Decius wrote:
This is an interesting discussion of the line between intelligence gathering and law enforcement that hasn't been recommended here before. I have some thoughts about this that perhaps I'll discuss at phreaknic.

It's interesting because it's a common attitude in the US these days, but it's not at all convincing to me.

Baker invokes "the hypothetical risk to privacy if foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement were allowed to mix." I find this risk neither hypothetical or particularly complicated to identify. If all risks to American lives or property become conflated, then either you must increase the protections given to foreign nationals or agents to the equivalent of the 4th amendment protections a US citizen gets (which we don't want), or you have to diminish the 4th amendment protections for citizens (which we don't want).

Now, to argue that staff ought to be cross trained and capable of acting in dual roles might make sense, assuming certain protocols for admissibility of collected information are followed, is fine. There may be some efficiencies to be gained there.

The second lesson is that we cannot write rules that will both protect us from every theoretical risk to privacy and still allow the government to protect us from terrorists.

This is true, almost simplistically so. The question that matters is whether it is more important to you to live in a nation that is "safe" from terrorism, or if it is more important that you live in a nation which values such semi-tangible benefits as privacy, freedom and due process (among others).

I very clearly fall into the latter camp. I think it's terrible that people died on September 11th. I feel deep sorrow for their families and for the brave emergency workers that died or became ill as a result of their efforts. Yet I continue to feel that their deaths were not the most costly result of the attacks. The most costly result is precisely the erosion of civil liberties -- the erosion of the very meaning of America -- espoused by this column. After all, if we allow our nation to be subverted by fear, suspicion and an iron hand, I believe we will no longer be the country we set out to be.

Surely, we should expect protection and feel safe in our homes and lands, but eroding our rights -- in the very *best* case -- only substitutes the oppression of the State for the threat of terrorist attack.

I, for one, do not at all find this a worthwhile trade.

When Baker says "We should not again put American lives at risk for the sake of some speculative risk to our civil liberties," I hear, "Of course we should trade liberty for security!" I simply do not agree, particularly in light of the illusory nature of "security" in a system predicated on such beliefs.

RE: Setting ourselves up for more 9/11s. - By Stewart Baker - Slate Magazine