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Since the Revolutionary War, America's military and political
leaders have recognized that U.S. national security depends upon
the collection of intelligence. Absent information about foreign
threats, the thinking went, the country and its citizens stood in
great peril. To address this, the Courts and Congress have
historically given the President broad leeway to obtain foreign
intelligence. But in order to find information about an individual
in the United States, the executive branch had to demonstrate that
the person was an agent of a foreign power. Today, that barrier no
longer exists. The intelligence community now collects massive
amounts of data and then looks for potential threats to the United
States. As renowned national security law scholar Laura K. Donohue
explains in The Future of Foreign Intelligence, the internet and
new technologies such as biometric identification systems have not
changed our lives in countless ways. But they have also led to a
very worrying transformation. The amount and types of information
that the government can obtain has radically expanded, and
information that is being collected for foreign intelligence
purposes is now being used for domestic criminal prosecution.
Traditionally, the Courts have allowed exceptions to the Fourth
Amendment rule barring illegal search and seizure on national
security grounds. But the new ways in which we collect intelligence
are swallowing the rule altogether. Just as alarming, the
ever-weaker standards that mark foreign intelligence collection are
now being used domestically-and the convergence between these
realms threatens individual liberty. Donohue traces the evolution
of foreign intelligence law and pairs that account with the
progress of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. She argues that the
programmatic surveillance that the National Security Agency
conducts amounts to a general warrant-the prevention of which was
the point of introducing the Fourth Amendment. The expansion of
foreign intelligence surveillance - leant momentum by significant
advances in technology, the Global War on Terror, and the emphasis
on securing the homeland - now threatens to consume protections
essential to privacy, which is a necessary component of a healthy
democracy. Donohue offers an agenda for reining in the national
security state's expansive reach, primarily through Congressional
statutory reform that will force the executive and judicial
branches to take privacy seriously, even as it provides for the
continued collection of intelligence central to U.S. national
security. Both alarming and penetrating, this is essential reading
for anyone interested in the future of foreign intelligence and
privacy in the United States.
In the aftermath of a terrorist attack political stakes are high:
legislators fear being seen as lenient or indifferent and often
grant the executive broader authorities without thorough debate.
The judiciary's role, too, is restricted: constitutional structure
and cultural norms narrow the courts' ability to check the
executive at all but the margins. The dominant 'Security or
Freedom' framework for evaluating counterterrorist law thus fails
to capture an important characteristic: increased executive power
that shifts the balance between branches of government. This book
re-calculates the cost of counterterrorist law to the United
Kingdom and the United States, arguing that the damage caused is
significantly greater than first appears. Donohue warns that the
proliferation of biological and nuclear materials, together with
willingness on the part of extremists to sacrifice themselves, may
drive each country to take increasingly drastic measures with a
resultant shift in the basic structure of both states.
In the aftermath of a terrorist attack political stakes are high:
legislators fear being seen as lenient or indifferent and often
grant the executive broader authorities without thorough debate.
The judiciary's role, too, is restricted: constitutional structure
and cultural norms narrow the courts' ability to check the
executive at all but the margins. The dominant 'Security or
Freedom' framework for evaluating counterterrorist law thus fails
to capture an important characteristic: increased executive power
that shifts the balance between branches of government. This book
re-calculates the cost of counterterrorist law to the United
Kingdom and the United States, arguing that the damage caused is
significantly greater than first appears. Donohue warns that the
proliferation of biological and nuclear materials, together with
willingness on the part of extremists to sacrifice themselves, may
drive each country to take increasingly drastic measures with a
resultant shift in the basic structure of both states.
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