The Change Mariner

Think tank debate focuses on counterterrorism tools

GovExec.com:

The September directive on the integration and use of screening information worries Dan Gallington, a senior research fellow at the Potomac Institute, because "it may be the first step in the creation of a terror watch list that would be U.S.-person centric," he said. The directive tells the attorney general to establish an organization to consolidate the government's approach on terrorism screening and requires agency heads to provide data to the TTIC.

Other surveillance measures have been foreign-citizen centered, with special protections afforded to U.S. citizens, Gallington noted, and "that is a huge distinction." The lack of congressional oversight also is troubling, he said.

While acknowledging that the government must have access to information and be able to connect dots to identify potential terrorist threats, "the executive branch is not making the task any easier" with some of its decisions, said Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

"Creating TTIC was a mistake," he said, because it repeated functions delegated to the Homeland Security Department, which is subject to congressional oversight. TTIC is not subject to oversight, and that raises red flags for civil libertarians, he added.

The now-defunct Terrorism Information Awareness program for mining data to try to identify potential terrorists also raised concerns that the administration could use it to create dossiers on U.S. citizens and prompted Congress to yank the funding.

Dempsey said it was a shame that funding was cut because the program was worth studying. He noted that the capabilities of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project did not meet expectations but that the hype created by DARPA probably killed the idea.