[iwar] [fc:Do.Dots.Connect.to.Police.State?]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-06-07 08:05:55
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2002 08:05:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Do.Dots.Connect.to.Police.State?]
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Do Dots Connect to Police State?
By Farhad Manjoo

2:00 a.m. June 7, 2002 PDT

In a televised address to the nation Thursday evening, President Bush
proposed the creation of a cabinet-level domestic security office to act as
a clearinghouse for intelligence collected by many existing federal
agencies.

Like several other law enforcement changes proposed by the Bush
administration during the past two weeks, this move was sharply criticized
by civil libertarians, one of whom cautioned that Bush was leading the
country toward a "police state."

The new agency, which requires congressional approval, would have the thorny
job of protecting "the homeland," an effort that the FBI and CIA have lately
been criticized for botching. Although details on the new agency's specific
mandate were fuzzy, it was clear that the administration expected its modus
operandi to be centered around easy interagency information sharing.

The "new entity will be one place where information will get pulled
together," said Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary.

One of the main criticisms of the FBI and CIA is that they did not share
intelligence leads they'd collected before Sept. 11, preventing each agency
from seeing a full picture of terrorist activity and potentially disrupting
the attackers' plans.

The FBI and the CIA would not be replaced by the new agency, but some of
their operations would be given over to it. The agency would reportedly
envelop the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Customs Service, the
Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Lawrence Livermore
National Lab, the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Program, the Drug
Enforcement Agency and the Secret Service.

Fleischer called it the biggest government restructuring plan since the
creation of the CIA in 1947.

Civil liberty and privacy watchdog groups were grim upon hearing the news,
which was only the latest bit of government security tightening to occur in
the last couple weeks.

Last week, Attorney General John Ashcroft scrapped the guidelines that
govern the FBI's conduct, allowing the bureau to monitor websites, public
gatherings and religious institutions that aren't under criminal
investigation.

On Wednesday, Ashcroft said the government would photograph and fingerprint
up to 100,000 foreigners entering the country from Arab and Muslim
countries.

"I think we've reached the point in the debate where we need to ask larger
questions about where this administration is taking the U.S. government,"
said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
He added that "someone needs to apply the brakes" or the United States will
become a "police state."

Jerry Berman, executive director of the Center for Democracy &amp; Technology,
said that not only were these moves potentially censorial, but they would
ironically make it more difficult to protect the homeland.

"When the government collects monumental amounts of information, it may not
be able to find anything it needs," Berman said. "The problem they had
(before Sept. 11) wasn't in finding information, it was in analyzing
information, and if they have more information they'll have more analytic
problems."

Berman allowed that the new agency could improve analysis, but he said it
wasn't obvious that it would. "The public is saying 'please do what is
necessary' -- and the government is saying 'take off the shackles.' But I
really believe that in 90 percent of the cases, they're saying 'let's blame
the law rather than the fact that we had a massive intelligence failure.'
What the public needs is a better FBI," not fundamental changes in
government, Berman said.

Several experts have noted that intelligence centrality of the sort proposed
by Bush was the main goal of the creation of the CIA -- an agency now best
known for not letting the FBI know before Sept. 11 that two members of al
Qaida had entered the United States. Those men, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid
Almihdhar, were on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

Stratfor.com, a Web-based "intelligence provider," said in an analysis
prepared last month that "a centralized intelligence capability is essential
if the United States is to have a single, integrated, coherent picture of
what is happening in the world. A bureaucratically fragmented intelligence
community will generate a fragmented picture of the world. That is currently
what we have."

Stratfor.com added that cultural and institutional differences within the
CIA and between the CIA and the FBI caused the fragmentation that is
apparent today.

Others echoed this theme.

Thomas Sanderson, deputy director of the Transnational Threats Initiative at
the Center for Strategic &amp; International Studies, said in a statement that
the creation of the new department "is a positive, timely, though
incomplete, step that will generate as much rancor as it does cooperation
and results.

"Centralizing security and preparedness efforts is essential for coping with
the terrorism threat. However, despite new funding and presidential backing,
there are bound to be budgetary and turf battles with other bureaucracies
that will slow the new department's efforts. The American people should be
encouraged by this development, but should not expect this to be the panacea
that many are seeking."

It's unclear what kind of reception the new agency will receive in Congress,
but several members were very supportive of the move, with Richard Gephardt,
the Democratic leader in the House, telling Reuters the move is "precisely
what I think should be done."

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