Why Are We Marching to Jail?
Kerry Howley | July 28, 2006, 1:30pm
According to a new ACLU report, pro-active California police haven't just been spying on anti-war protesters. They've been leading them:
Two Oakland police officers working undercover at an anti-war protest in May 2003 got themselves elected to leadership positions in an effort to influence the demonstration, documents released Thursday show.
The extent of the officers' involvement in the... march May 12, 2003, led by Direct Action to Stop War and Others, is unclear. But in a deposition related to a lawsuit filed by protesters, Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan said activists had elected the undercover officers to "plan the route of the march and decide I guess where it would end up and some of the places that it would go."
Full report here.
thoreau | July 30, 2006, 5:35pm | #
Shannon-
First, I just said that I am fine with information zero coming from informants. There's a difference between the informant who informs and the informant who sets himself the task of whipping some crazy guys into shape so that they can become an organized terror cell that's worthy of arrest.
Second, we don't live in a world where the starting point is impossible to find. There are known radical groups out there. We already have information on them. Not enough, but something. Why not use that info as the starting point? I'd be fine with tapping the phones of, say, somebody known to associate with people who are already known to be bad. I'd be fine with sending undercover agents to known recruiting areas for radical groups. I'd be fine with monitoring known recruiting areas. I'd be fine with monitoring web sites where known violent radicals hang out.
I don't know exactly how much info our government has on Islamic radicals, but they have
something. Whatever they have, let's call that the starting point, and proceed from there. It seems to be more efficient than tapping 300 million phones.
Indeed, I seem to recall that when the Bush administration was criticized for not acting soon enough prior to 9/11, Condoleeza Rice said (paraphrase) "Well, yes, we did have a memo warning us that something big was coming from Al Qaeda, but we had so much info that it was hard to know what to act on." That would seem to warn against tapping 300 million phones.
Finally, I'll offer a scenario where it would be fine to tap the phone of an innocent guy like myself: Let's say I am the advisor to a grad student who, unbeknownst to me, is tied to radical groups. By day, he's just a normal grad student, but at night he's studying nuclear physics textbooks. The feds have, by one means or another, identified him as a threat, and they know that I am in close contact with him. They would be justified in tapping my phone as long as they have him under surveillance. Even if they satisfy themselves that I am not a knowing accomplice of his, there may still be info that they could glean from listening to me, info concerning him. (e.g. He and I discuss some diffusion problems. I think he's interested in the diffusion of photons in tissue, or growth factors near tumors, two problems that I'm working on, but in fact these problems are mathematically equivalent to a neutron diffusion problem that he needs to understand so he can build a better nuclear bomb.)
But once he was busted, I would hope that they would stop tapping my phone. Especially if I cooperated.
Anyway, I think it's clear that:
1) We do have ways of getting information zero. We don't live in a world where we have no clue who any of the violent radicals are.
2) Adding more hay to the stack won't help us find needles.
3) My notion of who should or shouldn't be tapped is a reasonable one. I just came up with a very plausible scenario where an innocent person like myself could be justifiably spied on.
You always come here and explain that it's paramount to stop these guys, so anything and everything that might stop them should be justified. And I keep trying to explain that a more intelligent approach will not only protect my privacy, it might even make for a more, well, intelligent investigation, a more successful one.
Shannon Love | July 31, 2006, 12:57pm | #
lowdog,
I see your point, but I absolutely agree with thoreau that it's unacceptable for undercover agents to prod folks into doing something that they may or may not have had the skills/inclination/ability/etc to pull off.
I agree and so would everyone running such operations. Its a long known problem called the "Agent Provocateur problem." We might like to imagine that the agent can function as just the quite guy in the back of the room who never leads anything but as a practical matter agents almost always must become involved and they must often use inducements to gain entry, especially to the leadership circle. An outsider cannot gain entry into such a group quickly and reliably without bringing something important to the table. They also face time constraints. Undercover operations are taxing on people and expensive to run. The temptation to try to bait the group to see if they might be more than talk in order to save time is nearly overwhelming. Using undercover agents always raises the possibility that the actions of the agents caused the conspiracy they sought to prevent. No one can ever be sure that they did not.
The benefit of signal intelligence in this regard is that it is passive and does not in of itself alter the behavior of the observed. You can be fairly confident that information uncovered represents the true intent and capabilities of the group.
I would posit that the greater threat to our way of life is unbridled power given to our government and it's agents.
That is a valid fear but I would point out that historically, no liberal order as slowly evolved into an authoritarian one by increasingly
effective police powers. History shows that liberal orders that cannot maintain basic order reach a crisis and then suddenly collapse into authoritarian states. If we do not prevent terrorist attacks from any source, the use of the tactic will spread. Eventually, enough people might conclude that the American liberal order simply no longer worked and they might start looking at authoritarian solutions.
(Communist often tried consciously try to create this situation using terrorism because they thought a polarized authoritarian order was easier to subvert than a liberal one. Usually, they were right.)
Look at what happened with crime in the 60-80's. The resulting sense of chaos and disorder resulted in the popularity of characters like Eastwood's Dirty Harry, whose explicit appeal was a crypto-facsist disregard for formal law. It seemed to many that the rule of law had functionally broken down and only someone operating without constraint could solve the problem. Fortunately, a reversion to traditional approaches to crime control and other factors stopped the slide. I don't think, however, that we can assume that the same thing will happen with terrorism. It is a new threat made possible by technological and cultural change. We have no historically effective methods to revert to. When you add in the fact that terrorist maybe able to eventually launch attacks that kill millions, then the threat that they will drive dangerous political change is very real.
I think it far safer to create an effective system to prevent attacks. If no attacks occur, then there will be no political drive for more powers. I believe that because of technological change, we do have to create a monitoring system in cyberspace just as we once had to build radar to monitor airspace. Its grim but I believe that terrorism will be the principle form of warfare in the 21st century. If we do not effectively defend ourselves from it, then we will lose or freedoms one way or the other.
