Porking the Homeland

Depressing NYT account of how America's quest for security is no match for the congressional pork engine:

The Department of Homeland Security has invested tens of millions of dollars and countless hours of labor over the last four years on a seemingly simple task: creating a tamperproof identification card for airport, rail and maritime workers.

Yet nearly two years past a planned deadline, production of the card, known as the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, has yet to begin.

Instead, the road to delivering this critical antiterrorism tool has taken detours to locations, companies and groups often linked to Representative Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican who is the powerful chairman of the House subcommittee that controls the Homeland Security budget.

It is a route that has benefited Mr. Rogers, creating jobs in his home district and profits for companies that are donors to his political causes. The congressman has also taken 11 trips -- including six to Hawaii -- on the tab of an organization that until this week was to profit from a no-bid contract Mr. Rogers helped arrange. Work has even been set aside for a tiny start-up company in Kentucky that employs John Rogers, the congressman's son.

"Something stinks in Corbin," said Jay M. Meier, senior securities analyst at MJSK Equity Research in Minneapolis, which follows the identification card industry, referring to the Kentucky community of 8,000 that has perhaps benefited the most from Mr. Rogers's interventions. "And it is the sickest example of what is wrong with our homeland security agenda that I can find."

Sick, but not surprising. Reason's March cover-story detailed all the waste, fraud, and abuse that passes for government anti-terror efforts.

Comments

[Marcvs]

Mr. Rogers, 68, whom The Lexington Herald-Leader last year called the Prince of Pork, has never been shy about using clout gained over 13 House terms to steer federal dollars to his sparsely populated, poor corner of southeastern Kentucky.

"We see Hal pretty often," Mayor Amos Miller of Corbin, a Republican, said in an interview. "And he always brings good news."

'nuff said.

[D.A. Ridgely]

And this is why it is so vital that we impose American style democracies throughout the Middle East -- then its leaders will be too busy spreading around the, well, maybe not pork but its Islamic equivalent to stir up any trouble!

[Shannon Love]

Decisions made in a crisis atmosphere almost always lead to extravagant waste and misdirection. This happens in both government and the private sector. This is why it is important to think about potential problems and prepare for them long before the crisis hits.

There was a lot of talk in the terrorism expert community prior to 9/11 that Islamist had switched from low or zero causality mediaphillic type attacks to maximum causality attacks yet few if any decision makers paid any attention. Biowarfare experts have warned since the 60's that the mail system could be used for bio attacks. Only after the attacks actually occurred did we see a chaotic rush to try to defend against them.

We seem to have a cultural concept that anyone who warns against some future threat is actually always just trying accomplish some other unrelated and usually sinister goal. Even if the warnings are taken seriously and action taken to prevent actual harm, many will take the lack of actual harm as evidence that their was never a real threat in the first place.

I think I see the same pattern of behavior in the panic over the NSA operations. There was considerable discussion about the need to change the laws and regulations prior to 9/11 within the small community of people who kept track of such things but they couldn't get anyone's attention prior to the crisis. Now we have an ad hoc system of uncertain formal legality rushed into place by executive fiat.

I don't see any evidence that the vast majority of the critics of the NSA have spent anytime whatsoever thinking real hard about how to identify threats in the contemporary global packet-switched communication system. They seem to be stuck in default rejection mode where they will stay until the next crisis sets off another round of rushed decision making.

[Akira MacKenzie]

By the the headlilne, I thought that this was the title of a coffee table book.

[Adam]

Well, sure, this might be a rare example of a government program that failed to deliver on time and was corrupted for political purposes. But, really, how common can that kind of thing possibly be?

[thoreau]

I don't see any evidence that the vast majority of the critics of the NSA have spent anytime whatsoever thinking real hard about how to identify threats in the contemporary global packet-switched communication system.

If I wanted to organize a terrorist operation, I wouldn't have a centrally planned organization making frequent use of voice and text. I'd have a decentralized system, where the guys at the top provide training and resources to self-organized cells, and these cells plan their own operations. The cells would interact only sporadically with their trainers, and electronic communication would only be used to establish an initial meeting. After that, everything would be done face-to-face or, when absolutely necessary, by a code established during face-to-face meetings.

Say that some guys meet. They agree that if one of them sells a table on EBay it means they have to meet. If one of them makes a blog post about soccer it means that he's been compromised. If he makes a blog post about hocky it means that they should attack ASAP. If he makes a blog post about Lindsey Lohan's new movie it means that they should get money through a pre-arranged channel. If he posts an Amazon.com review of a cookbook it means that they should take the second letter of each sentence in the book review and read the secret code. And so forth. And they should rely on these means as little as possible, and face-to-face as much as possible, and use cash as much as possible when traveling.

How, pray tell would you even identify such communications, let alone decipher them?

This is no different from the means that criminals and spies and saboteurs have long used for their communications: Inconspicuous signals that the authorities can hardly spot, let alone decipher. Low-profile means of conducting business. The internet might make that sort of communication easier, but it hardly changes the name of the game. The only way to spot and decipher those signals, whether they're Amazon.com cookbook reviews or different colored flowers on a porch or a stain on the cloak (with matching dagger), is the same old-fashioned way: Find a person who knows the code and either get him to talk or steal the book where he wrote down the code or listen in on him.

All of this depends on spying on specific individuals, whom you have some reason to believe are useful. And if you have some reason to believe that they are useful, it shouldn't be hard to persuade FISA to give you a warrant.

Indiscriminate surveillance is no more useful today than it was when secret messages were written on the inside of your belt, which was removed and wrapped around a stick of pre-determined size to decode it (a method of the Romans). Indiscriminate methods swamp signal with noise.

It's not so different from the attitude that I encountered at a conference on tumor modeling last week. People want to write down 500 equations and put them into a computer and hope to get something that will give results that are better than just obvious consequences of the assumptions. I say that 500 equations are 495 too many, and a simple model that is intelligently designed can zero in on what really matters.

[thoreau]

Now, to be fair, if you had reason to believe that a particular person was a terrorist, and he always read Amazon.com cookbook reviews and soccer blogs, then sure, you can figure out that he's looking for a code. That's good. If you have reason to believe that he's a terrorist you should have no problem getting a warrant to monitor his internet activity. And if he starts reading soccer blogs more frequently or whatever, then you can be pretty sure that he's up to something.

But what could you possibly learn from monitoring every blog reader in the US? If somebody reads a blog more one week and less another week, does that mean his terrorist operations are in a critical stage, or does it mean that he was traveling more one week and around his computer less? If somebody reads a bunch of Amazon.com cookbook reviews one week and otherwise reads reviews of physics books, does that mean that he's looking for messages in the cookbooks, or does it mean that he's buying his mother a cookbook for her birthday?

Indiscriminate means will generate noisy results. It's one of the rarely mentioned reasons for requiring warrants: When you're doing a job, it's good if every now and then you have to stop and explain to somebody why you're doing what you're doing. If you can't explain it, not even after the fact (and recall that the FISA court can issue retroactive warrants), then that means that you're wasting your time. Even if you don't care about privacy, surely you should care that national security resources are used wisely rather than foolishly.

[jeffiek]

Mr. Rogers, 68, whom The Lexington Herald-Leader last year called the Prince of Pork, has never been shy about using clout gained over 13 House terms to steer federal dollars to his sparsely populated, poor corner of southeastern Kentucky.

So why is it still poor?

[thoreau]

So why is it still poor?

Obviously they need to spend more money!

[thoreau]

One other thing, Shannon:

You may be right that the threat we face today is so radically different that we need very different standards and procedures than in the past. But would you at least agree that there's a big difference between new standards and no standards? Bush's argument seems to be "It's OK because I said so!" That's hardly the sort of legal reasoning that should carry the day in a Republic based on the rule of law.

[Jennifer]

I just keep remembering the brouhaha when news of the infamous "Bin Laden Determined to Strike within US" memo came out; the administration and its apologists insisted that there was no way you could expect our intelligence agencies to realize the memo was important because, they said, there is just SO much intelligence coming in that trying to pinpoint the one bit of info that actually matters is like finding a needle in a haystack.

So even ignoring questions of legality and civil liberties, this indiscriminate NSA spying strikes me as just dumping more hay onto the stack. How is that supposed to make it easier for the NSA to find the next needle?

[sage +P]

Jennifer,

You should consider watching Mythbusters. Using modern technology two groups were able to find needles in haystacks: both needles made of steel and ones made of bone, like they were when the phrase likely originated. Thus, the saying "find a needle in a haystack" has been rendered obsolete.

[sage +P]

Perhaps a more modern version of the saying would be "find a bit in a terabyte." Sort of carries the same punch, right?

[Shannon Love]

thoreau,

Actually, face-to-face meetings, especially international ones are absolutely the worst way to organize any covert action. Traveling internationally means passing through highly monitored choke points. The entire passport system is designed expressly to track people as they move about.

Using electronic communications in a packet-switched network means that there is no single physical pathway linking any two nodes in the network. Using revolving email addresses, encrypted voice over IP, pre-paid cells and other similar technologies is an excellent way to avoid detection. You can coordinate action literally over the entire world without any physical contact at all. If the intelligence services have no authority to go fishing for patterns it would be impossible to be caught.

The best way to launch an attack, especially with the pre-9/11 standards would be to:

(1) Operate entirely within the US. This would protect you from the NSA entirely.
(2) Commit no other crimes or infractions that would generate probable cause for the civil law enforcement to investigate you.

Cover those two simple bases and you could operate with impunity until you struck.

But what could you possibly learn from monitoring every blog reader in the US?

Its data mining. You take numerous small details collected from many different sources and stitch them together into a coherent picture. If you COMBINE internet usage patterns AND phone call patterns AND library checkouts AND travel patterns AND political donation patterns AND purchasing patterns AND other bits of trivial information you can find individuals likely to be dangerous. Each single piece of information means nothing but combined together they generate a reasonable picture.

You should ask yourself not what it would require to stop Islamist terrorist operating from overseas but rather how you would identify someone like Timothy McViegh, an American citizen operating exclusively within the US itself. McViegh committed some minor crimes to finance his attack but if he had even a few thousands of dollars to his name he could have carried it off without those crimes. The ONLY means of identifying him as a possible threat prior to the attack would have been to have noticed his affiliation with various extremist groups and his interest in extremist writings.

That's hardly the sort of legal reasoning that should carry the day in a Republic based on the rule of law.

That why I would rather prefer we think seriously about what is actually needed long before a problem occurs which at present we do not do. I think most the screaming about the NSA is thoughtless knee jerking. I think the vast majority of critics are more interested in playing "1984" than they are about the new problems we face. I haven't seen any serious alternatives advanced beyond, "Let's treat military attackers like civilian criminals and just hope for the best."

Frankly, I am not very perturbed by Bush's actions because I see them as falling into a long history of emergency overreach by the executive during times of crisis. FDR could have been impeached for the things he did in the lead up to WWII yet few today believe he put the constitution at serious risk. History has shown that our institutions will adapt. Either we will decide that the possibly abrogated powers were justified and codify them or we will decide they are not and shut things down. Either way, no serious harm will be done.

History has shown that it is the ineffective state that leads to tyranny not the overreaching one. Without exception, every evolution from a liberal state to an authoritarian one in the 20th century occurred after the liberal state failed to maintain basic social and economic security. We are in far more danger from a situation where every little group with a grievance can kill hundreds at will than we are from overly invasive intelligence services.

[D.A. Ridgely]

Operate entirely within the US. This would protect you from the NSA entirely.

ROTFL!

[Jennifer]

McViegh committed some minor crimes to finance his attack but if he had even a few thousands of dollars to his name he could have carried it off without those crimes. The ONLY means of identifying him as a possible threat prior to the attack would have been to have noticed his affiliation with various extremist groups and his interest in extremist writings.

How do you separate the McVeighs from the thousands of people who share his interest in extremist viewpoints but never committed any actual crimes? And these days, more and more, the government is defining "extremist" as "anybody who disagrees with what we're doing." Posting on this website could be justification enough for the government to keep you under surveillance.

Operate entirely within the US. This would protect you from the NSA entirely.

If you use Qwest, yes. But if you use AT&T, Verizon wireless, or any other such communications company, the NSA's still going to keep an eye on who you're calling, and when, and where.

History has shown that our institutions will adapt. Either we will decide that the possibly abrogated powers were justified and codify them or we will decide they are not and shut things down. Either way, no serious harm will be done.

So you're saying that since we've never become a tyranny before, there's no chance we'll become one in the future? Before 1969, I could use that same logic to prove that humans would never walk on the moon.

[Daniel]

FDR could have been impeached for the things he did in the lead up to WWII yet few today believe he put the constitution at serious risk.

Interesting take on history. It's not like he inaugurated the era of BIG Government, no siree.

We are in far more danger from a situation where every little group with a grievance can kill hundreds at will than we are from overly invasive intelligence services.

Good to know you're a statist.

Just out of curiosity, what exactly must the government do to make people like you want to limit its powers ?

[thoreau]

Shannon, if you want a state run by a strong man who knows how to deal with emergency situations, here's some info you may find useful:

Venezuelan embassy web site: Visa services http://www.embavenez-us.org/?pagina=pag_consular_services.php&titulo=Consular%20Services

The office nearest to you is probably the one in Houston:

2925 Briar Park Dr., Suite 900, Houston, TX 77042
[phone]

[thoreau]

Two scenarios for Shannon:

1) An angry Muslim with a homemade bomb gets close to a Congressman at a campaign event. He sets off the bomb, killing himself, the Congressman, and a staffer. He leaves behind a manifesto calling on the world's Muslims to rise up against the Zionist crusaders who are a threat to Islam.

It appears that the bomber may have been influenced by radical preachers, but he apparently received no material assistance from them. (It appears that the London bombings of last summer may have been conducted in a similar manner, with minimal outside assistance.)

2) An angry divorced man, after losing custody of his kids, shoots the judge who took away custody, the judge's assistance, and then himself. He leaves behind a manifesto calling on American men to rise up against the radical feminists who are ruining our legal system.

There is evidence that he may have spent a little time hanging out with radical militia groups, but he apparently acted alone.

Would either of those scenarios merit some sort of large scale response involving the military and/or massive curtailment of civil liberties?

[Shannon Love]

thoreau,

Don't take this the wrong way but you have no clue about the technical issue involved and this is seriously distorting your thinking on this problem. You have not adapted your thinking to the new technological realities.

The first thing to understand about packet-based communications is that for any actor to know if they have authority to read a tap a communication or not, the entire communication must be trapped and assembled. In other words, in order for the NSA to know whether it can legal read a communication it must first read the communication. This is a technical limitation of the technology that cannot be worked around. Unless you simply want to forbid ALL incepts whether foreign or domestic, the government will be reading peoples communications on a routine basis.

Previous to 9/11, the NSA would erase the records of such analysis if they did not have authority to view the communication but they still read them. If the government is corrupt and choses to abuse this access then it will not matter if there is nominal laws in place to authorize wider searches or not.

Nothing in your arguments suggest to me that you have spent any serious time thinking about this problem. Your comments seem trite and rote. You certainly show no evidence of thinking about it from the perspective of those tasked with preventing terrorist attacks. You seem to argue from the perspective that contemporary terrorism is nothing more than minor criminal nuisance which requires no more response than a mob racketeering case.

Liberty requires ordered freedom. You must hit the sweet spot. To little order and security is just as bad as to much. Many libertarians like give themselves pats on the back for mindlessly opposing all exercises of government power but I don't think that is the way to approach new problem.

[thoreau]

Shannon-

OK, maybe my analysis is lacking in the technical department. Maybe any effort to monitor a specific target will require inspecting a much larger amount of traffic to figure out which portions actually belong to the target.

I will defer to your expertise on that.

However, I must address two points, one technical the other philosophical:

On the technical front, let's say that the NSA has the means, however indiscriminate or intrusive they may be, to intercept a terrorist group's communications. Even the most sophisticated cryptographers cannot break a substitution code that is used only sporadically (substitution codes, as I understand it, are broken by statistical means), and in which a very small aspect of the traffic conveys a large message. For instance, if blog posts relating to soccer mean "Go to our usual meeting point" while cookbook reviews mean "Attack as planned", I seriously doubt that any cryptographer will figure that out. Especially if the soccer blog posts are swamped by other sports posts, or the guy also reviews books of restaurant reviews. That is an inherent limitation of drinking from the fire hose, no matter how good your data mining might be. Why would terrorists spell out their plans in plain language if they know that NSA is drinking from the fire hose?

And yes, I know, face to face communication is risky if done by traveling with passports but (1) we don't yet have internal passports in the US, so cells already in the US could meet with impunity and (2) it's not like it's impossible to cross an international border without a passport. (I've heard rumors that Islamist terrorists might be working with opium traffickers, who seem to have ways of crossing borders undetected.)

Also, you still need to focus your attention to the part of the data that concerns radical groups. Whether you treat it as a law enforcement problem (detective work, defendants striking deals in exchange for immunity, etc.) or a military intelligence problem (analysts, double agents, etc.), the bottom line is that you need people who think and act in a focused and intelligent matter, rather than treating 6 billion people as suspects.

On the philosophical front, my concerns may seem trite to you but they are also realistic. These things happen. Power is dangerous. I am weighing the certainty of abuse against the dubious efficacy of drinking from a fire hose that may be too cryptic to decode.

You act as though the imperative of preventing a terrorist attack overwhelms any other conceivable concern. You assume that in every instance liberty must lose out against security if somebody asserts that there is a conflict. Down that road lies certain danger. I don't want to go there.

Finally, since you seem to be a very rational person, I'm curious why you are willing to risk so much liberty to stop what will, in all probability, be very few deaths. If we're talking about WMD, I can see the argument, but how much liberty would you sacrifice to stop, say, a campaign of car bombers? A campaign of car bombings would barely register on the death statistics against the background of ordinary illnesses and accidents. Would you be willing to throw away so much and hand over so much power to stop so few deaths?

I guess the bottom line is, how small of a threat would be small enough for you to accept risk in exchange for liberty and privacy?

[thoreau]

Also, for somebody who seems to devote a great deal of thought to organizations and decision-making processes, you are surprisingly sympathetic to the argument that "The only way we can do our jobs is if you give us everything we ask for and never require us to justify our actions. If we fail to prevent something bad from happening then we'll need even more resources and less accountability."

If somebody outside of the security business said that you'd probably be rather skeptical. An experienced person like yourself must be supervising somebody else. Would you accept that line from a subordinate? Would your boss accept that line from you? Then why do you accept that line from the NSA?

[Rick H.]

I guess the bottom line is, how small of a threat would be small enough for you to accept risk in exchange for liberty and privacy?

Don't think we can't see where you're heading with this. It's clear that Ben Franklin suffered from a pre-9/11 mindset.

[Mith]

I must have missed the part whether thoreau's comments "seem trite and rote". Where was that?

Good argument though, with only one dip into mocking the other person, rather than discussing their ideas. Good job for this (or any) message board.

Oh, and Thoreau - The rooster's in the henhouse, I repeat, the rooster's in the henhouse.

[Jason Ligon]

"Your comments seem trite and rote. You certainly show no evidence of thinking about it from the perspective of those tasked with preventing terrorist attacks."

So, I have a friend who is a cop and a pretty libertarian guy. We sometimes have disagreements about what 'needs to be done' to prevent crime X. It seemed that these conversations always wind up at an impasse. I was finally able to put my finger on why.

I view law enforcement as a broad set of general deterrents that are designed to set up the correct incentives for society at large. I do not view law enforcement as a mechanism to prosecute every conceivable instance of every conceivable crime. When push comes to shove, police agencies are not on the hook to save your bacon in any specific instance. The courts have detailed precedents about this.

So, when my friend complains that criminal recidivism is very high among illegal immigrants because their criminal records cross multiple identities, he thinks the situation needs to be fixed by getting control of all immigration. My response is, there is almost no way it could be worth the cost.

National security is a similar situation. Especially on the domestic front, I believe the cost of implementing an impenetrable wall against terrorists operating on our soil is far too high. We would need national ID cards, we would need no access to private encryption, and so on. Fundamentally, we would lose the reasonable expectation of the average American not to be monitored by the government. That is a tremendously high price.

We can't put ourselves in the situation where the claim that 'terrorists could do X' is a civil liberties trump card that comes with a blank check attached.

[Randolph Carter]

"Your comments seem trite and rote. You certainly show no evidence of thinking about it from the perspective of those tasked with preventing terrorist attacks."

I would hate to be tasked with something. I thought task was a noun. Use of the word "tasked" or "tasking" suggests a beauracratic background at the very least...

[Russ 2000]

Without exception, every evolution from a liberal state to an authoritarian one in the 20th century occurred after the liberal state failed to maintain basic social and economic security.

Actually, the transition occurred in every case because the liberal state TRIED to maintain security - aka the status quo - at the expense of a freely-functioning economy.

The NSA could have had superpowers and intercepted and analyzed every piece of relevant communication amongst terrorists prior to 9/11 and I'm highly skeptical that the NSA would have recommended the airlines be warned to secure their cockpit doors. And even if they did issue such a warning, why should the NSA have been believed at the time versus the mandates/recommendations from any other government agency?

The signal-to-noise ratio of information gathered by government agencies is matched by the signal-to-noise ratio of the information dispensed by government agencies.

Do you need a refresher course in the story of the boy who cried wolf?

[Jersey McJones]

Russ, you are historically illiterate. As a student of history, I can show you that the causes of tyranny have NOTHING to do with "trying" maintain a balanced and secure liberal state and everything to do with oligarchies formed by yje vacuum created by the laizze faire state. Anyone who thinks otherwise is utterly ignorant of history.

JMJ

[R C Dean]

the causes of tyranny have NOTHING to do with "trying" maintain a balanced and secure liberal state

See, I would say that the US is a liberal state and has been for a couple of generations. Trying to keep it balanced (Medicare drug benefit?) and secure (War on Terror?) seems to be the Bush administration's raison d'etre, much to the disappointment of those of us hoping for change.

Which would mean that JMJ is now arguing that we have nothing to fear from Chimpeachment W. Oligarchiburton's stolen Presidency.

and everything to do with oligarchies formed by yje vacuum created by the laizze faire state

Personally, I am trying to wrap my head around the idea of a tyrannical laissez faire state.

[Jersey McJones]

RCD, perhaps it's too much for you. For example, what better way to create an oligarchical class than to be rid of the estate tax? What better way for the oligarchy to sieze the reigns of the state than to consider money as speech in the context of campaign donations (re: bribery)? What better way for the oligarchy to secure their place than by fear and war (re: war on ____, Iraq)?

Get it yet?

JMJ

[Jason Ligon]

"I can show you that the causes of tyranny have NOTHING to do with "trying" maintain a balanced and secure liberal state and everything to do with oligarchies formed by yje vacuum created by the laizze faire state. Anyone who thinks otherwise is utterly ignorant of history."

There haven't been enough (any?) laizzes-faire states in history for this claim to have anything like credibility. Tyranny is the natural state of government. The vast majority of governments that have ever been formed were tyrannies.

[Jersey McJones]

Jason, it's a matter of degrees and I'll grabt you that those degrees are subjective. But take Russia circa the 19-teens. Take Shek's pre-revolution China. Pre-revolution Vietnam, pre-revolution France, etc.

Do you see what I mean?

JMJ

[Jason Ligon]

JMJ:

While I see the appropriateness of "oligarch", I'm wondering how the phrase "laizzes-faire" fits in with those examples.

[Daniel]

People, stop arguing with Jersey McCOMMIE (by the way, JMJ : stop calling yourself a "liberal progressive". We all know it's an euphemism for "communist who hopes to be in charge")

It's uselles pointing facts to a man who thinks a command economy (since that is the only alternative to laissez-faire) is the way forward...

[Isaac Bartram]

Oh, and just out of curiosity, Jersey, old boy, are you trying to say that Mao's China was somehow an improvement over Chiang's China?

[thoreau]

Russ 2000, your point about signal/noise is excellent. I wonder if data mining gave us all those orange alerts: "We have received unsubstantiated information that someone, somewhere maybe be planning an attack on some unknown target using some unknown means. Plan accordingly."

And Jason, I think you're right: Any sort of security measure, whether it's done with a law enforcement mindset, military mindset, intelligence mindset, or something different altogether, has to focus on risk, i.e. the unknown. Certainty is rarely an option. We can debate about appropriate levels of risk and appropriate measures for reducing risk, but if you are obsessed with certainty then (1) you'll fail and (2) you'll cause a lot of nasty consequences while failing.

For those who are willing to trade all of their liberty for alleged security, here's a suggestion: Get some adult diapers. That way, the next time you get scared and shit yourself, it won't land on the Bill of Rights.