, NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA, Feb 15, 2009 – available via:
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/0/6/6/p310665_index.html
The world is a dangerous place , plagued by the presence of terrorist cells; failed or failing states; competition for
scarce resources, such as oil, water, uranium, and food; chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, not to mention
bristling arsenals of conventional armaments; and deep-seated animosities between rival nations and factions. For selfprotection, if for no other reason, government officials leaders seek information about the capabilities and—an especially
elusive topic—the intentions of those overseas (or subversives at home) who can inflict harm upon the nation.
That is the core purpose of espionage: to gather information about threats, whether external or internal, and to warn
leaders about perils facing the homeland. Further, the secret services hope to provide leaders with data that can help advance the
national interest—the opportunity side of the security equation. Through the practice of espionage—spying
or clandestine human intelligence : whichever is one's favorite term—the central task, stated baldly, is to steal secrets
from adversaries as a means for achieving a more thorough understanding of threats and opportunities in the world.
National governments study information that is available in the public domain (Chinese newspapers, for example),
but knowledge gaps are bound to arise. A favorite metaphor for intelligence is the jigsaw puzzle. Many of the pieces to the
puzzle are available in the stacks of the Library of Congress or on the Internet; nevertheless, there will continue to be several
missing pieces— perhaps the most important ones. They may be hidden away in Kremlin vaults or in caves where members
of Al Qaeda hunker down in Pakistan's western frontier. The public pieces of the puzzle can be acquired through careful research; but often
discovery of the missing secret pieces has to rely on spying, if they can be found at all. Some things— "mysteries" in the argot
of intelligence professionals—are unknowable in any definitive way, such as who is likely to replace the current leader of North Korea. Secrets,
in contrast, may be uncovered with a combination of luck and skill—say, the number of Chinese nuclear-armed submarines, which are
vulnerable to satellite and sonar tracking. Espionage
can be pursued by way of human agents or with machines,
respectively known inside America's secret agencies as human intelligence ("humint," in the acronym) and
technical intelligence ("techint"). Humint consists of spy rings that rely on foreign agents or "assets" in the field, recruited by intelligence
professionals (known as case officers during the Cold War or. in more current jargon, operations officers). -_ Techint
includes
mechanical devises large and small, including satellites the size of Greyhound buses, equipped with fancy cameras and listening devices
that can see and hear acutely from orbits deep in space; reconnaissance aircraft, most famously the U-2; unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or
drones, such as the Predator—often armed with Hellfire missiles, allowing the option to kill what its handlers have just spotted through the lens
of an onboard camera); enormous ground-based listening antennae, aimed at enemy territory: listening devices clamped surreptitiously on
fiber-optic communications cables that carry telephone conversations; and miniature listening "bugs" concealed within sparkling cut-glass
chandeliers in foreign embassies or palaces. Techint attracts the most funding in Washington, D.C. (machines are costly,
especially heavy satellites that must be launched into space), by a ratio of some nine-to-one over humint in America's widely estimated S50
billion annual intelligence budget. Human spies, though, continue to be recruited by the United States in most every region of the globe. Some
critics contend that these spies contribute little to the knowledge of Washington officials about the state of international affairs; other
authorities maintain, though, that only
human agents can provide insights into that most vital of all national
security questions: the intentions of one's rivals— especially those adversaries who are well armed and
hostile. The purpose of this essay is to examine the value of humint, based on a review7 of the research literature on intelligence, survey
data, and the author's interviews with individuals in the espionage trade. The essay is organized in the following manner: it opens with a primer
on the purpose, structure, and methods of humint; then examines some empirical data on its value; surveys more broadly the pros and cons of
this approach to spying; and concludes with an overall judgment about the value of agents for a nation's security.
Humint key to verification of nuclear weaponization in North Korea.
Johnson ‘9
Dr. Loch K. Johnson is Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. He is editor of the journal "Intelligence
and National Security" and has written numerous books on American foreign policy. Dr. Johnson served as staff director of the
House Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight from 1977 to 1979. Dr. Johnson earned his Ph.D. in political science from the
University of California at Riverside. "Evaluating "Humint": The Role of Foreign Agents in U.S. Security" Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the ISA's 50th ANNUAL CONVENTION "EXPLORING THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE", New York
Marriott Marquis, NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA, Feb 15, 2009 – available via:
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/0/6/6/p310665_index.html
Despite the many negative critiques of humint, former DCI Tenet emphasizes that intelligence is still "primarily a
human endeavor.” — He is obviously not referring to the government's intelligence budget priorities. Recall that the United
States devotes only a small percentage of its annual intelligence budget to human spying. — Spy machines are costly,
while human agents are relatively inexpensive to hire and sustain on an annual stipend. One of the ironies of American
intelligence is that the vast percentage of its spending goes into expensive intelligence hardware, especially
surveillance satellites, even though the value of these machines is questionable in helping the United States
understand such contemporary global concerns as terrorism or China's economic might. Cameras mounted on satellites
or airplanes are unable to peer inside the canvas tents, mud huts, or mountain caves in Afghanistan or Pakistan where terrorists
plan their lethal operations, or into the deep underground caverns where North Koreans construct atomic weapons.
"Space cameras cannot see into factories where missiles are made, or into the sheds of shipyards," writes an intelligence expert.
"Photographs cannot tell whether stacks of drums
outside an assumed chemical-warfare plant contain nerve gas or
oil, or whether they are empty” — _As a U.S. intelligence officer has observed, we need "to know what's inside the
building, not what the building looks like”.
Effective verification creates deals that stop prolif.
Hernandez 13 – Research Associate, Monterey Institute of International Studies (Jason, “Proliferation
Pathways to a North Korean Intercontinental Ballistic Missile”, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Dec. 20, 2013)
RMT
During the Clinton Administration, the United States and
North Korea came extremely close to concluding a "Missile Deal" that would
testing of increasingly longer-range missiles. However, the deal never came to
fruition, and under the Bush Administration it was scrapped completely. One of the primary issues for both the Clinton and Bush administrations was
monitoring and verification. The United States sought a comprehensive monitoring and verification regime that would have permitted U.S.
have halted North Korean development, production, and
inspectors on-site access to rocket and missile facilities, while North Korea believed that the United States could accomplish verification through imagery analysis
and other national technical means. [20] It is therefore likely that any future missile deal negotiations
will focus heavily upon verification.
Detection and Monitoring Any advances in rocket technology using the three pathways described above will require numerous tests before the
missile can be accepted into service and deployed. Given North Korea's limited geographical size, all long-range missile tests will result in
debris falling into international waters. For the December 2012 Unha-3 launch, the rocket's first stage fell into the Yellow Sea, and the second fell off the
coast of the Philippines. By recovering the first stage debris, South Korea was able to confirm some facts about the Unha, while discovering new data that indicated
progress in the Unha's design. The debris demonstrated continued areas of struggle and primitive design elements, such as in the propellant, airframe, and welding,
while also showing program advancements and new design elements, such as the use of steering engines in place of jet vanes for orientation. [21] It is reasonable to
assume that over the course of a testing program, debris will be recovered to enlighten the world on the progress of North Korea's missile program. New
deployment methods, such as the use of silos or road-mobile launchers in pathways two or three will not necessarily be
detected. While the construction of silos could be detected by satellite imagery analysis, it is not guaranteed that the international community would detect
every silo. Iran's Shahab silos went unnoticed in the open source until displayed on Iranian media during the Great Prophet 6 military exercises. [22] A road-mobile
TD-2/Unha would seemingly go undetected unless paraded or displayed publically. The KN-08 was unknown in the open source until it was displayed at the April
2012 military parade in Pyongyang. Deployments and launches of silo-based or road-mobile TD-2/Unha's would be very difficult to detect and monitor. Verification
The issue of verification is complex, and any missile
deal will undoubtedly cover the entirety of North Korea's missile production, from
battlefield and short-range ballistic missiles to space launch vehicles and ICBMs. However, this brief will only address the relationship between a missile deal and
the three pathways to an ICBM. For the purpose of this section, the author assumes that a future missile deal
will either aim to prevent or reverse a
missile program in four key areas: development; manufacturing and production; acquisition; and deployment. The question becomes for each of the three
pathways to an ICBM, can the international community verify that North Korea is abiding by a deal that prevents or reverses 1) development; 2) manufacturing and
production; and 3) deployment of an ICBM?
North Korea prolif is accelerating now- recent submarine tests
Huessy 6/11 (Peter, 2015, Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, founded in 1981, and the senior defense consultant at the
Air Force Association and National Security Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, “North Korea's Serious New Nuclear Missile Threat,”
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5914/north-korea-nuclear-missile)//RTF
North Korea appears to have made significant progress in extending its capability as a nuclear-armed
rogue nation, to where its missiles may become capable of hitting American cities with little or no
warning. What new evidence makes such a threat compelling? North Korea claims to have nuclear warheads small
enough to fit on their ballistic missiles and missiles capable of being launched from a submerged platform such as a submarine.
Shortly after North Korea's April 22, 2015 missile test, which heightened international concern about the military capabilities of North Korea,
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged China and our regional allies to restart the 2003 "six-party talks" aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons
from the Korean peninsula and reining in North Korea's expanding nuclear missile program. There are
some "experts," however,
who believe that North Korea's threat is highly exaggerated and poses no immediate danger to the
United States. Consequently, many believe that, given China's oft-repeated support for a "nuclear weapons free" Korean peninsula, time is
on America's side to get an agreement that will guarantee just such a full de-nuclearization. But, if North Korea's technical
advances are substantive, its missiles, armed with small nuclear weapons, might soon be able to reach
the continental United States -- not just Hawaii and Alaska. Further, if such missile threats were to come from
submarines near the U.S., North Korea would be able to launch a surprise nuclear-armed missile attack
on an American city. In this view, time is not on the side of the U.S. Submarine-launched missiles come without a "return address" to
indicate what country or terrorist organization fired the missile. The implications for American security do not stop there. As North Korea
is Iran's primary missile-development partner, whatever North Korea can do with its missiles and nuclear
warheads, Iran will presumably be able to do as well. One can assume the arrangement is reciprocal.
Given recent warnings that North Korea may have upwards of 20 nuclear warheads, the United States seems to be facing a critical new danger.
Would renewed negotiations with China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea really be able to address this threat? Two years ago, Andrew
Tarantola and Brian Barrett said there was "no reason to panic;" that North Korea was "a long way off" -- in fact "years" -- before its missiles
and nuclear weapons could be "put together in any meaningful way." At the same time, in April 2013, an official U.S. assessment by the
Defense Intelligence Agency stated the U.S. had "moderate" confidence that "North Korea had indeed developed a nuclear device small enough
to mount on a ballistic missile." That was followed up two years later, on April 7, 2015, when the commander of Northcom, Admiral Bill
Gortney, one of the nation's leading homeland security defenders, said the threat was considerably more serious. He noted that, "North Korea
has deployed its new road-mobile KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile and was capable of mounting a miniaturized nuclear warhead on
it."[1] At a Pentagon press briefing in April, Admiral Cecil Haney, Commander of the US Strategic Command and America's senior military expert
on nuclear deterrence and missile defense, said it was important to take seriously reports that North Korea can now make small nuclear
warheads and put them on their ballistic missiles.[2] And sure
enough, in April, North Korea launched a ballistic missile
from a submerged platform. Media reaction to the North Korean test has been confused. Reuters, citing the analysis of two German
"experts," claimed the North Korean test was fake -- a not-too-clever manipulation of video images. The Wall Street Journal, on May 21, 2015,
echoed this view, noting: "[F]or evidence of North Korea's bending of reality to drum up fears about its military prowess," one need look no
further than a consensus that North Korea "doctored" pictures of an alleged missile test from a submarine. This, they claimed, was proof that
the "technology developments" by North Korea were nothing more than elaborately faked fairy tales. However, Israeli
missile defense
expert Uzi Rubin -- widely known as the "father" of Israel's successful Arrow missile defense program -explained to this author that previous North Korean missile developments, which have often been
dismissed as nothing more than mocked-up missiles made of plywood, actually turned out to be the real
thing -- findings confirmed by subsequent intelligence assessments. Rubin, as well as the South Korean
Defense Ministry, insist that on April 22, the North Korean military did, in fact, launch a missile from a
submerged platform.[3] Kim Jong Un, the "Supreme Leader" of North Korea, supervises the April 22 test-launch of a missile from a
submerged platform. (Image source: KCNA) What gave the "faked" test story some prominence were the misunderstood remarks of the Vice
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral James Winnefeld. He had said, on May 19, that the North Korean missile launch was "not all" that
North Korea said it was. He also mentioned that North Korea used clever video editors to "crop" the missile test-launch images. Apparently,
that was exactly what the editors did. The Admiral, however, never claimed in his speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
there had been no successful missile test.[4] The same day, a high-ranking State Department official, Frank Rose -- Assistant
Secretary
of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance -- told a Korean security seminar on Capitol Hill
that North Korea had successfully conducted a "missile ejection" test, but from an underwater barge
rather than a submarine.[5] To confuse matters further, additional pictures were released by the South Korean media to illustrate
stories about the North Korean test. Those pictures, however, were of American missiles, which use both solid and liquid propellant; as a result,
one photo showed a U.S. missile with a solid propellant smoke trail and one, from a liquid propellant, without a smoke trail. These photographs
apparently befuddled Reuters' "experts," who may have jumped to the conclusion that the photos of the North Korean test were "faked," when
they were simply of entirely different missile tests, and had been used only to "illustrate" ocean-going missile launches and not the actual North
Korean test.[6] According to Uzi Rubin, to
achieve the capability to eject a missile from an underwater platform is a
significant technological advancement. The accomplishment again illustrates "that rogue states such as North Korea
can achieve military capabilities which pose a notable threat to the United States and its allies." Rubin also
stated that the North Korean underwater launch test was closely related to the development of a missilefiring submarine, "a first step in achieving a very serious and dangerous new military capability."[7] Admiral
Winnefeld and Secretary Rose, in their remarks, confirmed that the North Korean test was not the "dog and pony show" some have claimed. In
other words, the
U.S. government has officially confirmed that the North Koreans have made a serious step
toward producing a sea-launched ballistic missile capability. While such an operational capability may be "years away,"
Rubin warns that "even many years eventually pass, and it will also take many years to build up the missile defenses, so we had better use the
time wisely."[8] Will diplomacy succeed in stopping the North Korean threats? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to think it worth a try;
so he began the push to restart the old 2003 "six-party" talks between the United States, North Korea, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan, to
bring North Korea's nuclear weapons under some kind of international control and eventual elimination. After all, supporters of such talks
claim, similar talks with Iran appear to be leading to some kind of "deal" with Tehran, to corral its nuclear weapons program, so why not
duplicate that effort and bring North Korea back into the non-nuclear fold? What such a "deal," if any, with Iran, will contain, is at this point
unknown. Celebrations definitely seem premature. If the "deal" with North Korea is as "successful" as the P5+1's efforts to rein in Iran's illegal
nuclear weapons program, the prognosis for the success of diplomacy could scarcely be more troubling. Bloomberg's defense writer, Tony
Carpaccio, reflecting Washington's conventional wisdom, recently wrote that of course China will rein in North Korea's nuclear program: "What
might be a bigger preventative will be the protestations of China, North Korea's primary trade partner and only prominent international ally.
Making China angry would put an already deeply impoverished, isolated North Korea in even more dire straits." Unfortunately, no matter how
attractive a strategy of diplomatically ending North Korea's nuclear program might look on the surface, it is painfully at odds with China's
established and documented track record in supporting and carrying out nuclear proliferation with such collapsed or rogue states as Iran, Syria,
Pakistan, North Korea and Libya, as detailed by the 2009 book The Nuclear Express, by Tom C. Reed (former Secretary of the Air Force under
President Gerald Ford and Special Assistant to the President of National Security Affairs during the Ronald Reagan administration) and Daniel
Stillman (former Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). Far from being a potential partner in seeking a non-nuclear Korean
peninsula, China, say the authors, has been and is actually actively pushing the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states, as a means of
asserting Chinese hegemony, complicating American security policy and undermining American influence. The problem is not that China has
little influence with North Korea, as China's leadership repeatedly claims. The problem is that China has no interest in pushing North Korea
away from its nuclear weapons path because the North Korean nuclear program serves China's geostrategic purposes. As Reed and Stillman
write, "China has been using North Korea as the re-transfer point for the sale of nuclear and missile technology to Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Libya
and Yemen". They explain, "Chinese and North Korean military officers were in close communication prior to North Korea's missile tests of 1998
and 2006". Thus, if China takes action to curtail North Korea's nuclear program, China will likely be under pressure from the United States and
its allies to take similar action against Iran and vice versa. China, however, seems to want to curry favor with Iran because of its vast oil and gas
supplies, as well as to use North Korea to sell and transfer nuclear technology to both North Korea and Iran, as well as other states such as
Pakistan. As Reed again explains, "China has catered to the nuclear ambitions of the Iranian ayatollahs in a blatant attempt to secure an
ongoing supply of oil". North Korea is a partner with Iran in the missile and nuclear weapons development business, as Uzi Rubin has long
documented. Thus, it is reasonable to believe that China may see any curtailment of North Korea's nuclear program as also curtailing Iran's
access to the same nuclear technology being supplied by North Korea. Any curtailment would also harm the Chinese nuclear sales business to
Iran and North Korea, especially if China continues to use the "North Korea to Iran route" as an indirect means of selling its own nuclear
expertise and technology to Iran. It is not as if Chinese nuclear proliferation is a recent development or a "one of a kind" activity. As far back as
1982, China gave nuclear warhead blueprints to Pakistan, according to Reed. These findings indicate that China's nuclear weapons proliferation
activities are over three decades old.[9] Reed and Stillman also note that nearly a decade later, China tested a nuclear bomb "for Pakistan" on
May 26, 1990, and that documents discovered in Libya when the George W. Bush administration shut down Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi's
nuclear program revealed that China gave Pakistan the CHIC-4 nuclear weapon design. Unfortunately, China's nuclear assistance to Pakistan did
not stay just in Pakistan. The nuclear technology made its way from Pakistan to North Korea. For example, high explosive craters, construction
of a 50 megawatt nuclear reactor (finished in 1986) and a secret reprocessing facility begun in 1987 all were done in North Korea with major
Pakistani help from the A.Q. Khan "Nukes R Us" smuggling group, as Reed and Stillman document in their book. Reed and Stillman write that
when, amid disclosures in 2003 of a major Libyan nuclear weapons program, the U.S. government sought help in shutting down the Khan
nuclear smuggling ring, "Chinese authorities were totally unhelpful, to the point of stonewalling any investigation into Libya's nuclear supply
network." More recently, Chinese companies have now twice -- in 2009 and 2011 -- been indicted by the Attorney for the City of New York for
trying to provide Iran with nuclear weapons technology. The indictments document that Chinese companies were selling Iran steel for nuclear
centrifuges and other banned technology. A leaked State Department cable, discussing the indictments at the time, revealed "details on China's
role as a supplier of materials for Iran's nuclear program," and that "China helped North Korea ship goods to Iran through Chinese airports."
And more recently, in April 2015, the Czech government interdicted additional nuclear technology destined for Iran -- the origin of which
remains unknown -- in violation of current sanctions against Iran. From 1982 through at least the first part of 2015, the accumulation of
documentary evidence on nuclear proliferation reveals two key facts: First, despite literally hundreds of denials by Iran that it is seeking nuclear
weapons, and amid current negotiations to end Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, there is solid evidence that Iran still seeks nuclear weapons
technology; and that North Korea has nuclear weapons and is advancing their capability. Second, China continues to transfer, through its own
territory, nuclear weapons technology involving both North Korea and Iran. Although the Chinese profess to be against nuclear proliferation,
their track record from the documented evidence illustrates just the opposite. In summary, it
is obvious North Korea's nuclear
weapons and ballistic missiles are a serious threat to America and its allies. And China, from its proliferation record
for the past three decades, is making such a threat more widespread. In this light, is dismissing North Korea's advances in military technology
and ignoring China's record of advancing its neighbors' nuclear weapons technology really best for U.S. interests?
That causes miscalc- leads to global nuclear war
Metz 13 – Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and Research Professor of
National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute (Steven, 3/13/13, “Strategic Horizons:
Thinking the Unthinkable on a Second Korean War,”
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12786/strategic-horizons-thinking-the-unthinkable-on-asecond-korean-war)
Today, North
Korea is the most dangerous country on earth and the greatest threat to U.S. security. For years, the bizarre regime in Pyongyang has
issued an unending stream of claims that a U.S. and South Korean invasion is imminent, while declaring that it will defeat this offensive just as -- according to official
propaganda -- it overcame the unprovoked American attack in 1950. Often the press releases from the official North Korean news agency are absurdly funny, and
American policymakers tend to ignore them as a result. Continuing to do so, though, could be dangerous as events and rhetoric turn even more ominous. In
response to North Korea's Feb. 12 nuclear test, the U.N. Security Council recently tightened existing sanctions against Pyongyang. Even China, North Korea's longstanding benefactor and protector, went along. Convulsed by anger, Pyongyang then threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States and South
Korea, abrogated the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and cut off the North-South hotline installed in 1971 to help avoid an escalation of tensions
between the two neighbors. A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry asserted that a second Korean War is unavoidable. He might be right; for the first
time, an official statement from the North Korean government may prove true. No American leader wants another war in Korea. The problem is that the North
Koreans make so many threatening and bizarre official statements and sustain such a high level of military readiness that American
policymakers
to recognize the signs of impending attack. After all, every recent U.S. war began with miscalculation;
American policymakers misunderstood the intent of their opponents, who in turn underestimated American determination. The conflict
might fail
with North Korea could repeat this pattern. Since the regime of Kim Jong Un has continued its predecessors’ tradition of responding hysterically to every action and
statement it doesn't like, it's hard to assess exactly what might push Pyongyang over the edge and cause it to lash out. It could be something that the United States
considers modest and reasonable, or it could be some sort of internal power struggle within the North Korean regime invisible to the outside world. While we
cannot know whether the recent round of threats from Pyongyang is serious or simply more of the same old lathering, it would be prudent to think the unthinkable
Korean War could
begin with missile strikes against South Korean, Japanese or U.S. targets, or with a combination of missile strikes and a major conventional invasion of
the South -- something North Korea has prepared for many decades. Early attacks might include nuclear weapons, but even if they didn't, the United
and reason through what a war instigated by a fearful and delusional North Korean regime might mean for U.S. security. The second
States would probably move quickly to destroy any existing North Korean nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The war itself would be extremely costly and
probably long. North Korea is the most militarized society on earth. Its armed forces are backward but huge. It's hard to tell whether the North Korean people,
having been fed a steady diet of propaganda based on adulation of the Kim regime, would resist U.S. and South Korean forces that entered the North or be thankful
for relief from their brutally parasitic rulers. As the conflict in Iraq showed, the United States and its allies should prepare for widespread, protracted resistance even
while hoping it doesn't occur. Extended guerrilla operations and insurgency could potentially last for years following the defeat of North Korea's conventional
military. North Korea would need massive relief, as would South Korea and Japan if Pyongyang used nuclear weapons. Stabilizing North Korea and developing an
effective and peaceful regime would require a lengthy occupation, whether U.S.-dominated or with the United States as a major contributor. The second Korean
War would force military mobilization in the United States. This would initially involve the military's existing reserve component, but it
would probably ultimately require a major expansion of the U.S. military and hence a draft. The military's training infrastructure and the defense industrial base
would have to grow. This would be a body blow to efforts to cut government spending in the United States and postpone serious deficit reduction for so me time,
even if Washington increased taxes to help fund the war. Moreover, a second Korean conflict
would shock the global economy and potentially
have destabilizing effects outside Northeast Asia. Eventually, though, the United States and its allies would defeat the North Korean military. At that point it
would be impossible for the United States to simply re-establish the status quo ante bellum as it did after the first Korean War. The Kim regime is too unpredictable,
desperate and dangerous to tolerate. Hence regime change and a permanent ending to the threat from North Korea would have to be America's strategic objective.
China would pose the most pressing and serious challenge to such a transformation of North Korea. After all, Beijing's intervention saved North Korean dictator Kim
Il Sung after he invaded South Korea in the 1950s, and Chinese assistance has kept the subsequent members of the Kim family dictatorship in power. Since the
second Korean War would invariably begin like the first one -- with North Korean aggression -- hopefully China has matured enough as a great power to allow the
world to remove its dangerous allies this time. If the war began with out-of-the-blue North Korean missile strikes, China could conceivably even contribute to a
multinational operation to remove the Kim regime. Still, China would vehemently oppose a long-term U.S. military presence in North Korea or a unified Korea allied
with the United States. One way around this might be a grand bargain leaving a unified but neutral Korea. However appealing this might be, Korea might hesitate to
adopt neutrality as it sits just across the Yalu River from a China that tends to claim all territory that it controlled at any point in its history. If the aftermath of the
second Korean War is not handled adroitly, the
result could easily be heightened hostility between the United States and China, perhaps even a
new cold war. After all, history shows that deep economic connections do not automatically prevent nations from hostility and
war -- in 1914 Germany was heavily involved in the Russian economy and had extensive trade and financial ties with France and Great Britain. It is not
inconceivable then, that after the second Korean War, U.S.-China relations would be antagonistic and hostile at the same time that the two continued mutual trade
and investment. Stranger things have happened in statecraft.
Plan solves and is reversible. Less Big Data means conventional and targeted human
intel.
Walt, 14
(Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, “The Big
Counterterrorism Counterfactual Is the NSA actually making us worse at fighting terrorism?”,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/11/10/counterterrorism_spying_nsa_islamic_state_terrorist_cve, November 10,
2014, ak.)
The head of the British electronic spy agency GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, created a minor flap last week in an article he wrote for the Financial Times. In effect,
Hannigan argued that more robust encryption procedures by private Internet companies were unwittingly aiding terrorists such as the Islamic State (IS) or al Qaeda,
by making it harder for organizations like the NSA and GCHQ to monitor online traffic. The implication was clear: The more that our personal privacy is respected
and protected, the greater the danger we will face from evildoers. It's a serious issue, and democracies that want to respect individual privacy while simultaneously
keeping citizens safe are going to have to do a much better job of reassuring us that vast and (mostly) secret surveillance capabilities overseen by unelected officials
such as Hannigan won't be abused. I
tend to favor the privacy side of the argument, both because personal freedoms are hard to get
back once lost, but also because there's not much evidence that these surveillance activities are making us
significantly safer.
They seem to be able to help us track some terrorist leaders, but there's a lively debate among scholars over whether tracking and
killing these guys is an effective strategy. The fear of being tracked also forces terrorist organizations to adopt less efficient communications procedures, but it
doesn't seem to prevent them from doing a fair bit of harm regardless. So
here's a wild counterfactual for you to ponder: What
would the United States, Great Britain, and other wealthy and powerful nations do if they didn't have these vast
surveillance powers? What would they do if they didn't have armed drones, cruise missiles, or other implements of destruction that can make it
remarkably easy (and in the short-term, relatively cheap) to target anyone they suspect might be a terrorist? Assuming that there were still violent extremists
plotting various heinous acts, what would these powerful states do if the Internet was there but no one knew how to spy on it? For starters, they'd
have to
rely more heavily on tried-and-true counterterrorism measures: infiltrating extremist organizations and
flipping existing members, etc., to find out what they were planning, head attacks off before they
occurred, and eventually roll up organization themselves. States waged plenty of counterterrorism
campaigns before the Internet was invented, and while it can be difficult to infiltrate such movements and find their vulnerable points,
it's not exactly an unknown art. If we couldn't spy on them from the safety of Fort Meade, we'd
probably be doing a lot more of this.
More funding WON’T solve. Data overload overwhelms intel and guarantees ongoing
resource failures.
Tufekci ‘15
Zeynep Tufekci is a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, an assistant professor at the
School of Information and Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, and a faculty associate at the Harvard
Berkman Center for Internet and Society. “Terror and the limits of mass surveillance” – Financial Times’ The Exchange - Feb 3rd
http://blogs.ft.com/the-exchange/2015/02/03/zeynep-tufekci-terror-and-the-limits-of-mass-surveillance/
The most common justification given by governments for mass surveillance is that these tools are
indispensable for fighting terrorism. The NSA’s ex-director Keith Alexander says big data is “what it’s all about”. Intelligence
agencies routinely claim that they need massive amounts of data on all of us to catch the bad guys, like the French brothers who assassinated the cartoonists of
Charlie Hebdo, or the murderers of Lee Rigby, the British soldier killed by two men who claimed the act was revenge for the UK’s involvement in the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. But
the assertion that big data is “what it’s all about” when it comes to predicting rare events is not supported
by what we know about how these methods work, and more importantly, don’t work. Analytics on massive datasets can be
powerful in analysing and identifying broad patterns, or events that occur regularly and frequently, but are singularly
unsuited to finding unpredictable, erratic, and rare needles in huge haystacks. In fact, the bigger the haystack — the more
massive the scale and the wider the scope of the surveillance — the less suited these methods are to finding such
exceptional events , and the more they may serve to direct resources and attention away from
appropriate tools
and methods. After Rigby was killed, GCHQ, Britain’s intelligence service, was criticised by many for failing to stop his killers, Michael
Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. A lengthy parliamentary inquiry was conducted, resulting in a 192-page report that lists all the ways in which Adebolajo and
Adebowale had brushes with data surveillance, but were not flagged as two men who were about to kill a soldier on a London street. GCHQ defended itself by
saying that some of the crucial online exchanges had taken place on a platform, believed to be Facebook, which had not alerted the agency about these men, or the
nature of their postings. The men apparently had numerous exchanges that were extremist in nature, and their accounts were suspended repeatedly by the
platform for violating its terms of service. “If only Facebook had turned over more data,” the thinking goes. But that is misleading, and makes sense only with the
benefit of hindsight. Seeking larger volumes of data, such as asking Facebook to alert intelligence agencies every time that it detects a post containing violence,
would deluge the agencies with multiple false leads that would lead to a data quagmire, rather than clues to impending crimes. For
big data analytics
to work, there needs to be a reliable connection between the signal (posting of violent content) and the event (killing
someone). Otherwise, the signal is worse than useless. Millions of Facebook’s billion-plus users post violent content every day, ranging
from routinised movie violence to atrocious violent rhetoric. Turning over the data from all such occurrences would merely flood the
agencies with “false positives” — erroneous indications for events that actually will not happen. Such data overload is not without
cost, as it takes time and effort to sift through these millions of strands of hay to confirm that they are, indeed, not needles — especially when we don’t even
know what needles look like. All that the investigators would have would be a lot of open leads with no resolution, taking away resources from any
real investigation. Besides, account suspensions carried out by platforms like Facebook’s are haphazard, semi-automated and unreliable indicators. The
flagging system misses a lot more violent content than it flags, and it often flags content as inappropriate even when it is not, and suffers from many biases. Relying
on such a haphazard system is not a reasonable path at all. So is all the hype around big data analytics unjustified? Yes and no. There are appropriate use cases for
which massive datasets are intensely useful, and perform much better than any alternative we can imagine using conventional methods. Successful examples
include using Google searches to figure out drug interactions that would be too complex and too numerous to analyse one clinical trial at a time, or using social
media to detect national-level swings in our mood (we are indeed happier on Fridays than on Mondays). In contrast, consider the “lone wolf” attacker who took
hostages at, of all things, a “Lindt Chocolat Café” in Sydney. Chocolate shops are not regular targets of political violence, and random, crazed men attacking them is
not a pattern on which we can base further identification. Yes, the Sydney attacker claimed jihadi ideology and brought a black flag with Islamic writing on it, but
given the rarity of such events, it’s not always possible to separate the jihadi rhetoric from issues of mental health — every era’s mentally ill are affected by the
cultural patterns around them. This isn’t a job for big data analytics. (The fact that the gunman was on bail facing various charges and was known for sending hate
letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed overseas suggests it was a job for traditional policing). When confronted with their failures in predicting those rare
acts of domestic terrorism, here’s what GCHQ, and indeed the
NSA, should have said instead of asking for increased surveillance capabilities: stop
asking us to collect more and more data to perform an impossible task. This glut of data is making our job harder, not
easier, and the expectation that there will never be such incidents, ever, is not realistic.
Contention 2: Data localization
NSA Surveillance fractures the internet—inhibits effective data sharing
Fisher 13 (Max Fisher staff writer quoting Google CEO and a former State Dept Official, “How anti-NSA
backlash could fracture the Internet along national borders”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/11/01/how-anti-nsa-backlash-couldfracture-the-internet-along-national-borders/, ekr)
Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former State Department official Jared Cohen predicted that the Internet could gradually
fracture into several regional- or country-level mini-Internets. We may be seeing some surprisingly early hints of that process -- but not in the part of the
world where Schmidt predicted it would occur. The Internet could break into pieces, Schmidt and Cohen warned, under pressure from
authoritarian states such as Iran and China, which are working to control online discussion and limit the free exchange of ideas and news online. Under this scenario, the Great
Firewall of China, which separates China's Web from the rest of the world's, could be just the beginning of a gradual process of separation. These authoritarian states also
In a book released earlier this year,
tend to be frequent sources of hacking and cyber-espionage, which could exacerbate the Internet's fracturing by leading democratic countries to wall themselves off from the threats. It would
be the authoritarian Web or Webs breaking apart from the free, democratic Internet. This week saw some signs that the fractured-Internet theory might be coming true, perhaps sooner than
A group of German telecoms have proposed that the country
develop its own, separate Web and e-mail systems, to wall themselves off from the U.S. cyber-snooping that has
Schmidt and Cohen anticipated, but along very different fault lines.
the mere fact that it's being discussed so widely
and seriously is an indication that the Web could indeed break apart. The Post's Michael Birnbaum explains that the German
proposal wouldn't result in a separate Internet, exactly, but it would be a step in that direction -- and it's not just under discussion in Germany. The efforts to nationalize
Internet traffic go beyond Germany. In Brazil, where President Dilma Rousseff was also allegedly monitored by the NSA, the government has
pushed to require U.S. companies to store data about Brazilian customers inside Brazil. European Union
leaders have advocated that their 28 nations develop “cloud” data storage that is independent from
sparked such outrage there. While the plan doesn't appear likely to be carried out anytime soon,
the United States. It's ironic that these Web fault lines would surface among liberal democracies, rather than just between those democracies and authoritarian states, as
Schmidt and Cohen predicted. And, surely, some of this is political, with leaders in Brazil and Germany looking to get out ahead of public outrage against U.S. cyber-monitoring programs. Still,
politics does drive policies. While it's unlikely that Web consumers in these countries would really be willing to shut themselves off from popular U.S. Web services like Google and Facebook,
they are showing much greater interest in limiting the global nature of those services, forcing them to create separate systems within each country and to work under different rules and
India, potentially the world's second-largest Internet market behind China, has already begun to do
this. And that's how the fragmentation of the Web could begin. Even if it never leads the Internet to splinter off into fully separated
pieces, it does reverse the now 20-year process of decentralizing and globalizing the Internet, which is
arguably the most trans-national economic and political network in human history . That's been an enormous boon for U.S.restrictions.
based Web companies, which are globally dominant, as well as for highly advanced American cyber-espionage efforts. (That's a big part of why the United States is the world's leading advocate
As citizens in these countries push for
greater Web sovereignty, that will naturally mean erecting cyber borders to limit the flow of data. The
of a globally open Internet.) But it's also made it harder for other countries to control how they interact with the Web.
Web's global nature has greatly benefited the spread of commerce and ideas -- exactly why authoritarian states want to carve themselves off from it -- but it has also weakened national
borders in ways that many democracies really don't like. It's easy for Chinese hackers to break into Western companies' Web sites and steal their secrets, and in the same way it's easier for
If people in countries such as Germany and Brazil conclude that the
borderless nature of the Internet has more costs than benefits, then the Internet could start fracturing
even earlier than Schmidt anticipated.
U.S. spy agencies to poke into networks around the globe.
Freedom Act insufficient to resolve US tech reputation
The Nation 15 (June 11, 2015, http://www.cfr.org/latin-america-and-the-caribbean/snowden-come-between-us-latin-america/p31109, “@HD New Head 36 light;Study shows
cost of whistle-blower Snowden's revelations to US tech firms” //ekr)
WASHINGTON @BT New Screen/briefs Text - no indent; US
technology companies are getting hit harder than anticipated by
revelations about surveillance programmes led by the National Security Agency, a study showed yesterday. The study by the Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington think-tank, said the impact would be greater than its estimate nearly two years ago of losses for the cloudcomputing sector. In 2013, the think-tank estimated that US cloud computing firms could lose between $22 billion and $35 billion (Bt739.8 billion and Bt1.1 trillion)
in overseas business over three years. It
now appears impossible to quantify the economic damage because the entire
sector has been tarnished by the scandal from revelations in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the report said.
" These revelations have fundamentally shaken international trust in US tech companies and hurt US
business prospects all over the world," the report said. Study co-author Daniel Castro said the impact is now open-ended, with the NSA scandal having
tarnished a wide range of US tech firms. Since 2013, he said, "we haven't turned this around; it's not just cloud companies. It's all tech
firms implicated by this," he said. "It doesn't show any signs of stopping." @New Subhead;New law insufficient @BT New
Screen/briefs Text - no indent;The report said foreign customers are increasingly shunning US companies, and governments
around the world "are using US surveillance as an excuse to enact a new wave of protectionist policies". One survey cited by the researchers found 25 per cent of
businesses in Britain and Canada planned to pull company data out of the United States as a result of the NSA revelations. Some companies in Europe do not want
their data hosted in North America due to these concerns, the researchers said. Meanwhile,
foreign companies have used the
revelations as a marketing opportunity . "There is also an increasingly distressing trend of countries, such as Australia, China,
Russia, and India, passing laws that prevent their citizens' personal information from leaving the country's
borders, effectively mandating that cloud computing firms build data centres in those countries or risk losing access to their markets." The report said several
US tech firms including Apple and Salesforce have already started to build data centres abroad "to appease foreign watchdogs and privacy advocates". While this
"data nationalism" may create some jobs in the short term, Castro said that countries enacting these policies "are hurting themselves in the long term by cutting
themselves off from the best technology". Castro said the passage of a reform measure last week called
the USA Freedom Act is not
sufficient to repair the reputation of US tech firms . The report recommends further reforms including boosting transparency of
surveillance practices, opposing government efforts to weaken encryption and strengthening its mutual legal assistance treaties with other nations. "Over the last
few years, the US government's failure to meaningfully reform its surveillance practices has taken a serious economic toll on the US tech sector and the total cost
continues to grow each day," Castro said. Castro said the USA Freedom Act, which curbs bulk data collection among its reforms, is "good legislation and a step in the
right direction. We have ignored the economic impact of US surveillance".
Specifically – fracturing devastates the healthcare industry and innovation
Cooper 15 (Rich, Vice President of Research and Emerging Issues at the Chamber of Commerce
Foundation, “Say No To Internet Balkanization”, http://www.uschamberfoundation.org/blog/post/sayno-balkanization-internet/42923)
Last year, the
world celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was an important
reminder of how walls of all kinds stall progress, not accelerate it . Look at Germany today, Europe’s economic
powerhouse and a far cry from the Cold War days when East Germany was a model for how thoroughly communism could destroy an economy.
There is a clear analogy here to what is happening in the digital world. Balkanization
is the antithesis of what the Internet
was created to do. Balkanization raises virtual borders in what was intended to be a vehicle for sharing
knowledge without regard for national borders. The reason this matters is there are very real and costly consequences
for segregating what was built to be whole. These include: 1. Restricting data restricts innovation. One of the
most exciting aspects of the exponentially growing volume of data in the world today is that it holds the
potential for world-changing ideas, insights, and technologies. Big Data is the ultimate fertile ground for
innovation, with scientists, engineers, doctors, manufacturers, and indeed, all professions across the world gaining greater insight,
discovering new correlations, and developing new tools and practices that improve everyone’s lives. Internet Balkanization threatens
all of that . If the European Union, for example, restricts data access and exchange (as EU countries have debated), it will
create real challenges for industries that thrive on data. The healthcare industry , for example, is passing
the threshold into a new era of medicine , with pharmaceuticals tailored to the individual, doctors using
cognitive computing , and hospitals consolidating and digitizing health records for more effective and
collaborative treatment. All of this requires fast, easy access to data, which is not
compatible with a complex Balkanized and individually silo-ed Internet . If we build walls
online, we will build walls between ourselves and a future of unlimited opportunity and innovation.
Data driven healthcare is the critical factor in disease prevention – revolutionizes
planning and treatment
Marr 15 (Bernard, contributor to Forbes, he also basically wrote the book on internet data – called Big
Data – and is a keynote speaker and consultant in strategic performance, analytics, KPIs and big data,
“How Big Data Is Changing Healthcare”, http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/04/21/howbig-data-is-changing-healthcare/)
If you want to find out how Big Data is helping to make the world a better place, there’s no better
example than the uses being found for it in healthcare. The last decade has seen huge advances in the
amount of data we routinely generate and collect in pretty much everything we do, as well as our ability to use
technology to analyze and understand it. The intersection of these trends is what we call “Big Data” and it is helping
businesses in every industry to become more efficient and productive. Healthcare is no different. Beyond improving
profits and cutting down on wasted overhead, Big Data in healthcare is being used to predict epidemics , cure
disease , improve quality of life and avoid preventable deaths. With the world’s population increasing and everyone
living longer, models of treatment delivery are rapidly changing, and many of the decisions behind those
changes are being driven by data . The drive now is to understand as much about a patient as possible,
as early in their life as possible – hopefully picking up warning signs of serious illness at an early enough stage that
treatment is far more simple (and less expensive) than if it had not been spotted until later. So to take a journey through Big Data in healthcare,
let’s start at the beginning – before we even get ill. Wearable blood pressure monitors send data to a smartphone app, then off to the doctor.
(Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) Prevention is better than cure Smart phones were just the start. With apps
enabling them to be used as everything from pedometers to measure how far you walk in a day, to calorie counters to help you plan your diet,
millions of us are now using mobile technology to help us try and live healthier lifestyles. More recently, a steady stream of dedicated wearable
devices have emerged such as Fitbit, Jawbone and Samsung Gear Fit that allow you to track your progress and upload your data to be compiled
alongside everyone else’s. In the very near future, you could also be sharing this data with your doctor who will use it as part of his or her
diagnostic toolbox when you visit them with an ailment. Even
if there’s nothing wrong with you, access to huge, ever
growing databases of information about the state of the health of the general public will allow
problems to be spotted before they occur , and remedies – either medicinal or educational – to be prepared in
advance This is leading to ground breaking work, often by partnerships between medical and data
professionals, with the potential to peer into the future and identify problems before they happen. One
recently formed example of such a partnership is the Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance – which aims to take data from various sources (such as
medical and insurance records, wearable sensors, genetic data and even social media use) to draw a comprehensive picture of the patient as an
individual, in order to offer a tailored healthcare package. That person’s data won’t be treated in isolation. It will be compared and analyzed
alongside thousands of others, highlighting specific threats and issues through patterns that emerge during the comparison. This enables
sophisticated predictive modelling to take place – a doctor will be able to assess the likely result of whichever treatment he or she is
considering prescribing, backed up by the data from other patients with the same condition, genetic factors and lifestyle. Programs such as this
are the industry’s attempt to tackle one of the biggest hurdles in the quest for data-driven healthcare: The medical industry collects a huge
amount of data but often it is siloed in archives controlled by different doctors’ surgeries, hospitals, clinics and administrative departments.
Another partnership that has just been announced is between Apple and IBM. The two companies are collaborating on a big data health
platform that will allow iPhone and Apple Watch users to share data to IBM’s Watson Health cloud healthcare analytics service. The aim is to
discover new medical insights from crunching real-time activity and biometric data from millions of potential users.
An international approach is key – only cooperation solves
Donahue et al 10 (Donald A. Donahue Jr, DHEd, MBA, FACHE, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies
and University of Maryland University College Stephen O. Cunnion, MD, PhD, MPH, Potomac Institute
for Policy Studies Fred L. Brocker, MPH, RS, Brocker Staffing & Consulting, Inc. Richard H. Carmona, MD,
MPH, FACS, 17th Surgeon General of the United States & University of
Arizona, https://www.academia.edu/3651172/Soft_Power_of_Solid_Medicine// ekr)
that a broader, coordinated program of medical diplomacy would generate dual benefits:
increased global engagement and stability and the creation of a worldwide disease surveillance network
that could detect and deter an emerging pandemic. Framing the Issue At an April 2008 conference on preparedness hosted by the Potomac Institute
for Policy Studies’ National Security Health Policy Center, Dr. C. Everett Koop observed that our national approach to communicable disease has
not changed in over a century. In Foggy Bottom—at the far end of the National Mall from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)— diplomacy is similarly
In this article, the authors argue
practiced as it was 100 years ago. This seemingly strange correlation and recent world events point to the need to augment nineteenth-century “Gunboat Diplomacy” with twenty-first-century
Linking the considerable scientific and public health expertise of HHS to the diplomatic mission of the State
Department would serve to bolster both the U.S.
international diplomacy mission and improve global public health (Avery 2010). The positive impact of projecting quality public health
“Hospital Ship Diplomacy.”
and medical expertise—on a consistent basis—to the developing world is well documented (Gillert 1996). The success of General Petreaus’ approach in Iraq is attributed largely to enhancing
the availability of the civic infrastructure (Patraeus 2006). Médecins San Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and similar nongovernment organizations (NGOs) sow well documented
international goodwill.
Even the Taliban recognize the value of providing medical infrastructure services where the
government does not. Providing these services was a significant factor in their early successes in parts of Afghanistan and the frontier provinces of Pakistan (Homas 2008). Serving the needs of
vulnerable populations can be an entrée to acceptance, including providing a salve for an otherwise unwanted foreign military presence. It should be noted that when U.S. Marine and French
The efficacy of medical diplomacy in underserved
regions has been validated by first-hand experience. As a young Army medic serving in Phu Bai, Vietnam in 1971, one of the authors built an 80-bed
paratrooper barracks were bombed in Beirut in 1983, Italian medical troops were left unharmed.
hospital which was named “Tu Ai,” a Vietnamese-Buddhist term for peace. This facility provided medical treatment to all in need with no questions asked. After the fall of South Vietnam in
1975, the Tu Ai medical facility was the only one in the I Corps area of operations (and perhaps of all Vietnam) that was allowed by the new government to continue its mission unchanged. It
continues to provide medical care to this very day. There is ample precedent that supporting improvements in world health produces a political payoff, as evidenced by multiple, if sometimes
disjointed, efforts (Avery 2010; Public Health Systems Research Interest Group Advisory Board 2009; Macqueen KM, et al. 2001; Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations 2008). The U.S.
and other nations’ military organizations routinely conduct medical assistance missions throughout the developing world. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and a
number of medical NGOs regularly provide disaster and humanitarian medical and public health assistance. Significant goodwill was engendered by deployment of U.S. Army, Navy, and Public
Health Service (PHS) Commissioned Corps resources to Banda Aceh after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami and, more recently, to Haiti. Relief missions to Pakistan have been
The benefit of having a
robust, organized health and medical presence around the globe to help collect and disseminate medical
information and coordinate public health activities, including humanitarian assistance, is less obvious.
This benefit is manifested in three ways: the fostering of human security, the increase in effectiveness of global
public health efforts, and an increase in political legitimacy (Nye 2004). While it is beyond the scope of this commentary to debate the
mounted following the 2005 earthquake and again in response to recent, epic flooding. Defining an Underutilized Resource as an Available Solution.
components and relative merits of human security, history supports the position that a population with increased levels of disease and illness is more susceptible to destabilizing factors that
can pose direct threats to state viability and create fertile fields for radicalism and insurgency (WHO 2007). This is especially true if there are very clear differences in healthcare and public
health services available to ruling and elite classes compared to that available to the general population. Reflective of this, the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) routinely
assesses medical information and reports on diseases and poor public health conditions that may contribute to politically destabilizing a county (e.g., AIDS). Despite significant,
initiatives and interest for improving international health throughout the executive branch of the U.S.
government, these collective efforts lack meaningful coordination into a comprehensive approach on foreign health
diplomacy, and therefore fail to realize the cumulative benefit of and the inherent political stabilization impact fostered by an organized and coordinated global health improvement
if disparate,
effort. Even with improved political stability, the need for increased global health capabilities continues unabated. The emergence of SARS, H5N1 influenza, and the pandemic H1N1 outbreak
clearly demonstrates that national borders and ocean expanses no longer protect us from far-flung illnesses. In a global economy and with the ability to travel almost anywhere in the
world within 24–36 hours, a local infectious disease aberration can become an international health crisis in a matter of days. Moreover, because H1N1 influenza turned out to be not as deadly
as feared, the danger of a future calamitous pandemic occurring could be enhanced because the public may not heed future health official warnings. This is not limited to individual perception.
In a rare divergence of political and clinical focus regarding communicable disease, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe soundly criticized the World Health Organization
(WHO) and national health authorities for “distortion of priorities of public health services across Europe, waste of large sums of public money, and also unjustified scares and fears about
health risks faced by the European public at large” (Flynn 2010).
Zoonotic diseases coming now – effective healthcare is key to check
Naish 12 (Reporter for Daily Mail, “The Armageddon virus: Why experts fear a disease that leaps from
animals to humans could devastate mankind in the next five years Warning comes after man died from a
Sars-like virus that had previously only been seen in bats Earlier this month a man from Glasgow died
from a tick-borne disease that is widespread in domestic and wild animals in Africa and Asia”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217774/The-Armageddon-virus-Why-experts-feardisease-leaps-animals-humans-devastate-mankind-years.html#ixzz3E5kqxjQI)
The symptoms appear suddenly with a headache, high fever, joint pain, stomach pain and vomiting. As the illness progresses, patients can develop large areas of bruising and uncontrolled bleeding. In at least 30 per cent of cases,
Crimean-Congo Viral Hemorrhagic Fever is fatal. And so it proved this month when a 38-year-old garage owner from Glasgow, who had been to his brother’s wedding in Afghanistan, became the UK’s first confirmed victim of the
tick-borne viral illness when he died at the high-security infectious disease unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital. It is a disease widespread in domestic and wild animals in Africa and Asia — and one that has jumped the species
barrier to infect humans with deadly effect. But the unnamed man’s death was not the only time recently a foreign virus had struck in this country for the first time. Last month, a 49-year-old man entered London’s St Thomas’
hospital with a raging fever, severe cough and desperate difficulty in breathing. He bore all the hallmarks of the deadly Sars virus that killed nearly 1,000 people in 2003 — but blood tests quickly showed that this terrifyingly
. Nor was it any other virus yet known to medical science . Worse still, the gasping,
sweating patient was rapidly succumbing to kidney failure, a potentially lethal complication that had
never before been seen in such a case. As medical staff quarantined their critically-ill patient, fearful questions began to mount. The stricken man had recently come from Qatar in the
virulent infection was not Sars
Middle East. What on earth had he picked up there? Had he already infected others with it? Using the latest high-tech gene-scanning technique, scientists at the Health Protection Agency started to piece together clues from tissue
samples taken from the Qatari patient, who was now hooked up to a life-support machine.
The results were extraordinary. Yes, the virus is from the
same family as Sars. But its make-up is completely new . It has come not from humans, but from
animals. Its closest known relatives have been found in Asiatic bats. The investigators also discovered that the virus has already killed someone. Searches of global medical
databases revealed the same mysterious virus lurking in samples taken from a 60-year-old man who had
died in Saudi Arabia in July. Scroll down for video Potentially deadly: The man suffered from CCHF, a disease transmitted by ticks (pictured) which is especially common in East and West Africa
Potentially deadly: The man suffered from CCHF, a disease transmitted by ticks (pictured) which is especially common in East and West Africa When the Health Protection Agency warned the world of this newly- emerging virus last
month, it ignited a stark fear among medical experts. Could this be the next bird flu, or even the next ‘Spanish flu’ — the world’s biggest pandemic, which claimed between 50 million and 100 million lives across the globe from 1918
In all these outbreaks, the virus responsible came from an animal . Analysts now believe that the Spanish flu pandemic originated from a
wild aquatic bird. The terrifying fact is that viruses that manage to jump to us from animals — called zoonoses —
can wreak havoc because of their astonishing ability to catch us on the hop and spread rapidly through
the population when we least expect it. The virus's power and fatality rates are terrifying One leading British virologist, Professor John Oxford at
Queen Mary Hospital, University of London, and a world authority on epidemics, warns that we must
expect an animal-originated pandemic to hit the world within the next five years , with potentially
to 1919?
cataclysmic effects on the human race. Such a contagion, he believes, will be a new strain of super-flu, a highly
infectious virus that may originate in some far-flung backwater of Asia or Africa, and be contracted by
one person from a wild animal or domestic beast, such as a chicken or pig. By the time the first victim has succumbed to this unknown,
unsuspected new illness, they will have spread it by coughs and sneezes to family, friends, and all those gathered anxiously around them. Thanks to our crowded, hyper-connected
world, this doomsday virus will already have begun crossing the globe by air, rail, road and sea before
even the best brains in medicine have begun to chisel at its genetic secrets. Before it even has a name, it will have started to cut its lethal
swathe through the world’s population. The high security unit High security: The high security unit where the man was treated for the potentially fatal disease but later died If this new virus follows the pattern of the pandemic of
They die because of something called a ‘cytokine storm’ — a vast
overreaction of their strong and efficient immune systems that is prompted by the virus. This uncontrolled response burns
them with a fever and wracks their bodies with nausea and massive fatigue. The hyper-activated immune system actually kills the person,
1918-1919, it will cruelly reap mass harvests of young and fit people.
rather than killing the super-virus. Professor Oxford bases his prediction on historical patterns. The past century
example, the 2003 global outbreak of Sars, the severe acute respiratory
syndrome that killed nearly 1,000 people, was transmitted to humans from Asian civet cats in China. More... Man, 38,
has certainly provided us with many disturbing precedents. For
dies from deadly tropical disease after returning to the UK from Afghanistan Nine-year-old who turns YELLOW with anger: Brianna must spend 12 hours a day under UV lights because of rare condition In November 2002, it first
spread among people working at a live animal market in the southern Guangdong province, where civets were being sold.
Nowadays, the threat from such zoonoses is far
greater than ever, thanks to modern technology and human population growt h. Mass transport such as airliners can quickly fan
outbreaks of newly- emerging zoonoses into deadly global wildfires. The Sars virus was spread when a Chinese professor of respiratory medicine treating people with the syndrome fell ill when he travelled to Hong Kong, carrying
the virus with him. By February 2003, it had covered the world by hitching easy lifts with airline passengers. Between March and July 2003, some 8,400 probable cases of Sars had been reported in 32 countries. It is a similar story
with H1N1 swine flu, the 2009 influenza pandemic that infected hundreds of millions throughout the world. It is now believed to have originated in herds of pigs in Mexico before infecting humans who boarded flights to myriad
Once these stowaway viruses get off the plane, they don’t have to learn a new language or new
local customs. Genetically, we humans are not very diverse ; an epidemic that can kill people in one part
destinations.
of the world can kill them in any other just as easily. On top of this, our risk of catching such deadly
contagions from wild animals is growing massively, thanks to humankind’s relentless encroachment
into the world’s jungles and rainforests , where we increasingly come into contact for the first time with
unknown viral killers that have been evolving and incubating in wild creatures for millennia. This month, an international
research team announced it had identified an entirely new African virus that killed two teenagers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2009. The virus induced acute hemorrhagic fever, which causes catastrophic widespread
bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth, and can kill in days. A 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl who attended the same school both fell ill suddenly and succumbed rapidly. A week after the girl’s death, a nurse who
cared for her developed similar symptoms. He only narrowly survived. The new microbe is named Bas-Congo virus (BASV), after the province where its three victims lived. It belongs to a family of viruses known as rhabdoviruses,
A report in the journal PLoS Pathogens says the virus probably originated in local wildlife and
was passed to humans through insect bites or some other as-yet unidentified means. There are plenty of
which includes rabies.
other new viral candidates waiting in the wings, guts, breath and blood of animals around us . You can, for
example, catch leprosy from armadillos, which carry the virus in their shells and are responsible for a third of leprosy cases in the U.S. Horses can transmit the Hendra virus, which can cause lethal respiratory and neurological
award-winning U.S. natural history writer David Quammen points to a
host of animal-derived infections that now claim lives with unprecedented regularity. The trend can only
get worse , he warns. Quammen highlights the Ebola fever virus, which first struck in Zaire in 1976. The virus’s power is terrifying, with fatality rates as high as 90 per cent. The latest mass outbreak of the virus, in the
disease in people. In a new book that should give us all pause for thought,
Congo last month, is reported to have killed 36 people out of 81 suspected cases. According to Quammen, Ebola probably originated in bats. The bats then infected African apes, quite probably through the apes coming into contact
with bat droppings. The virus then infected local hunters who had eaten the apes as bushmeat. Quammen believes a similar pattern occurred with the HIV virus, which probably originated in a single chimpanzee in Cameroon.
'It is inevitable we will have a global outbreak ' Studies of the virus’s genes suggest it may have first evolved as early as 1908. It was not until the Sixties that it appeared in
humans, in big African cities. By the Eighties, it was spreading by airlines to America. Since then, Aids has killed around 30 million people and infected another 33 million. There is one mercy with Ebola and HIV. They cannot be
If HIV could be
transmitted by air, you and I might already be dead. If the rabies virus — another zoonosis — could be
transmitted by air, it would be the most horrific pathogen on the planet.’ Viruses such as Ebola have another limitation, on top of their method
transmitted by coughs and sneezes. ‘Ebola is transmissible from human to human through direct contact with bodily fluids. It can be stopped by preventing such contact,’ Quammen explains. ‘
of transmission. They kill and incapacitate people too quickly. In order to spread into pandemics, zoonoses need their human hosts to be both infectious and alive for as long as possible, so that the virus can keep casting its deadly
tentacles across the world’s population.
But there is one zoonosis that can do all the right (or wrong) things. It is our old
adversary, flu. It is easily transmitted through the air, via sneezes and coughs. Sars can do this, too. But flu has a further advantage. As Quammen points out: ‘With Sars, symptoms tend to
appear in a person before, rather than after, that person becomes highly infectious. Isolation:
Unlike Sars the symptoms of this new disease may not be
apparent before the spread of infection Isolation : Unlike Sars the symptoms of this new disease may not be apparent before the spread of infection ‘That allowed many
Sars cases to be recognised, hospitalised and placed in isolation before they hit their peak of infectivity. But with influenza and many other diseases, the order is
reversed.’ Someone who has an infectious case of a new and potentially lethal strain of flu can be
walking about innocently spluttering it over everyone around them for days before they become
incapacitated . Such reasons lead Professor Oxford, a world authority on epidemics, to warn that a new global pandemic
of animal-derived flu is inevitable. And, he says, the clock is ticking fast. Professor Oxford’s warning is as stark as it is certain: ‘I think it is inevitable that we
will have another big global outbreak of flu ,’ he says. ‘We should plan for one emerging in 2017-2018.’ But are we
adequately prepared to cope? Professor Oxford warns that vigilant surveillance is the only real answer that we have. ‘
New flu strains are a day-to-day problem and we
have to be very careful to keep on top of them,’ he says. ‘We now have scientific processes enabling us to quickly identify the genome of the virus behind a new illness,
so that we know what we are dealing with. The best we can do after that is to develop and stockpile vaccines and antiviral drugs
that can fight new strains that we see emerging.’ But the Professor is worried our politicians are not taking this certainty of mass death seriously enough. Such laxity could
come at a human cost so unprecedentedly high that it would amount to criminal negligence. The race against newly-emerging animal-derived diseases is one that we have to win every time. A pandemic virus
needs to win only once and it could be the end of humankind.
Contention 3: Solvency
The current Freedom Act is too narrow. It’s limited to phone collection and not other
bulk collection programs.
Kopstein ‘15
Joshua Kopstein is a journalist and researcher. His work focuses on Internet law and disorder, surveillance and government
secrecy. He has written pieces for Slate Magazine and The New Yorker. “USA Freedom Act gives NSA everything it wants — and
less” - Al Jazeera America’s The Scrutineer – June 2nd – http://america.aljazeera.com/blogs/scrutineer/2015/6/2/usa-freedomact-gives-nsa-everything-it-wants--and-less.html
Obama signed the Freedom Act into law later
the Freedom Act has
focused almost exclusively on ending one single National Security Agency program under one single authority: The
secret bulk collection of Americans' phone records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, revealed almost exactly two years ago by Edward Snowden. Section 215
and two other “emergency” post-9/11 surveillance provisions briefly lapsed Sunday night after the Senate failed to reauthorize them. The new law replaces the NSA’s bulk data
collection with a program that requires telecom companies to retain the data and grant access to
intelligence agencies through more targeted court orders. The other surveillance powers — roving wiretaps and the so-called lone wolf provision — remained
The Senate adopted the House version of the bill, which had been watered down at the behest of intelligence agencies, and President
this evening. While far from what most would recognize as “reform,” at the end of the day, the bill is probably more of a victory for transparency than it is for privacy. That's because
unused even as surveillance hawks raised apocalyptic warnings about letting them expire. Two independent White House panels have found that the metadata collection program has never helped to foil a terrorist plot. A major
appellate court decision also ruled the program was illegal, and that it merely served to create a “vast data bank” of extremely sensitive information — specifically, phone numbers and when and how often they were called —
about millions of innocent Americans. In other words,
the bulk phone records program was on its way out no matter what. The court
ruling could have been a big opportunity to push for an end to all domestic bulk collection under the Patriot Act,
not just phone records. But additional privacy protections had been negotiated away in the House, and
Senate advocates were not given a chance to add them back. The result renders the Freedom Act a
missed opportunity to address countless other NSA authorities, such as Executive Order 12333 and Section
702 of the F ISA A mendments A ct, ones we know (again, thanks to Snowden) continue to collect many other types of data.’
The plan restores language that makes circumvention impossible
Granick ’14 Jennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Jennifer was
the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Jennifer practices, speaks and writes about computer crime
and security, electronic surveillance, consumer privacy, data protection, copyright, trademark and the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act. From 2001 to 2007, Jennifer was Executive Director of CIS and taught Cyberlaw, Computer Crime Law, Internet
intermediary liability, and Internet law and policy. Before teaching at Stanford, Jennifer earned her law degree from University
of California, Hastings College of the Law and her undergraduate degree from the New College of the University of South
Florida. “USA Freedom Act: Oh, Well. Whatever. Nevermind.” – Just Security - May 21, 2014 http://justsecurity.org/10675/usafreedom-act-oh-well-whatever-nevermind/
The initially promising USA Freedom Act could have ended the previously secret government practices of collecting
Americans’ calling records, internet transactional information and who knows what else in bulk. Today’s version would allow
broad collection to continue under the guise of reform. The initial version of the bill would have
reinforced existing statutory language requiring a showing of “relevance to an authorized investigation”
before agents can get an order requiring production of business records, dialing and routing information, and other
data, and would have added other limits to ensure massive collection would stop. It also would have implemented
mild reforms
to content surveillance under section 702 of the F ISA A mendments A ct, stopping “back door” searches
for Americans’ communications. Last week, a Managers’ Amendment watered those provisions down,
substituting new language that would allow agents to use a “specific selection term” as the “basis for production”.
The bill defined “specific selection term” as something that “uniquely describe[s] a person, entity, or
account.” Given the intelligence community’s success at getting FISA judges to reinterpret obvious language—e.g. “relevance”—in counter-intuitive ways,
people wondered what this new language might mean. There’s deep public mistrust for the intelligence community and for the FISA court, which conspired to allow
bulk collection under spurious legal justifications for years. Worse, there’s deep public mistrust for the law itself, since the intelligence community’s “nuanced”
definitions of normal words have made the public realize that they do not understand the meaning of words like “relevance”, “collection”, “bulk”, or “target”.
The NSA is required to abide by Congressional mandate
Buttar 15 — Shahid Buttar, constitutional lawyer and executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense
Committee, 2015 (“Senate Moves to Check Executive Spying Power,” The Progressive, May 27th,
Available Online at http://progressive.org/news/2015/05/188151/senate-moves-check-executivespying-power, Accessed 06-07-2015)
The political shift indicates a direction for future reform. Who Wins and Who Loses?
already permissive laws
The most obvious losers are the NSA and FBI After 15 years of breaking
the agencies must finally start complying with constitutional
.
, yet not congressional blank checks,
limits Within the agencies, senior leaders of the intelligence establishment also emerge looking like
clowns Section 215 survived this long only because agency officials
lied under oath to evade oversight The Senate's decision to end a program that senators learned about
from whistleblowers
discredits their legacies.
.
.
—including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former NSA Director Michael Hayden—
.
, instead of those officials, further
Even if they remain above the law by evading the prosecution for perjury sought by multiple members of Congress, their careers
will be defined by congressional and judicial rejection of illegal programs they built in secret. To the extent intelligence officials are clowns, the many congressional leaders from both parties who supported them are stooges. Establishment Democrats and Republicans alike uncritically
accepted lies, deferred to them and went along with the Beltway consensus - in sharp contrast to their populist colleagues who proved willing to uphold their oath of office to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Several winners also emerged from this
Congressional rejection of mass spying vindicates several principles at once, including transparency,
oversight, checks and balances, the separation of powers and constitutional rights enshrined in the First
and Fourth Amendments
drama.
. Each of those values is cherished across the political continuum, making them especially powerful during a presidential election year. Senator Paul is another clear winner. He demonstrated leadership, surged among
the crowded GOP field of 2016 presidential hopefuls and effectively seized control of the Senate from the majority leader. With its senators leading both the surveillance/secrecy/corruption caucus, as well as the competing constitutional/privacy/accountability caucus, Kentucky could also
claim victory. The US Constitution may be the most important winner. By proxy, "We the People of the United States" actually scored two victories at once. Narrowly, the expiration of Patriot Act Section 215 advances Fourth Amendment privacy interests. Even though mass surveillance
will continue for now under other legal authorities, one program through which our government monitors phone calls and tracks everyone's behavior, regardless of wrongdoing, will end. More broadly,
this vote begins a long-
overdue process of limiting executive powers
congressional assertiveness supports democracy in a long-running battle to avoid the erosion from
within
, expanded during a period of seeming emergency, which grew entrenched despite proving ineffective as well as constitutionally offensive. In this sense,
foreseen by both Alexis de Tocqueville and President and Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower. What Comes Next? With reformers having triumphed in Congress, the debate over surveillance reform must expand. Further reforms are necessary to enable an
adversarial process and greater transparency at the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and also to limit other legal authorities - like Executive Order 12333 and FISA Section 702 - used to justify unconstitutional domestic surveillance. It's a good thing that a bipartisan measure,
the Surveillance State Repeal Act (HR 1466), is poised to do exactly that. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) introduced the SSRA to force the agencies to justify the expansion of any powers from a constitutional baseline, rather than one contrived by a
Congress has long abandoned its role of checking and balancing runaway executive power, but
the Senate's recent vote suggests an overdue awakening
decade of executive lies.
. Members should heed the political wind, and embrace bipartisan calls for aggressive limits as the starting point for
comprehensive surveillance reform.