Aug 23 2006
Even With NSA, We Are Behind The UK
An interesting, and scary, revelation coming out in the news today is that the intelligence tools the UK used to thwart the recent Airline Bomb Plot are legally out of reach of US law enforcement officials – and that includes the current NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program used to monitor our enemies overseas (and note when they contact people here in the US) and the SWIFT financial monitoring program – both exposed and claimed unnecessary by the National Security Experts at the NY Times.
The Homeland Security Department has neither the legal nor technical tools to match the British capture of terrorist operatives before they were about to blow up passenger airliners.
Officials said U.S. law would not have allowed the FBI to conduct the type of surveillance that led Britain to uncover the al Qaeda cell and capture what could be the network’s chief. They said the department also does not have the funding to detect new types of bombs used by al Qaeda.
”What helped the British in this case is the ability to be nimble, to be fast, to be flexible, to operate based on fast-moving information,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.
Now we have to ask all Democrat candidates who are supportive of ending the NSA surveillance why we should be making ourselves even worse off than we are now? If we are behind the UK in our tools, why dig the whole any deeper (pun intended)? I think the Dems needs to explain why, since we are now behind, we want to be further handicapped by the NY Times as they expose and attempt to shut down our defenses.
We are ludicrous at these kinds of things. Canada beats us in these things. We have a lot of the tech, but our government is extremely liberal. We probably have better tech. But, we can’t use it.
Historically, we have kept really at a distance from investigating deeply such groups that espouse religious or political views (high profile, high media cases not withstanding). Look at Able Danger. How typical.
I am all for strong personal rights, but if we do not have a good system in place (nothing like what the conspiracy theorists are sure we already have), we do not have a chance. Eventually, we will be forced to. And nobody will like that.
You can do this stuff the right way without invading the rights of innocent civilians.
This revelation should add to some interesting political theater that’s already beginning to play out. If a Federal Appeals Court reverses Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s decision on the NSA surveillance program, and the Dems object strongly, it hurts them this November. If the decision is upheld (not likely) before the election, the Republican Congress will pass quickly legislation that satisfies whatever heartburn the courts seem to have with this program. Again, if the Donks put up a big fight, they lose this November. And if, but some unforseen fluke, the Donks manage to win control of Congress in November and undo such legislation, they will lose in 2008. I don’t see a position that the hapless jackasses can take on this that ends up being a winning hand for them. They have a virtually impossible task of convincing a significant number of voters beyond their paranoid left-wing base that doing what’s necessary intelligence-wise to combat terrorism is going to, in any significant way, impact the average persons rights.
If this gets as far as the Supreme Court I wonder if Ginzberg will recuse herself due to past ACLU association.
RS
If I was as paranoid as the most radical left, I would have to take out a contract on my current year tax preparer each year to give me one degree of seperation plausable defense.
All I have to remember is not to claim this as a deduction next year as a tax preperation expense!