We want to be able to search everything, so we could see if Mohammed Atta ever got a parking ticket in Roselle. You can’t connect the dots if you can’t see them. -- Richard Kelly, New Jersey Regional Operations Intelligence Center’s Director
[E]ach day [the NSA] collects four times the volume of information stored in the Library of Congress – Matthew Aid, Intelligence Historian
[If a terrorist incident has a] one percent chance of occurring, then it need[s] to be treated as a certainty. – Dick Cheney
As ridiculous as Cheney’s one percent doctrine sounds, his approach is that of our government, under both Republicans and Democrats, in gathering information about possible threats.
I call it the myth of omniscience.
Knowing that Mohammed Atta got a parking ticket in Roselle would be meaningless information even if they already strongly suspected that Atta was an important figure in a pending terrorist plot. What would this piece of information have done for them? As it happens, and as the whole world knows, US intelligence failed to finger Atta as a player in an upcoming attack. Having more information about Atta wouldn’t have helped. The problem was more basic.
Our government’s directive to the over two hundred thousand people engaged in intelligence work since 9/11 is that all leads must be followed up. Their suspects’ list has now more than 500,000 names on it and it’s growing daily.
Talk about a wild goose chase!
This makes for an interesting kind of symmetry: our government is guilty of suffocating people with water – aka waterboarding - and our government for its part is drowning in data as a result of drowning people to obtain “data.” One of the reasons why waterboarding was initiated was because top Bush officials insisted that actionable intelligence be produced tout suite. And everyone amongst this merry band of torturers/interrogators was and is convinced that their detainees are all in cahoots with Al-Qaeda. Those are the “right” answers they get when they put the screws on detainees.
The failure to interdict the Nigerian briefs bomber is not attributable to a lack of information. The problem is that there was and is too much information of the wrong kind.
You can’t connect the dots if you’re covering your map with millions upon millions of dots. You cannot connect the dots when you make no distinction between useful data and useless data and when you’re constantly escalating the amount of useless data that you are inputting.
The problem here might be described as a problem of the noise to signal ratio. In receiving radio broadcasts, for instance, it is hard to hear the signal when there is too much noise.
The redundancies in information gathering and the warrantless surveillance over everyone, with all of these data shielded from public scrutiny by self-serving claims that disclosing any of this would “harm national security,” and that it’s all “state secrets,” are producing a cacophony of ever more deafening noise.
By treating everyone as a suspect and marking every activity and association as suspicious and necessary to compile and track, the government is intermingling irrelevant and useless information with actual terrorist plots. This is the equivalent of taking haute cuisine and mixing it with tons of sewage.
The path our government is taking is doomed to fail again and again. We are the ones who pay for those failures, along with, and most especially, the victims of our country’s unjust wars and policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and who knows where next.
There is a reason why our government continues to amass more and more information, producing paralysis in their ranks. It’s not due to stupidity on their part. It’s because it is their view that everyone must be treated as a potential suspect.
The approach that everyone should be subjected to surveillance is not only the wet dream of police and intelligence personnel. It’s the product of public order policies that date from the 1970s worldwide that have supplanted the previous paradigm that people who are guilty of something should be tracked and everyone else should be left alone. In this brave new world, the government believes that, for example, you are a “low-level terrorist” if you exercise your right to speak out and protest.
Obama has said that he has the right to hold people indefinitely even if they have been acquitted in a trial. The new Democratic President, in other words, has declared that he has the power of those in The Minority Report who believed that they could tell when somebody was going to do something. “You may have been proven innocent, but we know that you’re guilty.”
If everyone’ s a suspect, then you can’t devote the necessary attention and resources to the people who really merit attention.
The problem we face then as a society is that our political and business leaders have introduced a new norm in which if possibly, maybe, conceivably, by the remotest chance, you might do something someone else doesn’t like, if you do something that can be construed as trying to affect government policy, then you are a TERRORIST.
Here is the USA PATRIOT Act’s definition for a new crime dubbed “domestic terrorism:” “acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws … [if such acts] … appear to be intended …to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.”
Doesn’t this make an overly enthusiastic or aggressive lobbyist a “domestic terrorist”?
When Bush falsely claimed that if we didn’t invade Iraq that we’d be hit by WMD from Saddam Hussein, wasn’t he then intimidating the nation and Congress into giving him the OK to attack Iraq? He was, therefore, a domestic terrorist.
The Patriot Act’s definition for terrorism is, of course, only applied to those that the government doesn’t like. But if they are allowed to get away with this scam, then who really is terrorizing the nation and the world? It isn’t only Al-Qaeda…
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Erica K
Jennifer Prestholdt
sickofstupid
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I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
Your post remind's me of Niemöller's famous 1946 speech..
As you speak out, I and I hope others, will offer their support. It is so very important that you and those with your courage, continue to challenge these global injustices.
The information overload problem is endemic to our society. Like the security establishment, the average information consumer is inundated with an ever-increasing flood of unsourced, undocumented and downright specious opinion-tinged assertions passing themselves off as factual information.
As information increases, the amount of attention given to each new datum inevitably decreases, which is one of the most basic issues in information theory. The inevitable consequence of this overload is that only the most dramatic data gets attention, which encourages only more dramatic presentations. The result - for both the security services and consumer news media - is that the information becomes coarser and therefore less detailed and less informative.
The only way to eradicate vermin is to attract the vermin out into the open. That is, in fact, the covert agenda behind our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan: by launching incursions into these countries, we present easily attacked targets of opportunity, drawing potential terrorists out into the open so we can destroy them.
As distasteful as this doctrine is, it's impossible to deny that it has worked, is working, and will continue to work. By the same token, however, it is equally true that there will be further attacks against domestic targets in the United States, some of which will succeed.
Rather than depending upon the impossible task of identifying each attack before it is launched, a better policy would have been to harden potential targets to the point where terrorist attacks simply bounce off.
In the beginning, this will be much more costly, and there will be failures. In the end, eventually, the attacks will diminish and finally cease in accordance with the law of diminishing returns.
Alan: The overriding issue here is not how the bureaucracy is functioning or not functioning. The issue is that our government and corporate heads are operating in such a fashion that is the mirror image of the jihadists. As long as they are allowed to do this and we the people participate and tolerate it, then the violence and repression will continue and get worse. SageMerlin: That's where I differ with you - the strategy you cite isn't working and won't ever work as an antidote to anti-state terrorism. But the ones in charge know this. It isn't their goal to curb anti-state terror. Indeed, their agenda is advanced by more incidents because they can use those incidents to justify doing more of what they're currently doing.
Hardening the target doesn't work because, as you point out, there will inevitably be more incidents. It's impossible to prevent any incidents at all. We have to address the fundamental problem which is that it is US policies that a) created the jihadists in the first place back when the USSR was in Afghanistan, and b) create the ocean of support for the jihadists.
Mal, always great to hear from you.
Ca - well, hello again.
O/E: yes, we're safe alright!
Token: What system's that that you refer to?
This is a religious war. The only thing that unites all of the terrorists that have so far attacked Western targets is their religion. Regardless of what saner Muslims say about their religion, the religion of Islam is built around a militaristic, theocratic society. For example, the translation of Islam as "Peace" is quite incorrect. The correct translation is either "submission" or "surrender", which is a very different thing. (The word "salam", the universal greeting between Muslims, means peace, hence the confusion.)
In this context, Islam has two major connotations. The first one is submission to religious rule. The second one is surrender to the will of the "'Umma? or community, and the will of the community is whatever the leaders of the community say it is, as long as it doesn't contradict the Qu'ran.
There is no possibility of an accommodation between the Islamists and the West because their objective isn't land or plunder: their goal is to establish the ascendancy of their religion, which requires that we accept theirs. There are historical precedents for this, everywhere from Spain to Iran.
I know I am espousing an unpopular opinion, but it's not really an opinion, but I think that its an opinion buttressed by the facts. The attacks will continue intermittently for the foreseeable future, while Muslim population growth from immigration and a higher birth rate continues to erode Western character of many European and Asiatic nations past the point of no return.
The Islamists know that history is in their favor. We haven't gotten that memo yet.
Two things. First, the Christian fundamentalists and the free market fundamentalists share the same goal as the Muslim fundamentalists - exclusion and domination of the OTHER. Second, the people you are describing are a specific, virulent and small segment overall within the larger body of the Islamic faith. Just as the majority of Christians don't subscribe to the agenda of leaders such as Pat Robertson et al, the majority of Muslims aren't jihadists.
It's not possible to reform the fundamentalist leaders in either camp. But what is possible is to condemn the war being waged by both sides, both the ideological wars (its roots) and the literal wars. It is possible to drain the swamp of support for the jihadists, the source of which is not historical enmity between Christianity and Islam but the specific US policies of our time. Those policies are the main problem.
US policy in the Middle East could be characterized by two major policies, support for the Shah of Iran and support for Israel, one of which is no longer pertinent and the other non-negotiable in the present political climate
American support for the Afghan uprising against the Russians did not cause the Jhihadist movement to emerge. The Jihadists already existed or they would have been there for us to supply them.
Perhaps you could expand upon exactly which policies you believe are responsible for the present situation and how they could be changed. I think that would be a more fruitful discussion.
that is the purpose of terrorism
the only solution is political
What, precisely, are the terrorists' demands?
What is it that they want the United States to do?
Release the detainees?
Withdraw our troops from Iraq?
Withdraw our troops from Afghanistan?
Pay cash reparations?
Withdraw our support from Israel?
Disarm ourselves?
Teach Islam in our public schools?
Forcibly convert our people to their religion?
The correct answer is "all of the above" but they aren't actually saying these things any more. So what is their purpose?
Their purpose is the end of Western civilization, pure and simple.
As far as I am concerned, I agree with the first three points....but no one is making specific demands associated with the threat of terrorist events. On the contrary, first they set the bombs off, and then they make demands....but, once again, exactly what are they demanding?
It is impossible to achieve a political solution to the terrorist dilemma because, in order for us to achieve a political settlement, we have to have a legitimate party to negotiate with. How do we negotiate with extra-legal, non-governmental organizations, unelected and unrepresentative, having neither a constituency nor an electorate, nor any real control over their numerous splinter groups?
The answer is that we can't. There is no political settlement short of complete acquiescence - and that won't work either, because all it takes is for one rogue bomber to set off one more bomb and we are right back where we started from.
As I keep saying, this is the new normal. Get used to it.
Sage:
"Their purpose is the end of Western civilization, pure and simple."
Again, this is the purpose of the jihadists. As to your list of demands, yes, the first three and withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia and stop siding with Israel against the Palestinians, these are the demands that they have made publicly and repeatedly. And they are just demands.
Anti-state terrorism tends to provoke state terrorism and state terrorism in turn promotes anti-state terrorism.
"Their purpose is the end of Western civilization, pure and simple." As to the leaders of the western powers, their aim is also the end of the Islamic world, pure and simple. They make no secret of this if you listen to them within, for example, the military community and fundamentalist community. So, would you side with one versus the other in a mutually catastrophic dynamic?
likewise with all fundamentalists - it's like the Move Your Money campaign
there will always be people who want to hate. You defeat them by depriving them of other people who want to hate as well.
One of the arguments I often make about the current wars is that if we spent 1% of what we're spending on them and spent that towards building real good will amongst the people of the area - building a real infrastructure, schools, wells, hospitals - well, we wouldn't need to spend most of the other 99%.
No one in Afghanistan, not the Taliban or anyone else, was advocating blowing up the US while we were supporting them when Russia was occupying them. Russia left, our support dried up.
As to the topic at hand, connecting all the dots assumes you have dots that define a pattern. The Secret Service does not follow up on each and every threat against the President - and not because the number of threats has gone up 400% for the current one.
We've reached the point where our government is no longer an extension of ourselves, but an entity unto itself. And like every insular group, they have an inherent mistrust of the "other." We, you and I, are that other - we are not them, and we can (in theory) remove them from power. We are therefore a threat. We must be watched.
We're regarded as perhaps disaffected teenagers. Why are we demanding privacy? What are we hiding? Better start reading our diaries and e-mails. Put a GPS on the car and track where we go. Find out who all our friends are. What're we buying? What're we reading. Lets make sure we're not thinking about buying a gun and shooting up the school. They're just trying to do what's best for us, after all.
To help to underscore your points, Craig Murphy, former British Ambassador to Afghanistan, who was run out of his extremely promising diplomatic career because he had the audacity to oppose torture when he learned it was going on, has pointed out that the real reason for the US being in Afghanistan isn't because of 9/11 but because of the pipeline that they want to build that would run through Afghanistan...
Happy New Year and Congrats on the EP.
To sagemerlin, I would like to point out a statement by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA , this statement he made about the rulers of the U.S. and the Islamic fundamentalists:
"What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand ,are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system.These two reactionary poles reinforce each other,even while opposing each other.If you side with either of these 'outmodeds',you ended up strengthening both."..."It is important to be clear about which has done and continues to do the greater damage, which has posed and does pose the greater threat to humanity.Clearly, and by far, it is 'the ruling strata of the imperialist system.'"
You can go to www.revcom.us to check it out as well as to
revolutiontalk.net, and youtube.com/revolutiontalk
Serious erosion of our Fourth Amendment rights started under Bush I, and continued apace under Clinton. In some respects, W's PATRIOT Act was an icing on the cake that had already been baked.
From an intelligence perspective, it makes much more sense to monitor web sites of political extremists, collating this information with other information like the purchase of guns or other suspicious activity. Computer algorithms have been established that do just that, but there are bureaucratic bottlenecks in effectively implementing such things, like our restrictions on hiring gays who happen to be fluent in Arabic, or the incompatability of intelligence collected and gathered from different agencies.
Even if there was a much smaller base of suspect populations studied, there would still be problems in implementing and tracking these people. And in one sense, I think sagemerlin is right when he talks about hardening security tar
gets, such as our ports.
But I do agree with what you've said. Keep up the good work.
Why would our own government be willing to time and time again ignore credible threats while allowing real disasters take place? I think Naomi Klien answered that in "the Shock Doctrine."
There are too many people making money out of collecting ridiculous amounts of intel, and those people dont want their gravy train to stop.
Spot on Dennis.