Terrorism is not a threat to the national security, strictly speaking. That is, the use of terrorist strategies against the US, per se, do not directly threaten the political or territorial integrity of the Republic (a generally accepted way to define ?national security?). What does threaten the fabric of the Republic is our response to terrorist attacks, in our economy, our society, and our laws. How we respond to terrorism will determine our fate at their hands.
Of the challenges in counter-terrorism, the most intractable are legal and policy challenges. Certainly as a society, we prize civil security. As a nation, we also prize civil liberty, economic prosperity, scientific progress, freedom of movement and commerce, open debate and public discourse, and social tolerance. It is quite a challenge to craft counter-terrorism policies and laws that guarantee civil security without impeding any of our other cherished public policy objectives. That is the challenge of our elected officials.
It is a challenge that is played out daily in the press, most recently with the challenge to balance civil security and intelligence needs with civil liberties and privacy needs of US persons. In particular, this challenge has received recent attention, focusing on the issue of eavesdropping by the National Security Agency. The recent debate surrounding the role of the intelligence community in domestic US society is not new, although the specifics of the NSA activities are a relatively recent development. Rather, the NSA controversy is the most recent instance in a series of controversies about the proper role of technology and intelligence for counter-terrorism and homeland security.
This species of controversy will continue well into 2006. It will continue because it reflects a public policy debate that has not been resolved; indeed, it has not been addressed within the proper framework for debate. It will continue because the underlying competing issues reflect market forces that will only grow as the world continues to globalize.
The competing issues underlying technology and intelligence are globalization, data mining, and privacy. These issues first appeared in their most modern incarnation shortly after the 9/11/2001 attacks, with the creation of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system that sought to use data mining technologies to mine the uncountable bytes of data resident in myriad publicly available databases to find and track terrorist activity. However, three trends that TIA sought to exploit offer productivity and profit well beyond the intelligence and counterterrorism world. These trends are:
? connectivity to the Internet of virtually every private or business actor,
? availability and multiplicity of databases of public information on individuals and entities, and
? the power of information technology to sift mass amounts of data, mine and aggregate data, and analyze patterns.
TIA is an example of an intelligence program exploiting these three common trends of globalization. However, ChoicePoint and Lexis/Nexis are two other examples. As with all technology, these trends can have good and bad uses. Put to good use, they can present the consumer with almost-perfect knowledge of the marketplace, maximizing purchasing power and boosting economies. However, reports of data loss and fraud portend the threat of identify theft. Potential abuse of these trends is not limited to intelligence agencies.
The debate over the proper duty to protect consumers? personal information is an important debate. It is, at heart, the same debate over how the intelligence community should use information technology in counter-terrorism. However, the public debate has yet to recognize the commonalities of these issues.
Instead, debate over the role of intelligence in the Information Revolution is cast in the irrelevant framework from which our privacy policies are derived. Fundamental notions of privacy are based on public policy formed in the 1960s and 1970s, when we had different technology, a different intelligence community, and a very different enemy. During that period, the concern was that the government would gain surreptitious access to information to which it had no right. Government risk of abuse is still a concern, but today, a more perplexing issue is what the government ought to do with the massive amounts of data to which it and others have legal?and more efficient?access.
Reliance on government inefficiency for privacy protection is not good policy. Rather, public policy should be updated to reflect technological and social modernity. Until this is accomplished, we will continue to deny ourselves critical opportunities to improve our intelligence community, while repeating the same misguided debate every time a new data mining program surfaces. An update begins with new laws governing the use of public and private databases, based upon a new, informed debate that addresses fundamental questions of privacy in light of modern trends, technologies, and expectations: What is a reasonable expectation of privacy, with respect to information freely given to third parties online or in commerce? What is the material difference between privacy and anonymity? How much data must be aggregated before privacy is violated, and what is the actual harm? Are there duties and liabilities that society ought to impose on private-sector collectors and maintainers of data?
These are issues of policy that must be addressed simultaneously as science is harnessed for the national security. We have reached a point where technology development can no longer flourish in a policy vacuum. Technology developers must consider the policy ramifications of their technology from the beginning of development and integrate policy objectives with technical objectives in program plans. Similarly, the development of public policy and law must not be ignorant of the potential of modern science. The government?s policy process should inform policymakers and lawmakers of opportunities and implications of emerging technology. Policymakers and legislators need to understand when general technology trends, or ?technology push,? challenges current policy or law, or even suggest the need for change.
The dangers of scientific progress ignorant of policy implications pre-date the intelligence abuses of the 1960s and 1970s and are hardly restricted to the intelligence world. Poster children of science flourishing in a policy vacuum include J. Robert Oppenheimer, Victor Frankenstein, and Prometheus. Ignorance has never been an excuse, in law, policy, or science. Ignorance, at best, results in missed opportunities. In counter-terrorism and intelligence, it can be deadly.
