07/10/10

Smoke and Mirrors?

By Lady Liberty

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February
10, 2004

The Bush administration says that its "War on Terrorism" is
an ongoing success. It claims that such successes are due to various laws
and programs implemented since 9/11. While I don't disagree that 9/11
served as a catalyst for the passage of several laws and the institution
of several programs, and I don't even argue that a terrorist or two may
have been caught in the law enforcement net of one of these programs, I
will say this: I believe that the measures taken by the Bush
administration in the name of preventing terrorism are less about stopping
terrorists than they are about asserting an ironclad authority over
American citizens.

Some of the
most well known laws and programs having directly to do with alleged
terrorist interdiction are the USA PATRIOT Act, CAPPS II, and MATRIX. None
of these have had particularly smooth sailing, due in large part to their
inherent unconstitutionality and extreme invasiveness. All, unfortunately,
are either in effect or gearing up for implementation. The latest status
of each offers little hope for those who love liberty:

Despite
ongoing criticism and escalating defiance by local governments of the USA
PATRIOT Act, the Bush administration continues to defend the law as
"necessary" to prevent terrorist attacks on American soil. In fact, the
White House has let it be known that if Congress takes any action to
repeal or mitigate any portion of the PATRIOT Act, President Bush will
veto the legislation. Officials are also working to expand the
Act.

A strong
public backlash against Delta
Airlines caused it to pull out of testing for the federal government's
CAPPS II (Civilian Air Passenger Profiling System) program, and it wasn't
too much later that JetBlue Airlines suffered a similar fate after it was
learned the airline had given passenger data to a Pentagon contractor for
"testing" purposes (in fact, the JetBlue incident was serious enough that
the company is now the subject of a Congressional investigation). Airlines
in general have now refused to participate in the program.

The MATRIX (Multi-state Anti-Terrorism
Information Exchange) program was originally to have been tested using the
data from some thirteen states. Initially begun with virtually no
publicity, the news eventually got out and now widespread criticism of the
database, its over broad anticipated contents and the likelihood of
erroneous data, the developer's shady background, and fears for privacy
have (to date) winnowed the testing states down to six.

And now, in
the midst of claiming that terror prevention is of paramount importance,
President Bush is proposing
an immigration plan that he says will reform and make more
compassionate existing law. While his plan has been endorsed by some
business owners and (somewhat reluctantly) by Mexican President Vicente
Fox, immigration reform groups, migrant groups, conservatives, and the majority
of Americans in general, do not support the plan (objections are, in
some cases, from opposite sides of the concept). In fact, conservative
radio talk show host Michael Savage has gone so far as to suggest the president
be impeached for the plan which he considers a threat to national
security.

Obviously,
although the administration is nowhere near throwing in the towel on these
and many other programs, protests and criticism are having some effect.
And the government's attempts to assuage fears or convince the public of
the programs' efficiencies and benefits, are going largely
unaccepted.

Consider,
for example, the two biggest news stories concerning the PATRIOT Act.
Neither is a particularly convincing point in favor of the law. One
involves an investigation in Las Vegas that was wholly unrelated to
terrorism (despite government assurance that the Act's provisions would be
used only for terrorism investigations), essentially making the case a
better argument against the PATRIOT Act than in favor of it. And there's
an ongoing
case in Florida [] where the information gathered in criminal and
terrorism investigations have been combined under provision of the PATRIOT
Act that permit previously prohibited communication between various
agencies. That sounds a little better until you know that, although it's
rarely pointed out, both investigations were proceeding apace - and with
success - long prior to any invocation of the PATRIOT Act.

MATRIX,
meanwhile, claims to offer only information already publicly available or
on law enforcement databases. The program, backers say, simply merges such
data and provides authorities with a quick way to efficiently mine the
information. But the same man who created MATRIX was also intimately
involved in the company and computer programming that was charged with
"scrubbing" Florida's voter records of criminals ineligible to vote. The
program did its scrubbing, but it wiped out thousands who were not
criminals and who were thus denied their right to vote in the 2000
presidential elections. Computer databases inherently contain errors;
computer programs always contain bugs that may or may not show up
depending on an endless variety of possible data combinations. That may be
acceptable for a word processor or a web browser, but it's not okay when
such mistakes - whether human or machine generated - will cause innocents
to be labeled as criminals and the guilty to be given a free pass (you can
find various links to MATRIX-related stories
here).

Take a look
as well at the case of a 21 year-old college student who was stopped from
boarding a
plane over the holidays because she was on a list of suspected
terrorists. She had no idea what might have prompted the designation, and
insisted it had to be a mistake. Eventually, the Department of Homeland
Security did admit there'd been an error and that it was taking steps to
correct it (the woman is now suing DHS). Now imagine the repercussions of
data multiplied by millions of bits of information, and know that the
error rate percentage invariably holds steady. Once CAPPS II goes into
effect, literally thousands of innocent Americans will be forbidden the
convenience of air travel, and the refusal of officials to discuss
determining data points means they'll never even know why. Meanwhile,
anyone with a few pieces of fraudulent ID and a little falsified
background information will move freely through the jetways and onto
planes loaded with unsuspecting passengers. Despite the obvious flaws, the
administration has determined that, rather than scrap or modify the
program, it will simply force unwilling airlines across the board to
participate against their will.

Even his
immigration plan's general unpopularity has not stopped President Bush
from continuing to tout his idea of reform as being compassionate, and
risking the alienation of a respectable number of his Republican
supporters. Whether he is doing this in tacit acknowledgment that
immigration authorities are unable to deal with an estimated 8 to 12
million illegal aliens already in the country, in an attempt to curry the
favor of a significant Hispanic voting block, or for some other more
subtle reason is immaterial to the probable devastating effects - on many
levels - of the implementation of such a plan. Already, illegal entries
into the country have
risen by 15% in reaction to the administration's plan.

All of
these laws and programs are being described as "necessary" and
"important." While their necessity and importance is arguable, certainly
their value in comparison to their cost, inefficiency, and danger to civil
liberties shows precisely where the administration places its
concentration: on itself and on its own powers. Not convinced? Well, if
the administration is truly concerned about terrorism, and if it genuinely
believes in liberty, before it institutes expensive and freedom-foiling
programs, why doesn't it consider some relatively cheap, far less
invasive, and significantly more efficient ideas?

If we want
to prevent any more airplanes from being used as missiles, why aren't
pilots armed so that they can shoot anyone attempting to illegally enter
the cockpit? Oh, the Transportation Security Administration does claim to
have a program to do just that. Unfortunately, the TSA is hindering
volunteer pilots at virtually every step, including a recently
revealed memo many consider an active threat against pilots who try to
participate. An armed pilot program is inexpensive; efficient; and offers
a very real deterrent. But the government agency charged with implementing
the program is actively working to see that the program never (pardon the
pun) gets off the ground. Why?

If we're
looking for likely hijackers, why are we conducting random searches at
airports in the name of political correctness rather than using our
knowledge to profile likely candidates? Some people will cry "racism" at
the first appearance of such profiling, but the bottom line is simple
enough: If I report to the police that an Asian man robbed me or that a
black man raped me, is it racist when police don't bother to question any
white men? To date, I'm unaware of a single terrorist attack conducted by
a little old lady or a kindergarten student. No one has mentioned to me a
family accompanied by young children attempting to board a plan with bombs
hidden in a teddy bear. Yet stories abound of people just like these being
searched while young Arab men move through security with only a cursory
glance. And if we want real security for public air transportation, is
there a reason we'd rely on an all-too-fallible database system when we
can simply use existing security measures which are both more reliable
(I'm aware that there are obvious loopholes to be addressed, but I'm
talking about systems as a whole, here) and less expensive?

If police
are truly sworn to uphold the law, why are they so anxious to circumvent
it by relying on error-prone databases rather than doing the thorough work
investigators used to be justifiably proud of doing? (If they don't have
time to handle the many cases on their desk with that kind of care, then
perhaps we're spending too much time prosecuting things that shouldn't be
called crimes...) And if law enforcement agents are remotely interested in
protecting the Constitutional rights of innocent Americans, how come
they're seeking still more exceptions to Fourth and Fifth Amendment
protections in a supposed effort to make catching the bad guys
easier?

If the
federal government really wants to stop terrorists from coming into the
country where they can roam freely and wreak havoc at a location of their
choice, why aren't authorities appreciative of the help in maintaining the
integrity of our borders offered by local citizens' militia groups? Along
the same lines, why isn't the government significantly beefing up its own
border patrols? And why would the administration propose a plan that
offers all of those already here illegally a de facto amnesty? (The White
House doesn't like to use the word "amnesty," but that's pretty much what
the plan entails even if it does preclude a direct path to citizenship.)
Why are states worried about providing all of the extra funding they need
to maintain social services for illegal aliens when it would be both
cheaper and closer to the actual law if they put them on buses or planes
back to wherever it was they came from instead? (To be fair, several
states - Arizona, California, and Colorado - are floating bills to
prohibit all but emergency services to illegals.)

I don't
debate the need to protect ourselves against terrorist attack. It just
seems to me that there are plenty of things that could and should be done
that would be reasonably effective, cost-efficient, and which would not
represent threats to liberty. And then there are those things which are
expensive, inefficient, and invasive of civil rights in the extreme. And
the fact that our government has chosen the latter rather than the former
makes the conclusion - the one with which I started this essay and the one
with which I'll finish it - an easy one to draw: The measures taken by the
Bush administration in the name of preventing terrorism are less about
stopping terrorists than they are about asserting an ironclad authority
over American citizens.

Lady
Liberty is the pseudonym of the Internet political activist behind the Lady Liberty’s Constitution Clearing
House web site. Through her web site, her goal is to educate and
motivate others to activism by offering Action Alerts, current news and
original commentary, and a significant listing of online resources for
activists.

Lady
Liberty was a part of the highly successful Boycott Delta Internet
campaign last year, and is currently working with the online effort to
stop the CAPPS II and MATRIX programs. Lady
Liberty is one of the first signed members of the web-centered Free State Project, and has
produced various print advertising and marketing pieces for the group; she
is also affiliated with the Free State Wyoming Project. She is currently a
featured editorial columnist for Internet publications Opinion Editorials, The Price of Liberty,
and The Sierra Times.

Lady
Liberty has a degree in communications, and she worked as a radio news
journalist before gaining certifications in various Internet disciplines.
She is a member of several political action groups including The Planetary
Society, National Space Society, National Rifle Association, and the
Second Amendment Sisters. She now works as a graphic and web designer in
the Midwest.

E-mail Lady
Liberty at [email-masked]

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