***INDEX*** ***INDEX***.................................................................................................1***SHELL***.................................................................................................2

1NC – Terrorism DA..................................................................................3***UNIQUENESS***.....................................................................................6

1NC – Uniqueness CP................................................................................72NC – Uniqueness...................................................................................10

***LINK/INTERNAL***...............................................................................122NC – Link Extensions............................................................................13XT – Mass Surveillance Key....................................................................17XT – Executive Flexibility I/L...................................................................192NC – Intel Key.......................................................................................202NC – Deterrence/Perception I/L............................................................23XT – Deterrence Works...........................................................................262NC – AT: Intel Cooperation Turn...........................................................27XT – Intel Cooperation High....................................................................29

***IMPACT***.............................................................................................312NC – Lone Wolf Scenario.......................................................................32XT – Lone Wolf Threat Growing..............................................................362NC – Threats Real (Domestic)...............................................................392NC – AT: No WMD Terrorism (Lone Wolf)............................................422NC – Bioweapons Impact......................................................................43AT: No Impact (Bioweapons)...................................................................45AT: No Tech Access (Bioweapons)..........................................................472NC – WMD Terrorism Impact – Turns Economy...................................482NC – WMD Terrorism Impact – Turns Rights........................................492NC – Threats Real (Al Qaeda)................................................................512NC – AT: No Nuclear Terrorism (General)............................................53

***AFF***....................................................................................................562AC – AT: Terrorism DA – No Link/Internal............................................57XT – Mass Surveillance Fails...................................................................602AC – AT: Terrorism DA – Link Turns.....................................................64XT – Intel Cooperation Turn....................................................................65XT – EU Cooperation Key........................................................................662AC – AT: Terrorism DA – No Terror Threat (AQ/ISIS)...........................68XT – No Terror Threat.............................................................................70XT – No Terror Threat – Homegrown Terrorism.....................................722AC – AT: Terrorism DA – No Nuclear Terrorism...................................73XT – No Nuclear Terrorism.....................................................................751AR – AT: Bioterrorism Impact...............................................................76

***SHELL***

1NC – Terrorism DA

Broad authority for mass surveillance is critical to counter-terrorism --- requiring targeted searches prevents the ability to identify networks and disrupt operations.Richard A. Posner, 2008. Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Senior Lecturer in Law, The University of Chicago. “Privacy, Surveillance, and Law,” 75 University of Chicago Law Review 245, http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2808&context=journal_articles.

What is most notable about the amendments, as indeed of the Terrorist Surveillance Program to which they seem addressed, is their backing away from reliance on warrants to prevent abuses of electronic surveillance. The warrant is a poorly designed means for balancing the security and liberty interests involved in counterterrorist surveillance. It is true that instead of requiring probable cause to believe that the target of an interception is a terrorist, FISA could be amended to require merely reasonable suspicion. But even that would be too restrictive from the standpoint of effective counterterrorism; effective surveillance cannot be confined to suspected terrorists when the object is to discover who may be engaged in terrorism or ancillary activities. Further attenuation of FISA's standard for obtaining a warrant might be possible without running afoul of the Fourth Amendment. Conceivably the issuance of a warrant could be authorized on the basis of a showing that while the target was probably not a terrorist, national security required making assurance doubly sure by inter- cepting some of his electronic communications. A model might be the criterion for issuing a search warrant to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, where a warrant can be issued on the basis of a factually supported "belief, on reasonable grounds, that [it] ... is required to enable the Service to investigate a threat to the security of Canada." 9 Such a criterion might pass muster under the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause for the issuance of a warrant but does not state what it is that there must be probable cause to believe. The Supreme Court has said that there must be probable cause to believe that the search will yield contraband or evidence of crime when the search is part of a criminal investigation." The Constitution binds the government more tightly when it is exerting its powers to convict people of crimes than in other areas of government activity. A search intended not to obtain evidence of crime but to obtain information about terrorism might, as under Canadian law, require only probable cause to believe that the search would yield such information. The lower the standard for getting a warrant, however, the more porous the filter that the requirement of a warrant creates, bearing in mind the ex parte character of a warrant proceeding. If all the application need state is that an interception might yield data having value as intelligence, judges would have no basis for refusing to issue the warrant. Alternatively, reliance on warrants could invite legislation to expand the reach of the criminal laws relating to terrorism in order to make it easier to establish probable cause to believe that a search will reveal evidence of a crime. That expansion could raise issues under the First Amendment, since the natural route for expanding criminal laws against terrorism is to criminalize extremist speech or even attendance at extremist (though peaceful) speeches and rallies, as activities that may be preparatory to or encouraging of terrorism. Warrants that satisfy FISA's standard as traditionally understood should continue to be required for all physical searches, because they are far greater intrusions on privacy than electronic interceptions, and for all electronic surveillance for which FISA's existing probable cause requirement can reasonably be satisfied (mainly cases in which the government wanted to intercept communications of a person who they had probable cause to believe was a terrorist). With these exceptions, civil libertarians' preoccupation with warrants is not only harmful to national security (and possibly to civil liberties if it induces legislation to expand the reach of the criminal law) but also anachronistic. The government's ready access to the vast databases that private and public

entities compile for purposes unrelated to national security has enabled it to circumvent much of the protection of privacy that civil libertarians look to warrant requirements to secure. There are a number of possible measures, apart from requiring warrants, that Congress could adopt in order to minimize abuses of domestic surveillance. If all were adopted, the risk of such abuses would be slight. The temporary FISA amendments take tiny steps in this direction. Bolder steps would include the following: 1. Congress could create a steering committee for national security electronic surveillance, composed of the attorney general, the director of national intelligence, the secretary of homeland security, and a retired federal judge or justice appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. The committee would monitor all such surveillance to assure compliance with the Constitution and federal statutes. The requirement in the temporary amendments that the attorney general and the director of national intelligence devise procedures for a new warrantless surveillance program is one of the tiny steps to which I referred." The other, and legally dubious one, is requiring submission of the procedures for approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; that court becomes in effect the steering committee. 2. The NSA could be required to submit to the steering committee, to departmental inspectors general, to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (a White House agency created by the Intelligence Reform Act), to the congressional intelligence and judiciary committees, and to an independent watchdog agency of Congress modeled on the GAO every six months a list of the names and other identifying information of all persons whose communications had been intercepted in the previous six months without a warrant, with a brief statement of why these persons had been targeted. 3. The responsible officials of the NSA could be required to certify annually to the watchdog groups that there had been no violations of the statute during the preceding year. False certification would be punishable as perjury. But lawsuits challenging the legality of the Terrorist Surveillance Program should be precluded. Such lawsuits would distract officials from their important duties to no purpose if the kind of statute that I am suggesting were enacted. The statute should sunset after five years. 4. The use of intercepted information for any purpose other than investigating threats to national security would be forbidden. Information could not be used as evidence or leads in a prosecution for ordinary crime-this to alleviate concern that wild talk bound to be picked up by electronic surveillance would lead to criminal investigations unrelated to national security. Violations of this provision would be made felonies punishable by substantial prison sentences and heavy fines. But the punishments must not be made too severe lest they cause intelligence officers to steer so far clear of possible illegality that they fail to conduct effective surveillance. The risk of abuses is not great enough to justify savage penalties in order to deter them, because intelligence officers have no interest in assisting in the enforcement of criminal laws unrelated to national security. A neglected point is that violations of privacy and civil liberties tend to emanate from the White House and the top management level of executive branch agencies rather than from the working or middle-management levels. 5. To limit the scope of surveillance, "threats to national security" should be narrowly defined as threats involving a potential for mass deaths or catastrophic damage to property or to the economy. That would exclude, for the time being anyway, ecoterrorism, animal-iights terrorism, and other political violence that, though criminal, does not threaten catastrophic harm (yet). Congressional action is also needed to protect the phone companies that cooperated with the NSA's surveillance program from potentially immense liability for allegedly having violated federal law protecting the privacy of telephone records; a number of suits are pending. The intelligence system is enormously dependent on informal assistance from private companies in communications, banking, and other industries. At times such assistance is made a legal duty, as in the federal law requiring banks to report cash transactions of $10,000 or more; and this is also a feature of the new amendments to FISA. Were it not for the threat of liability, which the amendments do not address, voluntary assistance would probably as in the past be all the government needed. But if voluntary assistance-even when tendered in a national emergency, as in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks- places companies in legal jeopardy, such assistance will dry up. FISA needs to be amended not only to authorize more extensive domestic surveillance than its anachronistic terms permit but also to insulate from liability conduct that may have violated the Act or some other statute but that would be permitted under the amended regime. Until the temporary amendments were enacted, the type of approach that I am advocating (call it the "nonwarrant" approach) for regularizing domestic surveillance was getting little attention from Congress and the Bush Administration, possibly because the Administration wanted to retain a completely free hand and thought it could fend off the sort of restrictions that I have

sketched. (It is remarkable how tepid the public reaction to the Terrorist Surveillance Program has been.) A related possibility is that the Administration's aggressive claims of presidential power prevented it from acknowledging the legitimacy of congressional controls over intelligence and hence of a legislative solution to the controversy over the program. Still another possibility was (and is) that because no one is in charge of domestic intelligence, authority over which is divided among the attorney general, the FBI director, the Department of Homeland Security, and the director of national intelligence (among others), no one is formulating a comprehensive legislative and public relations strategy for ending the controversy over the role of electronic surveillance in such intelligence. (At this writing, the only confirmed senior official in the Justice Department is the solicitor general.) And another possibility is the grip of our legalistic culture, which makes us think that the regulation of national security must be modeled on the regulation of criminal law enforcement. The temporary amendments suggest, however, that the logjam may be breaking, though one of the reasons, it appears, is that the Administration's decision to bring the Terrorist Surveillance Program under FISA resulted in a paper jam at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the number of warrant applications soared. We should be playing to our strengths, and one of the greatest of them is technology. We may not be able to prevail against terrorism with one hand tied behind our back. Critics of surveillance argue that since our enemies know that we monitor electronic communications, they will foil us by simply ceasing to use such communications. That is wrong. We know it is wrong because we do intercept terrorist communications. 24 But if it were true that our monitoring caused the terrorists to abandon the telephone and the internet, that would be an enor- mous victory for counterterrorism , as it is extremely difficult to coordinate and execute a major terrorist attack if all communications among the plotters must be face to face to avoid detection. The greater danger is that encryption and other relatively cheap and simple countermeasures will defeat our surveillance. Opponents of efforts to amend FISA point out that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has almost never turned down an application for a warrant. In 2005, for example, although more than 2,000 applications were filed, not a single one was denied in whole or in part. 5 The inference the critics wish drawn is that FISA is not inhibiting surveillance. The correct inference is that the Justice Department is too conservative in seeking warrants. The analogy is to a person who has never missed a plane in his life because he contrives always to arrive at the airport eight hours before the scheduled departure time. The effect of our legalistic culture is to cause law enforcement agencies, notably the FBI, to avoid not only violating the law but also steering so close to the wind that they might be accused, albeit groundlessly, of violating the law or of being "insensitive" to values that inform the law, even when those values have not been enacted into law.

AND --- nuclear terrorism risks extinction --- the threat of an attack is significant.Hellman 8 (Martin E. Hellman, emeritus prof of engineering @ Stanford, “Risk Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence” SPRING 2008 THE BENT OF TAU BETA PI, http://www.nuclearrisk.org/paper.pdf)

The threat of nuclear terrorism looms much larger in the public’s mind than the threat of a full-scale nuclear war, yet this article focuses primarily on the latter. An explanation is therefore in order

before proceeding. A terrorist attack involving a nuclear weapon would be a catastrophe of immense proportions: “A 10-kiloton bomb detonated at Grand Central Station on a typical work day would likely kill some half a million people, and inflict over a trillion dollars

in direct economic damage. America and its way of life would be changed forever.” [Bunn 2003, pages

viii-ix]. The likelihood of such an attack is also significant. Former Secretary of

Defense William Perry has estimated the chance of a nuclear terrorist incident

within the next decade to be roughly 50 percent [Bunn 2007, page 15]. David Albright, a former weapons inspector in Iraq, estimates those odds at less than one percent, but notes, “We would never accept a situation where the chance of a major nuclear accident like Chernobyl would be anywhere near 1% .... A nuclear terrorism attack is a low-probability event, but we can’t live in a world where it’s

anything but extremely low-probability.” [Hegland 2005]. In a survey of 85 national security experts, Senator Richard Lugar found a median estimate of 20 percent for the “probability

of an attack involving a nuclear explosion occurring somewhere in the world in the next 10 years,” with 79 percent of the respondents believing “it more likely to be carried out by terrorists” than by a government [Lugar 2005, pp. 14-15]. I support increased efforts to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism, but that is not inconsistent

with the approach of this article. Because terrorism is one of the potential trigger mechanisms for a full-scale nuclear war, the risk analyses proposed herein will include estimating the risk of nuclear terrorism as one component of the overall risk. If that risk, the overall risk, or both are found to be unacceptable, then the proposed remedies would be directed to reduce which- ever risk(s) warrant attention. Similar remarks apply to a number of other threats (e.g., nuclear war between the U.S. and China over Taiwan). his article would be incomplete if it only dealt with the threat of nuclear terrorism and neglected the threat of full- scale nuclear war. If both risks are unacceptable, an effort to reduce only the terrorist component would leave humanity in great peril. In

fact, society’s almost total neglect of the threat of full-scale nuclear war makes studying that risk all the more important. The cosT of World War iii The danger associated with nuclear deterrence depends on both the cost of a failure and the failure rate.3 This section explores the cost of a failure of nuclear deterrence, and the next section is concerned with the failure rate. While other definitions are possible, this article defines a failure of deterrence to mean a full-scale exchange of all nuclear weapons available to the U.S. and Russia, an event that will be termed World War III. Approximately 20 million people died as a result of the first World War. World War II’s fatalities were double or triple that number—chaos prevented a more precise deter- mination. In both cases humanity recovered, and the world today bears few scars that attest to the horror of those two wars. Many people therefore implicitly believe that a third World War would be horrible but survivable, an extrapola- tion of the effects of the first two global wars. In that view, World War III, while horrible, is something that humanity may just have to face and from which it will then have to recover. In contrast, some of those most qualified to assess the situation hold a very different view. In a 1961 speech to a joint session of the Philippine Con- gress, General Douglas MacArthur, stated, “Global war has become a Frankenstein to destroy both sides. … If you lose, you are annihilated. If you win,

you stand only to lose. No longer does it possess even the chance of the winner of a duel. It contains now only the germs of double suicide.” Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ex- pressed a similar view: “If deterrence fails and conflict develops, the

present U.S. and NATO strategy carries with it a high risk that Western civilization will be destroyed” [McNamara 1986, page 6]. More recently, George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn4 echoed those concerns when they quoted President Reagan’s belief that nuclear weapons were “totally irrational, totally inhu- mane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.” [Shultz 2007] Official studies, while couched in less

emotional terms, still convey the horrendous toll that World War III would exact: “The resulting deaths would be far beyond any precedent. Executive branch calculations show a range of U.S. deaths from 35 to 77 percent (i.e., 79-160 million dead) … a change in targeting could kill somewhere between 20 million and 30 million additional people on each side .... These calculations reflect only deaths during the first 30 days. Additional millions would be injured, and many would eventually die from lack of adequate medical care … millions of people might starve or freeze during the follow- ing winter, but it is not possible to estimate how many. … further millions … might eventually die of latent radiation effects.” [OTA 1979, page 8] This OTA report also noted the possibility of serious ecological damage [OTA 1979, page 9], a concern that as- sumed a new potentiality when the TTAPS

report [TTAPS 1983] proposed that the ash and dust from so many nearly simultaneous nuclear explosions and their resultant fire- storms could usher in a nuclear winter that might erase homo sapiens from the face of the earth, much as many scientists now believe the K-T Extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs resulted from an impact winter caused by ash and dust from a large asteroid or comet striking Earth. The TTAPS report produced a heated debate, and there is still no scientific consensus on whether a nuclear winter would follow a full-scale nuclear war. Recent

work [Robock 2007, Toon 2007] suggests that even a limited nuclear exchange or one

between newer nuclear-weapon states, such as India and Pakistan, could have devastating

long-lasting climatic consequences due to the large volumes of smoke that would be generated by fires in modern megacities. While it is uncertain how destructive World War III would be, prudence dictates that we apply the same engi- neering conservatism that saved the Golden Gate Bridge

from collapsing on its 50th anniversary and assume that preventing World War III is a necessity—not an option.

***UNIQUENESS***

1NC – Uniqueness CP

Text:

-The United States federal government should authorize warrantless non-targeted domestic mass surveillance and provide liability protection to all phone companies that cooperate with the National Security Agency.

-Congress should create a steering committee for national security electronic surveillance and require the NSA to submit to that committee and provide annual certification of legal compliance.

-Congress should also forbid the use of any information from warrantless mass surveillance for anything other than investigating threats to national security.

-Congress should narrowly define threats to national security as those involving a potential for mass deaths or catastrophic damage to property or to the economy.

Broad authorization of mass surveillance is critical to counter-terrorism --- requiring targeted searches prevents the ability to identify networks and disrupt operations. Congressional oversight prevents abuse of the program.Richard A. Posner, 2008. Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Senior Lecturer in Law, The University of Chicago. “Privacy, Surveillance, and Law,” 75 University of Chicago Law Review 245, http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2808&context=journal_articles.

What is most notable about the amendments, as indeed of the Terrorist Surveillance Program to which they seem addressed, is their backing away from reliance on warrants to prevent abuses of electronic surveillance. The warrant is a poorly designed means for balancing the security and liberty interests involved in counterterrorist surveillance. It is true that instead of requiring probable cause to believe that the target of an interception is a terrorist, FISA could be amended to require merely reasonable suspicion. But even that would be too restrictive from the standpoint of effective counterterrorism; effective surveillance cannot be confined to suspected terrorists when the object is to discover who may be engaged in terrorism or ancillary activities. Further attenuation of FISA's standard for obtaining a warrant might be possible without running afoul of the Fourth Amendment. Conceivably the issuance of a warrant could be authorized on the basis of a showing that while the target was probably not a terrorist, national security required making assurance doubly sure by inter- cepting some of his electronic communications. A model might be the criterion for issuing a search warrant to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, where a warrant can be issued on the basis of a factually supported "belief, on reasonable grounds, that [it] ... is required to enable the Service to investigate a threat to the security of Canada." 9 Such a criterion might pass muster under the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause for the issuance of a warrant but does not state what it is that there must be probable cause to believe. The Supreme Court has said that there must be

probable cause to believe that the search will yield contraband or evidence of crime when the search is part of a criminal investigation." The Constitution binds the government more tightly when it is exerting its powers to convict people of crimes than in other areas of government activity. A search intended not to obtain evidence of crime but to obtain information about terrorism might, as under Canadian law, require only probable cause to believe that the search would yield such information. The lower the standard for getting a warrant, however, the more porous the filter that the requirement of a warrant creates, bearing in mind the ex parte character of a warrant proceeding. If all the application need state is that an interception might yield data having value as intelligence, judges would have no basis for refusing to issue the warrant. Alternatively, reliance on warrants could invite legislation to expand the reach of the criminal laws relating to terrorism in order to make it easier to establish probable cause to believe that a search will reveal evidence of a crime. That expansion could raise issues under the First Amendment, since the natural route for expanding criminal laws against terrorism is to criminalize extremist speech or even attendance at extremist (though peaceful) speeches and rallies, as activities that may be preparatory to or encouraging of terrorism. Warrants that satisfy FISA's standard as traditionally understood should continue to be required for all physical searches, because they are far greater intrusions on privacy than electronic interceptions, and for all electronic surveillance for which FISA's existing probable cause requirement can reasonably be satisfied (mainly cases in which the government wanted to intercept communications of a person who they had probable cause to believe was a terrorist). With these exceptions, civil libertarians' preoccupation with warrants is not only harmful to national security (and possibly to civil liberties if it induces legislation to expand the reach of the criminal law) but also anachronistic. The government's ready access to the vast databases that private and public entities compile for purposes unrelated to national security has enabled it to circumvent much of the protection of privacy that civil libertarians look to warrant requirements to secure. There are a number of possible measures, apart from requiring warrants, that Congress could adopt in order to minimize abuses of domestic surveillance. If all were adopted, the risk of such abuses would be slight. The temporary FISA amendments take tiny steps in this direction. Bolder steps would include the following: 1. Congress could create a steering committee for national security electronic surveillance, composed of the attorney general, the director of national intelligence, the secretary of homeland security, and a retired federal judge or justice appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. The committee would monitor all such surveillance to assure compliance with the Constitution and federal statutes. The requirement in the temporary amendments that the attorney general and the director of national intelligence devise procedures for a new warrantless surveillance program is one of the tiny steps to which I referred." The other, and legally dubious one, is requiring submission of the procedures for approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; that court becomes in effect the steering committee. 2. The NSA could be required to submit to the steering committee, to departmental inspectors general, to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (a White House agency created by the Intelligence Reform Act), to the congressional intelligence and judiciary committees, and to an independent watchdog agency of Congress modeled on the GAO every six months a list of the names and other identifying information of all persons whose communications had been intercepted in the previous six months without a warrant, with a brief statement of why these persons had been targeted. 3. The responsible officials of the NSA could be required to certify annually to the watchdog groups that there had been no violations of the statute during the preceding year. False certification would be punishable as perjury. But lawsuits challenging the legality of the Terrorist Surveillance Program should be precluded. Such lawsuits would distract officials from their important duties to no purpose if the kind of statute that I am suggesting were enacted. The statute should sunset after five years. 4. The use of intercepted

information for any purpose other than investigating threats to national security would be forbidden. Information could not be used as evidence or leads in a prosecution for ordinary crime-this to alleviate concern that wild talk bound to be picked up by electronic surveillance would lead to criminal investigations unrelated to national security. Violations of this provision would be made felonies punishable by substantial prison sentences and heavy fines. But the punishments must not be made too severe lest they cause intelligence officers to steer so far clear of possible illegality that they fail to conduct effective surveillance. The risk of abuses is not great enough to justify savage penalties in order to deter them, because intelligence officers have no interest in assisting in the enforcement of criminal laws unrelated to national security. A neglected point is that violations of privacy and civil liberties tend to emanate from the White House and the top management level of executive branch agencies rather than from the working or middle-management levels. 5. To limit the scope of surveillance, "threats to national security" should be narrowly defined as threats involving a potential for mass deaths or catastrophic damage to property or to the economy. That would exclude, for the time being anyway, ecoterrorism, animal-iights terrorism, and other political violence that, though criminal, does not threaten catastrophic harm (yet). Congressional action is also needed to protect the phone companies that cooperated with the NSA's surveillance program from potentially immense liability for allegedly having violated federal law protecting the privacy of telephone records; a number of suits are pending. The intelligence system is enormously dependent on informal assistance from private companies in communications, banking, and other industries. At times such assistance is made a legal duty, as in the federal law requiring banks to report cash transactions of $10,000 or more; and this is also a feature of the new amendments to FISA. Were it not for the threat of liability, which the amendments do not address, voluntary assistance would probably as in the past be all the government needed. But if voluntary assistance-even when tendered in a national emergency, as in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks- places companies in legal jeopardy, such assistance will dry up. FISA needs to be amended not only to authorize more extensive domestic surveillance than its anachronistic terms permit but also to insulate from liability conduct that may have violated the Act or some other statute but that would be permitted under the amended regime. Until the temporary amendments were enacted, the type of approach that I am advocating (call it the "nonwarrant" approach) for regularizing domestic surveillance was getting little attention from Congress and the Bush Administration, possibly because the Administration wanted to retain a completely free hand and thought it could fend off the sort of restrictions that I have sketched. (It is remarkable how tepid the public reaction to the Terrorist Surveillance Program has been.) A related possibility is that the Administration's aggressive claims of presidential power prevented it from acknowledging the legitimacy of congressional controls over intelligence and hence of a legislative solution to the controversy over the program. Still another possibility was (and is) that because no one is in charge of domestic intelligence, authority over which is divided among the attorney general, the FBI director, the Department of Homeland Security, and the director of national intelligence (among others), no one is formulating a comprehensive legislative and public relations strategy for ending the controversy over the role of electronic surveillance in such intelligence. (At this writing, the only confirmed senior official in the Justice Department is the solicitor general.) And another possibility is the grip of our legalistic culture, which makes us think that the regulation of national security must be modeled on the regulation of criminal law enforcement. The temporary amendments suggest, however, that the logjam may be breaking, though one of the reasons, it appears, is that the Administration's decision to bring the Terrorist Surveillance Program under FISA resulted in a paper jam at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the number of warrant applications soared. We should be playing to our strengths, and one of the greatest of them is technology. We may not be able to prevail against terrorism with one hand tied behind our back. Critics of surveillance argue that since our enemies know that we

monitor electronic communications, they will foil us by simply ceasing to use such communications. That is wrong. We know it is wrong because we do intercept terrorist communications. 24 But if it were true that our monitoring caused the terrorists to abandon the telephone and the internet, that would be an enor- mous victory for counterterrorism , as it is extremely difficult to coordinate and execute a major terrorist attack if all communications among the plotters must be face to face to avoid detection. The greater danger is that encryption and other relatively cheap and simple countermeasures will defeat our surveillance. Opponents of efforts to amend FISA point out that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has almost never turned down an application for a warrant. In 2005, for example, although more than 2,000 applications were filed, not a single one was denied in whole or in part. 5 The inference the critics wish drawn is that FISA is not inhibiting surveillance. The correct inference is that the Justice Department is too conservative in seeking warrants. The analogy is to a person who has never missed a plane in his life because he contrives always to arrive at the airport eight hours before the scheduled departure time. The effect of our legalistic culture is to cause law enforcement agencies, notably the FBI, to avoid not only violating the law but also steering so close to the wind that they might be accused, albeit groundlessly, of violating the law or of being "insensitive" to values that inform the law, even when those values have not been enacted into law.

2NC – Uniqueness

NSA still has sufficient surveillance authority despite the PATRIOT Act expiration.Salon, 6/1/2015. Marcy Wheeler. “Reports of the Patriot Act’s death are greatly exaggerated,” http://www.salon.com/2015/06/01/reports_of_the_patriot_acts_death_are_greatly_exaggerated/.

The PATRIOT Act-authorized   phone dragnet   expired last night . For the first time since 2006, the NSA won’t receive records of the phone calls you make within the United States.But that doesn’t mean spying on Americans has stopped. The NSA still obtains records of calls — potentially   all   calls — you make with people overseas. It still tracks Americans’ Internet communications using metadata obtained overseas. The FBI can still access the   content   of any communications Americans have with foreigners targeted under PRISM without a warrant or even any evidence of wrong doing. FBI can still, and indeed does, obtain phone records of individuals in conjunction with national security investigations without any court review.Not even the spying conducted under Section 215 — the authority that had been used to collect all of Americans’ phone records, but which is also used to collect certain kinds of   Internet data — or the two other expiring provisions will stop. Because they’re tied to more focused investigations (though the Internet collection is probably not targeted at one individual), they will probably continue under a grandfather clause allowing ongoing investigations using those authorities to continue.

NSA surveillance authority is likely to be restored.Slate, 6/1/2015. Lily Hay Newman. “NSA Bulk Data Collection Expired Last Night. What’s Different Today?” http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/06/01/portions_of_the_patriot_act_expired_on_may_31_what_does_that_mean.html.

Yesterday bulk collection was in effect, but are we being surveilled today? For the first time in 14 years, there’s   no automatic NSA mechanism   for recording who you call and when you call them. But there are still ways for the NSA to use its network abroad to get information about your international calls and online browsing. The agency can even still get the content of your international communications   through PRISM . Salon’s Marcy Wheeler writes, “Reports of the Patriot Act’s death are greatly exaggerated”The NSA still obtains records of calls—potentially   all   calls—you make with people overseas. It still tracks Americans’ Internet communications using metadata obtained overseas. The FBI can still access the content of any communications Americans have with foreigners targeted under PRISM without a warrant or even any evidence of wrongdoing. The FBI can still, and indeed does, obtain phone records of individuals in conjunction with national security investigations without any court review.In addition to the halt in bulk NSA communication surveillance, the act’s expiration means that the FBI can no longer use it to get sweeping wiretap orders to track a suspect when he or she changes phones. Each new device now requires a fresh warrant. Additionally, the

agency can no longer use the act to justify wiretaps of “lone wolf” terrorism suspects—individuals who don’t have a known affiliation to a larger group.  As the   New York Times   points out , though, it seems that the NSA is keeping its existing trove of data, since the Justice Department will have grandfathered ability to continue to access files for ongoing investigations. The   Times   also indicates that law enforcement agencies have other workarounds to continue to get the approvals they want.In the tension between the security need for surveillance and the desire to preserve individuals’ rights to privacy, it seems like eliminating bulk surveillance would be an obvious solution. So that would make today a better day than yesterday, right? But there is strong bipartisan agreement that   some   surveillance is necessary to maintain safety from international bad actors. Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, called the expiration   “a lose-lose.” The Senate will probably restore the expired portions of the act this week. And Congress has been mulling alternatives, like the USA Freedom Act, which would notably mandate that phone companies, not the government itself, store bulk collections. That way, agencies would have to go through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court in order to pull individual records, instead of having full, broadly approved access.

***LINK/INTERNAL***

2NC – Link Extensions

Warrantless mass surveillance is critical to prevent terrorism --- casting a wide net and being able to act quickly is critical to identify networks.John Yoo, 5/8/2015. Emanuel Heller professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, former official in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. “Will Congress reject the dangerous NSA ruling by reauthorizing the Patriot Act?” American Enterprise Institute, https://www.aei.org/publication/will-congress-reject-todays-dangerous-nsa-ruling-by-reauthorizing-the-patriot-act/.

Finally, the Court displays a deep misunderstanding of the challenges of counterterrorism policy, which Congress understands far better. As Judge Richard Posner has recognized, an intelligence search “is a search for the needle in a haystack.” Rather than pursue suspects who have already committed a crime and whose identity is already known, intelligence agencies must search for clues among millions of potentially innocent connections, communications, and links. “The intelligence services,” Posner writes, “ must cast a wide net with a fine mesh to catch the clues that may enable the next attack to be prevented.” Our government can detect terrorists by examining phone and e-mail communications, as well as evidence of joint travel, shared assets, common histories or families, meetings, and so on. If our intelligence agents locate a lead, they must quickly follow its many possible links to identify cells and the broader network of terrorists. A database of call data would allow a fast search for possible links in the most important place — the United States, where terrorists can inflict the most damage. Most of the calling records may well be innocent (just as most of the financial records of a suspected white-collar criminal may also be innocent), but the more complete the database, the better our intelligence agencies can pursue a lead into the U.S.

The NSA program has been empirically effective --- it has neutralized over fifty plots.USA Today, 6/19/2013. “NSA director: Surveillance foiled 50 terror plots,” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/18/nsa-surveillance-secret-programs-terror-plots/2434193/.

National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more than 50 terror threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden.More than 10 of the plots targeted the U.S. homeland, Alexander told the House Intelligence Committee, including a plot to attack the New York Stock Exchange."I would much rather be here today debating this,'' Alexander told lawmakers, referring to the programs' value, "than explaining why we were unable to prevent another 9/11'' attack.At the rare open committee hearing, Alexander and Deputy Attorney General   Jim Cole   told lawmakers that both surveillance operations — a domestic telephone tracking system that collects records of millions of Americans and an Internet monitoring program targeting non-citizens outside the U.S. — have been subject to rigorous oversight to guard against privacy abuses.

"This isn't some rogue operation that some guys at the NSA are operating,'' said Alexander, also an Army general.Deputy   FBI Director   Sean Joyce described another threat Tuesday that was neutralized by the surveillance programs: Investigators used the phone tracking system to identify an operative in San Diego who was providing support to terrorists in   Somalia .Joyce also referred to two disrupted plots that were disclosed last week as having been thwarted by the surveillance operations, including a 2009 plan to bomb the   New York subway system .In that case, authorities used its Internet monitoring program to identify overseas communications involving   Najibullah Zazi   in Colorado, who was later convicted in connection with the subway attack plan."This is not a program that is off the books,'' Cole said, outlining the executive, legislative and judicial controls attached to both surveillance operations.

Requiring warrants undermines effective counter-terrorism searches --- the ability to identify unknown terrorists outweighs the risk of false positives.Richard A. Posner, 2008. Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Senior Lecturer in Law, The University of Chicago. “Privacy, Surveillance, and Law,” 75 University of Chicago Law Review 245, http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2808&context=journal_articles.

I now want to bring law into the picture. After the Supreme Court ruled in a conventional criminal case that wiretapping and, by implication, other forms of electronic surveillance were to be deemed "searches" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,' Congress enacted Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968.' Title III created procedures for obtaining warrants for electronic surveillance that were modeled on the procedures for conventional search warrants. 6 Ten years later-and thus long before the danger of global terrorism was recognized and electronic surveillance transformed by the digital revolution-the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was enacted.' It is a complicated statute, but basically it requires that interceptions in the United States of the international communications of a US citizen, or permanent resident, or of anyone in the United States if the interception is made here, be conducted pursuant to warrants based on probable cause to believe that one of the parties to the communication is a foreign terrorist. That is the wrong approach as 9/11 has taught us and as Congress is beginning to recognize, evidenced by amendments to FISA enacted since the conference for which this paper was prepared. 8 (The amendments were to be in effect for only six months; Congress is now considering a more permanent restructuring of FISA.) FISA in its preamendment form remains usable for regulating the monitoring of communications of known terrorists, but it is useless for finding out who is a terrorist, 9 even though "the problem of defeating the enemy consists very largely of finding him."' 0 Hence the importance of "collateral intercepts"-such as intercepts of communications that seem likely to yield information of intelligence value even if probable cause to believe that a party to the communication is a terrorist is lacking. It is true that surveillance not cabined by a conventional probable cause requirement produces many false positives-interceptions that prove upon investigation to have no intelligence value. But that is not a valid criticism.

The cost of false positives must be balanced against that of false negatives. The failure to detect the 9/11 plot was an exceptionally costly false negative. The intelligence services have no alternative to casting a wide net with a fine mesh if they are to have reason- able prospects of obtaining the clues that will enable future terrorist attacks on the United States to be prevented."

Requiring warrants risks intelligence disclosure --- that accelerates plots.Andrew McCarthy, 5/10/2005. Senior fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony, Patriot Act Reauthorization Hearings, 5/10, lexis.

Another frequent and understandable complaint about Section 215 revolves around its so-called "gag rule," which prohibits recipients to disclose the fact of a subpoena. To be sure, the desirability of openness as a check on government over-reaching is unassailable if national security is not threatened. A public safety threat, however, requires reasonable balance between the public interest in disclosure and

the reality that disclosure makes our enemies, to be blunt, more efficient at killing us. It can alert them to the fact of an investigation which may thwart our ability to identify key players and locations that threaten Americans. It may endanger the lives of informants or dry up other crucial sources of information (such as wiretaps) since, once terrorists -- or, for that matter, members of any

criminal organization -- realize the government knows enough to seek certain records, their first priority often becomes attempting to determine how they have been compromised. Finally, it may trigger a planned attack. On this last score, it is again important to note that terrorists are not like other criminals. They are not in it for the

money, and they are not as apt to flee and live to fight another day if they believe their cover is blown. Many of them are devoted to their missions to the point of committing suicide to accomplish them. Publicly revealing an investigation before agents have reached the point of being able to thwart an ongoing terrorist plot may serve to accelerate the terrorist plot.

Terror threats are growing at home and abroad --- continued mass surveillance is critical to detect threats and thwart plots.Jessica Zuckerman , Steven P. Bucci , Ph.D.  and James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., 7/22/2013. Policy Analyst, Western Hemisphere @ Heritage; Director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy @ Heritage; and Vice President for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, and the E. W. Richardson Fellow @ Heritage. “60 Terrorist Plots Since 9/11: Continued Lessons in Domestic Counterterrorism,” Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/60-terrorist-plots-since-911-continued-lessons-in-domestic-counterterrorism.

Three months after the attack at the Boston Marathon, the pendulum of awareness of the terrorist threat has already begun to swing back, just as it did after 9/11. Due to the resilience of the nation and its people, for most, life has returned to business as usual. The threat of terrorism against the United States, however, remains.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 OptionalIn a political environment of sequestration on the one hand and privacy concerns on the other, there are those on both sides of the aisle who argue that counterterrorism spending should be cut and U.S. intelligence agencies reigned in. As the above list indicates however, the long war on terrorism is far from over. Most disturbingly, an increasing number of Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks are originating within America’s borders. The rise of homegrown extremism is the next front in the fight against terrorism and should be taken seriously by the Administration .While there has not been another successful attack on the homeland on the scale of 9/11, the bombings in Boston reminded the country that the threat of terrorism is real and that continued vigilance is critical to keeping America safe. Congress and the Administration must continue to upgrade and improve the counterterrorism capabilities of law enforcement and intelligence agencies as well exercise proper oversight of these capabilities. The American people are resilient, but the lesson of Boston is that the government can and should do more to prevent future terror attacks.

XT – Mass Surveillance Key

Mass surveillance is critical to find actionable intelligence.John Yoo, 6/12/2013. Emanuel Heller professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, former official in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. “John Yoo: NSA activities shouldn't be aired in public,” http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/06/12/nsa-surveillance-john-yoo-editorials-debates/2417377/.

But fear should not provoke a rush to harm our war against al-Qaeda. Surveillance of enemy communications not only has a long history in the annals of American arms, but it is also the most effective means for gaining actionable intelligence on terrorists.President Obama has discarded superior tools: He has stopped the interrogation of al-Qaeda leaders, and his leak-loving staff has blown the penetrations of al-Qaeda cells by intelligence agencies.By combining telephone call records (but not the content of calls) and foreigners' e-mails abroad — neither of which is protected by the Fourth Amendment — the NSA can at least create the data necessary to quickly identify and frustrate terrorist plans.Of course, the NSA should not receive a blank check. But it is unnecessary, and even harmful, to air its activities in public.Al-Qaeda closely monitors our government affairs and reacts quickly. In the 1990s, for example, Osama bin Laden stopped using his personal cellphone only 48 hours after the White House leaked that it was tapped.Instead of risking the loss of intelligence sources and methods, we should continue to follow the constitutional design. A time-tested system has promoted legislative oversight of classified activities without losing the virtues of speed and secrecy abroad. American intelligence   agencies regularly disclose their most sensitive covert operations to congressional leaders, who can exercise their power of the purse to stop bad ideas.The Framers recognized that our elected representatives would need such secrecy to protect the national security, which is why the Constitution allows for closed congressional proceedings. We should allow the system of representative democracy to decide intelligence policy, rather than sacrifice a critical advantage to satisfy the whims of those who do not understand that we are still a nation at war.

NSA surveillance of meta-data is critical --- PATRIOT Act authorities are key.John Yoo, 5/15/2015. Emanuel Heller professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, former official in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. “The USA Freedom Act Would Take Us Back to the Pre-9/11 Security Status Quo,” National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/418462/usa-freedom-act-would-take-us-back-pre-911-security-status-quo-john-yoo.

I worry that the representatives who voted to pass the USA Freedom Act in the House do not understand its full import in terms of our national security. The bill practically repeals Section 215 of the Patriot Act, but makes it appear as if those who voted for the bill advanced security in some way. The result of the legislation’s enactment, however, would not be significantly different than if Section 215 were simply allowed to expire. Even before

the Patriot Act, the government could get a warrant from a judge to get call metadata from a phone company. The Freedom Act requires phone companies to keep the calling records, but of course they do that already in order to bill customers. So the Freedom Act eliminates the advantages of Section 215 and practically restores the system that existed before. It is politically superficial but also substantively destructive. As we saw on 9/11, that previous   system failed. The reason why is that it slowed everything down (as would the Freedom Act). If our intelligence agencies have a lead — say they capture a terrorist leader or intercept his calls — they will have to act quickly to see what other phone numbers and e-mail addresses that the leader contacted to discover the broader network. The other terrorists, of course, will be switching to other numbers and addresses as soon as they suspect that one of their number has been compromised. Taking the time to (a) prepare a request for a warrant; (b) get it approved by a judge; and then (c) search through multiple phone company databases, will give the terrorists time to hide and cover their tracks. Speed is of the greatest essence exactly when we are trying to find the links in the U.S., where the terrorists will be closest to their targets and our defenses at their weakest. If this program had been in effect before 9/11, the government could have quickly searched the databases to discover the links between the two hijackers known to the CIA to have entered the U.S. That could have quickly led the government to the rest of the hijackers (just as those calling, e-mail, and financial records allowed the FBI to reconstruct the 9/11 terror cells within a day or so after the attacks). Another problem is that having the database dispersed among the different phone companies means our government cannot be sure that it has searched thoroughly for all of the possible links. The value of these metadata searches is reduced if the database is not as complete as possible. The databases will also be in private hands, where they might easily be open to invasions of privacy and penetration by foreign intelligence services. 

XT – Executive Flexibility I/L

Flexibility is key to counter-terrorism --- executive must react quickly to intel --- deliberation in Court or Congress risks leaks and undermines rapid reaction.Glenn Sulmasy 9, law faculty of the United States Coast Guard Academy, , Anniversary Contributions: Use of Force: Executive Power: the Last Thirty Years, 30 U. Pa. J. Int'l L. 1355

Since the attacks of 9/11, the original concerns noted by Hamilton, Jay, and Madison have been heightened. Never before in the young history of the

United States has the need for an energetic executive been more vital to its national security. The need for quick action in this arena requires an executive response -

particularly when fighting a shadowy enemy like al Qaeda - not the deliberative bodies opining on what and how to conduct warfare or determining how and when to respond. The threats from non-state actors, such as al Qaeda, make the need for dispatch and rapid response even greater. Jefferson's concerns about the slow and deliberative institution of Congress being prone to informational leaks are even more relevant in the twenty-first century. The advent of the twenty-four hour media only leads to an increased need for retaining enhanced levels of executive [*1362] control of foreign policy. This is particularly true in

modern warfare. In the war on international terror, intelligence is vital to ongoing operations and successful prevention of attacks. Al Qaeda now has both the will and the ability to strike with the equivalent force and might of a nation's armed forces. The need to identify these individuals before they can operationalize an attack is vital. Often international terror cells consist of only a small number of individuals - making intelligence that much more difficult to obtain and even more vital than in previous conflicts. The normal movements of tanks, ships, and aircrafts that, in traditional armed conflict are indicia of a pending attack are not the case in the current "fourth generation" war. Thus, the need for intelligence becomes an even greater concern for the commanders in the field as well as the Commander-in-Chief.¶ Supporting a strong executive in foreign affairs does not necessarily mean the legislature has no role at all. In fact, their dominance in domestic affairs remains strong. Additionally, besides the traditional roles identified in the Constitution for the legislature in foreign affairs - declaring war, ratifying treaties, overseeing appointments of ambassadors, etc. - this growth of executive power now, more than ever, necessitates an enhanced, professional, and apolitical oversight of the executive. An active, aggressive oversight of foreign affairs, and warfare in particular, by the legislature is now critical. Unfortunately, the United States - particularly over the past decade - has witnessed a legislature unable to muster the political will necessary to adequately oversee, let alone check, the executive branch's growing power. Examples are abundant: lack of enforcement of the War Powers Resolution abound the executive's unchecked invasions of Grenada, Panama, and Kosovo, and such assertions as the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the USA Patriot Act, military commissions, and the updated Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA"). There have been numerous grand-standing complaints registered in the media and hearings over most, if not all, of these issues. However, in each case, the legislature has all but abdicated their constitutionally mandated role and allowed the judicial branch to serve as the only real check on alleged excesses of the executive branch. This deference is particularly dangerous and, in the current environment of foreign affairs and warfare, tends to unintentionally politicize the Court.¶ The Founders clearly intended the political branches to best serve the citizenry by functioning as the dominant forces in [*1363] guiding the nation's foreign affairs. They had anticipated the political branches to struggle over who has primacy in this arena. In doing so, they had hoped neither branch would become too strong. The common theme articulated by Madison, ambition counters ambition, n17 intended foreign affairs to be a "give and take" between the executive and legislative branches. However, inaction by the legislative branch on myriad policy and legal issues surrounding the "war on terror" has forced the judiciary to fulfill the function of questioning, disagreeing, and "checking" the executive in areas such as wartime policy, detentions at Guantanamo Bay, and tactics and strategy of intelligence collection. The unique nature of the conflict against international terror creates many areas where law and policy are mixed. The actions by the Bush administration, in particular, led to outcries from many on the left about his intentions and desire to unconstitutionally increase the power of the Presidency. Yet, the Congress never firmly exercised the "check" on the executive in any formal manner whatsoever.¶ For example, many policymakers disagreed with the power given to the President within the Authorization to Use Military Force ("AUMF"). n18 Arguably, this legislation was broad in scope, and potentially granted sweeping powers to the President to wage the "war on terror." However, Congress could have amended or withdrawn significant portions of the powers it gave to the executive branch. This lack of withdrawal or amendment may have been understandable when Republicans controlled Congress, but as of November 2006, the Democrats gained control of both houses of the Congress. Still, other than arguing strongly against the President, the legislature did not necessarily or aggressively act on its concerns. Presumably this inaction was out of concern for being labeled "soft on terror" or "weak on national security" and thereby potentially suffering at the ballot box. This virtual paralysis is understandable but again, the political branches were, and remain, the truest voice of the people and provide the means to best represent the country's beliefs, interests, and national will in the arena of foreign affairs. It has been this way in the past but the more recent (certainly over the past thirty years and even more so in the past decade) intrusions of the judicial branch into what [*1364] was intended to be a "tug and pull" between the political branches can properly be labeled as an unintended consequence of the lack of any real legislative oversight of the executive branch.¶ Unfortunately, now nine unelected, life-tenured justices are deeply involved in wartime policy decision making. Examples of judicial policy involvement in foreign affairs are abundant including Rasul v. Bush; n19 Hamdi v. Rumsfeld; n20 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld; n21 as well as last June's Boumediene v. Bush n22 decision by the Supreme Court, all impacting war policy and interpretation of U. S. treaty obligations. Simply, judges should not presumptively impact warfare operations or policies nor should this become acceptable practice. Without question, over the past thirty years, this is the most dramatic change in executive power. It is not necessarily the strength of the Presidency that is the change we should be concerned about - the institutional search for enhanced power was anticipated by the Founders - but they intended for Congress to check this executive tendency whenever appropriate. Unfortunately, this simply is not occurring in twenty-first century politics. Thus, the danger does not necessarily lie with the natural desire for Presidents to increase their power. The real danger is the judicial branch being forced, or compelled, to fulfill the constitutionally mandated role of the Congress in checking the executive.¶ 4. PRESIDENT OBAMA AND EXECUTIVE POWER¶ The Bush presidency was, and continues to be, criticized for having a standing agenda of increasing the power of the executive branch during its eight-year tenure. Numerous articles and books have been dedicated to discussing these allegations. n23 However, as argued earlier, the reality is that it is a natural bureaucratic tendency, and one of the Founders presciently anticipated, that each branch would seek greater powers whenever and

wherever possible. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent, technology and armament become more sophisticated, and with [*1365] the rise of twenty-first century non-state actors, the need for strong executive power is not only preferred, but also necessary. Executive power in the current world dynamic is something, regardless of policy preference or political persuasions, that the new President must maintain in order to best fulfill his constitutional role of providing for the nation's security. This is simply part of the reality of executive power in the twenty-first century. n24

2NC – Intel Key

Intel is key to preventing WMD terrorism --- compromising secrecy risks attacks.John Yoo, 2004. Professor of Law @ UC-Berkeley, visiting scholar @ the American Enterprise Institute, served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Council at the U.S. Department of Justice between 2001 and 2003. “War, Responsibility, and the Age of Terrorism,” UC-Berkeley Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=johnyoo.

Third, the nature of warfare against such unconventional enemies may well be different from the set-piece battlefield matches between nation-states. Gathering intelligence, from both electronic and human sources, about the future plans of terrorist groups may be the only way to prevent September 11-style attacks from occurring again. Covert action by the Central Intelligence Agency or unconventional measures

by special forces may prove to be the most effective tool for acting on that intelligence. Similarly, the least dangerous means for preventing rogue nations from acquiring WMD may depend on secret intelligence gathering and covert action, rather than open military intervention. A public revelation of the means of gathering intelligence, or the discussion of the nature of covert actions taken to forestall the threat by terrorist organizations or rogue nations, could render the use of force ineffectual or sources of information useless. Suppose, for example, that American intelligence agencies detected through intercepted phone calls that a terrorist group had built headquarters and

training facilities in Yemen. A public discussion in Congress about a resolution to use force against

Yemeni territory and how Yemen was identified could tip-off the group, allowing terrorists to disperse and to prevent further interception of their communications.

Intel gathering is key to execute a divide and conquer strategy --- that’s key to preventing WMD terrorism.Kurt M. Campbell and Richard Weitz, September 2006. PhD International Relations @ Oxford, Senior Vice President, Henry A. Kissinger Chair in National Security, and Director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington; and PhD Political Science @ Harvard, Senior Fellow and Associate Director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Future Security Strategies. “Non-Military Strategies For Countering Islamist Terrorism: Lessons Learned From Past Counterinsurgencies,” The Princeton Project Papers, https://www.princeton.edu/~ppns/papers/counterinsurgency.pdf.

In both counterinsurgency and counterterrorist campaigns, a divide-and-conquer strategy can have three dimensions: exploiting divisions within the adversary’s camp, separating the operatives from their domestic supporters, and isolating them from their foreign sponsors. Past insurgencies show how divisions among the guerrillas, or the people they seek to influence, can assist the counterinsurgency. In Malaya, the existence of a disaffected Chinese ethnic minority made the insurgency possible, but the fact that the majority of Malays identified the guerrillas as predominately ethnic Chinese limited their influence. In Algeria, Vietnam, and Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, however, the authorities could not persuasively depict the insurgents as an unrepresentative minority, particularly given their own dependence on non-native troops, which allowed the guerrillas to characterize the war as a “liberation” insurgency. 49 French, American, and Soviet policy makers also had very little success in exploiting divisions among the insurgent leaders. Furthermore, they proved unable to cultivate a viable “third force” of moderate nationalists that could stand up to the insurgents without extensive

foreign backing – something that remains an issue in Afghanistan and Iraq today. The value of amnesty programs in weakening insurgencies is less clear. Their purpose is to encourage defections by less dedicated or otherwise dissatisfied guerrillas. If successful, their direct effect is to reduce the insurgents’ ranks; their indirect impact is to provide additional intelligence sources as well as visible signs that the counterinsurgency is succeeding. In Malaya, the British amnesty program yielded important tactical and strategic intelligence and encouraged further defections. Financial rewards proved especially fruitful. One senior communist leader’s own bodyguards murdered him so they could collect a $200,000 reward. 50 Other surrendered enemy personnel frequently led the military or police to their former guerrilla units. 51 In the Philippines, offers of free land and basic supporting infrastructure (i.e., roads, housing, and liberal loans) induced some Huk guerrillas to surrender. Similar programs proved far less successful in Algeria or Vietnam. Although the South Vietnamese government began offering amnesty and “rehabilitation” (job training, welfare services, and resettlement assistance) to Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese defectors as early as 196, the program encountered several problems. Former Prime Minister Nguyen Ky lamented: “Often the Vietcong used the program to get medical attention, decent food, and a few weeks’ vacation from the war. Once they were rested, they re-defected to the communists and continued to fight us.” 52 Low-level VC or even fake guerillas participated for the free food, shelter, and other material benefits. Monetary awards for South Vietnamese responsible for a defection (under the “third-party inducement plan”) led to phony defectors who split the reward money with corrupt officials. 54 Defectors also encountered suspicion and other resistance when they genuinely sought to reintegrate into South Vietnamese society. The various amnesty programs introduced recently in Afghanistan also have experienced only modest success. 55 Pursuing a “divide-and-conquer” strategy in the GWOT would mean attempting to undo al Qaeda’s most important achievement – its success in combining terrorist foot-soldiers from many different ethnic groups and nationalities into a single, eclectic but cohesive movement with operations in more than sixty countries. 56 Bin Laden has managed to get antagonistic rivals – such as Egypt’s two main terrorist groups, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group – to set aside years of mutual hostility to cooperate against common enemies. 57 In the GWOT, logical fissures to exploit include divisions within al Qaeda, between al Qaeda and its affiliate terrorist groups, and between the terrorists and their active network of supporters. 58 At a minimum, U.S. policies should aim to counter al Qaeda’s strategy of subsuming all local conflicts under a war of civilizations between the Muslim world on the one hand, and the United States and its non-Muslim allies on the other. Left to themselves, local groups will give priority to local concerns. Most Islamist terrorists in Palestine, Xinjiang, and Chechnya want to focus on their immediate enemies (Israel, China, and Russia, respectively) and will seek to avoid becoming entangled in a direct conflict with the United States unless given cause to do so. Tensions between Shiite and Sunni extremists offer another opportunity for dividing the adversary. Many Shia Muslims in Iraq have declined to join the insurgency because some Sunni Muslim terrorists – influenced by Takfiri ideology, which depicts Shia Muslims as apostates – have attacked Shias. Some Sunni terrorist groups in Pakistan also have designated Shia Muslims as explicit targets. Bin Laden’s strengthened ties with Shiite-hater Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, especially his designation of him as al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, provided additional opportunities for the United States to cultivate Shiite support against Sunni terrorist organizations like al Qaeda. A further division within the global Islamist terrorist movement might be emerging between the Arab members of al Qaeda and its Central Asian allies. During the late 1990s, these two groups worked in harmony under the auspices of the IMU, which developed extensive connections with al Qaeda and the Taliban. In May 2001, Taliban authorities even appointed IMU military leader Juma Namangani head of a sort of Islamic foreign legion. Consisting of a variety of non-Afghan Islamic fighters, including Pakistanis, Turks, Uighurs, and Uzbeks, the brigade fought against the Afghani Northern Alliance until U.S. forces destroyed it after September 11, 2001. 59 Pakistan’s recent crackdown on the terrorist operatives who subsequently fled to North and South Waziristan has led to friction between the Arabs and Central Asians there. The two groups compete for hideouts and the affiliation of the local tribes. They also have different priorities, with the Central Asians focused on overthrowing the region’s secular governments rather than attacking Americans, which could draw the U.S. military further

into their region. According to media reports, this rivalry has seen captured Chechen, Tajik, and Uzbek suspects divulging information to Pakistani intelligence about the identity and whereabouts of senior Arab members of al Qaeda – including the arrested Libyan operative, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, described as al Qaeda’s third-highest leader. 60 Another way to counter the extremists is to empower Islamic moderates. Just as Social Democrats represented one of the strongest bulwarks against Soviet-allied Communist Parties in Western Europe during the Cold War, so Islamic moderates can drain support and legitimacy from jihadi extremists. Even some otherwise radical Islamist groups could, whatever their subjective views, objectively assist the United States to counter jihadi terrorism. Some of these groups opposed al Qaeda’s 9/11 operation on the grounds that the timing was inappropriate. In particular, they maintained that the strikes should not have occurred until Muslims were more united and better prepared to resist U.S. retaliation. 61 (Bin Laden anticipated that the attacks would further such unity by rallying Muslims against the expected harsh and indiscriminate U.S. response. 62 ) A salient if controversial target for such a strategy might be the Hizb-ut-Tahrir (“Party of Islamic Liberation”), an international Islamic movement with as many as one hundred thousand adherents concentrated in Eurasia. Although its followers seek to replace the existing regimes in the Middle East and Central Asia with a multinational Caliphate governed by the Islamic laws and practices that existed at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, they insist that such change must occur through non-violent means and dismiss the violent tactics of IMU and al Qaeda as ineffective. Despite the Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s anti-American rhetoric and some of its adherents’ conversion to violent terrorism, the U.S. government has persistently refused to designate it a Foreign Terrorist Organization like al Qaeda. Keeping such “café Islamists” preoccupied with theocratic debates and their never-ending project of writing the perfect constitution for their envisaged state should become an important goal. The presence of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and other nonviolent Islamic movements, notwithstanding their immoderate rhetoric, provides a non-violent means of expression for many Muslims. Its elimination would likely result in many of its adherents joining radical Islamist terrorist groups. On the other hand, the United States should continue to exert pressure on violent Islamist extremists to exacerbate differences among them – just as the firm U.S. stand against the Sino-Soviet alliance during the 1950s helped divide rather than unite them. In essence, the Soviets feared that the Chinese communists would drag them into a conflict with Washington over Taiwan. Similarly, al Qaeda’s affiliate organizations might break with the radical Islamist network to avoid the fate of the Taliban if, for example, al Qaeda operatives sought to attack a U.S. target in their geographic area of operations notwithstanding the heightened American antiterrorist response that would ensue. Exploiting such differences also could enhance U.S. deterrence against WMD attacks. 64 U.S. policies must make clear to all terrorist groups that joining al Qaeda’s violently anti-American network would result in their becoming targets of an exceptionally robust U.S. response. Intelligence Requirements Conducting an effective divide-and-conquer strategy requires excellent intelligence regarding policy disputes, ideological differences, and private vendettas between the terrorist leaders. For example, the United States needs to know more about the relationships between al Qaeda and its regional affiliates, between Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and between bin Laden and other regional leaders. 65 As the global network of radical terrorist groups continues to fragment – seen most saliently in the rise of the “lone wolf” individual inspired by, but not connected with, a specific terrorist group – intelligence analysts will find it increasingly challenging to keep abreast of the network’s evolving components, diverse goals, strategies, and tactics. 66

Complete elimination of terrorism impossible --- intel key to prevent attacks.John Yoo, 2005. Professor of Law @ UC-Berkeley, visiting scholar @ the American Enterprise Institute, served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Council at the U.S. Department of Justice between 2001 and 2003. “Enemy Combatants and

Judicial Competence,” in Terrorism, the Laws of War, and the Constitution, ed. Peter Berkowitz, 83-84, http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/0817946225_69.pdf.

Add to these concerns the important military interest, only made more acute by the unconventional nature of the war with al Qaeda, of interrogating enemy combatants for information about coming attacks. Unlike previous wars, the current enemy is a stateless network of religious extremists who do not obey the laws of war, who hide among peaceful populations, and who seek to launch surprise attacks on civilian targets with the aim of causing massive casualties. They have no armed forces to target, no territory to defend, no people to protect, and no fear of killing themselves in their attacks. The front line is not solely a traditional battlefield, and the primary means of conducting the war includes the efforts of military, law enforcement, and intelligence officers to stop attacks before they occur. Information is the primary weapon in the conflict against this new kind of enemy, and intelligence gathered from captured operatives is perhaps the most effective means of preventing future terrorist attacks upon U.S. territory.

2NC – Deterrence/Perception I/L

Expiration of NSA authority is a massive signal of weakness --- terrorist groups are looking to exploit any vulnerability.Daily Mail, 5/31/2015. “Head of CIA warns that US is at risk of lone wolf terror attack after NSA powers to monitor all phone calls expired – as Isis ‘watch carefully’ for security gaps,” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3105089/Senate-makes-ditch-bid-extend-NSA-s-bulk-collection-phone-records-Rand-Paul-swears-block-legislation-let-Patriot-Act-expire.html.

The head of the CIA has warned that Americans are now at risk after the Senate was unable to extend laws giving authorities special powers to fight terrorists.Politicians in the upper house were unable to come to an agreement to extend key parts of the Patriot Act - that legalize controversial methods of surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA) - which expired on Sunday.Attempts were frustrated by Presidential candidate Rand Paul, who has taken a firm stance against the extension of powers allowing the mass collection of phone records, wire taps and warrants without evidence.But the Head of the CIA John Brennan claims ordinary Americans, who expect the NSA to do their jobs, have been put at risk by 'political grandstanding and crusading for ideological causes' that fueled the debate.Speaking on CBS show Face The Nation, he warned that the US - and Europe - is now in danger from technologically 'sophisticated' terrorists who are watching developments carefully and 'looking for the seams to operate' within. He claimed that the authorities do not abuse the powers, extended in 2011 to help fight lone wolf terror suspects not connected to a specific group, and that without them, it's difficult for the NSA to protect America.Mr Brennan said: 'I think terrorist elements have watched very carefully what has happened here in the United States, whether or not it's disclosures of classified information or whether it's changes in the law and policies . They are looking for the seams to operate within .'And this is something that we can't afford to do right now, because if you look at the horrific terrorist attacks and violence that is being perpetrated around the globe, we need to keep our country safe. And our oceans are not keeping us safe the way they did a century ago.'The Patriot Act was passed in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. Now that the provisions have expired, government agents will need to subpoena phone companies for the records.The White House previously justified collecting the records because of the Patriot Act's Section 215, which expired on Sunday.Two other provisions, added in 2011, also expired with it. The first is a 'roving wiretap' provision which allows government agencies to keep tracking suspects as they switch devices.The second is a 'lone wolf' clause which allows warrants to be granted without any evidence linking a suspect to a foreign power or terrorist group.Political struggles over the NSA and its data collection have become a national issue since whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent of government programs in 2013. The senate's efforts to pass a replacement bill were frustrated by Kentucky's junior senator Rand Paul, who has spoken at length against the NSA's activities, which he has excoriated as illegal and unconstitutional.Paul, a Republican who is running for president, came up against members of his own party, as well as the Obama administration.

With his presidential campaign waning, he has been accused of irresponsible political opportunism by opponents, by fighting a bill on ideological grounds that may put ordinary people at risk.He was criticized by the White House Sunday night, which called the Patriot Act expiration an 'irresponsible lapse'. While Brennan didn't mention Paul by name, he said on Face The Nation: 'Unfortunately I think there is a little too much political grandstanding and crusading for ideological causes that have really fuelled the debate on this issue.He added: 'These are authorities that have been used by the government to make sure that we're able to safeguard Americans. And the sad irony is that most Americans expect the government to protect them. And so although there's a lot of debate that goes on, on the Congress and the Hill on this issue, I think, when you go out to Boise or Tampa or Louisville, Americans are expecting their law enforcement and homeland security and intelligence professionals to do their work. And these authorities are important.' Paul argued 'there must be another way' but even he agrees that the lapse in these powers are likely to be temporary as politicians work on the USA Freedom Act, which is expected to pass within the next week.Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called a rare Sunday session to try to pass the replacement law, but was unable to push it through in time.And although the replacement is set to pass this week, Paul said the expiration was 'a victory no matter how you look at it'. In a statement, he said: 'It might be short lived, but I hope that it provides a road for a robust debate, which will strengthen our intelligence community, while also respecting our Constitution. He added: 'The expiration of the NSA's sweeping, all-encompassing and ineffectual powers will not relinquish functions necessary for protecting national security. The expiration will instead do what we should have done all along - rely on the Constitution for these powers.' According to a top lawmaker, as of 8pm Sunday no NSA employee could access their enormous phone records database, which holds metadata on millions of phone conversations handed over by telecoms companies like Verizon and AT&T.Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr said on Sunday: 'There is no way to get any type of agreement tonight -- either an extension or passage of a bill. So at 8pm tonight, NSA employees can not query the database'. In a statement issued Sunday night, Obama's press secretary Josh Earnest, urged action to pass the USA Freedom Act as quickly as possible.He said: 'The Senate took an important - if late - step forward tonight. We call on the Senate to ensure this irresponsible lapse in authorities is as short-lived as possible.'On a matter as critical as our national security, individual Senators must put aside their partisan motivations and act swiftly. The American people deserve nothing less.'Some lawmakers have said the lapse raises alarming questions about how US authorities can keep the homeland safe with a diminished security toolbox.'I think it's very very unfortunate that we're in this position,' said Senator Mike Lee, a conservative Republican who supports the reform bill.'We've known this date was coming for four years. Four years. And I think it's inexcusable that we adjourned' for a weeklong break last week without resolving the issue.Lee, too, conceded that the reform bill would most likely pass in the coming week.With the clock ticking, CIA chief John Brennan warned Sunday that allowing vital surveillance programs to lapse could increase terror threats, and argued that the phone metadata dragnet has not abused civil liberties and only serves to safeguard citizens.'This is something that we can't afford to do right now,' Brennan said of allowing the counterterrorism provisions to expire.'Because if you look at the horrific terrorist attacks and violence being perpetrated around the globe, we need to keep our country safe, and our oceans are not keeping us safe the way they did century ago,' he said on CBS talk show Face the Nation.Brennan added that online threats from groups like Isis would continue to grow over the next five to ten years.He said: 'Isis has been very sophisticated and adept at using the Internet to propagate its message and reach out to individuals. We see what is

happening as far as thousands upon thousands of individuals, including many thousands from the West, that have traveled into Syria and Iraq. And a number of these individuals are traveling back.'And what we see, they're also using the Internet as a way to incite and encourage individuals to carry out acts of violence.'So as the director of FBI says, you know, this use of these websites and their Internet capabilities is something of great concern. So yes, I think ISIS is a threat not just in the Middle East and South Asia and African regions but also to Europe as well as to the United States.'

Deterrence works against terrorism --- AQ expects high reliability levels for operations --- they will wait for weakness.Gordon Woo, 2002. Dr. Gordon Woo was trained in mathematical physics at Cambridge, MIT and Harvard, and has made his career as a calculator of catastrophes. His diverse experience includes consulting for IAEA on the seismic safety of nuclear plants and for BP on offshore oil well drilling. As a catastrophist at Risk Management Solutions, he has advanced the insurance modelling of catastrophes, including designing a model for terrorism risk. “Quantitative Terrorism Risk Assessment,” http://isc.temple.edu/economics/wkpapers/Homeland/Quantitative_Terrorism_Risk_Assessment.pdf.

The term macroterrorism has been coined to describe a spectacular act of terrorism, (which may be a multiple strike at several locations), which causes more than $1 billion of loss, or 500 deaths. Minor (micro) terrorist acts, such as house bombing, may occur haphazardly, but not signify a change in the terrorism environment. However, this is not the case with macroterrorism. Following an act of macroterrorism, security and border controls are inevitably strengthened, and emergency government funding made available for improving protective measures. Civil liberties may be temporarily curtailed as suspects are detained without trial, and minority communities potentially supporting sleeper cells are placed under tight surveillance. Although copycat attacks may be attempted in the aftermath of a successful strike, they are likely to fail due to the heightened security. In the harsher security regime soon after a successful strike, terrorists may rationally decide to lie low, and delay any further action until security is relaxed, border controls are eased, civil liberties lawyers intervene, and public risk awareness fades: circumstances which would give a later attack a higher chance of success. There are other reasons favoring a delay. Logistically, resources may need to be replenished after a macroterror attack. Furthermore, once a terrorist’s message has been delivered across the media through a spectacular macroterrorism event, (perhaps after a series of failures), a publicity reminder may not be needed for a while. The change in system state following a sucessful macroterrorism event implies that, rather like great earthquakes, such events do not satisfy the prerequisites of a Poisson process. Although it would require an elaborate Monte Carlo simulation to realize the temporal pattern of successful al-Qaeda macroterror attacks, the simplest representation is a two-state Markov process. In the first state, security is comparatively relaxed, and conducive to a successful macroterror attack. In the second state, security is comparatively strict, and not conducive to a successful macroterror attack. With the almost infinite payoff of paradise promised to martyrs, patience in waiting for security weaknesses is an optimal strategy. Indeed, it is known that Osama bin Laden has expected very high reliability levels for martyrdom operations. As a didactic illustration, consider the binary situation where successful macroterror attacks only take place during the relaxed security state. If the rate of successful macroterror attacks in this first state is U, and the erosion rate of security in the second state is V, then, assuming a successful macroterror attack causes a state transition from 1 to 2, the limiting proportion of time spent in state 1 is V/(U+V), and

the limiting frequency of successful macroterror attacks is UV/(U+V). The effect of maintaining security measures is to keep V low, and hence suppress the limiting frequency of successful macroterror attacks.

XT – Deterrence Works

Deterrence works in this context --- terrorists might not care about death, but they are risk-averse in terms of executing their plots.Robert Anthony, May 2003. Institute for Defense Analyses. “Deterrence and the 911 Terrorists,” http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA430351.

The 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon using hijacked commercial aircraft as weapons provide a chilling example of a failure to thwart committed suicide terrorists. This paper argues that it should be possible to deter even suicide terrorists, and analyzes why our security protections failed to achieve the conditions necessary to deter the 9-11 attacks. Based on our current understanding and mathematical model of the psychology of deterrence, analysis of the 9-11 attacks shows that the terrorists were cautious and risk averse, yet we as a nation failed to challenge them at the threshold levels necessary to deter their attack. While publicly available empirical data is insufficient to support a complete analysis, both qualitative and quantitative techniques indicate wide gaps between where we were on September 10th and where we need to be to deter such terrorists.B. BACKGROUND: DETERRENCE AND AVIATION SECURITYOne would expect that as the chances of being caught, imprisoned, killed, or humiliated increase, many terrorists would quit, put off their attack, or chose different, less protected targets. Even suicide terrorists do not want to waste their lives on a futile attack and exhibit extreme caution in all of their preparations. In addition, they probably do not wish to appear as powerless or inept, embarrass their cause, reveal larger plans, or bring shame on their families and supporters.

2NC – AT: Intel Cooperation Turn

Intelligence cooperation is robust despite NSA surveillance.Defense One, 2/11/2015. Patrick Tucker. “‘Dramatic Improvement’ in US and European Intel Sharing Because of ISIS,” http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/02/dramatic-improvement-us-and-european-intel-sharing-because-isis/105120/.

More than ever, European countries are voluntarily providing the United States with large amounts of information about their citizens, particularly as those citizens attempt to travel, the nation’s top counterterrorism official said.Compared to the summer of 2013,   U.S.intelligence professionals have seen a “pendulum swing” in the willingness of European law enforcement to share information with the   U.S.   on European citizens, said Nicholas J. Rasmussen , director of the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, on Wednesday.Things have turned around since summer 2013, when   NSA   contractor Edward Snowden first disclosed some of the nation’s most closely kept secrets on surveillance capabilities. Rasmussen said that “the politics are difficult for some of our European partners” but tracking Islamic State fighters, or   ISIS, has become a   priority .Rasmussen, before the House Committee on Homeland Security, said that European partners continue to differ fromU.S.   counterparts on the issue of bulk metadata collection. But European reservations about data sharing in more targeted investigations had “seen a dramatic improvement ,” particularly in populating the   NCTC’s database , called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE. It is one of the key person-of-interest watch lists that the U.S. and other countries use to track potential or suspected terrorists.

Intelligence cooperation is inevitable despite any political disputes over surveillance.PBS, 10/25/2013. Ray Suarez, PBS; P.J. Crowley, former assistant secretary of state for public affairs, now a professor at George Washington University; and Philip Mudd, senior research fellow at the New America foundation, and held senior positions at the CIA, FBI and the National Security Council. “What are the diplomatic costs of the NSA surveillance revelations for the U.S.?” http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs-july-dec13-snowden2_10-25/

RAY SUAREZ: What impact have the revelations had on U.S. interests abroad and intelligence operations?P.J. Crowley is a former assistant secretary of state for public affairs, now a professor at George Washington University. And Philip Mudd is a senior research fellow at the New America foundation, and held senior positions at the CIA, FBI and the National Security Council.P.J. Crowley, these latest revelations of the surveillance of the communication of heads of state and heads of government, is that a serious breach, serious diplomatic problem for the United States now?P.J. CROWLEY, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs: It is a serious and awkward diplomatic problem for the United States.You know, that said, at the end of the day, interests drive relationship. Politics matters. It animates those relationships and the willingness of leaders to stand together in common cause and do whatever needs to be done to keep their respective countries safe, you know, those relationships also matter.

We have been through these stresses and strains before. We went through them with WikiLeaks. Remember that Iraq wasn’t very popular during the Bush administration. So I’m confident that because the relationship between the United States and Europe is so deep, is so broad, is so meaningful, we will get through this. But it will take some time.RAY SUAREZ: Philip Mudd, how seriously should we take the fury coming from Europe today?PHILIP MUDD, New America Foundation: I think this is a short-term problem.As P.J. suggested, I’m not sure it is a long-term issue. The issue here though really is not just these revelations in isolation. It is this cascade through the summer and into the fall about spying on Americans, spying on citizens in Europe, spying on foreign leaders.This cascade is going to, I think, lead to months, maybe a little longer of tension. These political leaders have to respond. But when security services feel a threat, for example, a threat from terror cells, they will continue to cooperate, regardless of what we’re seeing at the political level.

XT – Intel Cooperation High

The perceived threat of terrorism is driving greater EU collaboration on surveillance --- objections to the NSA haven’t undermined cooperation.AP, 5/20/2015. Associated Press. Lori Hinnant and Ken Dilanian. “For US allies, paradigm shift in intelligence collection,” http://hosted2.ap.org/WVLOG/f0fb39ba210e4705b63f4a0f168573df/Article_2015-05-20-EU--Rethinking%20Intel/id-e41396bf63a04689a4daaabc3fc48651.

PARIS (AP) — Fearful of an expanding extremist threat, countries that for years have relied heavily on U.S. intelligence are quickly building up their own capabilities with new technology, new laws and — in at least one case — a searing debate on how much the American government should be allowed to spy on their own citizens.Responding to a jihadi movement that is successfully recruiting people from around the world, France and Canada are both passing laws that would dramatically ramp up their intelligence apparatus. In France, lawmakers are on the verge of approving a bill that would let the government install "black boxes" to collect metadata from every major phone and Internet company.Canada's measures were rushed through after a two separate attacks in October 2014 on Canadian soldiers — including one that ended when the gunman stormed Parliament and was shot to death by guards and police. France's law went into high gear after the January terror attacks on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket that left 20 dead, including the gunmen.Analysts say it's not so much a question of diminishing cooperation with the U.S. — the revelations of Edward Snowden have ultimately done little to harm relationships between allies — as a push to increase domestic capacities ill-equipped to face the rising threat of Islamic State and other jihadi groups."These are not people coming from the outside, these are not people who are taking plane trips, they are not people who attracted notice outside our countries. These are people who come from the heart of our society," said Alain Chouet, a former French intelligence official who recently returned from an extended trip to Canada where he debated the measures in both countries. "International cooperation in this area isn't hugely useful."Technologically, France goes the furthest with the planned creation of a 'Made in France' mass collection of metadata that has the potential to go beyond a National Security Agency program. Where the NSA collected landline metadata for nearly every U.S. citizen but never really got into scooping up cell data, France is pushing to essentially vacuum up and analyze everything — landline, mobile and Internet metadata.The law authorizing that NSA program is set to expire June 1, but the U.S. House of Representatives last week (if it moves Sunday) passed legislation ending the collection by the government and only allowing the NSA to ask telephone companies for the metadata on a case-by-case basis. That bill may still face changes in the U.S. Senate.The Canadian proposals are more measured, but would dramatically expand domestic intelligence capabilities, including disrupting terrorist on-line communications and propaganda, expanding the no-fly list and allowing agencies to share more information, according to Wesley Wark, a Canadian security and intelligence expert. Unlike the French proposals, the Canadian measures began coming under strong public opposition as time went on, including an open letter from 60 executives and a Twitter campaign n that included a dire warning this month from author Margaret Atwood: "See you in the slammer, kids."France and Canada are likely to have new laws before summer. In Germany, the debate is just starting.

The German weekly Der Spiegel reported that the Federal Intelligence Service for years monitored telecoms traffic using filters provided by the NSA because it lacked the capacity — and the legal authority — to do so itself. By 2008, German intelligence agents discovered that some of the filters — known as selectors — related to European arms companies and French authorities.Neither the government nor the BND, as the intelligence service is known, would comment on reports that Germany has stopped sharing some Internet surveillance data from a German spy station with the NSA. The French appear unworried that their top officials may have been targeted: "We trust the German government," said France's chief spokesman, Stephane Le Foll.But the Germans may be caught between a history of Nazi and East German regimes and the potential of hundreds of returning Islamic State fighters in their future. Germany has very strict data privacy laws that place serious restrictions on the collection of data. It has been an open secret, however, that German security services have relied on data collected by its allies, particularly the U.S., in their own fight against domestic terrorism."There is a lot of caution as to the role of intelligence and in a way, I think, for Germans over the decades it had always been a comforting situation to know we are doing this in cooperation with our allies. Because we had this sort of internal dimension of abuse of secret services," said Daniela Schwarzer, the Berlin-based head of the Europe Program, German Marshall Fund think tank."So it's a huge thing and we're just only starting this debate," she said.Most prominently, German authorities were able to foil a plot in 2007, thanks to information from U.S. intelligence services, by radicals to attack American soldiers and civilians at facilities including the U.S. Air Force's Ramstein Air Base in Germany. In 2013, Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged that the security services could not have foiled the plot without "tips from American sources."Despite German debate over the latest revelations — and French objections to some of the data collection methods revealed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden — none of the allies are actually proposing diminishing cooperation with the NSA, just beefing up their own capacities, said John "Chris" Inglis, who retired in 2014 as the NSA deputy director.In France, he said, he sees "the law and policy catching up to what they have already been doing."In Germany, where many are deeply opposed to government surveillance, he noted that the German government is not foreswearing cooperation with the NSA.And Canada's role as a vital part of the "Five Eyes" intelligence-sharing program joining the U.S., Australia, Britain and New Zealand has not been called into question."I do not think we are seeing a trend of Europeans seeking to break away from America as much as a reaction to the increasingly global threat of domestic extremists and returning foreign fighters," said Raj De, who retired as NSA general counsel this year and is now a partner at the Mayer Brown law firm in Washington. "Europeans are having to openly confront the notion that their governments must protect their homeland independently or in continued cooperation with the U.S."

***IMPACT***

2NC – Lone Wolf Scenario

Expiration of NSA authority prevents our ability to detect lone wolf terrorists --- they are looking for any vulnerability.Daily Mail, 5/31/2015. “Head of CIA warns that US is at risk of lone wolf terror attack after NSA powers to monitor all phone calls expired – as Isis ‘watch carefully’ for security gaps,” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3105089/Senate-makes-ditch-bid-extend-NSA-s-bulk-collection-phone-records-Rand-Paul-swears-block-legislation-let-Patriot-Act-expire.html.

The head of the CIA has warned that Americans are now at risk after the Senate was unable to extend laws giving authorities special powers to fight terrorists.Politicians in the upper house were unable to come to an agreement to extend key parts of the Patriot Act - that legalize controversial methods of surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA) - which expired on Sunday.Attempts were frustrated by Presidential candidate Rand Paul, who has taken a firm stance against the extension of powers allowing the mass collection of phone records, wire taps and warrants without evidence.But the Head of the CIA John Brennan claims ordinary Americans, who expect the NSA to do their jobs, have been put at risk by 'political grandstanding and crusading for ideological causes' that fueled the debate.Speaking on CBS show Face The Nation, he warned that the US - and Europe - is now in danger from technologically 'sophisticated' terrorists who are watching developments carefully and 'looking for the seams to operate' within. He claimed that the authorities do not abuse the powers, extended in 2011 to help fight lone wolf terror suspects not connected to a specific group, and that without them, it's difficult for the NSA to protect America.Mr Brennan said: 'I think terrorist elements have watched very carefully what has happened here in the United States, whether or not it's disclosures of classified information or whether it's changes in the law and policies. They are looking for the seams to operate within.'And this is something that we can't afford to do right now, because if you look at the horrific terrorist attacks and violence that is being perpetrated around the globe, we need to keep our country safe. And our oceans are not keeping us safe the way they did a century ago.'The Patriot Act was passed in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. Now that the provisions have expired, government agents will need to subpoena phone companies for the records.The White House previously justified collecting the records because of the Patriot Act's Section 215, which expired on Sunday.Two other provisions, added in 2011, also expired with it. The first is a 'roving wiretap' provision which allows government agencies to keep tracking suspects as they switch devices.The second is a 'lone wolf' clause which allows warrants to be granted without any evidence linking a suspect to a foreign power or terrorist group.Political struggles over the NSA and its data collection have become a national issue since whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent of government programs in 2013. The senate's efforts to pass a replacement bill were frustrated by Kentucky's junior senator Rand Paul, who has spoken at length against the NSA's activities, which he has excoriated as illegal and unconstitutional.Paul, a Republican who is running for president, came up against members of his own party, as well as the Obama administration.

With his presidential campaign waning, he has been accused of irresponsible political opportunism by opponents, by fighting a bill on ideological grounds that may put ordinary people at risk.He was criticized by the White House Sunday night, which called the Patriot Act expiration an 'irresponsible lapse'. While Brennan didn't mention Paul by name, he said on Face The Nation: 'Unfortunately I think there is a little too much political grandstanding and crusading for ideological causes that have really fuelled the debate on this issue.He added: 'These are authorities that have been used by the government to make sure that we're able to safeguard Americans. And the sad irony is that most Americans expect the government to protect them. And so although there's a lot of debate that goes on, on the Congress and the Hill on this issue, I think, when you go out to Boise or Tampa or Louisville, Americans are expecting their law enforcement and homeland security and intelligence professionals to do their work. And these authorities are important.' Paul argued 'there must be another way' but even he agrees that the lapse in these powers are likely to be temporary as politicians work on the USA Freedom Act, which is expected to pass within the next week.Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called a rare Sunday session to try to pass the replacement law, but was unable to push it through in time.And although the replacement is set to pass this week, Paul said the expiration was 'a victory no matter how you look at it'. In a statement, he said: 'It might be short lived, but I hope that it provides a road for a robust debate, which will strengthen our intelligence community, while also respecting our Constitution. He added: 'The expiration of the NSA's sweeping, all-encompassing and ineffectual powers will not relinquish functions necessary for protecting national security. The expiration will instead do what we should have done all along - rely on the Constitution for these powers.' According to a top lawmaker, as of 8pm Sunday no NSA employee could access their enormous phone records database, which holds metadata on millions of phone conversations handed over by telecoms companies like Verizon and AT&T.Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr said on Sunday: 'There is no way to get any type of agreement tonight -- either an extension or passage of a bill. So at 8pm tonight, NSA employees can not query the database'. In a statement issued Sunday night, Obama's press secretary Josh Earnest, urged action to pass the USA Freedom Act as quickly as possible.He said: 'The Senate took an important - if late - step forward tonight. We call on the Senate to ensure this irresponsible lapse in authorities is as short-lived as possible.'On a matter as critical as our national security, individual Senators must put aside their partisan motivations and act swiftly. The American people deserve nothing less.'Some lawmakers have said the lapse raises alarming questions about how US authorities can keep the homeland safe with a diminished security toolbox.'I think it's very very unfortunate that we're in this position,' said Senator Mike Lee, a conservative Republican who supports the reform bill.'We've known this date was coming for four years. Four years. And I think it's inexcusable that we adjourned' for a weeklong break last week without resolving the issue.Lee, too, conceded that the reform bill would most likely pass in the coming week.With the clock ticking, CIA chief John Brennan warned Sunday that allowing vital surveillance programs to lapse could increase terror threats, and argued that the phone metadata dragnet has not abused civil liberties and only serves to safeguard citizens.'This is something that we can't afford to do right now,' Brennan said of allowing the counterterrorism provisions to expire.'Because if you look at the horrific terrorist attacks and violence being perpetrated around the globe, we need to keep our country safe, and our oceans are not keeping us safe the way they did century ago,' he said on CBS talk show Face the Nation.Brennan added that online threats from groups like Isis would continue to grow over the next five to ten years.He said: 'Isis has been very sophisticated and adept at using the Internet to propagate its message and reach out to individuals. We see what is

happening as far as thousands upon thousands of individuals, including many thousands from the West, that have traveled into Syria and Iraq. And a number of these individuals are traveling back.'And what we see, they're also using the Internet as a way to incite and encourage individuals to carry out acts of violence.'So as the director of FBI says, you know, this use of these websites and their Internet capabilities is something of great concern. So yes, I think ISIS is a threat not just in the Middle East and South Asia and African regions but also to Europe as well as to the United States.'

Dispersion of technology enables lone wolf terrorists to access WMD.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]

The first question to answer is whence the concerns about the nexus between CBRN weapons and isolated actors come and whether these are overblown. The general threat of mass violence posed by lone wolves and small autonomous cells has been detailed in accompanying issue contributions, but the potential use of CBRN weapons by such perpetrators presents some singular features that either amplify or supplement the attributes of the more general case and so are deserving of particular attention. Chief

among these is the impact of rapid technological development. Recent and emerging advances in a variety of areas, from synthetic biology 3 to nanoscale engineering, 4 have opened doors not only to new medicines and materials, but also to new possibilities for malefactors to inflict harm on others. What is most relevant in the context of lone actors and small autonomous cells is not

so much the pace of new invention, but rather the commercialization and consumerization of CBRN weapons-relevant technologies. This process often entails an increase in the availability and safety of the technology, with a concurrent diminution in the cost, volume, and technical knowledge required to operate it. Thus, for example, whereas fifty years ago producing large quantities of certain chemical weapons might have been a dangerous and inefficient affair requiring a large plant, expensive equipment, and several chemical engineers, with the advent of

chemical microreactors, 5 the same processes might be accomplished far more cheaply and safely on a desktop assemblage, purchased commercially and monitored by a single chemistry graduate student.

The rapid global spread and increased user-friendliness of many technologies thus represents a potentially radical shift from the relatively small scale of harm a single individual or small autonomous group could historically cause. 6 From the limited reach and killing power of the sword, spear, and bow, to the introduction of dynamite and eventually the use of our own infrastructures against us (as on September 11), the number of people that an individual who was unsupported by a broader political entity could kill with a single action has increased from single digits to thousands. Indeed, it has even been asserted that “over time …

as the leverage provided by technology increases, this threshold will finally

reach its culmination—with the ability of one man to declare war on the world and win.” 7 Nowhere is this trend more perceptible in the current age than in the area of unconventional weapons.

These new technologies do not simply empower users on a purely technical level. Globalization and the expansion of information networks provide new opportunities for disaffected individuals in the farthest corners of the globe to become

familiar with core weapon concepts and to purchase equipment—online technical

courses and eBay are undoubtedly a boon to would-be purveyors of violence. Furthermore, even the most solipsistic misanthropes, people who would never be able to function socially as part of

an operational terrorist group, can find radicalizing influences or legitimation for their beliefs in the maelstrom of virtual identities on the Internet.

All of this can spawn, it is feared, a more deleterious breed of lone actors, what have been

referred to in some quarters as “super-empowered individuals.” 8 Conceptually, super-empowered individuals are atomistic game-changers, i.e., they constitute a single (and often singular) individual who can shock the entire system (whether

national, regional, or global) by relying only on their own resources . Their core

characteristics are that they have superior intelligence, the capacity to use complex communications or technology systems, and act as an individual or a “lone-wolf.” 9 The end result, according to the pessimists, is that if one of these individuals chooses to attack the system, “the unprecedented nature of his attack ensures that no counter-measures are in place to prevent it. And when he

strikes, his attack will not only kill massive amounts of people, but also profoundly change the financial, political, and social systems that govern modern life.” 10 It almost

goes without saying that the same concerns attach to small autonomous cells, whose members' capabilities and resources can be combined without appreciably increasing the operational footprint presented to intelligence and law enforcement agencies seeking to detect such behavior.

With the exception of the largest truck or aircraft bombs, the most likely means by which to

accomplish this level of system perturbation is through the use of CBRN agents as WMD . On the motivational side, therefore, lone actors and small autonomous cells may ironically be more likely to select CBRN weapons than more established terrorist groups—who are usually more conservative in their tactical orientation—because the extreme asymmetry of these weapons may provide the only subjectively feasible option for such actors to achieve their grandiose aims of deeply affecting the system. The inherent technical challenges presented by CBRN weapons may also make them attractive to self-assured individuals who may have a very different risk tolerance than larger, traditional terrorist organizations that might have to be concerned with a variety of constituencies, from state patrons to prospective recruits. 11 Many other factors beyond a “perceived potential to achieve mass casualties” might play into the decision to pursue CBRN weapons in lieu of conventional explosives, 12 including a fetishistic fascination with these weapons or the perception of direct referents in the would-be perpetrator's belief system.Others are far more sanguine about the capabilities of lone actors (or indeed non-state actors in general) with respect to their potential for using CBRN agents to cause mass fatalities, arguing that the barriers to a successful large-scale CBRN attack remain high, even in today's networked, tech-savvy environment. 13 Dolnik, for example, argues that even though homegrown cells are “less constrained” in motivations, more challenging plots generally have an inverse relationship with capability, 14 while Michael Kenney cautions against making presumptions about the ease with which individuals can learn to produce viable

weapons using only the Internet. 15 However, even most of these pundits concede that low-level CBR attacks emanating from this quarter will probably lead to political, social, and economic disruption that extends well beyond the areas immediately affected by the attack. This raises an essential point with respect to CBRN terrorism: irrespective of the harm potential of CBRN weapons or an actor's capability (or lack thereof) to successfully employ them on a catastrophic scale, these weapons invariably exert a stronger psychological impact on audiences—the essence of terrorism—than the traditional gun and

bomb. This is surely not lost on those lone actors or autonomous cells who are as interested in getting noticed as in causing casualties.

Proven Capability and IntentWhile legitimate debate can be had as to the level of potential threat posed by lone actors or small autonomous cells wielding CBRN weapons, possibly the best argument for engaging in a substantive

examination of the issue is the most concrete one of all—that these actors have already demonstrated the motivation and capability to pursue and use CBRN weapons, in some cases even close to the point of constituting a genuine WMD

threat . In the context of bioterrorism, perhaps the most cogent illustration of this is the case of Dr.

Bruce Ivins, the perpetrator behind one of the most serious episodes of bioterrorism in living memory, the 2001 “anthrax letters,” which employed a highly virulent and sophisticated form of the agent and not only killed five and seriously sickened 17 people, but led to widespread disruption of the U.S. postal services and key government facilities. 16Other historical cases of CBRN pursuit and use by lone actors and small autonomous cells highlight the need for further exploration. Among the many extant examples: 17Thomas Lavy was caught at the Alaska-Canada border in 1993 with 130 grams of 7% pure ricin. It is unclear how Lavy obtained the ricin, what he planned to do with it, and what motivated him.In 1996, Diane Thompson deliberately infected twelve coworkers with shigella dysenteriae type 2. Her motives were unclear.In 1998, Larry Wayne Harris, a white supremacist, was charged with producing and stockpiling a biological agent—bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax.In 1999, the Justice Department (an autonomous cell sympathetic to the Animal Liberation Front) mailed over 100 razor blades dipped in rat poison to individuals involved in the fur industry.In 2000, Tsiugio Uchinshi was arrested for mailing samples of the mineral monazite with trace amounts of radioactive thorium to several Japanese government agencies to persuade authorities to look into potential uranium being smuggled to North Korea.In 2002, Chen Zhengping put rat poison in a rival snack shop's products and killed 42 people.In 2005, 10 letters containing a radioactive substance were mailed to major organizations in Belgium including the Royal Palace, NATO headquarters, and the U.S. embassy in Brussels. No injuries were reported.In 2011, federal agents arrested four elderly men in Georgia who were plotting to use ricin and explosives to target federal buildings, Justice Department officials, federal judges, and Internal Revenue Service agents.Two recent events may signal an even greater interest in CBRN by lone malefactors. First, based on one assessment of Norway's Anders Breivik's treatise, his references to CBRN weapons a) suggest that

CBRN weapons could be used on a tactical level and b) reveal (to perhaps previously

uninformed audiences) that even low-level CBRN weapons could achieve far-reaching impacts driven by fear. 18 Whether or not Breivik would actually have sought or been able to pursue CBRN, he has garnered a following in several (often far-right) extremist circles and his treatise

might inspire other lone actors. Second, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released two issues of Inspire magazine in 2012 . Articles, on the one hand, call for lone wolf jihad attacks to target non-combatant populations and, on the other, permit the use of chemical and biological weapons. The combination of such directives may very well influence the weapon selection of lone actor jihadists in Western nations. 19

XT – Lone Wolf Threat Growing

Lone wolf terrorism’s growing nowChristopher HEWITT, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 14 [“Law Enforcement Tactics and Their Effectiveness in Dealing With American Terrorism: Organizations, Autonomous Cells, and Lone Wolves,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 26, Issue 1, 2014]

The results of our study have some obvious implications for law enforcement practices and policies.

Routine policing by local law enforcement agencies played an unexpectedly significant role in catching terrorists. Therefore it is imperative that local police forces should be given adequate resources (funding, training, and equipment) commensurate with that role.

The importance of the general public as witnesses and otherwise providing information to police is clear, but attempts to encourage even greater public cooperation—“See something, say something”—have problems. Appeals for help in locating or identifying suspects are costly in terms of manpower expended in tracking down false leads. The government and the media typically exaggerate the threat from terrorism. The changing colors published by Homeland Security showing the supposed level of terrorist threat initially increased public fears, and later led to claims that the authorities were crying wolf after so many false alarms had been publicized. The ideal should be a vigilant but not a hysterical citizenry.

One function of policing is preventive, seeking to identify potential criminal or terrorist threats. Generally informants or surveillance are used, not to catch

terrorists after they have committed their crimes, but to prevent terrorist attacks from occurring in the first place. However, this raises significant civil liberties concerns. To what extent is it legitimate to gather intelligence on extremist movements and activists if they have not actually engaged in violence? Intelligence gathering by these means is even more troubling if it involves spying on members of the general public. Since 9/11, it is alleged that police departments have been guilty of placing entire Muslim communities under scrutiny without any evidence of wrongdoing. Indeed in April 2012, the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting was awarded to the Associated Press for a series of critical articles about the policies of the New York City Police Department's Intelligence Department. The Associated Press articles claimed that the NYPD “put American citizens under surveillance and scrutinized where they ate, prayed, and worked, not because of charges of wrongdoing but because of their ethnicity …. The documents describe in extraordinary detail a secret program intended to catalog life inside Muslim neighborhoods.” The NYPD was accused of using “mosque crawlers” to monitor sermons, employing undercover officers and confidential informants, and of infiltrating Muslim student groups and monitoring their Internet activities. 28

A chronology of terrorist incidents and plots since 9/11 reveals the major role played by undercover agents and informants, as well as the frequency with which

electronic surveillance is employed. Of 47 plots, all were carried out by lone wolves or a group of friends, and none were by members of organized groups. 29 Most plots were by Islamist extremists (53%) or right-wing extremists (34%), with the remainder by anarchists, militant Jews, and anti-abortionists. For the 38 plots for which information is available, Table 2 shows what factors were successful in how they were uncovered.There are some striking differences between police tactics in dealing with plots and dealing with actual incidents. Obviously since no actual attack had taken place, the absence of clues from the crime scene or

witnesses is understandable. Tips from the public or routine policing are much less important, while the role of undercover agents is a major factor. An examination of several of the cases

suggests that many of the plots discovered were a result of sting operations, sometimes verging on entrapment.

Overall, the difference between the earlier organized campaigns and the later lone wolf terrorism is evident. The main reason for this transition lies in the repressive powers available to modern states. Extremist groups which threaten violence become the objects of repression. Historically, the decline of the Klan, Black militants, Puerto Rican nationalists, and right-wing extremists was a result of mass arrests and police harassment. 30 Leaderless resistance emerged as a strategy among right-wing militants

because of the imprisonment and prosecution of their leaders and activists. Similarly, the jihadist movement resorted to lone wolf actions after the decapitation of al Qaeda and the destruction of most of its leadership. Since both in the United States

and Europe there exists large and growing numbers of both angry jihadists and White nationalists, we can expect an increase in lone-wolf terrorism in the future.

Lone wolves growing—can’t decapitate an ideologySam Jones 14, Financial Times (FT), 14 [“Al-Qaeda: on the march,” January 19, 2014, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d8662d86-8124-11e3-95aa-00144feab7de.html#slide0]

But al-Qaeda has proved to have a Hydra-like quality. Far from withering, it has proliferated. The group and its affiliates have never controlled more land, had as many recruits in their ranks or been as well financially resourced as now.

In recent months, al-Qaeda franchises have scored successes or near-victories in

an arc stretching from the Sahel in east Africa through to the Levant via the Horn of Africa, Yemen and Iraq.

In 2012, al-Qaeda forces came within hours of seizing control of Bamako, the capital

of Mali. In 2013, its militants radicalised the conflict in Syria. This year has begun with fighters storming the city of Fallujah in Iraq, just 70km from Baghdad. They still control it.Last Wednesday, the US House Intelligence committee opened an inquiry to investigate the resurgence

of the group. Mike Rogers, the Republican congressman who chairs the committee, called the demise of al-Qaeda a “false narrative” and warned against complacency in Washington. He

cautioned: “The defeat of an ideology requires more than just drone strikes.”Three fundamental questions are of concern to the west in its handling of the group’s rebound. How resilient is the resurgence, how centralised is its structure and how much of a threat does it still pose internationally?The hope among its opponents is that al-Qaeda’s renaissance belies a still dangerous but fatally weakened foe. Many see the group as a disparate set of franchises that have fed off disenchantment caused by the Arab Spring, but which ultimately are either locally focused and pragmatic. Or they believe it will burn itself out through its own brutality, alienating local Muslim populations by persecuting them as much as waging jihad against the west and its regional allies.They point to the situation in Syria, where jihadis fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham are committing atrocities against civilians, turning other Islamist groups against them.But Isis’s brutality – and the “seeds of its own destruction” narrative of al-Qaeda that is perpetuated by such actions in the west – is far from the complete picture.

Al-Qaeda is certainly disparate and no longer controlled to the same degree by a central authority.

But it has proved very adaptable , and very aware of the mistakes it made in the past.Afghanistan and PakistanIn Afghanistan, the rout of al-Qaeda has been extensive. Intelligence analysts put the number of al-Qaeda operatives functioning in the country as low as 200, although many fear a rebound if aid to the fragile Afghan government dries up.

For now, al-Qaeda’s core presence in the area – and the world – remains in Pakistan,

where Ayman al-Zawahiri, the successor to Osama bin Laden, is based.

Its links in Pakistan run deep. It is telling that it took the US a decade to find the whereabouts of bin Laden, who turned out to be living in a compound in urban Abbottabad. While al-Qaeda is known to

have a significant presence in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of the country, many analysts believe its core leadership operates comfortably – or could even be based in – its

most populated, metropolitan areas.

The US drone campaign explains why. “You can’t just go and bomb an urban area,” says Shashank Joshi, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a UK think-

tank. “Al-Qaeda has adapted to our counterterrorism measures and it has become more resilient. [While] its leadership has been shattered at various points, it is clearly not any longer an organisation dependent on a small coterie of individuals for its survival.”

Syria and IraqIt is now difficult to imagine that before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, al-Qaeda and affiliated groups had

almost no presence in the Levant. The ill-fated US occupation created both a lawless environment for radical jihadi governments to take root and fomented an ideologically potent cause for them to pursue.Al-Qaeda’s early success in Iraq under Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was unwound from 2006, thanks to the US-funded sahwa (awakening) of local Sunni tribes in Iraq’s Anbar province, who revolted against

al-Qaeda’s excesses. It has since been resurgent. In Syria, the relentless and brutal assault on mostly

peaceful Sunni protesters by Bashar al-Assad, the country’s Alawite president, has provided al-Qaeda with an expansive presence in the region. In Iraq, political mismanagement on the part of President Nouri al-Maliki and the spillover from Syria have contributed to the group’s renewed presence in Anbar province.Both Jahbat Al-Nusra, led by Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claim affiliation to al-Qaeda in the region.But in Syria, it is Al-Nusra – Syrian- led and more tolerant – that has the support of Mr Zawahiri, and not the more brutal Iraqi-dominated Isis, which has already alienated swaths of the indigenous Syrian population with its ruthlessness.Yemen

The remote mountains of southern Yemen gave birth to al-Qaeda and to this day

remain one of the group’s most cohesive strongholds in the world. The group has found solace among the mountains and fiercely independent tribes of the south, tapping into the deep pool of resentment born of grinding poverty, anti-northern sentiment and, more recently, US drone strikes that have all too often hit innocent targets .The Yemeni and Saudi branches of the group merged in 2009 to form al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, led by Nasir al-Wuhaishi, Osama bin Laden’s former secretary and one of Mr Zawahiri’s closest allies.

AQAP is considered by western intelligence agencies the most dangerous branch of al-Qaeda, and it has proved resilient : a government campaign in 2012 to expel the group from Abyan and Sabwah provinces is still continuing.

AQAP has more recently adapted its method of exporting jihad by using other militant groups around the world as proxies.“This may be the kind of relationship that we increasingly see between AQAP and other groups with the promotion of Mr Wuhaishi – loose operational guidance with seed funding and, where possible, the provision of fighters to participate in high-profile plots, especially in the fluid security environments of north Africa,” says John Nugent, terrorism analyst at Control Risks, a security consultancy.Horn of Africa

In the Horn, al-Qaeda’s current largest affiliate is al-Shabaab (the Boys), the former youth movement of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), the radical Islamist group that once controlled most of Somalia.

While it has been forced to cede huge swaths of territory in the past 18 months, it remains a well-resourced organisation, and embedded throughout Somalia.The UN estimated it earned $50m a year when it controlled the port of Kismayo. It has also exploited the illegal ivory trade, killing hundreds of elephants in the region, according to environmental campaigners.As al-Shabaab has been pushed back, it has sought to export violence to the home soil of those fighting it, such as Kenya. The group orchestrated the deadly Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi last September, in which more than 60 people died.The ICU itself had strong ties with al-Qaeda core, with many of its founding leaders trained in Afghanistan, but al-Shabaab has often chosen to follow its own path.In 2010 Mr Zawahiri sought to replace al-Shabaab’s leader, Ahmed Godane, but his ruling was ignored. Mr Godane swore allegiance to Mr Zawahiri again in 2012.The Sahel and MaghrebMore than a year after staging a spectacular attack on a remote Algerian oil and gas facility, and 18 months after nearly seizing control of Mali, al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb appears on the defensive.

French troops have pushed back AQIM, led by Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud, a veteran of Algeria’s 1990s civil war. Algeria’s security forces have cornered extremist groups.

But from Mauritania to Libya, the longstanding ethnic and political grievances still fester. The abuses of the civil war that fed Algerian Islamist anger have never been resolved. The official neglect that led ethnic Tuaregs to seek an autonomous Saharan homeland has worsened.

“No one should underestimate the narrow margin that existed between AQ and their goal of seeking to take over the organs of a whole state and create a safe haven,” says Stephen O’Brien, the UK prime minister’s special envoy to the Sahel, referring to AQIM’s near takeover of Bamako, Mali’s capital, in 2012.

“What is clear is that the franchise’s approach has become much more about winning over the hearts and minds of populations by the provision of basic services.”

2NC – Threats Real (Domestic)

Terror threats are growing --- NSA surveillance is vital.John R. Bolton, 4/28/2015. Formerly served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, and under secretary of state for arms control and international security. At AEI, Ambassador Bolton’s area of research is U.S. foreign and national security policy. “NSA activities key to terrorism fight,” American Enterprise Institute, https://www.aei.org/publication/nsa-activities-key-to-terrorism-fight/.

Congress is poised to decide whether to re-authorize programs run by the National Security Agency that assess patterns of domestic and international telephone calls and emails to uncover linkages with known terrorists. These NSA activities, initiated after al-Qaeda’s deadly 9/11 attacks, have played a vital role in protecting America and our citizens around the world from the still- metastasizing terrorist threat.The NSA programs do   not   involve listening to or reading conversations, but rather seek to detect communications networks. If patterns are found, and more detailed investigation seems warranted, then NSA or other federal authorities, consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, must obtain judicial approval for more specific investigations. Indeed, even the collection of the so-called metadata is surrounded by procedural protections to prevent spying on U.S. citizens.Nonetheless, critics from the right and left have attacked the NSA for infringing on the legitimate expectations of privacy Americans enjoy under our Constitution. Unfortunately, many of these critics have absolutely no idea what they are talking about; they are engaging in classic McCarthyite tactics, hoping to score political points with a public justifiably worried about the abuses of power characteristic of the Obama administration. Other critics, following Vietnam-era antipathies to America’s intelligence community, have never reconciled themselves to the need for robust clandestine capabilities. Still others yearn for simpler times, embodying Secretary of State Henry Stimson’s famous comment that “gentlemen don’t read each others’ mail.”The ill-informed nature of the debate has facilitated scare-mongering, with one wild accusation about NSA’s activities after another being launched before the mundane reality catches up. And there is an important asymmetry at work here as well. The critics can say whatever their imaginations conjure up, but NSA and its defenders are significantly limited in how they can respond. By definition, the programs’ success rests on the secrecy fundamental to all intelligence activities. Frequently, therefore, explaining what is not happening could well reveal information about NSA’s methods and capabilities that terrorists and others, in turn, could use to stymie future detection efforts.After six years of President Obama, however, trust in government is in short supply. It is more than a little ironic that Obama finds himself defending the NSA (albeit with obvious hesitancy and discomfort), since his approach to foreign and defense issues has consistently reflected near-total indifference, except when he has no alternative to confronting challenges to our security. Yet if harsh international realities can penetrate even Obama’s White House, that alone is evidence of the seriousness of the threats America faces.In fact, just in the year since Congress last considered the NSA programs, the global terrorist threat has dramatically increased. ISIS is carving out an entirely new state from what used to be Syria and Iraq, which no longer exist within the borders created from the former Ottoman Empire after World War I. In already-chaotic Libya, ISIS has grown rapidly, eclipsing al-Qaeda there and across the region as the largest terrorist threat. Boko Haram is expanding beyond

Nigeria, declaring its own caliphate, even while pledging allegiance to ISIS. Yemen has descended into chaos, following Libya’s pattern, and Iran has expanded support for the terrorist Houthi coalition. Afghanistan is likely to fall back under Taliban control if, as Obama continually reaffirms, he withdraws all American troops before the end of 2016.This is not the time to cripple our intelligence-gathering capabilities against the rising terrorist threat. Congress should unquestionably reauthorize the NSA programs, but only for three years. That would take us into a new presidency, hopefully one that inspires more confidence, where a calmer, more sensible debate can take place.

Homegrown terrorism threat is increasing --- domestic surveillance is essential.Jessica Zuckerman , Steven P. Bucci , Ph.D.  and James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., 7/22/2013. Policy Analyst, Western Hemisphere @ Heritage; Director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy @ Heritage; and Vice President for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, and the E. W. Richardson Fellow @ Heritage. “60 Terrorist Plots Since 9/11: Continued Lessons in Domestic Counterterrorism,” Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/60-terrorist-plots-since-911-continued-lessons-in-domestic-counterterrorism.

Three months after the attack at the Boston Marathon, the pendulum of awareness of the terrorist threat has already begun to swing back, just as it did after 9/11. Due to the resilience of the nation and its people, for most, life has returned to business as usual. The threat of terrorism against the United States, however, remains.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 OptionalIn a political environment of sequestration on the one hand and privacy concerns on the other, there are those on both sides of the aisle who argue that counterterrorism spending should be cut and U.S. intelligence agencies reigned in. As the above list indicates however, the long war on terrorism is far from over. Most disturbingly, an increasing number of Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks are originating within America’s borders. The rise of homegrown extremism is the next front in the fight against terrorism and should be taken seriously by the Administration .While there has not been another successful attack on the homeland on the scale of 9/11, the bombings in Boston reminded the country that the threat of terrorism is real and that continued vigilance is critical to keeping America safe. Congress and the Administration must continue to upgrade and improve the counterterrorism capabilities of law enforcement and intelligence agencies as well exercise proper oversight of these capabilities. The American people are resilient, but the lesson of Boston is that the government can and should do more to prevent future terror attacks.

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

Their defense doesn’t assume lone wolves and dual techPatrick 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 d o- i t- y ourself 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 fastGary 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 globallyPatrick 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 d o- i t-

y ourself 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.

ExtinctionNathan 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 bio logical tech nology, 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.

1

AT: No Tech Access (Bioweapons)

Tech access becoming easier all the timePatrick 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 libertiesRobert 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 constructionLee 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 barrierBunn 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 WeaponsMost 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.

***AFF***

2AC – AT: Terrorism DA – No Link/Internal

In-depth analysis shows NSA metadata is not critical to counter-terrorism --- claims to the contrary by government officials are unsubstantiated.Peter Bergen et al, 1/13/2014. David Sterman, Emily Schneider, and Bailey Cahall. New America Foundation. “Do NSA's Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists?” http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/do_nsas_bulk_surveillance_programs_stop_terrorists.

On June 5, 2013, the Guardian broke the first story in what would become a flood of revelations regarding the extent and nature of the NSA’s surveillance programs.  Facing an uproar over the threat such programs posed to privacy, the Obama administration scrambled to defend them as legal and essential to U.S. national security and counterterrorism. Two weeks after the first leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden were published, President Obama defended the NSA surveillance programs during a visit to Berlin, saying: “We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States, but, in some cases, threats here in Germany. So lives have been saved.”  Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, testified before Congress that: “the information gathered from these programs provided the U.S. government with critical leads to help prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world.”  Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said on the House floor in July that “54 times [the NSA programs] stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe – saving real lives.”  However, our review of the government’s claims about the role that NSA “bulk” surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in keeping the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading.  An in-depth analysis of 225 individuals recruited by al-Qaeda or a like-minded group or inspired by al-Qaeda’s ideology, and charged in the United States with an act of terrorism since 9/11, demonstrates that traditional investigative methods, such as the use of informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence operations, provided the initial impetus for investigations in the majority of cases, while the contribution of NSA’s bulk surveillance programs to these cases was minimal. Indeed, the controversial bulk collection of American telephone metadata, which includes the telephone numbers that originate and receive calls, as well as the time and date of those calls but not their content, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, appears to have played an identifiable role in initiating, at most, 1.8 percent of these cases. NSA programs involving the surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act played a role in 4.4 percent of the terrorism cases we examined, and NSA surveillance under an unidentified authority played a role in 1.3 percent of the cases we examined. Regular FISA warrants not issued in connection with Section 215 or Section 702, which are the traditional means for investigating foreign persons, were used in at least 48 (21 percent) of the cases we looked at, although it’s unclear whether these warrants played an initiating role or were used at a later point in the investigation. (Click on the link to go to a database of all 225 individuals, complete with additional details about them and the government’s investigations of these cases:http://natsec.newamerica.net/nsa/analysis).

Surveillance of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group. Furthermore, our examination of the role of the database of U.S. citizens’ telephone metadata in the single plot the government uses to justify the importance of the program – that of Basaaly Moalin, a San Diego cabdriver who in 2007 and 2008 provided $8,500 to al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia – calls into question the necessity of the Section 215 bulk collection program.  According to the government, the database of American phone metadata allows intelligence authorities to quickly circumvent the traditional burden of proof associated with criminal warrants, thus allowing them to “connect the dots” faster and prevent future 9/11-scale attacks. Yet in the Moalin case, after using the NSA’s phone database to link a number in Somalia to Moalin, the FBI waited two months to begin an investigation and wiretap his phone. Although it’s unclear why there was a delay between the NSA tip and the FBI wiretapping, court documents show there was a two-month period in which the FBI was not monitoring Moalin’s calls, despite official statements that the bureau had Moalin’s phone number and had identified him. ,   This undercuts the government’s theory that the database of Americans’ telephone metadata is necessary to expedite the investigative process, since it clearly didn’t expedite the process in the single case the government uses to extol its virtues. Additionally, a careful review of three of the key terrorism cases the government has cited to defend NSA bulk surveillance programs reveals that government officials have exaggerated the role of the NSA in the cases against David Coleman Headley and Najibullah Zazi, and the significance of the threat posed by a notional plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange. In 28 percent of the cases we reviewed, court records and public reporting do not identify which specific methods initiated the investigation. These cases, involving 62 individuals, may have been initiated by an undercover informant, an undercover officer, a family member tip, other traditional law enforcement methods, CIA- or FBI-generated intelligence, NSA surveillance of some kind, or any number of other methods. In 23 of these 62 cases (37 percent), an informant was used. However, we were unable to determine whether the informant initiated the investigation or was used after the investigation was initiated as a result of the use of some other investigative means. Some of these cases may also be too recent to have developed a public record large enough to identify which investigative tools were used.We have also identified three additional plots that the government has not publicly claimed as NSA successes, but in which court records and public reporting suggest the NSA had a role. However, it is not clear whether any of those three cases involved bulk surveillance programs.Finally, the overall problem for U.S. counterterrorism officials is not that they need vaster amounts of information from the bulk surveillance programs, but that they don’t sufficiently understand or widely share the information they already possess that was derived from conventional law enforcement and intelligence techniques. This was true for two of the 9/11 hijackers who were known to be in the United States before the attacks on New York and Washington, as well as with the case of Chicago resident David Coleman Headley, who helped plan the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and it is the unfortunate pattern we have also seen in several other significant terrorism cases. 

Mass surveillance fails --- false positivesRay Corrigan , 1/25/2015. Senior lecturer in mathematics, computing, and technology at the Open University, U.K. “Mass Surveillance Will Not Stop Terrorism,” Slate,

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2015/01/mass_surveillance_against_terrorism_gathering_intelligence_on_all_is_statistically.html.

In response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, the U.K. government is redoubling its efforts to engage in mass surveillance.Prime Minister David Cameron wants to   reintroduce the so-called snoopers’ charter—properly, the Communications Data Bill—which would compel telecom companies to keep records of all Internet, email, and cellphone activity. He also wants to ban encrypted communications services.Cameron seems to believe terrorist attacks can be prevented if only mass surveillance, by the U.K.’s intelligence-gathering center GCHQ and the U.S. National Security Agency, reaches the degree of perfection portrayed in his favorite TV dramas, where computers magically pinpoint the bad guys. Computers don’t work this way in real life and neither does mass surveillance.Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly, who murdered 17 people, were known to the French security services and considered a serious threat. France has blanket electronic surveillance. It didn’t avert what happened.Police, intelligence, and security systems are imperfect. They process vast amounts of imperfect intelligence data and do not have the resources to monitor all known suspects 24/7. The French authorities lost track of these extremists long enough for them to carry out their murderous acts. You cannot fix any of this by treating the entire population as suspects and then engaging in suspicionless, blanket collection and processing of personal data.Mass data collectors can dig deeply into anyone’s digital persona but don’t have the resources to do so with everyone. Surveillance of the entire population, the vast majority of whom are innocent, leads to the diversion of limited intelligence resources in pursuit of huge numbers of false leads. Terrorists are comparatively rare, so finding one is a needle-in-a-haystack problem. You don’t make it easier by throwing more needleless hay on the stack.It is   statistically impossible for total population surveillance to be an effective tool for catching terrorists. Even if your magic terrorist-catching machine has a false positive rate of 1 in 1,000—and no security technology comes anywhere near this—every time you asked it for suspects in the U.K. it would flag 60,000 innocent people.Law enforcement and security services need to be able to move with the times, using modern digital technologies intelligently and through targeted data preservation—not a mass surveillance regime—to engage in court-supervised technological surveillance of individuals whom they have reasonable cause to suspect. That is not, however, the same as building an infrastructure of mass surveillance.Mass surveillance makes the job of the security services more difficult and the rest of us less secure.

XT – Mass Surveillance Fails

Government statements about NSA surveillance preventing attacks have been thoroughly debunked.Cindy Cohn  and Nadia Kayyali , 6/2/2014. Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From 2000-2015 she served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel; and member of EFF’s activism team. Nadia's work focuses on surveillance, national security policy, and the intersection of criminal justice, racial justice, and digital civil liberties issues. “The Top 5 Claims That Defenders of the NSA Have to Stop Making to Remain Credible,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/top-5-claims-defenders-nsa-have-stop-making-remain-credible.

Over the past year, as the Snowden revelations have rolled out, the government and its apologists have developed a set of talking points about mass spying that the public has now heard over and over again. From the President, to Hilary Clinton to Rep. Mike Rogers, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and many others, the arguments are often eerily similar.But as we approach the one year anniversary, it’s time to call out the key claims that have been thoroughly debunked and insist that the NSA apologists retire them. So if you hear any one of these in the future, you can tell yourself straight up: “this person isn’t credible,” and look elsewhere for current information about the NSA spying. And if these are still in your talking points (you know who you are) it’s time to retire them if you want to remain credible. And next time, the talking points should stand the test of time.1.   The NSA has Stopped 54 Terrorist Attacks with Mass Spying The discredited claimNSA defenders have thrown out many claims about how NSA surveillance has protected us from terrorists, including repeatedly declaring that it has thwarted 54 plots.  Rep. Mike Rogerssays it often. Only weeks after the first Snowden leak, US President Barack Obama claimed: “We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted” because of the NSA’s spy powers. Former NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander also repeatedly claimed that those programs thwarted 54 different attacks.Others, including former Vice President Dick Cheney have claimed that had the bulk spying programs in place, the government could have stopped the 9/11 bombings, specifically noting that the government needed the program to locate Khalid al Mihdhar, a hijacker who was living in San Diego. Why it’s not credible:These claims   have been thoroughly debunked .   First, the claim that the information stopped 54 terrorist plots fell completely apart.   In dramatic   Congressional testimony , Sen. Leahy forced a formal retraction from NSA Director Alexander in October, 2013:"Would you agree that the 54 cases that keep getting cited by the administration were not all plots, and of the 54, only 13 had some nexus to the U.S.?" Leahy said at the hearing. "Would you agree with that, yes or no?""Yes," Alexander replied, without elaborating.But that didn’t stop the apologists. We keep hearing the “54 plots” line to this day.   As for 9/11, sadly, the same is true.   The government did not need additional mass collection capabilities, like the mass phone records programs, to find al Mihdhar in San Diego.  AsProPublica noted, quoting Bob Graham, the former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

U.S. intelligence agencies knew the identity of the hijacker in question, Saudi national Khalid al Mihdhar, long before 9/11 and had the ability find him, but they failed to do so."There were plenty of opportunities without having to rely on this metadata system for the FBI and intelligence agencies to have located Mihdhar," says former Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who extensively investigated 9/11 as chairman of the Senate’s intelligence committee.Moreover, Peter Bergen and a team at the New America Foundation dug into the government’s claims about plots in America, including studying over 225 individuals recruited by al Qaeda and similar groups in the United States and charged with terrorism,   and   concluded : Our review of the government’s claims about the role that NSA "bulk" surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in keeping the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading...When backed into a corner, the government’s apologists cite the capture of Zazi, the so-called New York subway bomber. However, in that case,   the Associated Press reported   that the government could have easily stopped the plot   without   the NSA program , under authorities that comply with the Constitution. Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been saying this for a long time.Both of the President’s hand-picked advisors on mass surveillance concur about the telephone records collection. The President’s Review Board issued a   report   in which it stated “the information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks,” The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) also   issued a report   in which it stated, “we have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which [bulk collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act] made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation.”And in an amicus brief in EFF’s case First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. the NSA case, Sens. Ron Wyden, Mark Udall, and Martin Heinrich stated that, while the administration has claimed that bulk collection is necessary to prevent terrorism, they “have reviewed the bulk-collection program extensively, and none of the claims appears to hold up to scrutiny.” Even former top NSA official John Inglis   admitted   that the phone records program has not stopped any terrorist attacks aimed at the US and at most, helped catch one guy who shipped about $8,000 to a Somalian group that the US has designated as a terrorist group but that has never even remotely been involved in any attacks aimed at the US.

Mass surveillance fails --- numerous empirical examples prove we are never able to effectively act on intelligence.Patrick Eddington, 1/27/2015. Policy analyst in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute. “No, Mass Surveillance Won't Stop Terrorist Attacks,” Reason, http://reason.com/archives/2015/01/27/mass-surveillance-and-terrorism.

But would more mass surveillance have prevented the assault on the   Charlie Hebdo   office? Events from 9/11 to the present help provide the answer :2009: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—i.e., the "underwear bomber"—nearly succeeded in downing the airline he was on over Detroit because, according to then-National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) director Michael Leiter, the

federal   Intelligence Community (IC) failed " to connect, integrate, and fully understand the intelligence "   it had collected .2009: Army Major Nidal Hasan was able to conduct his deadly, Anwar al-Awlaki-inspired rampage at Ft. Hood, Texas, because the FBI   bungled   its Hasan investigation.2013: The Boston Marathon bombing happened, at least in part, because the CIA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, NCC, and National Security Agency (NSA) failed to properly coordinate and share information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his family, associations, and travel to and from Russia in 2012. Those failures were detailed in a 2014 report prepared by the Inspectors General of the IC, Department of Justice, CIA, and DHS.2014: The   Charlie Hebdo   and French grocery store attackers were not only known to French and U.S. authorities but one had   a prior terrorism conviction   and another was   monitored for years   by French authorities until less than a year before the attack on the magazine.No, mass surveillance does not prevent terrorist attacks.It’s worth remembering that the mass surveillance programs initiated by the U.S. government after the 9/11 attacks—the   legal ones   and the   constitutionally- dubious ones —were premised on the belief that bin Laden’s hijacker- terrorists were able to pull off the attacks because of a failure to collect enough data. Yet in their subsequent reports on the attacks, the   Congressional Joint Inquiry (2002)   and the   9/11 Commission   found exactly the opposite. The data to detect (and thus foil) the plots was in the U.S. government’s hands prior to the attacks; the failures were ones of sharing, analysis, and dissemination. That malady perfectly describes every intelligence failure from Pearl Harbor to the present day.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (created by Congress in 2004) was supposed to be the answer to the "failure-to-connect-the-dots" problem. Ten years on, the problem remains, the IC bureaucracy is bigger than ever, and our government is continuing to rely on mass surveillance programs that have failed time and again to stop terrorists while simultaneously undermining the civil liberties and personal privacy of every American. The quest to " collect it all ," to borrow a phrase from NSA Director Keith Alexander, only leads to the accumulation of masses of useless information, making it harder to find real threats and   costing billions   to store .A recent Guardian editorial noted that such mass-surveillance myopia is spreading among European political leaders as well, despite the fact that "terrorists, from 9/11 to the Woolwich jihadists and the neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, have almost always come to the authorities’ attention before murdering."Mass surveillance is not only destructive of our liberties, its continued use is a virtual guarantee of more lethal intelligence failures. And our continued will to disbelieve those facts is a mental dodge we engage in at our peril.

Applications of network theory are helpful for preventing fraud but not terrorism --- mass surveillance just generates over-saturation of information. Patrick Radden Keefe, 3/12/2006. Century Foundation fellow, is the author of "Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping.” “Can Network Theory Thwart Terrorists?” New York Times, http://www.trecento.com/lfriedl/tmp/forwiki/nwks.html.

Recent debates about the National Security Agency's warrantless-eavesdropping program have produced two very different pictures of the operation. Whereas administration officials

describe a carefully aimed "terrorist surveillance program," press reports depict a pervasive electronic net ensnaring thousands of innocent people and few actual terrorists. Could it be that both the administration and its critics are right? One way to reconcile these divergent accounts — and explain the administration's decision not to seek warrants for the surveillance — is to examine a new conceptual paradigm that is changing how America's spies pursue terrorists: network theory.During the last decade, mathematicians, physicists and sociologists have advanced the scientific study of networks, identifying surprising commonalities among the ways airlines route their flights, people interact at cocktail parties and crickets synchronize their chirps. In the increasingly popular language of network theory, individuals are "nodes," and relationships and interactions form the "links" binding them together; by mapping those connections, network scientists try to expose patterns that might not otherwise be apparent. Researchers are applying newly devised algorithms to vast databases — one academic team recently examined the e-mail traffic of 43,000 people at a large university and mapped their social ties. Given the difficulty of identifying elusive terror cells, it was only a matter of time before this new science was discovered by America's spies.In its simplest form, network theory is about connecting the dots. Stanley Milgram's finding that any two Americans are connected by a mere six intermediaries — or "degrees of separation" — is one of the animating ideas behind the science of networks; the Notre Dame physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi studied one obvious network — the Internet — and found that any two unrelated Web pages are separated by only 19 links. After Sept. 11, Valdis Krebs, a Cleveland consultant who produces social network "maps" for corporate and nonprofit clients, decided to map the hijackers. He started with two of the plotters, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, and, using press accounts, produced a chart of the interconnections — shared addresses, telephone numbers, even frequent-flier numbers — within the group. All of the 19 hijackers were tied to one another by just a few links, and a disproportionate number of links converged on the leader, Mohamed Atta. Shortly after posting his map online, Krebs was invited to Washington to brief intelligence contractors.Announced in 2002, Adm. John Poindexter's controversial Total Information Awareness program was an early effort to mine large volumes of data for hidden connections. But even before 9/11, an Army project called Able Danger sought to map Al Qaeda by "identifying linkages and patterns in large volumes of data," and may have succeeded in identifying Atta as a suspect. As if to underline the project's social-network principles, Able Danger analysts called it "the Kevin Bacon game."Given that the N.S.A. intercepts some 650 million communications worldwide every day, it's not surprising that its analysts focus on a question well suited to network theory: whom should we listen to in the first place? Russell Tice, a former N.S.A. employee who worked on highly classified Special Access Programs, says that analysts start with a suspect and "spider-web" outward, looking at everyone he contacts, and everyone those people contact, until the list includes thousands of names. Officials familiar with the program have said that before individuals are actually wiretapped, computers sort through flows of metadata — information about who is contacting whom by phone or e-mail. An unclassified National Science Foundation report says that one tool analysts use to sort through all that data is link analysis.The use of such network-based analysis may explain the administration's decision, shortly after 9/11, to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The court grants warrants on a case-by-case basis, authorizing comprehensive surveillance of specific individuals. The N.S.A. program, which enjoys backdoor access to America's major communications switches, appears to do just the opposite: the surveillance is typically much less intrusive than what a FISA warrant would permit, but it involves vast numbers of people.In some ways, this is much less alarming than old-fashioned wiretapping. A computer that monitors the metadata of your phone calls and e-mail to see if you talk to terrorists will learn less about you than a government agent listening in to the words you speak. The problem

is that most of us are connected by two degrees of separation to thousands of people, and by three degrees to hundreds of thousands. This explains reports that the overwhelming number of leads generated by the N.S.A. program have been false positives — innocent civilians implicated in an ever-expanding associational web.This has troubling implications for civil liberties. But it also points to a practical obstacle for using link analysis to discover terror networks: information overload. The National Counterterrorism Center's database of suspected terrorists contains 325,000 names; the Congressional Research Service recently found that the N.S.A. is at risk of being drowned in information. Able Danger analysts produced link charts identifying suspected Qaeda figures, but some charts were 20 feet long and covered in small print. If Atta's name was on one of those network maps, it could just as easily illustrate their ineffectiveness as it could their value, because nobody pursued him at the time.One way to make sense of these volumes of information is to look for network hubs. When Barabasi mapped the Internet, he found that sites like Google and Yahoo operate as hubs — much like an airline hub at Newark or O'Hare — maintaining exponentially more links than the average. The question is how to identify the hubs in an endless flow of records and intercepted communications. Scientists are using algorithms that can determine the "role structure" within a network: what are the logistical and hierarchical relationships, who are the hubs? The process involves more than just tallying links. If you examined the metadata for all e-mail traffic at a university, for instance, you might find an individual who e-mailed almost everyone else every day. But rather than being an especially connected or charismatic leader, this individual could turn out to be an administrator in charge of distributing announcements. Another important concept in network theory is the "strength of weak ties": the most valuable information may be exchanged by actors from otherwise unrelated social networks.Network academics caution that the field is still in its infancy and should not be regarded as a panacea. Duncan Watts of Columbia University points out that it's much easier to trace a network when you can already identify some of its members. But much social-network research involves simply trawling large databases for telltale behaviors or activities that might be typical of a terrorist. In this case the links among people are not based on actual relationships at all, but on an "affiliation network," in which individuals are connected by virtue of taking part in a similar activity. This sort of approach has been effective for corporations in detecting fraud. A credit-card company knows that when someone uses a card to purchase $2 of gas at a gas station, and then 20 minutes later makes an expensive purchase at an electronics store, there's a high probability that the card has been stolen. Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. case officer who wrote a book on terror networks, notes that correlating certain signature behaviors could be one way of tracking terrorists: jihadist groups in Virginia and Australia exercised at paint-ball courses, so analysts could look for Muslim militants who play paint ball, he suggests. But whereas there is a long history of signature behaviors that indicate fraud, jihadist terror networks are a relatively new phenomena and offer fewer reliable patterns.There is also some doubt that identifying hubs will do much good. Networks are by their very nature robust and resistant to attack. After all, while numerous high ranking Qaeda leaders have been captured or killed in the years since Sept. 11, the network still appears to be functioning. "If you shoot the C.E.O., they'll hire another one," Duncan Watts says. "The job will still get done."

2AC – AT: Terrorism DA – Link Turns

TURN --- NSA surveillance undermines US-EU intelligence cooperation.Kristin Archick, 12/1/2014. Specialist in European Affairs @ Congressional Research Service. “U.S.-EU Cooperation Against Terrorism,” CRS Report, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22030.pdf.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and the subsequent revelation of Al Qaeda cells in Europe gave new momentum to European Union (EU) initiatives to combat terrorism and improve police, judicial, and intelligence cooperation among its member states. Other deadly incidents in Europe, such as the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005 respectively, injected further urgency into strengthening EU counterterrorism capabilities and reducing barriers among national law enforcement authorities so that information could be meaningfully shared and suspects apprehended expeditiously. Among other steps, the EU has established a common definition of terrorism and a common list of terrorist groups, an EU arrest warrant, enhanced tools to stem terrorist financing, and new measures to strengthen external EU border controls and improve transport security. Over the years, the EU has also encouraged member states to devote resources to countering radicalization and terrorist recruitment, issues that have been receiving renewed attention in light of growing European concerns about the possible threats posed by European fighters returning from the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Promoting law enforcement and intelligence cooperation with the United States has been another top EU priority since 2001. Washington has largely welcomed enhanced counterterrorism cooperation with the EU, which has led to a new dynamic in U.S.-EU relations by fostering dialogue on law enforcement and homeland security issues previously reserved for bilateral discussions. Contacts between U.S. and EU officials on police, judicial, and border control policy matters have increased substantially and a number of new U.S.-EU agreements have also been reached; these include information-sharing arrangements between the United States and EU police and judicial bodies, two U.S.-EU treaties on extradition and mutual legal assistance, and accords on container security and airline passenger data. In addition, the United States and the EU have been working together to curb terrorist financing and to strengthen transport security. Nevertheless, some challenges persist in fostering closer U.S.-EU cooperation in these fields. Among the most prominent and long-standing are data privacy and data protection issues. The negotiation of several U.S.-EU information-sharing agreements, from those related to tracking terrorist financial data to sharing airline passenger information, has been complicated by EU concerns about whether the United States could guarantee a sufficient level of protection for European citizens’ personal data. EU worries about U.S. data protection safeguards and practices have been further heightened by the unauthorized disclosures since June 2013 of U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs and subsequent allegations of U.S. collection activities in Europe (including reports that U.S. intelligence agencies have monitored EU diplomatic offices and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone). Other issues that have led to periodic tensions include detainee policies, differences in the U.S. and EU terrorist designation lists, and balancing measures to improve border controls and border security with the need to facilitate legitimate transatlantic travel and commerce. Congressional decisions related to intelligence-gathering reforms, data privacy, border controls, and transport

security may affect how future U.S.-EU counterterrorism cooperation evolves. In addition, given the European Parliament’s growing influence in many of these policy areas, Members of Congress may be able to help shape the Parliament’s views and responses through ongoing contacts and the existing Transatlantic Legislators’ Dialogue (TLD). This report examines the evolution of U.S.-EU counterterrorism cooperation and the ongoing challenges that may be of interest in the 113 th Congress.

XT – Intel Cooperation Turn

NSA surveillance undermines intelligence cooperation with allies.Washington Examiner, 5/12/2015.  Charles Hoskinson. “NSA spying undermines global efforts to fight terrorism,” http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nsa-spying-undermines-global-efforts-to-fight-terrorism/article/2564341.

Surveillance by the National Security Agency is undermining intelligence cooperation with allies as the U.S. fights the growing threat of Islamic extremists.The June 2013 revelations of NSA spying by contractor Edward Snowden are having repercussions, particularly in Germany, even as many allies come to appreciate the need to keep closer tabs on potential terrorists in the wake of deadly attacks in Europe and North America.Reports in the German media that the NSA asked the German intelligence service BND to   spy on Siemens , a German company suspected of dealing with Russia, as well as other European companies and politicians, have rattled the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, which is already dealing with demands from a parliamentary investigation into Snowden's allegations.The BND last week reportedly   stopped sharing Internet surveillance data   with the NSA, the latest fallout from the scandal. Efforts to smooth out the bumps caused by Snowden have contributed to some of the fallout, as European parliaments become more assertive at overseeing their own intelligence agencies, which often are full partners in the NSA's activities.

XT – EU Cooperation Key

Intelligence sharing is key to effective operations --- diplomacy key to maintain those coalitions.Anna-Katherine Staser McGill and David H. Gray, Summer 2012. School of Graduate and Continuing Studies in Diplomacy Norwich University; and Campbell University. “Challenges to International Counterterrorism Intelligence Sharing,” Global Security Studies, 3.3, http://globalsecuritystudies.com/McGill%20Intel%20Share.pdf.

It is clear that diplomacy will continue to be a key component in US counterterrorism coalition building. Intelligence sharing, as a by-product of these efforts, will likely improve for as long as trust is maintained or improved and compromises are made in the greater interest of combating the shared threat of terrorism. However, the US is also likely to face continuing foreseeable challenges from the ever expanding breadth of its international allies, its increasing dependence on its counterterrorism coalitions, and unpredictable setbacks to international trust like WikiLeaks. There are ways, however, to allay the impact of these challenges if not overcome them all together. With regards to traditional allies the United States must continue to negotiate a close working relationship with its NATO, EU, and 5 EYES partners. Great strides have been made but future disagreements on policy, tactics, and strategy for the war on terrorism are inevitable. The best way to prepare for such future issues is to continue to foster a positive collaborative relationship with these nations so that mutual trust will prevent arguments from threatening the survival of the alliance. This means that the US must carefully manage its international position. It cannot exploit legal loopholes like exporting suspects to other nations for questionable interrogations; it cannot bully its friends nor act unilaterally against their wishes; and it must hold itself to high moral standards befitting a liberal democracy. For new and non-traditional allies, Reveron states that “the long-term challenge for policymakers will be to convert these short-term tactical relationships into meaningful alliances while protecting against counterintelligence threats” (467). Traditional alliances have to start somewhere and over time these new relationships can turn in to tried and tested cooperation. In order to further develop these relationships the US should attempt to iron out policy differences in other arenas rather than turn a blind eye to them and continue providing technical and material support to their development of effective intelligence programs. The US should not however hold CT cooperation supreme over other critical issues such as nuclear and conventional arms proliferation and human rights violations. Nations like Iran and Syria may be helpful in the short term and for limited purposes but this does not negate their less desirable practices. Finally, the US will also need to look inward to prevent more classified information leaks. The US needs to be more critical in the issuance of security clearances, employ digital monitoring of who is downloading information and in what amount to prevent mass dumps, and give greater importance to curtailing the “insider threat” of US citizens leaking information overall. Improving intelligence security will help to mitigate the blowback from WikiLeaks and will go a long way to advancing US credibility and trust building. The careful maintenance and development of counterterrorism intelligence sharing is no doubt critical to the success of national and international-level CT operations. As this paper has demonstrated, many of the solutions to challenges facing CT intelligence sharing will require long-term solutions requiring patience, compromise, and vigilance. It will no doubt be a difficult task but intelligence is the first line of defense against terrorism. As such, it is imperative that the United States do all that it can strengthen this defense.

EU intelligence cooperation is key to effective prevention of terrorism but NSA surveillance deters cooperation.George X. Protopapas, December 2014. Analyst at the ResearchInstitute for European and American Studies (RIEAS) and member of International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies. “European Union’s Intelligence Cooperation: A Failed Imagination?” Journal of Mediterranean and Balkan Intelligence, 4.2, http://www.academia.edu/10996393/European_Union_s_Intelligence_Cooperation_A_Failed_Imagination.

In addition, Snowden’s case provoked confrontation among the euro Atlantic   partners   as   the   National Security Agency (NSA)   spying   revelations   broke   the ties of trust between USA and EU Member- States. For example, the German   parliament   decided   the   establishment   of   a   special   Bundestag   commi ttee   in order to investigate the global spying activities of the American National Security Agency (NSA) and European counterparts such as the GCHQ in the UK. Furthermore, the committee will likely examine if the German intelligence agencies were either aware of, or complicit in, the gathering of people’s data.18 The threat of the spread of Islamic extremism in the European continent desperately demands a close cooperation of the intelligence communities of USA, the European Union and the European states. The European Islamist extremists, who fight in the war of Syria against the president Bashar Assad pose a very dangerous threat, when they return in their European hometowns. The intelligence cooperation and   sharing between USA and the European allies increase the possibilities for an effective identification and the prevention of terrorist , terrorism attacks and the organized crime’s illegal activities. In addition, the links between Islamic terrorist cells and organized crime groups   pose a   more combined   threat to   European security, as   the terrorists   and criminals has a boarder field of cooperation (illegal trade weapons, smuggling, human trafficking, drugs, extortion, adductions for money etc.)

2AC – AT: Terrorism DA – No Terror Threat (AQ/ISIS)

Global terror threats are exaggerated --- ISIS and AQ talk a big game but don’t pose a real threat.Stratfor, 5/14/2015. “Don't Take Terrorism Threats at Face Value,” Security Weekly, https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/dont-take-terrorism-threats-face-value.

The Islamic State has demonstrated in the past year that it is quite adept in its use of social media as a tool to raise money, recruit fighters and inspire grassroots jihadists to conduct attacks. This week, however, its social media network was heavily focused on making threats. On May 11, Twitter users associated with the Islamic State unleashed two seemingly unrelated threat campaigns. One using the hashtag #LondonAttack, displayed photos of London and weapons (including AK-47 rifles and what appeared to be suicide bombs) and urged Muslims in the United Kingdom not to visit shopping malls. The second campaign threatened to launch a cyber war against the United States and Europe.The Islamic State took credit for the   botched May 3 attack in Garland, Texas , saying it would carry out harder and "more bitter" attacks inside the United States. Coinciding with the Islamic State's threats, FBI Director James Comey warned that his agency does not have a handle on the grassroots terrorism problem in the United States. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson noted that the United States has entered "a new phase in the global terrorist threat, where the so-called lone wolf could strike at any moment." Michael Morell, the former Deputy Director of the CIA, added his voice by claiming that the Islamic State has the ability to conduct a 9/11-style attack today.While these statements and warnings paint a bleak picture, a threat should never be taken at face value — when placed into context, these claims aren't as dire as they seem.Analyzing ThreatsWhen analyzing a direct threat from a person or organization it is important to understand that in most cases they come from a position of weakness rather than power. The old saying "all bark and no bite" is based on this reality. This applies to personal threats as well as terror-related threats. Terrorism   is frequently used by weak actors as a way of taking asymmetrical military action against a superior opponent. Despite its battlefield successes against the Iraqi and Syrian governments and militant groups, the Islamic State is certainly far weaker militarily than the United States and Europe.An important part of threat evaluation is assessing if the party making the threat possesses both the intention to conduct such an action and the capability to carry out that intent. Indeed, many threats are made by groups or individuals who have neither intent nor capability. They are made simply to create fear and panic or to influence the conduct or behavior of the target, as in the cases of a person who sends a "white powder" letter to a government office or a student who phones in a bomb threat to his school to get out of taking a test.Generally, if a person or group possesses both the intent and capability to conduct an act of violence, they just do it. There is little need to waste the time and effort to threaten what they are about to do. In fact, by telegraphing their intent they might provide their target with the opportunity to avoid the attack. Professional terrorists often invest a lot of time and resources in a plot, especially a spectacular transnational attack. Because of this, they take great pains to hide their

operational activity so that the target or authorities do not catch wind of it and employ countermeasures that would prevent the successful execution of the scheme. Instead of telegraphing their attack, terrorist groups prefer to conduct the attack and exploit it after the fact, something sometimes called the propaganda of the deed.Certainly, people who possess the capability to fulfill the threat sometimes make threats. But normally in such cases the threat is made in a conditional manner. For example, the United States threatened to invade Afghanistan unless the Taliban government handed over Osama bin Laden. The Islamic State, however, is not in that type of dominating position. If it dispatched a team or teams of professional terrorist operatives to the United States and Europe to conduct terrorist attacks, the very last thing it would want to do is alert said countries to the presence of those teams and have them get rolled up. Trained terrorist operatives who have the ability to travel in the United States or Europe are far too valuable to jeopardize with a Twitter threat.Rather than reveal a network of sophisticated Islamic State operatives poised to conduct devastating attacks on the United States and Europe, these threats are meant to instill fear and strike terror into the hearts of one of their intended audiences: the public at large. I say one of their audiences because these threats are not only aimed at the American and European public. They are also meant to send a message to radicalize and energize grassroots jihadists like those who have conducted Islamic State-related attacks in the West.Examining the StatementsFirst, it is important to understand the context of the statements made by FBI Director Comey, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Johnson and former CIA Deputy Director Morell. Comey's statement about not having a complete handle on the grassroots terrorist threat is true. The very nature of such operatives makes them difficult for governments to combat. However, the FBI has been very successful in interdicting grassroots plots in recent months. In fact, I cannot recall so many grassroots operatives being arrested so closely together. However, one of the factors driving Comey's recent remarks is his steadfast belief that technological developments, such as encryption, are creating "dark spaces" that the FBI does not have the ability to investigate. Comey contends that there is no place in the physical world that the FBI cannot get a warrant to search, but technology has permitted criminals and terrorists to create virtual places where the FBI simply cannot penetrate even if they procure the proper search warrants. Comey's recent statement is part of his campaign to convince the public and congress that the FBI needs the ability to investigate those places.Secretary Johnson's statement about the new jihadist threat is also nothing new. Indeed, I heard him make   the same statement last November   and took issue with it then. Leaderless resistance, the terrorist operational model that stresses the importance of lone wolf operatives, is simply not a new problem in the United States. It has existed for decades and been actively promoted in the jihadist world since at least 2004. Michael Morell is on a book tour and attempting to sell as many books as possible. One way to accomplish that is to make eye-popping claims. If the Islamic State had the capability to launch a 9/11-style attack inside the United States, or a similar spectacular terrorist attack, it would have already done so. Instead, the Islamic State has been forced to rely on grassroots operatives to conduct less than spectacular attacks on its behalf. Furthermore, the pre-9/11 paradigm has changed and there is simply no way an airline captain is going to relinquish control of his aircraft to be used as a guided cruise missile — nor would the passengers permit it. Because of this, it is very hard to imagine the Islamic State conducting a 9/11-style attack.

XT – No Terror Threat

Global terror threats are inflated --- AQ and ISIS don’t pose a credible threat of major attacks.Nick Gillespie , 9/10/2014. Editor in chief of Reason.com. “Why We Shouldn't Be Scared of ISIS: Threat Inflation and Our Next Dumb War,” The Daily Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/10/why-we-shouldn-t-be-scared-of-isis-threat-inflation-and-our-next-dumb-war.html.

More than a dozen years after the horrors of 9/11, we find ourselves in aGroundhog Day-style nightmare. We wake up yet again to find ourselves terrified of a radical Islamist group that shows no compunction about barbarically killing American civilians and gets off on issuing apocalyptic warnings about a coming age of Allah uber Alles. These days, ISIS is wired; al Qaeda is tired; and Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi expired.“God willing,” proclaims an ISIS spokesman, “we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House.” Administration officials are only too happy to play along as well. ISIS, explains Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk, “is worse than al Qaeda,” while a deputy secretary of defense warns that ISIS has proclaimed, “We’re coming for you, Barack Obama.”And so we’re being gulled into a new-and-improved crusade to fix a Middle East still utterly destabilized in large part due to our still-smoldering failure to reshape desert sand into a form more to our desires. As we prep for the next “smart war” engineered by Obama (he’s against “dumb wars,” remember, and lives by the credo “don’t do stupid shit”), it’s worth acknowledging that the signature characteristic of America’s 21st-century war on terrorism and foreign policy has been massive threat inflation at every level. Until we fully grok that terrorism—whether state-sponsored or stateless—thrives on the overreaction of its targets and that we have overreacted so far at virtually every turn, we have no hope of enacting real solutions.Domestically, we are finally beginning to understand that threat inflation has produced results like the petty, ineffective, and costly indignities that we experience each and every time we board an airplane. Even brass-balled, pro-security Republicans who are otherwise quick to redact the Constitution in the name of national security understand that the Transportation Security Administration exemplifies wasted time and money. Every time you raise your hands in the air and get irradiated in the name of national security, the terrorists have won another small victory. On the 10th anniversary of the TSA’s creation, Reps. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and John Mica (R-Fla.) released a report that concluded (in Broun’s words), “ Americans have spent nearly $60   billion, and they are no safer today than they were before 9/11. ” The simple act of reinforcing cockpit doors has guaranteed that an American airliner will not be hijacked and used as a missile again. The TSA, by contrast, exemplifies “security theater,” or visible actions to make people feel comfortable while doing nothing to actually increase safety.The sheen has also mostly worn off The Patriot Act, that awful, Constitution-shredding piece of legislation that, until the passage of Obamacare, held the record for being the least-read law that was rubber-stamped by a pliant Congress (at least our representatives debated The Affordable Care Act). Ongoing revelations about massive bipartisan government abuses of power and the general ineffectiveness of the Patriot Act have driven home the reality that government will use whatever powers it has to do pretty much whatever it can get away with.But when it comes to foreign threats in foreign lands, we’re still as gullible as the tourists Mark Twain chronicled in Innocents Abroad. As Ohio State University political scientist John Mueller has written , at least since 9/11, our elected officials and policymakers have been quick to designate any number of states (Iraq, Iran, North Korea, for starters) and terrorist groups (the Taliban, al Qaeda,

and now ISIS) as “existential threats” to the United States and our way of life. This is, to say the least, preposterous. Unlike, say, the old Soviet Union, which controlled a vast nuclear arsenal capable of blowing up the planet and a large number of vassal states, none of these enemies has the military or economic might to challenge the United States. “As a misguided Turkish proverb holds,” explains Mueller, “‘If your enemy be an ant, imagine him to be an elephant.’”The original sin of post-9/11 foreign policy stems from the intertwined and equally mistaken ideas that al Qaeda was a potent, ongoing “existential” threat to America and that the United States had a responsibility to “nation build” in the Islamic world rather than avenge monstrous acts against its citizens. As Mueller and Mark G. Stewart note in their 2012 survey of “Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Since 9/11” (PDF), the 9/11 attacks were not the start of a new era of mass terroristic violence in the West. “Terrorists are not really all that capable a bunch, terrorism tends to be a counterproductive exercise, and 9/11 is increasingly standing out as an aberration, not a harbinger,” they write in their survey of 50 Islamist terrorist acts since 2001.The United States had every right and reason to destroy al Qaeda’s capabilities and hunt down its leadership (which it eventually did do, after a long detour into Iraq). But apart from hawks who are always on the hunt for the next military engagement, who among us will argue that America’s adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq have left those places and neighboring areas more stable?As with al Qaeda back in the day, our fears of ISIS suffer from massive threat inflation at every possible level.   At the start of the summer, the number of ISIS fighters in Iraq was somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 to 10,000; those numbers have doubtless grown but they still face off against more than a quarter of a million Iraqi troops and somewhere between 80,000 and 240,000 Peshmerga soldiers. Even the much-maligned Free Syrian Army numbers 70,000 to 90,000. And, it’s worth pointing out,   ISIS is facing intense opposition   (and some cooperation) from other jihadist groups, including and especially al Qaeda.If the Iraqi armed forces are in fact incapable of fighting successfully against ISIS after years of training and resources given them by the United States, there is in fact little we will be able to do to change things in Iraq (Obama has already ruled out “boots on the ground,” and it’s unlikely he will change course between now and leaving office). At the same time, we’re now in a position where we are de facto allies with at least two of our longtime enemies in the immediate vicinity: Iran and Bashar al-Assad in Syria, whose government Barack Obama was set to attack just a year ago. Indeed, the widely expected push to start bombing targets in Syria can only help Assad, who earlier this year was supposedly close to total defeat. The United States and other Western countries being hit up to form the next multinational coalition are now prepping their citizens to help keep Assad in power for the foreseeable future.Add to this uncomfortable turn of events the fact that American arms given to Syrian opposition forces are now being used by ISIS against Iraqi (and eventually, one presumes, American) forces. If that is not enough to underscore shifting political alliances worthy of Orwell’s 1984, now comes news that Steven Sotloff, the American journalist just beheaded by ISIS, was sold to the group by “moderate Syrian rebels” of precisely the sort we were helping to take down Assad (the White House disputes this).Given all this, it’s easy to sympathize with why Barack Obama copped to not having a strategy on what to do in the Middle East. But given his past record—tripling troop strength in Afghanistan with nothing to show for it, bombing Libya with nothing to show for it, “resetting” relations with Russia with nothing to show for it—there’s no reason to be hopeful that the president will finally come up with a workable plan. Especially if early reports that he’s pursuing a three-year strategy that will, according to The New York Times, outlast his second term, thus saddling the next president with an inherited war of choice.At the very least, it’s worth holding the president and his planners accountable for clarifying whether ISIS in fact poses any sort of threat to the United States homeland and narrowly defined American interests, the two things on which foreign policy and military action should be built. Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), the House Foreign Affairs Committee

chairman, has stated flatly that “We don't have any information about credible planning for an attack" by ISIS,   an assessment that has been corroborated by both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

XT – No Terror Threat – Homegrown Terrorism

A major study demonstrates that the threat of homegrown terrorism is overblown --- Muslim-American communities overwhelming constrain radicalization.CNN, 1/6/2010. “Study: Threat of Muslim-American terrorism in U.S. exaggerated,” http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/01/06/muslim.radicalization.study/.

The terrorist threat posed by radicalized Muslim- Americans has been exaggerated, according to a study released Wednesday by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.A small number of Muslim-Americans have undergone radicalization since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the study found. It compiled a list of 139 individuals it categorized as "Muslim-American terrorism offenders" who had become radicalized in the U.S. in that time -- a rate of 17 per year.That level is "small compared to other violent crime in America, but not insignificant," according to the study, titled "Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans."To be included on the list, an offender had to have been wanted, arrested, convicted or killed in connection with terrorism-related activities since 9/11 -- and have lived in the United States, regardless of immigration status, for more than a year prior to arrest.Of the 139 offenders, fewer than a third successfully executed a violent plan, according to a Duke University statement on the study, and most of those were overseas. Read the report:"Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans""Muslim-American organizations and the vast majority of individuals that we interviewed firmly reject the radical extremist ideology that justifies the use of violence to achieve political ends," David Schanzer, an associate professor in Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy and director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, said in the statement.In the aftermath of 9/11, however, as well as terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world, the possible radicalization of Muslim-Americans is a "key counterterrorism concern" -- magnified by heavy publicity that accompanies the arrests of Muslim-Americans, such as that seen in the wake of the November shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 people were killed. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, a Muslim born in Virginia, is charged in connection with that incident.Other high-profile incidents include the charging of eight Somali-American men on charges related to what authorities say are efforts to recruit youths from the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area to fight for al-Shabaab, a Somali guerrilla movement battling the African country's U.N.-backed transitional government. At least two young men from Minnesota have been killed in Somalia, including one who blew himself up in what is believed to have been the first suicide bombing carried out by a naturalized U.S. citizen.In addition, five Americans were arrested last month in Pakistan, and police have said they are confident that they were planning terrorist attacks. A Pakistani court Monday gave police two weeks to prepare their case against the five; authorities have said they plan to prosecute the youths under the country's anti-terrorism act.But it is the Muslim-American communities themselves who play a large role in keeping the number of radicalized members low through their own practices, according to the study. Leaders and Muslim-American organizations denounce violent acts, for instance, in messages that have weight within communities.In addition, such communities often self-police -- confronting those who express radical ideology or support for terrorism and communicating concerns about radical individuals to authorities. Some Muslim-Americans have

adopted programs for youth to help identify those who react inappropriately to controversial issues so they can undergo counseling and education, the researchers said."Muslim-American communities have been active in preventing radicalization," said Charles Kurzman, professor of sociology at UNC, in the statement. "This is one reason that Muslim-American terrorism has resulted in fewer than three dozen of the 136,000 murders committed in the United States since 9/11."

2AC – AT: Terrorism DA – No Nuclear Terrorism

Their impact is irresponsible fearmongering – there is NO capacity for terrorists to acquire and execute a nuclear attackMueller and Stewart 12 [John Mueller is Senior Research Scientist at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Political Science, both at Ohio State University, and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Mark G. Stewart is Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow and Professor and Director at the Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability at the University of Newcastle in Australia, “The Terrorism Delusion”, International Security, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Summer 2012), pp. 81–110, Chetan]

It seems increasingly likely that the official and popular reaction to the terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2001, has been substantially deluded —massively disproportionate to the threat that al-Qaida has ever actually presented either

as an international menace or as an inspiration or model to homegrown amateurs. Applying the

extensive datasets on terrorism that have been generated over the last decades, we conclude that the chances of an American perishing at the hands of a terrorist at present rates is one in 3.5 million per year—well within the range of what risk analysts hold to be “acceptable risk.”40 Yet,

despite the importance of responsibly communicating risk and despite the costs of irresponsible

fearmongering , just about the only official who has ever openly put the threat presented by

terrorism in some sort of context is New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who in 2007 pointed out that

people should “get a life” and that they have a greater chance of being hit by lightning than of being a victim of terrorism—an observation that may be a bit off the mark but is roughly accurate.41 (It might be noted that, despite this unorthodox outburst, Bloomberg still managed to be re-elected two years later.) Indeed, much of the reaction to the September 11 attacks calls to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s fable of delusion, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which con artists convince the emperor’s court that they can weave stuffs of the most beautiful colors and elaborate patterns from the delicate silk and purest gold thread they are given. These stuffs, they further convincingly explain, have the property of remaining invisible to anyone who is unusually stupid or unfit for office. The emperor finds this quite appealing because not only will he have splendid new clothes, but he will be able to discover which of his officials are unfit for their posts—or in today’s terms, have lost their effectiveness. His courtiers, then, have great professional incentive to proclaim the stuffs on the loom to be absolutely magnificent even while mentally justifying this conclusion with the equivalent of

“absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Unlike the emperor’s new clothes, terrorism does of course exist. Much of the reaction to the threat, however, has a distinctly delusionary quality . In Carle’s view, for example, the CIA has been “spinning in self-referential

circles” in which “our premises were flawed, our facts used to fit our premises, our premises

determined, and our fears justified our operational actions, in a self-contained

process that arrived at a conclusion dramatically at odds with the facts.” The process “projected evil actions where there was, more often, muddled indirect and unavoidable complicity, or not much at all.” These “delusional ratiocinations,” he further observes, “were all sincerely, ardently held to have constituted a rigorous, rational process to identify terrorist threats” in which “the avalanche of reporting confirms its validity by its quantity,” in which there is a tendency to “reject incongruous or contradictory facts as erroneous, because they do not conform to accepted reality,” and in which potential dissenters are not-so-subtly reminded of career dangers: “Say what you want at meetings. It’s your decision. But you are doing yourself no favors.”42 Consider in this context the alarming and profoundly imaginary estimates of U.S. intelligence agencies in the year after the September 11 attacks that the number of trained al-Qaida operatives in the United States was between 2,000 and 5,000.43 Terrorist cells, they told reporters, were “embedded in most U.S. cities with sizable Islamic communities,” usually in the “run-down sections,” and were “up and active” because electronic intercepts had found some of them to be “talking to each other.”44 Another account relayed the view of “experts” that Osama bin Laden was ready to unleash an “11,000 strong terrorist army” operating in more than sixty countries “controlled by a Mr. Big who is based in Europe,” but that intelligence had “no

idea where thousands of these men are.”45 Similarly, FBI Director Robert Mueller assured the

Senate Intelligence Committee on February 11, 2003, that, although his agency had

yet to identify even one al-Qaida cell in the United States, “I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing,” a sentence rendered in bold lettering in his

prepared text. Moreover, he claimed that such unidentified entities presented “the greatest threat,” had “developed a support infrastructure” in the country, and had achieved both the “ability” and the “intent” to inflict “signi ficant casualties in the US with little warning.”46 Over the

course of time, such essentially delusionary thinking has been internalized

and institutionalized in a great many ways . For example, an extrapolation of

delusionary proportions is evident in the common observation that, because terrorists were able, mostly by thuggish means, to crash airplanes into buildings, they might therefore be able to construct a nuclear bomb. Brian Jenkins has run an internet search to discover how often variants of the term “al-Qaida” appeared within ten words of “nuclear.” There were only seven hits in 1999 and eleven in 2000, but the number soared to 1,742 in 2001 and to 2,931 in 2002.47 By 2008, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was assuring a congressional committee that what keeps every senior government leader awake at night is “the thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear.”48 Few of the sleepless, it seems, found much solace in the fact that an al-Qaida computer seized in Afghanistan in 2001 indicated that the group’s budget for research on weapons of mass destruction (almost all of it focused on primitive

chemical weapons work) was $2,000 to $4,000.49 In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, officials now have many more al-Qaida computers, and nothing in their content appears to suggest that the group had the time or inclination, let alone the money, to set up and staff a uranium-seizing operation, as well as a fancy, super-high-technology facility to fabricate a bomb. This is a process that requires trusting corrupted foreign collaborators and other criminals, obtaining and transporting highly guarded material, setting up a machine shop staffed with top scientists and technicians, and rolling the heavy, cumbersome, and untested finished product into position to be detonated by a skilled crew—all while attracting no attention from outsiders.50 If the miscreants in the American cases have been unable to create and set off even the

simplest conventional bombs, it stands to reason that none of them were very close to creating, or having anything to do with, nuclear weapons—or for that matter biological, radiological, or chemical ones. In fact, with perhaps one exception, none

seems to have even dreamed of the prospect; and the exception is José Padilla

(case 2), who apparently mused at one point about creating a dirty bomb—a device that would disperse radiation—or even possibly an atomic one. His idea about isotope separation was to put uranium into a

pail and then to make himself into a human centrifuge by swinging the pail around in great arcs.51 Even if a weapon were made abroad and then brought into the United States, its detonation would require individuals in-country with the capacity to receive and handle the complicated weapons and then to set them off. Thus

far, the talent pool appears, to put mildly, very thin.

XT – No Nuclear Terrorism

No risk of nuclear terrorism --- the risk is consistently over-estimated.Walt 12 (Stephen, Belfer Professor of International Affairs – Harvard University, “What Terrorist Threat?,” Foreign Policy, 8-13, http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/13/what_terrorist_threat)Remember how the London Olympics were supposedly left vulnerable to terrorists after the security firm hired for the games admitted that it couldn't supply enough manpower? This "humiliating shambles" forced the British government to call in 3,500 security personnel of its own, and led GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney to utter some tactless remarks about Britain's alleged mismanagement during his

official "Foot-in-Mouth" foreign tour last month. Well, surprise, surprise. Not only was there no terrorist attack, the Games themselves came off rather well. There were the inevitable minor glitches, of course, but no disasters and some quite impressive organizational achievements. And of course, athletes from around the world delivered inspiring, impressive, heroic, and sometimes disappointing performances, which is what the Games are all about. Two lessons might be drawn from this event. The first is that the head-long rush to privatize everything -- including the provision of security -- has some obvious downsides. When markets and private firms fail, it is the state that has to come to the rescue. It was true after the 2007-08 financial crisis, it's true in the ongoing euro-mess, and it was true in the Olympics. Bear that in mind when Romney and new VP nominee Paul Ryan tout the virtues of shrinking

government, especially the need to privatize Social Security and Medicare. The second lesson is that we continue to over-react to the "terrorist threat." Here I recommend you read

John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart's The Terrorism Delusion : America's

Overwrought Response to September 11, in the latest issue of International Security. Mueller and Stewart analyze 50 cases of supposed "Islamic terrorist plots" against the United States, and show how virtually all of the perpetrators were (in their words) "incompetent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational and foolish."

They quote former Glenn Carle, former deputy national intelligence officer for transnational

threats saying "we must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are," noting further that al Qaeda's "capabilities are far inferior to its desires." Further, Mueller and Stewart estimate that expenditures on domestic homeland security (i.e., not counting the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan) have increased by more

than $1 trillion since 9/11, even though the annual risk of dying in a domestic terrorist attack is about 1 in 3.5 million . Using conservative assumptions and conventional risk-assessment

methodology, they estimate that for these expenditures to be cost-effective "they would have had to deter, prevent, foil or protect against 333 very large attacks that would otherwise have been successful every year." Finally, they worry that this exaggerated sense of danger has now been "internalized": even when politicians and "terrorism experts" aren't hyping the danger, the public still sees the threat as large and imminent. As they conclude: ... Americans seems to have internalized their anxiety about terrorism, and politicians and policymakers have come to believe that they can defy it only at their own peril.  Concern about appearing to be soft on terrorism has replaced concern about seeming to be soft on communism, a phenomenon that lasted far longer than the dramatic that generated it ... This extraordinarily

exaggerated and essentially delusional response may prove to be perpetual." Which is another way of saying that you should be prepared to keep standing in those pleasant and efficient TSA lines for the rest of your life, and to keep paying for far-flung foreign interventions designed to "root out" those nasty jihadis.

1AR – AT: Bioterrorism Impact

No bioterror impactKeller, 3/7/2013 -- Analyst at Stratfor, Post-Doctoral Fellow at University of Colorado at Boulder (Rebecca, 2013, "Bioterrorism and the Pandemic Potential," http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/bioterrorism-and-pandemic-potential)

It is important to remember that the risk of biological attack is very low and that, partly

because viruses can mutate easily, the potential for natural outbreaks is unpredictable. The key is having the right tools in case of an outbreak, epidemic or pandemic, and these include a plan for containment, open channels of

communication, scientific research and knowledge sharing. In most cases involving a potential pathogen, the news can appear far worse than the actual threat. Infectious Disease Propagation Since the beginning of February there have been

occurrences of H5N1 (bird flu) in Cambodia, H1N1 (swine flu) in India and a new, or novel, coronavirus (a member of the same virus family as SARS) in the United Kingdom. In the past week, a man from Nepal traveled through several countries and eventually ended up in the United States, where it was discovered he had a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report stating that antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitals are on the rise. In addition, the United States is experiencing a worse-than-normal flu season, bringing more attention to the influenza virus and other infectious diseases. The potential for a disease to spread is measured by its effective reproduction number, or R-value, a numerical score that indicates whether a disease will propagate or die out. When the disease first occurs and no preventive measures are in place, the reproductive potential of the disease is referred to as R0, the basic reproduction rate. The numerical value is the number of cases a single case can cause on average during its infectious period. An R0 above 1 means the disease will likely spread (many influenza viruses have an R0 between 2 and 3, while measles had an R0 value of between 12 and 18), while an R-value of less than 1 indicates a disease will likely die out. Factors contributing to the spread of the disease include the length of time people are contagious, how mobile they are when they are contagious, how the disease spreads (through the air or bodily fluids) and how susceptible the population is. The initial R0, which assumes no inherent immunity, can be decreased through control measures that bring the value either near or below 1, stopping the further spread of the disease. Both the coronavirus family and the influenza virus are RNA viruses, meaning they replicate using only RNA (which can be thought of as a single-stranded version of DNA, the more commonly known double helix containing genetic makeup). The rapid RNA replication used by many viruses is very susceptible to mutations, which are simply errors in the replication process. Some mutations can alter the behavior of a virus, including the severity of infection and how the virus is transmitted. The combination of two different strains of a virus, through a process known as antigenic shift, can result in what is essentially a new virus. Influenza, because it infects multiple species, is the hallmark example of this kind of evolution. Mutations can make the virus unfamiliar to the body's immune system. The lack of established immunity within a population enables a disease to spread more rapidly because the population is less equipped to battle the disease. The trajectory of a mutated virus (or any other infectious disease) can reach three basic levels of magnitude. An outbreak is a small, localized occurrence of a pathogen. An epidemic indicates a more widespread infection that is still regional, while a pandemic indicates that the disease has spread to a global level. Virologists are able to track mutations by deciphering the genetic sequence of new infections. It is this technology that helped scientists to determine last year that a smattering of respiratory infections discovered in the Middle East was actually a novel coronavirus. And it is possible that through a series of mutations a virus like H5N1 could change in such a way to become easily transmitted between humans. Lessons Learned There have been several influenza pandemics throughout history. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is often cited as a worst-case scenario, since it infected between 20 and 40 percent of the world's population, killing roughly 2 percent of those infected. In more recent history, smaller incidents, including an epidemic of the SARS virus in 2003 and what was technically defined as a pandemic of the swine flu (H1N1) in 2009, caused fear of another pandemic like the 1918 occurrence. The spread of these two diseases was contained before reaching catastrophic levels, although the economic impact from fear of the diseases reached beyond the infected areas. Previous pandemics have underscored the importance of preparation, which is essential to effective disease management. The World Health Organization lays out a set of guidelines for pandemic prevention and containment. The general principles of preparedness include stockpiling vaccines, which is done by both the United States and the European Union (although the possibility exists that the vaccines may not be effective against a new virus). In the event of an outbreak, the guidelines call for developed nations to share vaccines with developing nations. Containment strategies beyond vaccines include quarantine of exposed individuals, limited travel and additional screenings at places where the virus could easily spread, such as airports. Further measures include the closing of businesses, schools and borders. Individual measures can also be taken to guard against infection. These involve general hygienic measures -- avoiding mass gatherings, thoroughly washing hands and even wearing masks in specific, high-risk situations. However, airborne viruses such as influenza are still the most difficult to contain because of the method of transmission. Diseases like noroviruses, HIV or cholera are more serious but have to be transmitted by blood, other bodily fluids or fecal matter. The threat of a rapid pandemic is thereby slowed because it is easier to identify potential contaminates and either avoid or sterilize them. Research is another important aspect of overall preparedness. Knowledge gained from studying the viruses and the ready availability of information can be instrumental in tracking diseases. For example, the genomic sequence of the novel coronavirus was made available, helping scientists and doctors in different countries to readily identify the infection in limited cases and implement quarantine procedures as necessary. There have been only 13 documented cases of the novel coronavirus, so much is unknown regarding the disease. Recent cases in the United Kingdom indicate possible human-to-human transmission. Further sharing of information relating to the novel coronavirus can aid in both treatment and containment. Ongoing research into viruses can also help make future vaccines more efficient against possible mutations, though this type of research is not without controversy. A case in point is research on the H5N1 virus. H5N1 first appeared in humans in 1997. Of the more than 600 cases that have appeared since then, more than half have resulted in death. However, the virus is not easily transmitted because it must cross from bird to human. Human-to-human transmission of H5N1 is very rare, with only a few suspected incidents in the known history of the disease. While there is an H5N1 vaccine, it is possible that a new variation of the vaccine would be needed were the virus to mutate into a form that was transmittable between humans. Vaccines can take months or even years to develop, but preliminary research on the virus, before an outbreak, can help speed up development. In December 2011, two separate research labs, one in the United States and one in the Netherlands, sought to publish their research on the H5N1 virus. Over the course of their research, these labs had created mutations in the virus that allowed for airborne transmission between ferrets. These mutations also caused other changes, including a decrease in the virus's lethality and robustness (the ability to survive outside the carrier). Publication of the research was delayed due to concerns that the results could increase the risk of accidental release of the virus by encouraging further research, or that the information could be used by terrorist organizations to conduct a biological attack. Eventually, publication of papers by both labs was allowed. However, the scientific community imposed a voluntary moratorium in order to allow the community and regulatory bodies to determine the best practices moving forward. This voluntary ban was lifted for much of the world on Jan. 24, 2013. On Feb. 21, the National Institutes of Health in the United States issued proposed guidelines for federally funded labs working with H5N1. Once standards are set, decisions will likely be made on a case-by-case basis to allow research to continue. Fear of a pandemic resulting from research on H5N1 continues even after the moratorium was lifted. Opponents of the research cite the possibility that the virus will be accidentally released or intentionally used as a bioweapon, since information in scientific publications would be considered readily available. The Risk-Reward Equation The risk of an accidental release of H5N1 is similar to that of other infectious pathogens currently being studied. Proper safety standards are key, of course, and experts in the field have had a year to determine the best way to proceed, balancing safety and research benefits. Previous work with the virus was conducted at biosafety level three out of four, which requires researchers wearing respirators and disposable gowns to work in pairs in a negative pressure environment. While many of these labs are part of universities, access is controlled either through keyed entry or even palm scanners. There are roughly 40 labs that submitted to the voluntary ban. Those wishing to resume work after the ban was lifted must comply with guidelines requiring strict national oversight and close communication and collaboration with national

authorities. The risk of release either through accident or theft cannot be completely eliminated, but given the established parameters the risk is minimal. The use of the pathogen as a biological weapon requires an assessment of whether a non-state actor would have the capabilities to isolate the virulent strain, then weaponize and distribute it. Stratfor has long held the position that while terrorist organizations may have rudimentary capabilities regarding biological weapons, the

likelihood of a successful attack is very low. Given that the laboratory version of H5N1

-- or any influenza virus, for that matter -- is a contagious pathogen, there would be two possible modes that a non-state actor would have to instigate an attack. The virus could be refined and then aerosolized and released into a populated

area, or an individual could be infected with the virus and sent to freely circulate within a population. There are severe constraints that make success using either of these methods unlikely.

The technology needed to refine and aerosolize a pathogen for a biological attack is beyond the capability of most non-state actors. Even if they were able to develop a weapon,

other factors such as wind patterns and humidity can render an attack ineffective. Using a human carrier is a less expensive method, but it requires that the biological agent be a contagion. Additionally, in order to infect the large number of people necessary

to start an outbreak, the infected carrier must be mobile while contagious, something that is doubtful with a serious disease like small pox. The carrier also

cannot be visibly ill because that would limit the necessary human contact. As far as continued research is

concerned, there is a risk-reward equation to consider. The threat of a terrorist attack using biological weapons is very low. And while it is impossible to predict viral outbreaks, it is important to be able to recognize a new strain of virus that could result in an epidemic or even a pandemic, enabling countries to respond more effectively. All of this hinges on the level of preparedness of developed nations and their ability to rapidly exchange information, conduct research and promote individual awareness of the threat.

Even if information is available, the risk of a successful attack is low.Ouagrham-Gormley 2012Sonia Ben, Assistant Professor in the Biodefense Program at George Mason University, “Barriers to Bioweapons,” International Security, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Spring 2012), pp. 80–114

Knowledge Acquisition and Diffusion in Past Weapons Programs Studies of knowledge transfer, including in weapons technology, indicate that access to written data does not guarantee its successful transfer and subsequent use, even by experts. The reasons fall into four main categories: the nature of knowledge; external factors; socioeconomic conditions; and the organizational dimensions of programs. As a consequence,

scientiªc data produced elsewhere can be used in a different context as a general guideline to perform a speciªc task, but rarely as a comprehensive set of “how to” instructions to reproduce past work, even with the necessary expertise, which poses serious challenges to weapons development and proliferation. the tacit, local,

and collective nature of knowledge Technical and scientiªc knowledge results from a process of experimentation and testing that, in addition to producing explicit knowledge

(e.g., reports, formulas, and designs), produces tacit knowledge, or unarticulated know-how or skills that cannot, or only with considerable difªculty, be translated into written form. Tacit knowledge may also take the form of laboratory practices, routines, or techniques, which, although important for the success of an experiment or process, may not be included in a written document. Two reasons explain their absence: (1) they are not recognized as being an essential part of the experiment or process, or (2) scientists and technicians are unaware that their peculiar way of

doing things is crucial for experimental success. Because scientiªc data capture only the explicit portion of the author’s expertise, it is an incomplete representation of the knowledge produced, which constitutes a major obstacle to its efªcient use by others. In addition, written documents rarely explain why scientiªc teams make certain technical choices. 16 As a result, written information requires a degree of interpretation for use in speciªc contexts, implying that those who receive this information must possess sufªcient knowledge to

decide how best to use it. Yet, even when the users have the required base knowledge, the absence of the associated tacit knowledge makes the use of explicit data difªcult. Analysts have recorded such technical difªculties in past weapons programs when the transfer of data occurs between state programs, but also within state programs. For instance, despite receiving hundreds of pages of scientiªc information on the production of the Soviet anthrax weapon designed by the Kirov bioweapons laboratory in Russia, the Stepnogorsk bioweapons production plant in Kazakhstan failed to produce an anthrax weapon based on this information after two years of repeated attempts. Only with the addition of sixtyªve scientists from two Russian facilities at Kirov and Sverdlovsk, and three more years of interpretation and modiªcation of the original protocols, did the Kazakh facility succeed in producing an anthrax weapon, one that proved to be dramatically different

from the Kirov weapon. 17 Similarly, the blueprints and scientiªc data that Britain provided to the United States in the early 1940s, which described the production process and weaponization of biological agents, could not be

used in the U.S. bioweapons program without extensive modiªcations. The British production process used a series of connected milk churns and was capable of producing only small amounts of agents. The process was not suited for the large-scale production envisioned by the United States. As a result, the United States had to create a new development and production infrastructure, as well as production processes, which required several years of research and testing. 18 Another challenge in using others’ scientiªc data is that tacit knowledge does not transfer easily. It requires proximity to the original source(s) and an extended master-apprentice relationship. 19

Scientiªc and technical knowledge is also highly local: it is developed within a speciªc infrastructure, using a speciªc knowledge base, and at a speciªc location. Some studies have shown that the use of data and technology in a new environment

frequently requires adaption to the new site. 20 Successful adaptation often requires the involvement of the original scientiªc author(s) to guide the adjustment. For

instance, some of the problems encountered during the production of the Soviet anthrax weapon were solved only after the authors of the weapon in Russia traveled to Kazakhstan to assist their colleagues. These individuals trained their colleagues, transferring their tacit knowledge in the process, and helped adjust the technical protocols to

the Kazakh infrastructure, which was substantially different from that of the Russian facility. Even with the presence of these original authors, ªve years were needed to complete the process of successful transfer and use of bioweapons technology. 21 A further complication is that tacit knowledge can decay over time and may disappear if not used or transferred. Studies have shown that trying to re-create lost knowledge can be difªcult, if not impossible. 22 Finally, knowledge and technology development, particularly in complex technological projects, is rarely the work of one expert. Instead it requires the cumulative and cooperative work of teams of individuals with speciªc skills. This is particularly true in weapons programs, which pose a variety of problems spanning many disciplines. For example, biological weapons development can involve mechanical and electrical engineering, chemistry, statistics, aerobiology, and microbiology, demanding large interdisciplinary

teams of scientists, engineers, and technicians. A successful weapon, therefore, is not the product of an individual scientist working alone, but that of the collective work of those involved in the research, design, and testing of the weapon. 23 In this context, the efªcient use of written technical data would require access to or re-creation of the collective explicit and tacit knowledge of those involved in its development, making the reproducibility of an experiment or object particularly challenging. external factors External factors can also interfere with

the use and transfer of knowledge. In the biological sciences, the properties of reagents and other materials used in scientiªc experiments may differ from one location to another and may vary seasonally. An experiment conducted successfully in one location may not be reproducible in another because of the varying properties of the material used, even when the same individual conducts the experiment. 24 Other external factors that cannot be easily identiªed or quantiªed can also interfere with an experiment, even when the task is performed by an experienced scientist or technician who has had

previous successes in performing the task. 25 For example, within the U.S. bioweapons program, the production and scaling up of biological material were routinely subject to unexplained failures whenever production was interrupted to service or decontaminate the equipment. On these occasions, plant technicians at Fort Detrick—the main facility of the U.S. bioweapons program—experienced, on average, three weeks of

unsuitable production. The scientiªc staff could not identify the causes of such routine failures and could only assume that either a contaminant had been introduced during the service or cleanup, or that the technicians changed the way they were doing things and unconsciously corrected the problem only after several weeks. 26