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- The NSA program has been empirically effective --- it has neutralized over fifty plots.
- Requiring warrants risks intelligence disclosure --- that accelerates plots.
***LINK/INTERNAL***2NC – Link ExtensionsWarrantless mass surveillance is critical to prevent terrorism --- casting a wide net and being able to act quickly is critical to identify networks.John Yoo, 5/8/2015. Emanuel Heller professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, former official in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. “Will Congress reject the dangerous NSA ruling by reauthorizing the Patriot Act?” American Enterprise Institute, https://www.aei.org/publication/will-congress-reject-todays-dangerous-nsa-ruling-by-reauthorizing-the-patriot-act/. Finally, the Court displays a deep misunderstanding of the challenges of counterterrorism policy, which Congress understands far better. As Judge Richard Posner has recognized, an intelligence search “is a search for the needle in a haystack.” Rather than pursue suspects who have already committed a crime and whose identity is already known, intelligence agencies must search for clues among millions of potentially innocent connections, communications, and links. “The intelligence services,” Posner writes, “must cast a wide net with a fine mesh to catch the clues that may enable the next attack to be prevented.” Our government can detect terrorists by examining phone and e-mail communications, as well as evidence of joint travel, shared assets, common histories or families, meetings, and so on. If our intelligence agents locate a lead, they must quickly follow its many possible links to identify cells and the broader network of terrorists. A database of call data would allow a fast search for possible links in the most important place — the United States, where terrorists can inflict the most damage. Most of the calling records may well be innocent (just as most of the financial records of a suspected white-collar criminal may also be innocent), but the more complete the database, the better our intelligence agencies can pursue a lead into the U.S. The NSA program has been empirically effective --- it has neutralized over fifty plots.USA Today, 6/19/2013. “NSA director: Surveillance foiled 50 terror plots,” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/18/nsa-surveillance-secret-programs-terror-plots/2434193/. National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more than 50 terror threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden. More than 10 of the plots targeted the U.S. homeland, Alexander told the House Intelligence Committee, including a plot to attack the New York Stock Exchange. "I would much rather be here today debating this,'' Alexander told lawmakers, referring to the programs' value, "than explaining why we were unable to prevent another 9/11'' attack. At the rare open committee hearing, Alexander and Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole told lawmakers that both surveillance operations — a domestic telephone tracking system that collects records of millions of Americans and an Internet monitoring program targeting non-citizens outside the U.S. — have been subject to rigorous oversight to guard against privacy abuses. "This isn't some rogue operation that some guys at the NSA are operating,'' said Alexander, also an Army general.
"This is not a program that is off the books,'' Cole said, outlining the executive, legislative and judicial controls attached to both surveillance operations. Requiring warrants undermines effective counter-terrorism searches --- the ability to identify unknown terrorists outweighs the risk of false positives.Richard A. Posner, 2008. Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Senior Lecturer in Law, The University of Chicago. “Privacy, Surveillance, and Law,” 75 University of Chicago Law Review 245, http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2808&context=journal_articles. I now want to bring law into the picture. After the Supreme Court ruled in a conventional criminal case that wiretapping and, by implication, other forms of electronic surveillance were to be deemed "searches" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,' Congress enacted Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968.' Title III created procedures for obtaining warrants for electronic surveillance that were modeled on the procedures for conventional search warrants. 6 Ten years later-and thus long before the danger of global terrorism was recognized and electronic surveillance transformed by the digital revolution-the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was enacted.' It is a complicated statute, but basically it requires that interceptions in the United States of the international communications of a US citizen, or permanent resident, or of anyone in the United States if the interception is made here, be conducted pursuant to warrants based on probable cause to believe that one of the parties to the communication is a foreign terrorist. That is the wrong approach as 9/11 has taught us and as Congress is beginning to recognize, evidenced by amendments to FISA enacted since the conference for which this paper was prepared. 8 (The amendments were to be in effect for only six months; Congress is now considering a more permanent restructuring of FISA.) FISA in its preamendment form remains usable for regulating the monitoring of communications of known terrorists, but it is useless for finding out who is a terrorist, 9 even though "the problem of defeating the enemy consists very largely of finding him."' 0 Hence the importance of "collateral intercepts"-such as intercepts of communications that seem likely to yield information of intelligence value even if probable cause to believe that a party to the communication is a terrorist is lacking. It is true that surveillance not cabined by a conventional probable cause requirement produces many false positives-interceptions that prove upon investigation to have no intelligence value. But that is not a valid criticism. The cost of false positives must be balanced against that of false negatives. The failure to detect the 9/11 plot was an exceptionally costly false negative. The intelligence services have no alternative to casting a wide net with a fine mesh if they are to have reason- able prospects of obtaining the clues that will enable future terrorist attacks on the United States to be prevented." Requiring warrants risks intelligence disclosure --- that accelerates plots.Andrew McCarthy, 5/10/2005. Senior fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony, Patriot Act Reauthorization Hearings, 5/10, lexis. Another frequent and understandable complaint about Section 215 revolves around its so-called "gag rule," which prohibits recipients to disclose the fact of a subpoena. To be sure, the desirability of openness as a check on government over-reaching is unassailable if national security is not threatened. A public safety threat, however, requires reasonable balance between the public interest in disclosure and the reality that disclosure makes our enemies, to be blunt, more efficient at killing us. It can alert them to the fact of an investigation which may thwart our ability to identify key players and locations that threaten Americans. It may endanger the lives of informants or dry up other crucial sources of information (such as wiretaps) since, once terrorists -- or, for that matter, members of any criminal organization -- realize the government knows enough to seek certain records, their first priority often becomes attempting to determine how they have been compromised. Finally, it may trigger a planned attack. On this last score, it is again important to note that terrorists are not like other criminals. They are not in it for the money, and they are not as apt to flee and live to fight another day if they believe their cover is blown. Many of them are devoted to their missions to the point of committing suicide to accomplish them. Publicly revealing an investigation before agents have reached the point of being able to thwart an ongoing terrorist plot may serve to accelerate the terrorist plot. Terror threats are growing at home and abroad --- continued mass surveillance is critical to detect threats and thwart plots.Jessica Zuckerman, Steven P. Bucci, Ph.D. and James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., 7/22/2013. Policy Analyst, Western Hemisphere @ Heritage; Director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy @ Heritage; and Vice President for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, and the E. W. Richardson Fellow @ Heritage. “60 Terrorist Plots Since 9/11: Continued Lessons in Domestic Counterterrorism,” Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/60-terrorist-plots-since-911-continued-lessons-in-domestic-counterterrorism. Three months after the attack at the Boston Marathon, the pendulum of awareness of the terrorist threat has already begun to swing back, just as it did after 9/11. Due to the resilience of the nation and its people, for most, life has returned to business as usual. The threat of terrorism against the United States, however, remains. Expecting to stop each and every threat that reaches a country’s borders is unreasonable, particularly in a free society committed to individual liberty. Nevertheless, there are important steps that America’s leaders can take to strengthen the U.S. domestic counterterrorism enterprise and continue to make the U.S. a harder target. Congress and the Administration should: Ensure a proactive approach to preventing terrorist attacks. Despite the persistent threat of terrorism, the Obama Administration continues to focus on reactive policies and prosecuting terrorists rather than on proactive efforts to enhance intelligence tools and thwart terrorist attempts. This strategy fails to recognize the pervasive nature of the threat posed by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and homegrown extremism. The Administration, and the nation as a whole, should continue to keep in place a robust, enduring, and proactive counterterrorism framework in order to identify and thwart terrorist threats long before the public is in danger.
Break down the silos of information. Washington should emphasize continued cooperation and information sharing among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to prevent terrorists from slipping through the cracks between the various jurisdictions. In particular, the FBI should make a more concerted effort to share information more broadly with state and local law enforcement. State and local law enforcement agencies are the front lines of the U.S. national security strategy. As a result, local authorities are able to recognize potential danger and identify patterns that the federal authorities may miss. They also take the lead in community outreach, which is crucial to identifying and stopping “lone wolf” actors and other homegrown extremists. Federal law enforcement, on the other hand, is not designed to fight against this kind of threat; it is built to battle cells, groups, and organizations, not individuals. Streamline the domestic counterterrorism system. The domestic counterterrorism enterprise should base future improvements on the reality that governments at all levels are fiscally in crisis. Rather than add additional components to the system, law enforcement officials should streamline the domestic counterterrorism enterprise by improving current capabilities, leveraging state and local law enforcement resources and authorities, and, in some cases, reducing components where the terrorist threat is not high and the financial support is too thin or could be allocated more effectively. For example, the Department of Homeland Security should dramatically reduce the number of fusion centers, many of which exist in low-risk areas or areas where similar capabilities exist. An easy way to reduce the number of fusion centers is to eliminate funding to those that are located outside the 31 urban areas designated as the highest risk. Fully implement a strategy to counter violent extremism. Countering violent extremism is an important complementary effort to an effective counterterrorism strategy. In August 2011, the U.S. government released a strategic plan called “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.”[209] The plan focuses on outlining how federal agencies can assist local officials, groups, and private organizations in preventing violent extremism. It includes strengthening law enforcement cooperation and helping communities understand how to counter extremist propaganda (particularly online). Sadly, this plan is not a true strategy. It fails to assign responsibilities and does not direct action or resource investments. More direction and leadership must be applied to transform a laundry list of good ideas into an effective program to support communities in protecting and strengthening civil society. Vigilance Is Not Optional
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