![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016) terrorist attacks reignited the debate over security vs. liberty in the fight against terrorism in democratic societies. In the United States, the controversy began again in 2012, as a result of revelations coming from Edward Snowden about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) domestic and foreign intelligence collection programs. The collection of telephony metadata by the NSA raised the issue about the legal provisions of section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, and section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, concerning the collection of phone records of U.S. citizens. The USA Freedom Act was meant to address some of these concerns over the use of technology domestically in the fight against terrorism, but does it? This article argues that the use of advanced technologies in domestic intelligence and information collection by intelligence agencies does not significantly enhance security and prevent the possibility of terrorist attacks, as much as good police work and information sharing. Also, the article addresses the broader issue of the role of the governments in the use of information and communication technology in democratic societies for intelligence purposes, suggesting that as technology advances and the fear over new threats increases, the potential for democratic governments to use that technology to their own detriment also increases.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. “The program collects ‘metadata’—a term used in this context to refer to data about a phone call, but not the audio contents of a phone conversation itself. Declassified FISC orders indicate that the data include the number that a call was dialed from; the number that a call was dialed to; and the date, time, and duration of the call. The data do not include cell site location information” (Liu, Nolan, and Thompson, Citation2014, p.2).
2. In the United Kingdom, ISIS members were even reported to be using internet ISPs with email accounts linked to the British Department of Work and Pensions, which had been sold by the British government to Saudi Arabia (Hamill, Citation2015).
3. Glenn Greenwald took the title for his book (Citation2014) from this quote by Church.
4. The quotation marks are a reference to remarks attributed to Sir Francis Bacon in the 1600s, ‘He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator’ (Forbes, Citation2015).
5. Anecdotally, this is a common response by many college students today. I have taught a course on Terrorism and Political Violence at two different colleges and this sentiment is echoed by most of my students in the course even after the Snowden revelations. For a good treatise on the fallacy of this argument see Solove (Citation2013), Nothing to hide: The false tradeoff between privacy and security.
6. James Bamford wrote about the NSA’s eavesdropping on American citizens in 2008, yet there was little public reaction to his revelations. He also reported that then Director of the NSA, General Michael Hayden, had testified before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on the expansion of its collection programs involving U.S. citizens. The only reaction was a follow-on letter from Congresswoman Pelosi, who wanted to know whether the NSA was operating under White House approval for the expanded authorities (Bamford, Citation2008, p. 117).
7. In remarks at the 10th Anniversary Homeland Defense/Security Education Summit (HDSES) in Arlington, VA in May 2017, General (ret.) Alexander was still unapologetic about the NSA’s domestic collection programs, in fact arguing for more government control over the nation’s cyber and communications architecture, rather than less. Personal observations of the author.
8. The 9/11 Commission Report (Citation2004) was the result of a Congressional investigation over the intelligence failures which led up to the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. The 9/11 Commission made a number of recommendations on restructuring the intelligence and law enforcement communities to ensure timely sharing of threat information, to include the formation of the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
9. Brazil was intending to award a $4 billion dollar contract to Boeing for the purchase of the F-18 Super Hornet combat aircraft, but after the Snowden revelations, Dilma Rousseff announced that the contract would be awarded to Sweden instead (Greenwald, Citation2014, p. 250; Winter, Citation2013).
10. I am indebted to the insights of Wolfgang Rensch, the University of Magdeburg, Germany, who offered these perspectives on the depth of German public reaction to the Snowden revelations in his commentary on the initial draft of this article in a paper presented at the International Political Science Association World Congress in Montreal, Canada in July 2014.
11. The ‘Five Eyes’ countries include: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States.
12. In September 2001, the U.S. Congress issued the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which provided legal justification in the GWOT to use force against terrorists and those suspected of supporting terrorism. The AUMF authorized President Bush to
to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided in the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 1, 2001 … in order to prevent any future attacks of international terrorism against the US by such nations, organizations or persons. (Public Law No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224 quoted in Ramsay and Kiltz, Citation2014, p. 20)
13. The U.S. Army did not initially identify Major Hasan as a terrorist. Rather, his murder of 13 people and wounding of 32 others at Ft. Hood was classified as ‘workplace violence’ (Chumley, Citation2013).
14. The Senate got even more frustrated with the CIA over revelations in March 2014 that the CIA has been collecting information on members of the Senate Intelligence Committee (Grier, Citation2014).
15. After the withdrawal of forces from Iraq at the end of 2011 and the drawdown from Afghanistan in 2012, the active duty military decreased its size considerably due to a mandated budget cut of $487 billion dollars over 10 years (U.S Department of Defense, Citation2012). The U.S. military is poised to grow again under a Trump proposed budget increase of $51 billion to $522 billion in 2017 and $574 billion in 2018 (NPR, Citation2017).
16. For example, the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota was listed as ‘critical infrastructure’ to South Dakotans, based on tourism’s economic impact on the community (Calvitto, Citation2005).
17. Excerpt from the 4th Amendment, U.S. Constitution, 1789.
18. The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. The Report was titled, ‘Liberty and Security in a Changing World’ (2013).
19. Continuismo is the practice of maintaining oneself in power once in office. In Latin America, populist leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Raphael Correa in Ecuador fit this pattern. When Manuel Zelaya attempted to follow suit in Honduras in 2009, he was ousted in a military coup. The promise of democracy in countries in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and North Africa after their color revolutions and Arab Springs, has also proved elusive, as new leaders have resorted to authoritarian solutions to maintain power.
20. The Oath of Office for U.S. military officers (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).
21. National security states refer to the military regimes that ruled many Latin American countries in the 1970s and 1980s, which used repressive means to control society due to the internal threat from insurgent and revolutionary movements. In Argentina, for example, it was call the ‘Dirty War’, where thousands were ‘disappeared’ based on suspicion that they were a threat to the government (Hillman & D’Agostino, Citation2011, p. 86).
22. A Pew Center poll (Citation2013) found that a majority of Americans were in favor of the NSA domestic collection programs in the fight against terror. However, a January 2014 CBS News poll found that 47% of Americans believe the collection of phone records of U.S. citizens is necessary in the fight against terror, while 48% do not. On the issue of Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA domestic surveillance program only 31% approved of his actions, while 54% disapproved. Even more telling is that 61% think he should return to the United States to stand trial for his actions, while only 23% think he should be granted amnesty (Dutton, De Pinto, Salvanto, & Backus, Citation2014).
23. The U.S. government accused Chinese military officials of cyber espionage arguing that such actions were used to enhance the economic competitiveness of Chinese companies in bidding contracts. The U.S. position is that while the United States may also conduct economic espionage, it is not done to financially benefit U.S. companies, but rather for national security reasons (Tucker, Citation2014).