The political blogosphere and the opinion sections of media sites are buzzing with a discussion of the federal government’s datamining of, well, just about everything you do online, by phone, or with a credit card. All of the ferment was spurred, no doubt, by Glenn Greenwald’s revelation of the use of phone call records. Walter Russell Mead’s remarks are as good as any:
As if the Tea Party/IRS mess isn’t enough, the White House has been shaken to its foundations by a series of dramatic and devastating revelations about the unsuspected reach of the government’s surveillance of the telephone records, email and other activities of US citizens without their knowledge. The President’s liberal base is stunned and appalled, with the New York Times editorial board hanging out the black crepe of official mourning. Al Gore twittered his disappointment and fear.
Republicans are divided. Jeffersonians and libertarians wave the flag of civil liberty, ready to join the liberal left in an attack on an administration that would have loved the Alien and Sedition Acts. Security focused Republicans are saying little; more concerned about the terror threat than some, they don’t want to see tools that may be necessary hastily stripped from the executive—though they have little reason to help President Obama out of his worst political scrape since Jeremiah Wright went under the bus.
The revelations could hardly have come at a worse time; when public trust in the good intentions of the federal government are ebbing is a difficult time to recommend that we’ll just have to trust the federal government to use the information it’s gathered properly.
I’m reading quite a few opinions to the effect that we should blame the growth of the security state on Americans’ obsession with terrorism and perfect security. Is this what obsession looks like?
That’s a graph, courtesy of the Gallup organization, of how many Americans list terrorism as their most important priority.
I don’t for a second believe that the growth of the “security state” is a matter of national security so much as job security. Elected officials are minimizing downside risk by determining how far they can push the envelope.
If I had any confidence that the vast and elaborate structures that have been erected over the last ten years were really necessary and sufficient to deter terrorist attack I might feel a bit better about the situation but I don’t. All of this acquiring of data is done in the name of making us more secure but is it really suitable to that task? Not being able to identify apparent Lone Wolves like Nidal Hasan is one thing. Not being able to identify active conspiracies, like the Boston Marathon Bombing, is another. The argument would be made, presumably, that the data are necessary but not sufficient.
What is sufficient? If no amount of data would be sufficient is acquiring that much data even necessary? Are they just gathering data in the hope that someday they might have the tools to make it useful? Is that an acceptable purpose? Sheer volume of data might be a barrier to its effective use.
Assurances that anything they sweep up in their search for usable information are nice but IMO it’s a reasonable assumption that if it can be misused then, ultimately, it will be misused. Just as there’s no perfect protection against terrorism, there’s no perfect protection against the misuse of information.
And then there’s the niggling suspicion that all of this, whether orchestrated by the Bush Administration or the Obama Administration, is far more about job security than about national security. As me auld mither used to say “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.â€
The national security state has been a feature of American life since the Truman Administration. This is part of a process, not an aberration s resulting from the 9/11 attacks. It also just happens to be a process which has made many people in government and big business wealthy and powerful.
USA 1776 to PRISM R.I.P. It is not ok on any level. Done entirely secret. Unilaterally. Unconstitutional.
OT “Those who give some of their freedom for greater security will end up with neither” Benjamin Franklin
“That’s a graph, courtesy of the Gallup organization, of how many Americans list terrorism as their most important priority.”
Maybe they ought to run the poll again, you know, after the Boston Marathon bombing.
As for this:
“the White House has been shaken to its foundations by a series of dramatic and devastating revelations about the unsuspected reach of the government’s surveillance of the telephone records, email and other activities of US citizens without their knowledge. ”
Bullshit. Most Americans, I’d wager, are, at best, ambivalent about these programs. I don’t why you lend any credence to Mead at all. The silly old gasbag.
Are you saying that the enormous amount of surveillance has been put into place since the Boston Marathon Bombing? Clearly, that is not the case. Public concerns since the bombing cannot have been causative since they would have come after the surveillance was well under way.
Fortunately, Gallup has taken their poll since the Boston Marathon Bombing and concern about terrorism remains at a very low level with just 2% of people listing it as their most important concern. Your position does not have factual support.
“Elected officials are minimizing downside risk by determining how far they can push the envelope”
I agree, but it not the present graph of public opinion, but the fear of public opinion turning drastically in the face of horrors, perhaps Democrats feeling more vulnerable than Republicans. Obama sure acts like the risks are unacceptable. A mass casualty attack on U.S. soil leading to tax cuts and partial-privatization of SS.
As a security hawk, I’m not outraged by what I’ve read (while on vacation), but I don’t trust Obama’s risk assessment since reading about the drone program. He sets the dial too high.
That’s a somewhat different proposition. The claim, made by Josh Barro and others, is that the vast security apparatus has been put into place because Americans are obsessed with perfect security. In my view politicians’ obsession with perfect security as a means of anticipating changeable public opinion is a far less justifiable reason for abrading individual rights than a persistent public opinion, something unsupported by facts, would be.
Its a claim that restates, don’t let an emergency go to waste.
I’m typing while looking at Cheyenne Mtn, where the NORAD complex was open for visitor tours after the end of the Cold War, but closed (essentially) after 9/11. I hope people don’t become too cynical about the inevitability of an increasing security state. Things change.
You are sort of right about job security, but I dont think you have it right. No one worries about terrorist attacks when they arent happening. If an attack happens, and it can be claimed that you had not been maintaining some near maximalist effort to prevent it, you will lose an election. Look at the criticisms they took over the Boston bombings. Given how the critics of this admin pilloried them, do you really think they want to reduce monitoring?
The best way out of this mess is for Americans to grow up. Some attacks are going to happen. They cant all be stopped. The returns on ever increasing intrusiveness get smaller as you max out efforts to monitor. As you increase the scope of those efforts, your risk of abuse increases. If we can just learn to not panic over every attack (think of the time we spent on the underwear bomber who basically just set his undies on fire) then we can have a policy which balances the conflict between security and privacy. Until then, it aint happening and every POTUS will err on the side of too much security since they dont want to lose an election by being soft on security. Presidents dont win elections by being soft on terror, crime, drugs or most anything in this country.
(I kind of deliberately ignore the fact that the opposition will always attack the admin over any attack. Look at Benghazi. We were working under a strict budget, keeping costs down. We spend relatively little on security for our embassies as a whole. When something goes wrong you get criticized for not having dozens of guards in place. Same thing with Boston. The guy made it on to their lists, just not high enough to get investigated. Triple the funds and number of people investigating those leads, and Tsarnaev probably gets a closer look.So, this stuff will always make for political fodder and the gullible or those obsessed with finding a scandal, like several at this site, will buy into the political attacks. But, if we can just get Americans to not panic over this stuff anymore, the politics will be less effective.)
Steve
I don’t take a purely consequentialist view. From my point of view, there are many things worse than any given politician losing an election and what’s being done is one of them.
Additionally, I don’t think you can support your argument of panic from the data. Boston Marathon Bombing: no big spike. And that was before the news of all of the surveillance broke so, assuming you’re right, the pre-revelations level of activity was maximalist enough.
I general I agree with steve that politicians tend to focus on avoiding perceived certain outcomes. They are willing to take a risk on a potentially worse, but uncertain, outcome to avoid the known outcome. For anti-terrorism efforts, the political cost of a pervasive surveillance program is perceived to be less than the certain political cost following a successful major terrorist attack.
Similarly, I think both Presidents Bush and Obama made similar calculations with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan. The certain political costs of cutting our losses in 2006-2007 did not compare to doubling down on the so-called “surge.” Bush got lucky with that one. President Obama tried the same thing with Afghanistan but it didn’t work out as well, but he got lucky too in that he isn’t paying a political price for the failure – most have come to agree that Afghanistan isn’t worth more blood and treasure.
“Additionally, I don’t think you can support your argument of panic from the data.”
They shut down a city for a couple of days. Can you see the Israelis doing this? We happened to catch the guys. It still dominated the news for days after.
“From my point of view, there are many things worse than any given politician losing an election and what’s being done is one of them.”
Kind of my point. if we can be rational rather than panic, we can set realistic policies understanding that there will be successful attacks, but there wont be immediate fear of losing an election as a result. Absent that kind of resolve, politicians will react to perceived incentives and err on the side of too much security.
Steve
As far as the NSA Prism stuff goes, the reporting on this lacks historical context – namely that this stuff has been going on since the late 1940’s. Up until the 1970’s AT&T (then a monopoly, of course) worked very closely with the government and there was no oversight at all. That changed with the Church committee and the creation of FISA, changed again with the break-up of AT&T and again in the 1990’s with internet and change from copper to fiber. Here’s an interview that provides a taste, but most of the details are in books few have read. It would be nice if someone would do an article for a major media outlet.
The key to any intelligence program with constitutional and privacy concerns is proper oversight. This is a topic where reasonable people can disagree on what constitutes sufficient oversight. The problem is difficult for secret programs that deal with sources and methods where public oversight would compromise the programs. Beyond the FISA court, the IG function and regular classified reports to Congress I’m not sure what more could be done.
steve,
How did Israel get to that point where they are more “rational” about it that we are? It came from suffering hundreds of attacks. And while Israelis may have developed a “keep calm and carry on” attitude, their policies are another matter….
I was curious myself whether or not the Boston Marathon bombing might have raised more American’s fears of terrorism. Dave’s mention of the new Gallup Poll answered that question.
” Look at the criticisms they took over the Boston bombings. Given how the critics of this admin pilloried them, do you really think they want to reduce monitoring? “
I think some of those ‘criticisms’ were more than justified. Considering that members of the Boston anti terrorist team were left out of the federal loop deserves inquiry. The fact that the older brother was treated so casually by the feds, and not closely followed during his back and forth trips overseas is another lapse by the government. It almost seems like where government should have been more on the stick, they failed. But, regarding aspects of public control, there seems to be a definite bureaucratic creep in the name of ‘national security,’ and staving off terrorist attacks.
IMO, terrorism has become more of a tool adding layers of government, rather than serving the people in maintaining a consistent protocol safeguarding this country from future terrorist attacks. This should be viewed in less of a left/right offensive, but rather an apolitical application of keeping the country secure while still maintaining the civil rights and freedoms that have been at the very foundation of why this country was established in the first place.
The problem here is that it’s not always apparent who is a bad guy and who isn’t. If one objects to treating him “casually” then one needs to accept the fact that everyone in a similar situation would also subject to greater scrutiny which would require giving the federal government more power to investigate people like him in greater detail.
If one objects to treating him “casually†then one needs to accept the fact that everyone in a similar situation would also subject to greater scrutiny which would require giving the federal government more power to investigate people like him in greater detail.
Shedding any semblance of being PC, IMO people, exhibiting a number of problematic variables indicating a proclivity towards terrorism, should be monitored more closely than those who don’t. This is certainly not a failsafe method, as there is always the exception to the rule out there. Nonetheless, I don’t believe we should avoid focusing available resources and intel on the most predictable types intending harm to this country.
Getting back to a comment Steve posted:
“I kind of deliberately ignore the fact that the opposition will always attack the admin over any attack. Look at Benghazi. We were working under a strict budget, keeping costs down. We spend relatively little on security for our embassies as a whole. When something goes wrong you get criticized for not having dozens of guards in place.”
It has been mentioned numerous times now that the budget had nothing to do with the lapse of security in Benghazi. Other embassies, in far less volatile areas, had far greater security than Benghazi. In fact, a waiver had to be issued, from the state dept., in order to allow the Benghazi post to exist with below minimal standards of security normally mandated for all embassies, such as thickness of walls etc..
From what Hicks testified to, security was kept to a minimum in order to showcase Libya as a stable enough area to allow the then SOS Clinton to eventually visit. This government fantasy prevailed, even though the UK shut down their embassy because of fears of unrest, the Red Cross left the area, and the US embassy had already been under previous attacks. The state department, however, was so invested in the idea that Libra was a safe haven that it continued to ignore Steven’s streams of requests for additional security, to keep the ruse alive (maybe for election purposes?).
Ambassador Steven’s life, though, was essentially dismissed as much as those who lost their lives in the Benghazi attacks, with no attempts to save them.
In the meantime, the Obama apologists continue to turn a deaf ear to the multitude of questions surrounding this preventable tragedy, pigeonholing it, instead, as a mere Republican vendetta, or something. The Administration’s primary compensatory cooperation seems to be pushing out reams of vapid, inconclusive, contradictory papers/talking points, while stonewalling vital questions and access to witnesses leading to real answers regarding the many failures in Benghazi.
@Cannons Call
“Those who give some of their freedom for greater security will end up with neither†Benjamin Franklin
The problem is that the terms “freedom” and “security” are never defined. The one quoting is usually referring to somebody else’s security. One’s reasonable tradeoff is another’s police state.
@steve
The best way out of this mess is for Americans to grow up. Some attacks are going to happen. They cant all be stopped. The returns on ever increasing intrusiveness get smaller as you max out efforts to monitor. As you increase the scope of those efforts, your risk of abuse increases. …
Why is this only applicable to terrorism? If we are going to be adults, we should grow up about healthcare. Everybody cannot have health care. This applicable to all safety net programs.
As an adult, I expect to hear, “but this is different.”
” in order to allow the Benghazi post to exist with below minimal standards of security normally mandated for all embassies, such as thickness of walls etc..”
Which really wasnt the problem. It was the number of guards. The number of State Dept security people is low. Keeping the number low to be a showcase place is not documented at all.
Steve
If one objects to treating him “casually†then one needs to accept the fact that everyone in a similar situation would also subject to greater scrutiny which would require giving the federal government more power to investigate people like him in greater detail.
Uh, no, what needs to be done is to not allow such people in the country in the first place. Chechens? Really? What, don’t we have enough vicious homegrown criminals?
Stop allowing everyone to come here as they please and this problem goes away. I really don’t give a damn about the problems in Chechnia so long as those problems stay over there.
Which really wasnt the problem.
What wasn’t the problem — to have the place properly fortified? To decrease the American security and rely on Libyan security, who ran away when the attack happened?
The state dept blew it Steve, plain and simple! The motives behind it were implied by Hicks, who was 2nd below Stevens. Shouldn’t he have had a pretty good command of the information?
I can’t believe how you go to any lengths to rationalize the behavior that went on with the state dept, the WH , and those dealing with making some of the top military decisions on whether or not to deploy assistance that was pleaded for from those on the ground.
Also, the information gleaned from the ARB report was hardly complete or even well documented.
” The motives behind it were implied by Hicks,”
An angry, guilt ridden guy. I doubt he has any idea about motives since he was in Libya. He is speculating. (Remember that building in which the ambassador hid held up against the attackers. Also, it was the CIA that vetted the guards, not State.)
I cannot believe that you, with your willingness to accept cartoonish views from pundits on your side on our military capabilities, are second guessing the military people who had to actually make the command decisions that night on whom to deploy, or not.
The referent of “they” in that sentence is the police not the people of Boston. The people of Boston were sheep. That’s disturbing, too, but in a different way. Maybe I’m wrong about this but I can’t imagine the Chicago authorities even trying to shut down the city under like circumstances let alone Chicagoans going along with it.
And I can only imagine the reactions of the residents of, say, Houston under those circumstances.
Steve,
Hicks was in Libya, directly interacting with Ambassador Stevens regarding the threatening climate before the attack, as well as what was happening during the attack. His record as a government employee is long and unblemished, as far as I know. For you to assume or speculate this guy’s testimony was based on being an “angry, guilt ridden guy” is pretty arrogant, IMO. Furthermore, my understanding is that this accusation was made by an anonymous source, alluding to an “ax to grind.” Sure, being demoted like Hicks was made no points. But, that in itself should provoke additional inquiry as to why he was demoted. Was it because he was doing a bad job, or because he might have information that would ultimately embarrass the government.
As for second-guessing the military and their command decisions — I never think anybody is above questioning, especially when there is so much candid disagreement from people like Mark Thompson, Deputy Coordinator for counter terrorism in the State Dept since 2006, Eric Nordstrom, former regional security officer in Libya, as to how their superiors responded to this crisis, and a bevy of other ex-military people familiar with that area. The State Dept., though, seems to rely heavily on the now questionable, light-weight ARB report, for it’s defense, which skimmed the surface of this incident, not even bothering the then SOS to fill in the details of that night.
Basically Steve, you believe the government, hook, line and sinker. I don’t. And as for cartoonish characters involved in the Libyan chaos I think they would be Obama, who seemed to disappear that night, along with that supposed memo ordering people to do whatever they had to do; Clinton, who threw up her hands and denied everything; and the military brass who somehow can’t name who said what, or when it was said. In this event it seems more like confused and scared Keystone Cops running the country, than anyone with courage or understanding of military protocol or even available resources.
Another glaring failure in the administration’s initial response to Benghazi was why they didn’t immediately contact the Counter terrorism Security Group (CSG), to brainstorm and respond to this crisis. That’s been this agency’s purpose since their formation in 1986, for all administrations up to Obama’s — to evaluate a terrorist incident and recommend courses of action to the Deputies Committee. The Deputies Committee then has the power to recommend the deployment of the Foreign Emergency Support Team (aka FEST), the National Mission Force, FBI Fly Teams, etc. FEST, if you recall, that is where Mark Thompson’s role came into play, as he was ready to deploy when told to ‘stand down,’ something the higher ups are now saying didn’t happen.
And, people continue to contend this incident has all been ferreted out properly, and now move along…..until the next foreign disaster?
……But then again, Obama and Clinton steadfastly didn’t want Benghazi to be interpreted as a terrorist act. So, they obfuscated the details, turned their backs on the men under fire, refusing to engage the resources available to help out in such an attack, covered it up, and then hoped it would all just go away. That’s what happened, IMO.
For many of you that may be just life, and all ok. For me, it’s cowardly and dishonest leadership, that if not exposed and rectified, will only come back to haunt us later on — if not in this administration, then a future one.
“Basically Steve, you believe the government”
Basically, I dont believe in conspiracy theory. Show me some evidence and I will be much happier. Hicks went back to a desk job since his job was basically gone. Arrogant to suggest he felt guilty? Ever have someone you were responsible for die? I have. Projection maybe, arrogance, probably not. When Thompson tells us how those 4 guys were going to get there (hijack a Libyan plane and then walk there?) I will be willing to at least listen to is rationale for how 4 guys would make that much difference. (These guys all trained with Rambo?) I understand the impulse to send whomever you have into the fray. That is what you expect from junior officers. Senior officers need to decide if the risk is worth the potential reward.
“……But then again, Obama and Clinton steadfastly didn’t want Benghazi to be interpreted as a terrorist act.”
Conspiracy theory again.
Steve