August 5, 2013
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I hope you had a nice weekend cowering in your home, refusing to leave or answer the door, in accordance with
orders issued by the United States Department of State. On Friday the department issued
a “worldwide” travel alert, lasting until the end of August, sort of generally alerting traveling Americans that terrorists exist and intend to hurt us.
Terrorists
may elect to use a variety of means and weapons and target both
official and private interests. U.S. citizens are reminded of the
potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and
other tourist infrastructure. Terrorists have targeted and attacked
subway and rail systems, as well as aviation and maritime services. U.S.
citizens should take every precaution to be aware of their surroundings
and to adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when
traveling.
Just a reminder: Your life is in peril.
Terrorists could attack anything at any time using “a variety of means
and weapons.” Have a kick-ass summer!
We needn’t be entirely cynical about this. Twenty-two embassies and other diplomatic posts
have been closed in
the Middle East and North Africa. Unlike similar vague warnings in the
past, this one is not suspiciously close to Election Day. There is
likely some genuine intelligence about some sort of attack that led to
this. But that raises questions
posed by Philip Bump this
weekend: If the American intelligence community was crippled by the
recent leaks about its operations and tools, as so many have claimed,
how did it manage to collect the intelligence that led to this alert?
The head of the National Security Agency told us that
the terrorists read all those Guardian stories and
immediately took action. Presumably they now no longer use “telephones”
or “the Internet,” whereas before they were all blissfully unaware that
the United States had the ability to spy on them at all.
So maybe
comrade Snowden’s leaks didn’t cripple the NSA? Perhaps the NSA, and
our other intelligence-gathering agencies, can still monitor the
communications of terrorist organizations despite the fact that people
know that our intelligence-gathering agencies are trying to monitor the
communications of terrorist organizations. (I mean, how could it have
been news to them? Have they not seen “Homeland”?)
In honor of this vague scary warning,
a phalanx of pro-intelligence lawmakers and commentators hit
the Sunday Show circuit yesterday to argue that our national security
state is both effective and vital. These threats, about which the public
can have no details other than that they exist, are serious.
As Lindsey Graham said,
since hashtag-Benghazi, “these al-Qaida types are really on steroids.”
(Al-Qaida types now face a lifetime ban from Major League Baseball.)
Graham also said that
the NSA is “proving its worth yet again,” since
presumably it is responsible for the intelligence that led to this
vague panic. So, again: If the NSA was able to discover whatever threat
we are currently facing, how badly could the revelations from Mr.
Snowden have damaged the agency? If revealing the capabilities and
actions of the NSA was a treasonous act, why is Lindsey Graham on
television talking about all the important terrorist-monitoring work the
NSA does?
CNN reports that
an intercepted message “among senior al Qaeda operatives” led to the alert and embassy closings. Lawmakers like Graham, Saxby Chambliss and Peter King
all went on television yesterday and
essentially confirmed that the U.S. had access to this message
involving “high-level” al-Qaida people. And now these terrorists know
that we are monitoring them, correct? I thought we weren’t supposed to
tell them!
One problem with the entire argument over our massive
largely unchecked surveillance state is that the people in charge of it
have rather a lot more information about it than the people opposed to
it, and they can (and frequently do) use that informational advantage to
defend it in ways that are hard to argue against. So now we are being
told that the very programs that we have been fighting about led to this
information that may save lives. But we can’t know if that’s true. What
we can do is say that “effectiveness” is not the criterion we should be
using when it comes to government programs that violate civil
liberties. Establishing a totalitarian police state would be quite
“effective” in fighting terror and maintaining law and order, but most
people, besides perhaps Peter King, would oppose such a state on
principle. Whether or not a terrorist action was or will be disrupted by
intelligence gathered by the NSA this month should have absolutely no
bearing on the debate over whether the NSA is violating the law.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at
apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene
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