July 25, 2004

More Matters of Concern in the 9/11 Commission Report

I'll start with a factual point that, sadly, isn't remotely surprising:

Since 9/ 11, about 90 percent of the nation's $5 billion annual investment in transportation security has gone to aviation, to fight the last war.

True, lightning can strike the same place twice - an obvious example being that Islamic terrorists attacked the WTC in 1993, and then attacked it again in 2001. But there is no reason to think that the next domestic attack will look like the last one. I'm glad the commission is making this point

Another important recommendation is their call to "base federal funding for emergency preparedness solely on risks and vulnerabilities, putting New York City and Washington, D. C., at the top of the current list. Such assistance should not remain a program for general revenue sharing or pork-barrel spending." That this is even a matter of debate shows what a ridiculous bunch of media hounds certain members of Congress are.

However, another point they make (a number of times) concerns me a great deal. They advocate a full-speed-ahead approach to the development and use of biometric surveillance equipment. This could have serious civil liberties consequences down the road. This is really opening up a Pandora's box on the government's ability to spy on the people. We need to watch this carefully.

And while I'm intrigued by their call for a National Director of Intelligence (please, please, pretty please can we stop calling posts like these "tsars"! what moron ever thought we should emulate, even symbolically, an organizational structure associated with an absolute monarchy?) I'm skeptical of how this would work in practice. For example, there is the matter of the Director's 3 deputies. One would be the CIA director, one would be the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, and the third would either be a FBI official or a Homeland Security official. So the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (presumably the most important and influential of these given the power and intelligence resources of the DOD) would get to serve two masters, the NDI and the Secretary of Defense? Gee, that sounds like a fun job. And who gets to appoint the Undersecretary?

Given that such a post as been advocated by many people in the know for years, and that the current Secretary of Defense and DCI (the two people with the most to lose in this reshuffle) are quite weak politically, this may yet come to pass. But it will be interesting to see how details like this get ironed out if such changes are adopted. We should take care to read the fine print to see if the process is really getting stream-lined.

Posted by armand at July 25, 2004 08:16 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics


Comments

And in addition, the threat to civil liberties is even more concerning given the rampant inaccuracy in most of the biometric technology. Bloodless Coup's Hometown U. has developed an interest in biometrics (research and training) that does not reassure me in the least, neither in terms of the quality of the majors nor of the course content.

Posted by: binky at July 25, 2004 09:19 PM | PERMALINK

Excellent point. Plus, we still have problems with the finger-printing system. That alone makes me question government use of biometrics.

Posted by: armand at July 26, 2004 09:11 AM | PERMALINK
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