Potemkin Privacy Panel

I was just watching a recent episode of Charlie Rose where First Amendment lawyer Floyd  Abrams  offered a fascinating bit of  little-noticed history. Abrams was part of a Defense Department panel created in 2003--in the wake of the TIA fiasco--to advise the government how to protect privacy  while still taking advantage of data-mining tools and such.

The panel, as Abrams recalled, was all for data-mining--with one caveat:  it should  be done with oversight. Use FISA, or ask Congress to update  it.  As Floyd recounted on Charlie Rose

We basically said if you want to engage in data mining, which we said was a very good way to gather information to fight terrorism, you should go to the FISA court to get permission. You should go to the court established by Congress and get an OK from the court to do so, and if - if you didn`t think that was the right way to do it, you ought to go to Congress and get them to give you more authority to go to that court and get permission.

The panel presented its conclusions to Secretary Rumsfeld--who, it might be noted, is also a boss the NSA, since it's a military agency. Rummy thanked them, got some good P.R. and then of course chucked the conclusions in the circular file.

Asked by guest host Brian Ross, "Do you feel used?" Floyd said:

[I]t's one thing to be on a commission and then be ignored. That's --that's life. But not even to be told that the government was then engaged in the very activities that  we were writing about does seem as if we were being used, yes.

These Potemkin panels  are turning out to be something of a trend! Perhaps the Sunday Styles section should get on it.

And by the way, turns out NSA phone records sweeps are looking increasing  TIA-ike. It's not about afiliations with terrorists. As Noah Schachtman puts it, the latest details suggest: "It doesn't matter who you know.  It's what you do that gets you in trouble. If you spend money and buy plane tickets like Mohammed Atta did, then maybe you're a terrorist, too. Same goes for the kind, and frequency, of phone calls you make."

Comments

[Pangloss]

As the Counterterrorism Blog notes here...

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/05/the_emerging_shape_of_the_comi.php

"The coming shape of the Islamist jihad war is becoming clear: self-starting groups that are increasingly decentralized structure, linked by shifting networks and communicating almost exclusively through the Internet.

"The chief architect of this strategy is the Spanish-Syrian strategist Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, the subject of a very nice piece in The Washington Post, whose 1,600 page treastise, `The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance,' has been circulating on Web sites for 18 months. "

In other words, one of the major shapes that terrorism will take in the future is individually directed terrorism following templates such as those that are offered up in Setmariam's work, on various Internet Jihad websites.

A movement of Jihadists is envisioned that is armed with 1800 pages of detailed templates about how to conduct terrorist attacks. They may not know any formally affiliated terrorists. In the dangerous case, they will meet other non-affiliated Moslems with jihadist sympathies, and feed each others' jihadist ambition using the material in "The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance," and Internet Jihad websites.

We have two choices, either (1) let them commit terrorist acts just like John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, or (2) stop them. If we let them kill at will, then we are sheep waiting to be slaughtered. If we are to stop them, how do we find them? The only way to find them is to look for suspicious behavior. Look at websites visited, phone calls made and received, special training, special materials, plane tickets, train tickets, van rentals, etc, and the patterns of all these things.

All this knowledge is powerful. In the wrong hands it could be dangerous. In the hands of terrorists it would be really dangerous. Credit bureaus already have half of that information. Phone companies have the other half. It is not beyond belief that terrorists could get at this information. Let us make sure that our government pulls out all the stops to keep us safe where it can, and that it not misuse the information for anything other than the prevention of terrorist attacks and the prosecution and punishment of those who scheme to commit them. The distinction to make is between proper and improper use of data mining, not between data mining and not.

Also we have to remember that we are in a war against Jihad terrorists. Wars are not run by courts and judges and police, they are run by strategists and troops. War is hell. Nobody likes it, least of all those who are caught by the enemy. In a war against those who refuse to wear uniforms and hide among civilians, mistakes will be made. It is not the fault of a civilized military if civilians who harbor terrorists, or who are used as shields by terrorists, are mistakenly imprisoned or hurt. It is the fault of the terrorists. This is why nobody likes terrorists. They are dangerous to *everybody*, including their allies and supporters.

The proper place for judicial oversight is after suspects have been identified by data mining and captured, not before the data mining takes place. The best that can be done is to sort through those who are captured or killed after action, sock the guilty away in a deep hole for a long time, and let the innocent go with our apologies and a commendation for putting up with it. The dead and innocent are casualties of war and should be buried with honors as the tragic heroes of war they are. They are true martyrs, unlike those who strap nailbombs around their torso and blow themselves up in a disco.

SUMMING UP
Just like real mining, data mining is perilous. Real mining needs to be done with care, but we don't let the dangers stop mining completely. There is a reason to be careful about how the information from data mining is used in the prosecution of war, not a reason to stop data mining as we prosecute this war.

Or we could just give up and let the Jihadists conquer us for Islam. I'm sure that women won't mind going back to being the chattel of men again. It's a little too much Slavegirl of Gor for me, but it might be to your taste.