[EPIC_IDOF] Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis

[Richard M. Smith]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR20051220010
53.html

Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis
By Richard A. Posner
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; Page A31

We've learned that the Defense Department is deeply involved in domestic
intelligence (intelligence concerning threats to national security that
unfold on U.S. soil). The department's National Security Agency has been
conducting, outside the framework of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance
Act, electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens within the United States.
Other Pentagon agencies, notably the one known as Counterintelligence
Field
Activity (CIFA), have, as described in Walter Pincus's recent
articles in
The Post, been conducting domestic intelligence on a large scale.
Although
the CIFA's formal mission is to prevent attacks on military
installations in
the United States, the scale of its activities suggests a broader
concern
with domestic security. Other Pentagon agencies have gotten into the
domestic intelligence act, such as the Information Dominance Center,
which
developed the Able Danger data-mining program.

These programs are criticized as grave threats to civil liberties.
They are
not. Their significance is in flagging the existence of gaps in our
defenses
against terrorism. The Defense Department is rushing to fill those gaps,
though there may be better ways.

The collection, mainly through electronic means, of vast amounts of
personal
data is said to invade privacy. But machine collection and processing of
data cannot, as such, invade privacy. Because of their volume, the
data are
first sifted by computers, which search for names, addresses, phone
numbers,
etc., that may have intelligence value. This initial sifting, far from
invading privacy (a computer is not a sentient being), keeps most
private
data from being read by any intelligence officer.

The data that make the cut are those that contain clues to possible
threats
to national security. The only valid ground for forbidding human
inspection
of such data is fear that they might be used to blackmail or otherwise
intimidate the administration's political enemies. That danger is more
remote than at any previous period of U.S. history. Because of increased
political partisanship, advances in communications technology and more
numerous and competitive media, American government has become a
sieve. No
secrets concerning matters that would interest the public can be kept
for
long. And the public would be far more interested to learn that public
officials were using private information about American citizens for
base
political ends than to learn that we have been rough with terrorist
suspects
-- a matter that was quickly exposed despite efforts at concealment.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act makes it difficult to conduct
surveillance of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents unless
they are
suspected of being involved in terrorist or other hostile activities.
That
is too restrictive. Innocent people, such as unwitting neighbors of
terrorists, may, without knowing it, have valuable counterterrorist
information. Collecting such information is of a piece with data-mining
projects such as Able Danger.

...
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