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Julian Sanchez: Lessons from the Canadian Terror Arrests?
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I wouldn't be surprised if the idea behind this American Spectator Blog post turned into a mini-meme for defenders of our own NSA's warrantless wiretap and data mining programs, so perhaps it's best to nip it in the bud if we can. AmSpec's Jed Babbin writes:
Because no one else wants to talk about this we must. The RCMP arrests of some 17 Canadian al-Q wannabes was based on the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service - their equivalent of the NSA - monitoring of e-mails between suspects and international connections, and among the suspects in Canada.Now, perhaps you're among those who believe — and there seem to be not a few who at least purport to — that the sole possible basis for objections to the NSA programs, which circumvent even the most minimal sort of judicial oversight, is the conviction that we just shouldn't be trying to conduct any sort of surveillance of terrorists. If so, then this is an awesome argument. Otherwise, it looks as though it probably cuts the other way.More proof that it works. Are you listening, Sen. Specter?
Here's what the Toronto Star article linked by the AmSpec folks says:
The chain of events began two years ago, sparked by local teenagers roving through Internet sites, reading and espousing anti-Western sentiments and vowing to attack at home, in the name of oppressed Muslims here and abroad.And good work on their part. But was all this achieved by liberating Canada's intelligence officers from burdensome warrant requirements or oversight protocols that would have prevented them from discovering this suspected terror cell? Apparently not:Their words were sometimes encrypted, the Internet sites where they communicated allegedly restricted by passwords, but Canadian spies back in 2004 were reading them. And as the youths' words turned into actions, they began watching them.
Martin Rudner, director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies at Carleton University, said the surveillance of the Toronto cell shows that it is possible to detect terrorist cells using a system that requires the equivalent of a search warrant.Now, the arrest of the Canadian cell appears to have been the outcome of a long period of surveillance involving extensive international cooperation, so it's hard to know to what extent due process was observed every step of the way. But it least looks as though the capture of these wannahadeen turned out to be compatible with reasonable checks on state eavesdropping powers.Canadian officials had to obtain permission from a threat-review committee before investigating Canadian citizens, he said. As a result, he said, all the information collected should be usable in court.
Julian Sanchez is an assistant editor of Reason.
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As I understood it, from the earlier stories, we're not talking about routine scanning of emails here. These guys were picked up on a forum or yahoo group or whatever, and from there their comms were monitored.
I knew as I read the earlier story titled (iirc) "Internet Monitoring Led To Arrests" that this would be spun like mad south of the border as a justification for the 'unconfirmed' NSA story, but really all this represents is due diligence (finding and monitoring jihadi/whatever forums) and good followup.
And since the NSA program would use illegally obtained information, we would have to resort to indefinite detention. Fortunately we can do this, and avoid all the mess of going to trial and possibly losing.
We should get real here, these 'kids' couldn't even purchase fertilizer without getting caught; it doesn't sound to me like a very big threat.
From a security and intelligence perspective, I want to second Julian's perspective. I am someone who spent the 1990s, as a Clintonista, championing counter terrorism and anti-crime legislation coveted by federal law enforcement and intelligence -- because I rightly understood their noble motives and genuine frustrations, but also because I WRONGLY assumed no administration, whether Republican or Democratic, would ever turn its back on the post-Watergate, post-COINTELPRO consensus on reforms. I could not imagine anything as radical and abusive as what the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal and its neo-totalitarians (they are not neo-conservatives) have forced upon us in defiance of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But I digress...back to the original point, Julian is right, reasonable checks do not thwart such investigations, FISA more than compensates for any time-sensitive issues or Constitutional concerns. It will be shown sooner or later that they have been monitoring elected officials of the legislative branch, officials of the judiciary branch, law enforcement prosecutors and intelligence analysts, government scientists, as well as the press, anti-war activists and opposition political operatives. In the end, Nixon, in spite of the ugliness in his soul, had a self-awareness of being a person inside of a system of government, which he attempted to twist to his own ends. Bush and Cheney do not experience it that way, they see themselves literally as kings over a subject people, and act tyranically.
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