NC – Threats Real (Domestic)

Homegrown terrorism threat is increasing --- domestic surveillance is essential.

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.

Maintain essential counterterrorism tools. Support for important investigative tools such as the PATRIOT Act is essential to maintaining the security of the U.S. and combating terrorist threats. Key provisions within the act, such as the roving surveillance authority and business records provision, have proved essential for thwarting terror plots, yet they require frequent reauthorization. In order to ensure that law enforcement and intelligence authorities have the essential counterterrorism tools they need, Congress should seek permanent authorization of the three sun setting provisions within the PATRIOT Act.[208] Furthermore, legitimate government surveillance programs are also a vital component of U.S. national security, and should be allowed to continue. Indeed, in testimony before the house, General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed that more than 50 incidents of potential terrorism at home and abroad were stopped by the set of NSA surveillance programs that have recently come under scrutiny. That said, the need for effective counterterrorism operations does not relieve the government of its obligation to follow the law and respect individual privacy and liberty. In the American system, the government must do both equally well.

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

2NC – AT: No WMD Terrorism (Lone Wolf)

Their defense doesn’t assume lone wolves and dual tech

Patrick D. ELLIS, WMD/Homeland Security Analyst and Instructor at the U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center, Air University, 14 [“Lone Wolf Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Examination of Capabilities and Countermeasures,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 26, Issue 1, 2014]
Today, the specters of lone wolves and autonomous cells acquiring and using chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons of mass destruction, whether in their traditional military forms or the more non-traditional industrial forms, seems less far-fetched. Fortunately, military CBRN agents and weapons are not normally accessible to lone wolves or autonomous cells and are often located in highly secured areas. Therefore, lone wolves and autonomous cells may be drawn to materials similar to CBRN located in less secure areas. These commonplace industrial chemicals, biological contaminants, and radioactive materials could be used to cause disruptions or mass casualties. The dual use nature of these materials and technologies enables them to be turned into weapons and delivered by nonmilitary means. Future “over-the-horizon” threats, such as the proliferation of new biotechnologies and amateur do-it-yourself capabilities, pose a risk that lone wolves could develop weapons at a time when travel, access to knowledge, and dual-use technologies, in the globalizing environment, make lone wolf terrorists more dangerous. Thus, the author explores existing countermeasures, such as laws, strategies, passive and active measures designed to stop these dangerous threats. In particular, capabilities to prevent, protect, respond, and recover from CBRN terrorist acts are examined.

Risk is high—WMD barriers are falling fast

Gary A. ACKERMAN, Director of the Special Projects Division at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), University of Maryland, AND Lauren E. PINSON, Senior Research/Project Manager at START and PhD student at Yale University, 14 [“An Army of One: Assessing CBRN Pursuit and Use by Lone Wolves and Autonomous Cells,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 26, Issue 1, 2014]
Yet, even though the probability of lone actors or autonomous cells possessing the technical and operational capabilities to deploy CBRN agents on the scale of a WMD is currently low, this should not lull security agencies into a sense of complacency with respect to the future threat. After all, the philosopher David Hume 65 and others have warned us not to put too much stock in prior experience—while historical patterns can often be valuable indicators, the future is an undiscovered country variously populated by Black Swans and Wild Cards. 66 This is especially true in the current technological environment. As described in the introductory section, rapid and more importantly, accelerating technological advancement, suggests a dramatic rise in the number of alienated adepts with the capability to twist these advances to a baleful design. The probability that the wrong individual will come into contact with the wrong technology at the wrong time might thus be trending inexorably upwards. Several individuals have already tried and at least one, Bruce Ivins, came extremely close. So, even though current empirical data does not indicate a CBRN threat of catastrophic magnitude emanating from lone actors or autonomous cells, we need to at least remain cognizant of the possibility, to our disquiet, that it might be only a matter of time before a misanthropic individual or small, nebulous group becomes superempowered and attains a WMD capability. Given the colossal difficulties in an open and free society of interdicting these insidious actors before they strike, researchers and security agencies alike should be exerting the maximum effort to monitor developments in this area and evolve their own powers of detection if they wish to forestall the threat.

2NC – Bioweapons Impact

Lone wolves will use bio-weapons—tech is accessible and will spread globally

Patrick D. ELLIS, WMD/Homeland Security Analyst and Instructor at the U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center, Air University, 14 [“Lone Wolf Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Examination of Capabilities and Countermeasures,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 26, Issue 1, 2014]
Since the mapping of the human genome in the early 2000s, the biotechnological fields have grown dramatically. 40 A driver for this growth has been the convergence of engineering, physical sciences, and life sciences, creating a cross-pollination environment for the transfer of individual “tool sets from one science to another.” 41 This of course is of concern to military professionals who are worried that the proliferation of “biotechnology and life sciences—including the spread of expertise to create modified or novel organisms—present the prospect of new toxins, live agents, and bioregulators.” 42 With these skills, it would be possible for a small group to take the convergence in sciences and “inflict untold damage if armed with the right unconventional weapon.” 43 It is the dual nature of these dynamic technologies that could bring unforeseen horror if used improperly and “provide bad actors increased capacity to build and deploy more dangerous biological weapons.” 44 As these technologies and sciences are diffused through more than 4,070 45 biotechnology companies, security professionals should be aware that a lone wolf insider could have access to these skills, especially since these technologies and knowledge are also being diffused to larger populations. In recent years, there has emerged a community of amateur do-it-yourself biologists “dedicated to making biology an accessible pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists and biological engineers.” 46 They provide the “mechanisms for amateurs to increase their knowledge and skills.” 47 However, while the majority of these do-it-yourself biologist activities remain benign, there runs a risk that lone wolves could acquire this technology to develop a weapon.

In his book Hot Zone, Richard Preston points out how easy it is for diseases to move globally: “A hot virus from the rain forest lives within a twenty-four hour plane ride from every city on earth. All of the earth's cities are connected by a web of airline routes. The web is a network. Once a virus hits the net, it can shoot anywhere in a day—Paris, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, wherever planes fly.” 48 In 2008, passengers travelled over 4,621 billion kilometers, 49 compared with over 1,500 billion kilometers in 1990, 50 and by 2028 it will rise to 12,090 billion. 51 If a lone wolf terrorist infected himself with an infectious disease, such as plague or a future DIY disease, and flew on a major airline through several major hubs, a serious pandemic could occur. Just note how the 2002–2003 outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)—starting in Hong Kong—became a global problem very quickly.

Extinction

Nathan MYHRVOLD, PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics from Princeton, former chief technology officer of Microsoft, 13 [July 2013, “Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action,” The Lawfare Research Paper Series No.2, http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Strategic-Terrorism-Myhrvold-7-3-2013.pdf]
A virus genetically engineered to infect its host quickly, to generate symptoms slowly—say, only after weeks or months—and to spread easily through the air or by casual contact would be vastly more devastating than HIV. It could silently penetrate the population to unleash its deadly effects suddenly. This type of epidemic would be almost impossible to combat because most of the infections would occur before the epidemic became obvious. A technologically sophisticated terrorist group could develop such a virus and kill a large part of humanity with it. Indeed, terrorists may not have to develop it themselves: some scientist may do so first and publish the details. Given the rate at which biologists are making discoveries about viruses and the immune system, at some point in the near future, someone may create artificial pathogens that could drive the human race to extinction. Indeed, a detailed species-elimination plan of this nature was openly proposed in a scientific journal. The ostensible purpose of that particular research was to suggest a way to extirpate the malaria mosquito, but similar techniques could be directed toward humans.16 When I’ve talked to molecular biologists about this method, they are quick to point out that it is slow and easily detectable and could be fought with biotech remedies. If you challenge them to come up with improvements to the suggested attack plan, however, they have plenty of ideas. Modern biotechnology will soon be capable, if it is not already, of bringing about the demise of the human race— or at least of killing a sufficient number of people to end high-tech civilization and set humanity back 1,000 years or more. That terrorist groups could achieve this level of technological sophistication may seem far-fetched, but keep in mind that it takes only a handful of individuals to accomplish these tasks. Never has lethal power of this potency been accessible to so few, so easily. Even more dramatically than nuclear proliferation, modern biological science has frighteningly undermined the correlation between the lethality of a weapon and its cost, a fundamentally stabilizing mechanism throughout history. Access to extremely lethal agents—lethal enough to exterminate Homo sapiens—will be available to anybody with a solid background in biology, terrorists included. The 9/11 attacks involved at least four pilots, each of whom had sufficient education to enroll in flight schools and complete several years of training. Bin laden had a degree in civil engineering. Mohammed Atta attended a German university, where he earned a master’s degree in urban planning—not a field he likely chose for its relevance to terrorism. A future set of terrorists could just as easily be students of molecular biology who enter their studies innocently enough but later put their skills to homicidal use. Hundreds of universities in Europe and Asia have curricula sufficient to train people in the skills necessary to make a sophisticated biological weapon, and hundreds more in the United States accept students from all over the world. Thus it seems likely that sometime in the near future a small band of terrorists, or even a single misanthropic individual, will overcome our best defenses and do something truly terrible, such as fashion a bioweapon that could kill millions or even billions of people. Indeed, the creation of such weapons within the next 20 years seems to be a virtual certainty.

AT: No Impact (Bioweapons)

Bioweapons cause extinction—nuclear weapons don’t.

Singer 1— Clifford Singer, Director of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security at the University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign [Spring 2001, “Will Mankind Survive the Millennium?” The Bulletin of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 13.1, http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/research/S&Ps/2001-Sp/S&P_XIII/Singer.htm]
In recent years the fear of the apocalypse (or religious hope for it) has been in part a child of the Cold War, but its seeds in Western culture go back to the Black Death and earlier. Recent polls suggest that the majority in the United States that believe man would survive into the future for substantially less than a millennium was about 10 percent higher in the Cold War than afterward. However fear of annihilation of the human species through nuclear warfare was confused with the admittedly terrifying, but much different matter of destruction of a dominant civilization. The destruction of a third or more of much of the globe’s population through the disruption from the direct consequences of nuclear blast and fire damage was certainly possible. There was, and still is, what is now known to be a rather small chance that dust raised by an all-out nuclear war would cause a socalled nuclear winter, substantially reducing agricultural yields especially in temperate regions for a year or more. As noted above mankind as a whole has weathered a number of mind-boggling disasters in the past fifty thousand years even if older cultures or civilizations have sometimes eventually given way to new ones in the process. Moreover the fear that radioactive fallout would make the globe uninhabitable, publicized by widely seen works such as “On the Beach,” was a metaphor for the horror of nuclear war rather than reality. The epidemiological lethal results of well over a hundred atmospheric nuclear tests are barely statistically detectable except in immediate fallout plumes. The increase in radiation exposure far from the combatants in even a full scale nuclear exchange at the height of the Cold War would have been modest compared to the variations in natural background radiation doses that have readily been adapted to by a number of human populations. Nor is there any reason to believe that global warming or other insults to our physical environment resulting from currently used technologies will challenge the survival of mankind as a whole beyond what it has already handily survived through the past fifty thousand years.

There are, however, two technologies currently under development that may pose a more serious threat to human survival. The first and most immediate is biological warfare combined with genetic engineering. Smallpox is the most fearsome of natural biological warfare agents in existence. By the end of the next decade, global immunity to smallpox will likely be at a low unprecedented since the emergence of this disease in the distant past, while the opportunity for it to spread rapidly across the globe will be at an all time high. In the absence of other complications such as nuclear war near the peak of an epidemic, developed countries may respond with quarantine and vaccination to limit the damage. Otherwise mortality there may match the rate of 30 percent or more expected in unprepared developing countries. With respect to genetic engineering using currently available knowledge and technology, the simple expedient of spreading an ample mixture of coat protein variants could render a vaccination response largely ineffective, but this would otherwise not be expected to substantially increase overall mortality rates. With development of new biological technology, however, there is a possibility that a variety of infectious agents may be engineered for combinations of greater than natural virulence and mortality, rather than just to overwhelm currently available antibiotics or vaccines. There is no a priori known upper limit to the power of this type of technology base, and thus the survival of a globally connected human family may be in question when and if this is ¹achieved.

AT: No Tech Access (Bioweapons)

Tech access becoming easier all the time

Patrick D. ELLIS, WMD/Homeland Security Analyst and Instructor at the U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center, Air University, 14 [“Lone Wolf Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Examination of Capabilities and Countermeasures,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 26, Issue 1, 2014]
A WMD in the hands of a lone wolf terrorist is a scenario we all hope will never happen. However, we live in a world where traditional WMD weapons are being proliferated and new Janus-headed technologies and systems can become weapons. The proliferation of WMD technology through legitimate as well as illegitimate programs in recent years continues to warn us of the uncertain nature of who might be able to acquire such weapons in the future. A more clear and present danger may very well be from the more accessible sources of radiation, bacteria, or other industrial chemicals that are always in our communities. Do-it-yourself biology and access to other technologies might open the doors for newer forms of violent diseases that could spread through populations. The ease of acquiring the skills and knowledge to cultivate known diseases such as plague and anthrax are as close as a small university microbiology program. Access to dual-use miniaturized laboratory technologies is not as hard to obtain as it was in the past. The future possibility of cross-pollination between bad actors such as terrorist and criminals due to “a convergence of interests and methods” 94 will become more problematic and of grave concern to security practitioners. The requirement for security professionals to continue to develop their capacity to envision future threats based on technological advancements will become key to creating future solutions to potentially destructive new weapons.

2NC – WMD Terrorism Impact – Turns Economy

Nuke terror would end the economy.

John Kenneth Galbraith, April 2000. Professor of Economics at Harvard. “Economic Aspects,” from the IPPNW Nuclear Weapons Convention Monitor, http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/nwc/mon1galb.html.
Such is the vulnerability of the American economy that in the form we know it, it could be brought to an end by the most elementary of nuclear attacks. This could be accomplished by a tactical nuclear weapon on downtown New York. With such an attack there would, of course, be massive death and destruction. But additionally the American economy would be made non-functional. No longer in the economic world would it be known what was owned and what possessed in the banks. That knowledge would be destroyed along with the people that convey the information. The trading of securities would, of course, come to an end but, as seriously, so would the knowledge throughout the country of what is owned. Those with ownership in and income from the financial world — stocks, bonds and other financial instruments — would find a record of their possessions eliminated. It would be true for individuals and for corporations throughout the country. Ownership would come to an end; of assets possessed there would no longer be a record. Capitalism as it is known would be finished. This, to repeat, would be the result of one small nuclear weapon.

A terrorist attack would cause massive economic damage.

Raneta Mack et al, 2004. Professor of Law at Creighton University. Equal Justice in the Balance, p. 13-14.
In addition to the psychological and strategic impact of terrorism, such pervasive, continuing, and unpredictable violence (or the threat of such violence) also inflicts a severe economic wound on its victims. Although terrorists rarely have as their ultimate goal the devastation of a nation’s economic infrastructure, one of the inevitable consequences of large-scale terrorist violence is economic downturn and a corresponding reassessment of economic resource allocation. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the United States has endured a dramatic economic upheaval in both the business and consumer markets. Widespread economic uncertainty has resulted in a declining investment market, reduced overall spending, and massive layoffs. Moreover, to fight the escalating war on terrorism, the government has radically refocused its mission to support the counterterrorism effort, which, in turn, requires equally dramatic budgetary revamping. To cite a few examples, in February 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft requested an additional $2 billion to help the Department of Justice (DOJ) fight the terrorism battle. On the legislative front, Congress approved a $15 billion emergency assistance package to help the ailing airline industry recover from the 9/11 attacks. The bailout package included immediate cash payments to compensate for the shutdown of the airlines after the attacks and loan guarantees of $10 billion. But arguably the most devastated sector of the economy is the insurance industry, which is expected to pay out record claims to those who lost loved ones and property as a result of the attacks. Analysts predict that these claims could reach a crippling $50 billion. A draft report by NATO’s Economics and Security Committee entitled The Economic Consequences of 11 September and the Economic Dimension of Anti-terrorism anticipated that “many of the losses associated with the [September 11] attacks are essentially ‘one-off’ costs that will not endure over the long-term. There are, however, several important exceptions. Insurance [premiums], particularly against terrorist attacks, have probably risen permanently [and] … the costs of increased security no doubt will continue to weigh on national economies for the foreseeable future and will disproportionately hit certain sectors like airlines and insurance.”

2NC – WMD Terrorism Impact – Turns Rights

A nuclear terrorist attack turns the case by crushing constitutional liberties

Robert Chesney, 1997. Law Clerk to the Hon. Lewis A. Kaplan (S.D.N.Y.); B.S., Tex. Christian Univ.; J.D., Harvard Law School. “National Insecurity: Nuclear Material Availability and the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism,” 20 Loy. L.A. Int'l & Comp. L.J. 29, lexis.

The horrible truth is that the threat of nuclear terrorism is real, in light of the potential existence of a black market in fissile material. Nuclear terrorists might issue demands, but then again, they might not. Their target could be anything: a U.S. military base in a foreign land, a crowded U.S. city, or an empty stretch of desert highway. In one fell swoop, nuclear terrorists could decapitate the U.S. government or destroy its financial system. The human suffering resulting from a detonation would be beyond calculation, and in the aftermath, the remains of the nation would demand both revenge and protection. Constitutional liberties and values might never recover. When terrorists strike against societies already separated by fundamental social fault lines, such as in Northern Ireland or Israel, conventional weapons can exploit those fault lines to achieve significant gains. 1 In societies that lack such pre-existing fundamental divisions, however, conventional weapon attacks do not pose a top priority threat to national security, even though the pain and suffering inflicted can be substantial. The bedrock institutions of the United States will survive despite the destruction of federal offices; the vast majority of people will continue to support the Constitution despite the mass murder of innocent persons. The consequences of terrorists employing weapons of mass destruction, however, would be several orders of magnitude worse than a conventional weapons attack. Although this threat includes chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear weapon's devastating [*32]  potential is in a class by itself. 2 Nuclear terrorism thus poses a unique danger to the United States: through its sheer power to slay, destroy, and terrorize, a nuclear weapon would give terrorists the otherwise-unavailable ability to bring the United States to its knees. Therefore, preventing terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons should be considered an unparalleled national security priority dominating other policy considerations.

The disad turns the case – a terrorist attack will lead to a crackdown on rights and enemy construction

Lee Epstein et al, April 2005. Professor of Political Science and Law at Washington University. “The Supreme Court during crisis: How war affects only non-war cases,” New York University Law Review, 80(1): 1-116, http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4214882/King_SupremeCourt.pdf?sequence=2.
When societies confront crises, they respond in different ways. Sometimes they use military force to attack their aggressors; sometimes they do not. n27 Sometimes they impose economic sanctions; sometimes they do not. n28 Sometimes they undertake diplomatic efforts; sometimes they do not. n29 But, as many studies reveal, one response is essentially universal: In times of emergency - whether arising from wars, internal rebellions, or terrorist attacks - governments tend to suppress the rights and liberties of persons living within their borders. n30 They may respond in this way out of a desire to present [*12] a unified front to outsiders, their perception that cleavages are "dangerous," n31 or, of course, their belief that national security and military "necessity" must outweigh liberty interests if government is to be protected and preserved. n32 Whatever the reason, the United States is no exception to this rule. n33 Indeed, America's history is replete with executive and legislative attempts, during times of "urgency," to restrict the people's ability to speak, publish, and organize; to erode guarantees usually afforded to the criminally accused; or to tighten restrictions on "foreigners" or [*13] perceived "enemies." n34 The "ink had barely dried on the First Amendment," n35 as Justice Brennan once observed, when Congress passed two restrictive legislative enactments: the Sedition Act, n36 which prohibited speech critical of the United States, and the Enemy Alien Act, n37 which empowered the President to detain or deport alien enemies n38 and which the government has used during declared wars to stamp out political opponents. n39 During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln took steps to suppress "treacherous" behavior, most notably by suspending habeas corpus, out of the belief "that the [*14] nation must be able to protect itself in war against utterances which actually cause insubordination." n40 Prior to America's entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson "predicted a dire fate for civil liberties should we become involved." n41 With passage of the Espionage Act of 1917 n42 and the Sedition Act of 1918, n43 Wilson's prediction was realized - with Wilson as a prime accomplice. World War II brought yet more repressive measures, most notably executive orders limiting the movement of and providing for the internment of Japanese Americans. n44 The Korean War and the supposed "communist menace" n45 resulted in an "epidemic of witch-hunting, paranoia, and political grandstanding" directed against "reds" across the country. n46 And Vietnam was accompanied by governmental efforts to silence war protests. n47 Thus, in the United States, "the struggle between the needs of national security and political or civil liberties has been a continual one." n48 Of course, politicians would have a difficult time enacting and implementing such curtailments on rights and liberties if those measures lacked public support. n49 But that has not been the case during[*15] crises for which we have survey data. In a general sense, the data reveal that public confidence in the President, who is often the catalyst for repressive legislation, n50 soars in the face of international crises. n51 This "rally effect" n52 gave Franklin Roosevelt a twelve-point increase after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, John Kennedy a thirteen-point lift during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and George H.W. Bush a fourteen-point boost when Iraq invaded Kuwait. n53 As Figure 1 shows, in the wake of September 11, 2001, George W. Bush's approval rating jumped a record-setting thirty-five points, from fifty-one percent on September 7 to eighty-six percent on September 14. [*16] [mg f:'nyu10101.eps',w28.,d17.6] Figure 1: Percentage of Americans approving of the way George W. Bush is handling his job: The "rally effect" generated by September 11, 2001. n54 Survey data also reveal a public supportive of specific efforts on the part of political actors to curtail rights and liberties. Consider Americans' response to September 11. n55 As Table 1 shows, all but one restriction on rights designed to furnish the government with significant authority to combat terrorism - the indefinite detainment of terrorist suspects without charging them - attained the support of a substantial majority of respondents. n56

2NC – Threats Real (Al Qaeda)

Al-Qaeda is planning mass casualty attacks on the West --- continued surveillance is critical to prevent them.

Wall Street Journal, 1/8/2015. Cassell Bryan-Low. “U.K. MI5 Chief Andrew Parker Warns of Threat of al Qaeda Attack in West,” http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-mi5-chief-andrew-parker-warns-of-threat-of-al-qaeda-attack-in-west-1420757705.
LONDON—The head of the U.K.’s domestic intelligence agency said Thursday that al Qaeda continued to pose an immediate threat and was planning large-scale attacks against the West.

In a rare public speech, MI5 chief Andrew Parker said “a group of core al Qaeda terrorists in Syria is planning mass casualty attacks against the West,” without elaborating on how advanced such planning was. The comments underscore that the terrorist threat remains diverse despite the recent focus on Islamic State, which has gained territory in Syria and Iraq.

The comments, made at MI5’s London headquarters, come on the heels of Wednesday’s shooting attack in Paris, which left 12 people dead. While authorities haven’t yet confirmed any possible connections of the perpetrators to terrorist organizations, intelligence officials have said that links to al Qaeda were a possibility.

In his remarks, Mr. Parker briefly addressed the Paris attack. “It is too early for us to come to judgments about the precise details or origin of the attack, but it is a terrible reminder of the intentions of those who wish us harm,” Mr. Parker said.

Speaking more generally, Mr. Parker said, “we face a very serious level of threat that is complex to combat and unlikely to abate significantly for some time.” He added that in recent months, authorities have prevented three U.K. terrorist plots that “would certainly” have resulted in deaths.

Mr. Parker said there had been an increase in the number of “crude but potentially deadly plots” and cited last year’s attacks in Canada and Australia as examples. “Such attacks are inherently harder for intelligence agencies to detect,” he said. “They are often the work of volatile individuals, motivated by terrorist propaganda rather than working as part of sophisticated networks. They often act spontaneously or after very short periods of prior training.”

He focused in particular on the threat stemming from the conflict in Syria. There have been more than 20 terrorist plots outside of Syria and Iraq that were either directed or provoked by extremist groups in Syria, including those in Canada, Australia, Belgium and France, according to Mr. Parker.

Britain’s security agencies in August raised the assessment of the threat from international terrorism to “severe” from “substantial,” the second-highest level on its five-point scale, primarily because of the threat of Islamist militants in Syria. The change, which triggered a step-up in security measures such as visible police patrols, reflects an assessment that an attack is highly likely but that there isn’t intelligence to suggest an imminent terror strike.

The MI5 chief said some 600 extremists now had traveled from Britain to Syria and that a “significant proportion” of those had joined Islamic State, also known as ISIL.

He also talked about the stiff challenges intelligence agencies face, ranging from the difficulty in collecting intelligence in Syria, where the U.K. has no partner agency to work with to technological challenges more broadly.

As the terrorism threat is increasing, intelligence agencies are finding their ability to counter them is decreasing, he said. The reasons include the increased availability—and use—of encryption that makes it harder for intelligence agencies to intercept communications.

“Changes in the technology that people are using to communicate are making it harder for the agencies to maintain the capability to intercept the communications of terrorists,” he said. “The further reduction of this capability will seriously harm our ability to investigate and disrupt such threats in the future.”

Mr. Parker also waded into Britain’s feud with Internet companies over how much they should help in combating terrorist activity. British authorities say they remain frustrated that U.S. Internet companies don’t feel obliged to comply with U.K. warrants requesting information about users.

He said intelligence agents need to be able to access communication among terrorists if they are to do their job, which means including the assistance of companies which hold relevant data. “Currently this picture is patchy,” he said.

He also defended the communications-data gathering work by intelligence agencies, which has come under criticism following the disclosure of mass-surveillance techniques by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

“MI5 does not browse through the private lives of the population at large,” he said. “We need to have powerful capabilities that enable us to range widely, with the potential to reach anyone who might threaten national security—but with our efforts always concentrated on the tiniest minority who actually present threats.”

AQAP has demonstrated capacity and intent for attacks on the US --- the threat is high.

Michael Kugelman, 1/9/2015. Senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “Why Al Qaeda Poses a Greater Terror Threat to the U.S. Than ISIS,” Wall Street Journal, http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/09/why-al-qaeda-poses-a-greater-terror-threat-to-the-u-s-than-isis/.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has long posed a direct threat to the West, a threatarguably more serious than that posed by Islamic State. Yet many seem surprised by this after news reports that one of the suspects in Wednesday’s attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris may have had links to AQAP.

The suspect, Said Kouachi, reportedly received training in Yemen in 2011. During that trip, he allegedly met with Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born preacher closely associated with AQAP until he was killed by a U.S. drone strike later that year.

In recent years, Washington has deemed Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula the most dangerous terror threat to the West because of its global reach and technical savvy. And unlike Islamic State, AQAP has staged attacks in the West, including in the United States.

The “underwear bomber” who tried to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day 2009, the 2013 massacre at Fort Hood, and the 2010 plot to send parcel bombs to Chicago all had some connection to AQAP.

Islamic State extremists have done no such things–yet. To this point, ISIS has appeared content to terrorize Westerners in Syria and Iraq, where the group holds sway. Its core objective for now appears to be managing the territory it controls in those countries, not taking its fight to the West.

Now, many observers have good reason to fear that Westerners who go to the Middle East to fight for Islamic State could eventually return home and stage attacks.

Perhaps a more immediate fear, however, is that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula–a group that has demonstrated its intent and ability to strike in the West—will carry out its own attacks, much like the one in Paris this week.

And, unfortunately, the United States could be the next target.

Competition between AQ and ISIS increases the incentive to pull off large-scale attacks.

Bloomberg, 3/21/2015. Ian Wishart. “Al Qaeda-Islamic State Rivalry Worsens Threat, de Kerchove Says,” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-21/al-qaeda-islamic-state-rivalry-worsens-threat-de-kerchove-says.
Competition for the “leadership of global jihad” could incite al-Qaeda to carry out a terrorist attack in Europe to prove its credibility, according to the European Union’s counter-terrorism chief.

Rivalry between al-Qaeda and Islamic State, also known by the Arabic acronym Daesh, has only added to the terror threat Western policy makers grapple with, Gilles de Kerchove said at a forum in Brussels Saturday.

“The fierce competition between al-Qaeda and Daesh over the leadership of global jihad -- we may see at some stage in Europe or in some part of Africa, al-Qaeda wanting to launch an attack to show they are still relevant,” de Kerchove said.

At least one of the three gunmen who killed 17 people in attacks in Paris in January had connections to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based group that swears allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s original movement. Another declared allegiance to Islamic State in a video.

Islamic State, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the killing at least 22 people at a museum in Tunis on Wednesday.

2NC – AT: No Nuclear Terrorism (General)

High risk of nuke terror—there’s motivation and capability

Kenneth C. Brill 12 is a former U.S. ambassador to the I.A.E.A. Kenneth N. Luongo is president of the Partnership for Global Security. Both are members of the Fissile Material Working Group, a nonpartisan nongovernmental organization [“Nuclear Terrorism: A Clear Danger,” www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/opinion/nuclear-terrorism-a-clear-danger.html?_r=0]
Terrorists exploit gaps in security. The current global regime for protecting the nuclear materials that terrorists desire for their ultimate weapon is far from seamless. It is based largely on unaccountable, voluntary arrangements that are inconsistent across borders. Its weak links make it dangerous and inadequate to prevent nuclear terrorism.

Later this month in Seoul, the more than 50 world leaders who will gather for the second Nuclear Security Summit need to seize the opportunity to start developing an accountable regime to prevent nuclear terrorism.

There is a consensus among international leaders that the threat of nuclear terrorism is real, not a Hollywood confection. President Obama, the leaders of 46 other nations, the heads of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations, and numerous experts have called nuclear terrorism one of the most serious threats to global security and stability. It is also preventable with more aggressive action.

At least four terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, have demonstrated interest in using a nuclear device. These groups operate in or near states with histories of questionable nuclear security practices. Terrorists do not need to steal a nuclear weapon. It is quite possible to make an improvised nuclear device from highly enriched uranium or plutonium being used for civilian purposes. And there is a black market in such material. There have been 18 confirmed thefts or loss of weapons-usable nuclear material. In 2011, the Moldovan police broke up part of a smuggling ring attempting to sell highly enriched uranium; one member is thought to remain at large with a kilogram of this material.

Their take-outs are wrong—the motivation and technical capability exist—acquisition is the only barrier

Bunn 10— Associate Professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Senior Research Associate, Managing the Atom Project [April, 2010, Matthew Bunn, “Securing the Bomb 2010,” http://www.nti.org/e_research/Securing_The_Bomb_2010.pdf]
Complacency about the threat is perhaps the biggest obstacle to forging the urgent, in-depth international cooperation needed to secure nuclear stockpiles and reduce the danger of nuclear terrorism. Many policymakers around the world continue to believe that it would take a Manhattan Project to make a nuclear bomb, that it would be almost impossible for terrorists to get the necessary nuclear material, and that the risk of terrorists getting and using a nuclear bomb is therefore vanishingly small. The experience of finding that Iraq did not have nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons in 2003 has made many justifiably skeptical of other assertions about serious threats from such weapons. Unfortunately, while no one can say precisely what the probability of nuclear terrorism is, the danger is very real. Several unfortunate facts shape the risk the world faces.

Some Terrorists are Seeking Nuclear Weapons

Most terrorist groups are focused on small-scale violence to attain local objectives. For them, the old adage that “terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead” holds true, and nuclear weapons are likely to be irrelevant or counterproductive for their goals. But a small set of terrorists with global ambitions and nihilistic visions clearly are eager to get and use a nuclear bomb. Osama bin Laden has called the acquisition of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction a “religious duty.” 1

For years, al Qaeda operatives have repeatedly expressed the desire to inflict a “Hiroshima” on the United States. 2 Al Qaeda operatives have made repeated attempts to buy nuclear material for a nuclear bomb, or to recruit nuclear expertise.

Shortly before the 9/11 attacks, for example, bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri met with two senior Pakistani nuclear scientists to discuss nuclear weapons. 3 Former CIA Director George Tenet reports that the two provided al Qaeda with a rough sketch of a nuclear bomb design, and that U.S. officials were so concerned about the activities of the “charity” they had established (whose board of directors also included a range of senior retired military officers, and which reportedly also offered nuclear weapons help to Libya) that President Bush directed him to fly to Pakistan and discuss the matter directly with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. 4 Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmoud, the more senior of the two, had long argued that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons rightfully belonged to the whole worldwide “ummah,” or Muslim community, and had advocated sharing nuclear weapons technology. 5

After the 9/11 attacks, intelligence agencies from the United States and other countries learned that in the years leading up to the attacks, al Qaeda had a focused nuclear weapons program managed by Abdel Aziz al-Masri (aka Ali Sayyid alBakri), an Egyptian explosives expert. The program reported directly to Zawahiri, as did al Qaeda’s anthrax efforts, its other major strategic-scale weapons of mass destruction program. This program reportedly got to the point of carrying out tests of conventional explosives for use in a nuclear bomb. 6

Al Qaeda’s nuclear efforts apparently continued after the disruptions the group faced following the overthrow of the Taliban government and the removal of al Qaeda’s Afghan sanctuary. In 2002-2003, U.S. intelligence received a “stream of reliable reporting” that the leadership of al Qaeda’s cell in Saudi Arabia was negotiating to purchase three objects they believed to be Russian “nuclear devices,” and that al Qaeda’s central leadership had approved the purchase if a Pakistani expert using his equipment confirmed that they were genuine. (The actual nature of these “devices,” if they existed, the name of the Pakistani expert, and the type of equipment he was to use to examine the devices have never been learned.) 7 At the same time these discussions were taking place, bin Laden arranged for a radical Saudi cleric to issue a fatwa or religious ruling authorizing the use of nuclear weapons against American civilians. 8 The cleric who issued the fatwa was the “steady companion” of the al Qaeda operative leading the negotiations over the nuclear devices. 9

Before al Qaeda, the Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo also made a concerted effort to get nuclear weapons. 10 Chechen terrorists have certainly pursued the possibility of a radioactive “dirty bomb,” and there are at least suggestive indications that they also have pursued nuclear weapons—including two incidents of terrorists conducting reconnaissance at secret nuclear weapon storage sites, confirmed by Russian officials. There are at least some indications that Pakistani groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba may also be interested—a particularly troubling possibility given the deep past connections these groups have had with Pakistani security services, their ongoing cooperation with al Qaeda, and the example of in-depth cooperation on unconventional weapons provided by al Qaeda’s work with Jemaah Islamiyah on anthrax. 11

With at least two groups going down this path in the last 15 years, and possibly more, there is no reason to expect that others will not do so in the future.

Some Terrorist Groups might be able to make Crude Nuclear Bombs

Repeated assessments by the U.S. government and other governments have concluded that it is plausible that a sophisticated terrorist group could make a crude nuclear explosive—capable of destroying the heart of a major city—if they got enough plutonium or HEU. A “gun-type” bomb made from HEU, in particular, is basically a matter of slamming two pieces of HEU together at high speed. An “implosion-type” bomb—in which precisely arranged explosives crush nuclear material to a much higher density, setting off the chain reaction—would be substantially more difficult for terrorists to accomplish, but is still plausible, particularly if they got knowledgeable help (as they have been actively attempting to do). 12

One study by the now-defunct congressional Office of Technology Assessment summarized the technical reality: “A small group of people, none of whom have ever had access to the classified literature, could possibly design and build a crude nuclear explosive device... Only modest machine-shop facilities that could be contracted for without arousing suspicion would be required.” 13 Indeed, even before the revelations from Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence concluded that “fabrication of at least a ‘crude’ nuclear device was within al-Qa’ida’s capabilities, if it could obtain fissile material.” 14

It is important to understand that making a crude, unsafe, unreliable bomb of uncertain yield that might be carried in the back of a large van is a dramatically simpler task than designing and building a safe, secure, reliable, and efficient weapon deliverable by a ballistic missile, which a state might want to incorporate into its arsenal. Terrorists are highly unlikely to ever be able to make a sophisticated and efficient weapon, a task that requires a substantial nuclear weapons enterprise— but they may well be able to make a crude one. Their task would be easier if they managed to recruit experts with experience in key aspects of a national nuclear weapons program. Nuclear weapons themselves generally have substantial security measures and would be more difficult to steal than nuclear materials. If terrorists nevertheless managed to steal an assembled nuclear weapon from a state, there is a significant risk that they might figure out how to set it off—though this, too, would in most cases be a difficult challenge for a terrorist group. 15 Many modern U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons are equipped with sophisticated electronic locks, known in the United States as “permissive action links” or PALs, intended to make it difficult to detonate the weapon without inserting an authorized code, which terrorists might find very difficult to bypass. Some weapons, however, are either not equipped with PALs or are equipped with older versions that lack some of the highestsecurity features (such as “limited try” features that would permanently disable the weapon if the wrong code is inserted too many times or attempts are made to bypass the lock). 16 Many nuclear weapons also have safety features designed to prevent the weapon from detonating unless it had gone through its expected flight to its target—such as intense acceleration followed by unpowered flight for a ballistic missile warhead—and these would also have to be bypassed, if they were present, for terrorists to be able to make use of an assembled nuclear weapon they acquired.

If they could not figure out how to detonate a stolen weapon, terrorists might choose to remove its nuclear material and fashion a new bomb. Some modern, highly efficient designs might not contain enough material for a crude, inefficient terrorist bomb; but multistage thermonuclear weapons, with nuclear material in both the “primary” (the fission bomb that sets off the fusion reaction) and the “secondary” (where the fusion takes place) probably would provide sufficient material. In any case, terrorists in possession of a stolen nuclear weapon would be in a position to make fearsome threats, for no one would know for sure whether they could set it off.

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