| « Privacy Act | Main | What's in a Name? » |
For those who haven't gotten a copy of this summer's bestseller, The 9/11 Commission Report, let me now suggest you get a copy. It is an historic document that will be a key reference point in anti-terrorism debates over the next five or ten years.
And to the commission's immense credit, the report is crisply written in plain language. You do not need a law degree or two years experience as a Congressional staffer to understand it.
But that same plain language also means that the specific recommendations (PDF) are unspecific.
Though both the Republicans and Democrats have signed on to the Commission's recommendations, the task of translating those recommendations into legislative language (currently being handled by Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain) is complicated by differences in what legislators and interest groups understand the recommendations mean.
The recommendation that there should be a National Intelligence Director (NID) to coordinate domestic and foreign intelligence gathering and have budgetary authority over the sprawling intelligence bureaucracy is the prime example. It is by far the most contentious and important of the Commission's recommendations.
Civil liberties groups fear that a centralized director, especially one in the executive office, would lead to politicized intelligence and would inevitably lead to Hoover and Reagan-era abuses.
Agencies, including the Justice Department and the Pentagon, fear such centralization would lead to loss of control (and turf) and lead to inflexibility in the fight against an enemy whose structure and methods change rapidly.
But even those who agree that the idea is a good one don't necessarily agree what that position looks like in practice. Should the NID be in the cabinet? Or should the NID have a fixed term (along the lines of the Fed chief) that insulates her from political pressure? How much control should the chief have over how the FBI divies up money to various intelligence agencies or what information it decides to share with other agencies?
As my article in Wired News shows, similar problems exist with the commission's recommendation that the government should create a national civil liberties board to oversee anti-terrorism information sharing.
However, I think I failed to convey in the article how historic and important this proposal is.
Regardless of one's position on the Patriot Act and the necessity of increased anti-terrorism powers, it is impossible to ignore that many people fear that the government is abusing its newfound powers.
That perception is only strengthened by the Bush Administration's unwillingness to share information.
How often and for what reasons has the FBI used the National Security Letters provisions of the Patriot Act? That provision gives the FBI wide authority to issue itself administrative subpoenas in order to compel businesses (including ISPs) to provide evidence and business documents to investigators.
How many times has the FBI used that provision? We don't know, since the FBI has decided that even aggregate statistics about the use of NSLs are classified. The ACLU, which is suing the FBI over the use of NSLs, has heavily redacted FBI documents that indicate the NSLs are widely used. Now just because they are widely used, that does not mean the FBI is abusing that power.
But how are we to know, given the Attorney General has decided to share as little information as possible? We know how often the government uses wiretaps, but that is only because a 25 year old law forces the FBI to report to Congress about how it is using that power every year.
Yet, Congress has been unwilling to require similar public reports about other powers and programs. Their oversight of anti-terrorism programs and powers has been abysmal and the executive branch has continually stonewalled and resisted their meager efforts.
This is exactly why an independent, powerful and balanced civil liberties board is necessary.
There is no real debate that the government should be fighting militant Islamic extremism (which is how I think the government defines the war on terrorism, explicitly excluding domestic right-wing anti-abortion, anti-federal government militants).
If that movement is left unchecked and allowed to grow, millions around the world could lose their lives and liberty to religious extremists who hate modernity.
Our civil liberties, not our economic system, are what should define us as a nation -- the right to petition for the redress of grievances, the right to travel without undue restriction, the right to worship any or no god, the right to be safe in our homes and papers from unjustified government searches, our right to walk the streets without the fear of a cop demanding identification and our right to speak freely in opposition to government.
So to the extent the government needs expanded powers to fight terrorists, so too do we need expanded powers to protect our civil liberties.
Part of the function of a truly independent board is to lend credence to legitimate government efforts to thwart religious extremists who find glory in killing 3,000 Americans going about their daily lives and in the beheading of civilians such as journalist Daniel Pearl.
But the board should also be there to ensure we never need another Church Committee report and to ensure that all-too widespread beliefs that the government is monitoring our every move be confined to the schizophrenic, and not the loyal opposition.
Posted by Ryan Singel at August 21, 2004 12:37 PM
Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.secondaryscreening.net/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/2