Yesterday, the FBI arrested Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari for the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. His arrest marks the 38th successfully thwarted terrorist plot against the United States since 9/11. The FBI, with the help of concerned citizens, should be applauded for stopping the plot before it was able to mature. At the same time, it also highlights key failures of Congress and the Obama Administration in homeland security. According to the FBI, Aldawsari, a 20-year-old Saudi citizen and student at South Plains College in Lubbock, Texas, sent …
This week, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are set to vote on reauthorization of three key counterterrorism provisions—two found in the PATRIOT Act and one in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. These provisions include: Roving surveillance authority, which is used by investigators, working within the law, to track a suspected terrorist as he or she moves from cell phone to cell phone. Business records orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, where business records and similar items are required to be disclosed …
Last night, despite a strong majority vote in favor of the bill, the House of Representatives fell seven votes short of the two-thirds they needed to suspend the rules and pass three key counterterrorism amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Many of the headlines you will read today will say things like “Patriot Act Extension Fails in House,” but the reality is that much of the PATRIOT Act was already permanently enacted. Of the three amendments to FISA at issue in last night’s vote, two were part of …
On December 25th there was a clear failure to connect the dots that could have prevented Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane bound for the U.S with a bomb strapped to his body. However, as explained last week at Heritage by former Homeland Security Advisor, the Hon. Kenneth Wainstein, the U.S. would not have even been in the position to try and piece together this intelligence information before the Patriot Act lowered the walls between intelligence and law enforcement. Immediately after 9/11, intelligence operators realized that they possessed too …
Former CIA director Michael Hayden defends the National Security Agency’s post-9/11 electronic surveillance program in today’s New York Times: The program was crucial in addressing one of the most stinging criticisms of the 9/11 commission — the need to reduce the gap between foreign intelligence and domestic security. This was an especially difficult task, which helps explain both the program’s importance and its sensitivity. The program was lawful, effective and necessary. … The report also suggested that there were counterterrorism successes associated with the program but that these could not …
Last week we congratulated the Obama Administration for choosing the security of the American people over the bumper sticker slogans of the far left. Today, the New York Times details the Obama Administration’s continued prudence on some key national security issues: During her confirmation hearing last week, Elena Kagan, the nominee for solicitor general, said that someone suspected of helping finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield law — indefinite detention without a trial — even if he were captured in a place like the Philippines rather than in …
Anyone who has ever entered the United States after traveling abroad knows that the federal government does not always need a warrant to conduct a reasonable search of a person’s belongings. The federal government has a myriad of interests, including national security, that outweigh a person’s right to privacy at the border (which if you’re flying from Cancun to St.Louis, includes the St. Louis airport). Following that same logic, the government also has an interest in monitoring international communications between persons inside the United States and persons abroad. For the …
Last Wednesday a small group of at least 10 gunmen fanned out across the Indian city of Mumbai. In coordinated assaults, they attacked areas frequented by foreigners, killing indiscriminately and taking hostages. The one gunmen captured so far has reportedly admitted to authorities that he received training from Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States that has long fought an Islamic insurgency in Kashmir. While the rationale and responsibility for the attacks are still under investigation, the incident is not unprecedented and does raise questions …
ABC News has a story out reporting that employees at the National Security Agency (NSA) listened in on “hundreds of US citizens overseas … as they called friends and family back home.” One employee described the contents of the calls as “personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.” nother employee ws even more specific: Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls …
In an editorial today, The Washington Post does a decent job responding to completely overblown claims coming from Senate liberals about what the FISA bill does and doesn’t do: Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) … said the measure overhauling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, on the verge of congressional passage, “gives the government broad new powers to collect information on innocent Americans within the United States without providing nearly enough protections for privacy.” It means, Mr. Feingold said, that “Americans e-mailing relatives abroad or calling business associates overseas could be monitored …
