Comments on: Spook Central

By: JB

JB — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 18:27:49 +0000

The Pentagon’s 135 page piece on its $74 million+ per-year investment in new surveillance technologies is relevant … and scary. Go here to read an abridged review. Or-well (big sigh)…

By: Daragh McDowell

Daragh McDowell — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 03:58:15 +0000

Due to 9/11 related security beef-ups, after 2 months of being checked out before I got my visa, I’ve now been waiting almost 2 more months (with about 6 weeks left in my stay) for INS to doublecheck my papers before SSA will give me a Social Security Number (without which I can’t even get a key to my office, let alone get paid.) I do however have a bank account, into which my folks have kindly transferred some cash while I wait to be paid so I can survive off of something other than rats. Lets think about this: I have been denied entry into a government database which would allow my employment, the amount of money I’m earning, my residence etc. etc. to be catalogued and tracked, until INS checks that the birthdate on my DS-2019 matches that on my passport and Visa. Meanwhile I’m still here, but I’m outside the system, and thus much harder to ‘find.’ I do have a bank account though, and thus if I had a patron willing to send it, access to as much cash as I need. My patron happens to be my parents, but what if I was someone else, and my patron happened to be in the House of Saud. I really don’t think the Americans have a clue how to conduct succesful counterterrorism and are just blindly throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. And if that should just happen to vastly inflate the powers of the thief-in-chief well hey, what’s the harm?

By: tew

tew — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 01:06:14 +0000

pg’s proposal is reasonable and clear-headed, but I disagree about the interaction between regular law enforcement and intelligence. While it makes sense for the police to tip off the spooks when something irregular is going on, I would rather not have the spooks tipping off the police when they come across something out of their jurisdiction but potentially criminal. If we’re going to give intelligence services broad surveillance powers, let’s not tempt anybody to use them for anything but protecting us from terrorists and foreign enemies. Disallowing spook-to-cop tips would go a long way toward making me more comfortable with spies among us.

By: aelph

aelph — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 00:35:18 +0000

I can’t resist the cheap shot… and a well-informed American media The Economist’s editorial staff apparently has little experience with American media. That being said, I must say I like pg’s rather clear-headed proposal.

By: PG

PG — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 21:32:43 +0000

Adding to the mix, what is the military element in this? It seems strange that we would have domestic law enforcement hunting down a guy and then handing him over to a military tribunal. I think the lines should be kept more clear: domestic law enforcement goes after criminals who will be tried in the criminal courts, and intelligence agencies go after military-esque threats (the soldiers of the terror war, I suppose) who will be tried in military tribunals. I’m fine with having regular law enforcement tip off the intelligence agencies to dodgy sorts, but I think their involvement should stop there. Ditto for the intelligence agencies’ interference in domestic crime matters. Has anyone posted here about the parallels between Moussaoui and a Mafia member on trial? I would think some of the same concerns about organized general crime would apply to organized terrorism. Finally, if we are going to hold people indefinitely because we cannot risk their telling their compatriots what they’ve leaked to the U.S., why don’t we just call them POWs and stop bothering with trials altogether?

By: SageOne

SageOne — Wed, 16 Jul 2003 21:10:46 +0000

I would have to agree, though I find it hard to believe that some sort of big brother doesn’t already exist and that we are monitored more than we know.