aff cards - Wikispaces… · Web viewdomestic drone surveillance that the law should allow. This...

[File Title] [khirn]Michigan Debate 2015-2016

AFF CARDS

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1AC PRIVACYA. Drone surveillance is proliferating and unregulated Gilens, ACLU, 2013 (Naomi [ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project]; New Documents Reveal U.S. Marshals’ Drones Experiment, Underscoring Need for Government Transparency; https://www.aclu.org/blog/new-documents-reveal-us-marshals-drones-experiment-underscoring-need-government-transparency; kdf)The use of surveillance drones is growing rapidly in the United States , but we know little about how the federal government employs this new tech nology. Now, new information obtained by the ACLU shows

for the first time that the U.S. Marshals Service has experimented with using drones for domestic surveillance. We learned this through documents we released today, received in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents are available here. (We also released a short log of drone accidents from the Federal Aviation Administration as well as accident reports and other documents from the U.S. Air Force.) This revelation comes a week after a bipartisan bill to protect Americans’ privacy from domestic drones was introduced in the House. Although the Marshals Service told us it found 30 pages about its drones program in response to our FOIA request, it turned over only two of those pages—and even they were heavily redacted. Here’s what we know from the two short paragraphs of text we were able to see. Under a header entitled “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Man-Portable (UAV) Program,” an agency document overview begins: USMS Technical Operations Group's UAV Program provides a highly portable, rapidly deployable overhead collection device that will provide a multi-role surveillance platform to assist in [redacted] detection of targets. Another document reads: This developmental program is designed to provide [redacted] in support of TOG [presumably the agency’s Technical Operations Group] investigations and operations. This surveillance solution can be deployed during [multiple redactions] to support ongoing tactical operations. These heavily redacted documents reveal almost no information about the nature of the Marshals’ drone program. However, the Marshals Service explained to the Los Angeles Times that they tested two small drones in 2004 and 2005. The experimental program ended after both drones crashed. It is surprising that what seems like a small-scale experiment remained hidden from the public until our FOIA unearthed it. Even more surprising is that seven years after the program was discontinued, the Marshals still refuse to disclose almost any records about it. As drone use becomes more and more common, it is crucial that the government’s use of these spying machines be transparent and accountable to the American people. All too often, though, it is unclear which law enforcement agencies are using these tools, and how they are doing so. We should not have to guess whether our government is using these eyes in the sky to spy on us. As my colleague ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump told me, Americans have the right to know if and how the government is using drones to spy on them. Drones are too invasive a tool for it to be unclear when the public will be subjected to them. The government needs to respect Americans’ privacy while using this invasive technology, and the laws on the books need to be brought up to date to ensure that America does not turn into a drone surveillance state . All over the U.S., states and localities are trying to figure out through the democratic political process exactly what kind of protections we should put in place in light of the growing use of what Time Magazine called “the most powerful surveillance tool ever devised, on- or offline.” These debates are essential to a healthy democracy, and are heartening to see. However, this production from the Marshals Service underscores the need for a federal law to ensure that the government’s use of drones remains open and transparent. A number of federal lawmakers are already pushing to bring the law up to date. Representatives Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) recently introduced the first bipartisan legislation to regulate the government’s use of drones. The proposed legislation, which is supported by the ACLU, would enact judicial and Congressional oversight mechanisms, require government agencies to register all drones and get a warrant when using them for surveillance (except in emergency situations), and prohibit the domestic use of armed drones. We believe this bill—and hopefully a future companion bill in the Senate—will provide a strong foundation for future legislation protecting our privacy rights in the face of proliferating drone surveillance and government secrecy.

B. Current Legal frameworks are insufficient to address drone privacy concerns Rothfuss, JD Candidate, 2014 (Ian F [George Mason School of Law]; Student Comment: An Economic Perspective on the Privacy Implications of Domestic Drone Surveillance; 10 J.L. Econ. & Pol'y 441; kdf)Introduction A sixteen-hour standoff with police began after a suspect took control of six cows that wandered on to his farm and "chased police off his land with high powered rifles." n1 Without the suspect's knowledge, police used a Predator drone to locate and apprehend him on his 3,000-acre farm. n2 In addition to law enforcement, anyone may buy a handheld drone. The Parrot AR.Drone 2.0, for example, costs less than three hundred dollars and can fly up to 165 feet from its controller while recording and transmitting live high-definition video from the sky. n3 Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) have become essential to government surveillance overseas and are now being deployed domestically for law enforcement and [khirn] pg. 2


other purposes. The ability of drone s to conduct widespread domestic surveillance has raised serious privacy concerns . Both government and private actors may use drones. Given the proliferation of this new technology, Congress has recently directed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to expedite the licensing process and open the domestic airspace to drones. n4 Situations like the one described above will likely become more common in the near future. n5 Domestic drones [*442] have the potential to allow the government to effectively and efficiently monitor the activities of people across the nation. Part I of this Comment examines the capabilities of drones, discusses currently planned drone deployments, and examines recent developments that have brought the topic of domestic drone surveillance to the forefront of national security law discussions. This comment concludes that current law does not adequately protect privacy interests from the widespread surveillance that could result from the unrestricted domestic use of drones. Part II discusses the sources of the right to privacy and examines the current state of the law. Part III applies an economic perspective to determine the optimal level of domestic drone surveillance that the law should allow. This analysis is based upon a general economic model of surveillance developed by Andrew Song following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. n6 Economic analysis shows that the uncontrolled domestic deployment of drones would lead to an inefficient and unproductive loss of social utility. Prompt legislative action is therefore necessary to address the fundamental privacy challenges presented by the use of drones. Part IV concludes by proposing a legal framework to balance security and other interests while safeguarding the privacy rights of U.S. citizens. As discussed in this comment, such legislation should allow constructive use of the technology within a framework that protects individual privacy rights. I. Background: Domestic Deployment of Drones Recent congressional legislation has directed the FAA to expedite its current licensing process and allow the private and commercial use of drones in U.S. airspace by October 2015. n7 The FAA has streamlined the authorization process to "less than 60 days" for nonemergency drone operations. n8 Among other requirements, the recent legislation directs the FAA to allow government agencies to operate small drones weighing less than 4.4 pounds. n9 The use of drones can be expected to increase dramatically in the coming years. [*443] The FAA has already authorized many police departments and other agencies to use drones. n10 As of November 2012, the FAA oversaw 345 active Certificates of Waiver or Authorization that allow public entities to operate drones in civil airspace. n11 Customs and Border Protection uses Predator drones along the nation's borders "to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers" n12 and "the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations." n13 Predators owned by Customs and Border Protection and based at U.S. Air Force bases have been deployed on numerous occasions to assist local law enforcement. n14 One law enforcement agency has even deployed a drone capable of being armed with lethal and non-lethal weapons. n15 Drones also have applications beyond government law enforcement. Drones may be used to provide live video coverage of events without the need to use piloted helicopters and by paparazzi chasing after pictures of celebrities and other public figures. n16 Individuals may use drones to spy on their neighbors, to keep an eye on their children, or to keep tabs on a potentially unfaithful spouse. n17 The possibilities for corporate espionage and the theft of trade secrets are also endless. Drones range in size from handheld units to units the size of large aircraft and have a wide variety of capabilities. n18 Nearly fifty companies are reported to be developing an estimated 150 varieties of drone systems. n19 Users of drones may include the military, federal and local law enforcement agencies, business entities, and private individuals. Drones have many diverse domestic uses including surveillance of dangerous disaster sites, patrolling borders, helping law enforcement locate suspects, monitoring traffic, crop dusting, aerial mapping, media coverage, and many others. n20 [*444] Drones represent an unprecedented convergence of surveillance technologies that could lead to increased security but could also jeopardize the privacy of U.S. citizens. Drones may be equipped with a variety of technologies including high-resolution cameras, n21 face-recognition technology, n22 video-recording capability, n23 heat sensors, n24 radar systems, n25 night vision, n26 infrared sensors, n27 thermal-imaging cameras, n28 Wi-Fi and communications interception devices, n29 GPS, n30 license-plate scanners, n31 and other systems designed to aid in surveillance. Drones will soon be able to recognize faces and track the movement of subjects with only minimal visual-image data [*445] obtained from aerial surveillance. n32 Drones have the ability to break into wireless networks, monitor cell-phone calls, and monitor entire towns while flying at high altitude. n33 These rapid technological advancements present privacy challenges that were not contemplated when our existing laws were developed.

C. Regulation of domestic drones is key to prevent racist militarization of society Ahsanuddin MPAC research fellow 2014 (Sadia - principal investigator for the report and MPAC research fellow; Domestic Drones: Implications for Privacy and Due Process in the United States; Sep 8; www.mpac.org/publications/policy-papers/domestic-drones.php; kdf) (muslim public affairs council) Drones also impact due process rights. Drones are perhaps best known for the role they play in conducting signature strikes against suspected militants abroad. Will civilians on American soil ever be subjected to drone attacks? Should civilians fear the weaponization of drones or their use in delivering lethal payloads? Although the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments assure individuals of the right to due process before the deprivation of life, liberty, or property, these rig hts have already begun to erode due to the global war on terror and the use of drones to conduct signature strikes by virtue of executive decisions that are devoid of judicial review . With the mass introduction of domestic drones , there remains a threat and real fear that drones may be used to deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property with no opportunity to dispute the charges brought against them. Americans of all ethnicities and creeds are likely to be affected by the domestic deployment of drones. American Muslims have a special contribution to make to [khirn] pg. 3


this discussion. Having been subjected to special law enforcement attention and scrutiny, American Muslims find themselves particularly susceptible to infractions of civil liberties. As representatives of the American Muslim population and with the expertise to ground our analysis, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) proposes the following guidelines to address the issues of law enforcement use of drones, data collection, weaponization of drones, due process, oversight, and transparency: • Law enforcement use of drones should be restricted. • Data collection should be strictly monitored. • The FAA should require, not merely recommend, that test sites incorporate the Fair Information Principles into their privacy policies. • The weaponization of drones should be prohibited. • The right to due process should be preserved. • States and individuals should have the ability to bring a cause of action against an entity that, in operating a drone, violates their rights. • Drone deployment by federal agents must be subjected to Congressional oversight and local public drone use should be subjected to local city council oversight. • The general public should be engaged in the development of policy guidelines by a public body intending to operate drones. • In keeping with the principle of transparency, the FAA should make available to the public the names of drone applicants, the holders of Certificates of Authorization, other licensees, and privacy policies of drone-operating agencies. Adequate protection of privacy is necessary to allow the public to take advantage of drone technology without becoming a society in which every movement is monitored by the authorities. Simultaneously, drone developers need regulations so that they can conduct research and development unimpeded by protests and news reports. Additionally, the weaponization of drones on domestic soil poses a threat to due process rights and public safety. This was acknowledged by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who called for a total prohibition on the weaponization of domestic drones.13 Indeed, politicians and policymakers representing a broad spectrum of political views advocate regulations for domestic drones.

D. Omnipresent drone surveillance destroys a cornerstone of US democracy- anonymity Burow, JD candidate 2013 (Matthew L [Candidate for JD @ New England School of Law]; The Sentinel Clouds above the Nameless Crowd: Prosecuting Anonymity from Domestic Drones; 39 New Eng. J. on Crim. & Civ. Confinement 443; kdf)Walking down the street. Driving a car. Sitting on a park bench. By themselves, these actions do not exhibit an iota of privacy. The individual has no intention to conceal their movements; no confidentiality in their purpose. The individual is in the open, enjoying a quiet day or a peaceful Sunday drive. Yet as Chief Justice Rehnquist commented, there is uneasiness if an individual suspected that these innocuous and benign movements were being recorded and scrutinized for future reference. 119 If the "uneasy" reaction to which the Chief Justice referred is not based on a sense of privacy invasion, it stems from something very close to it-a sense that one has a right to public anonymity. 120 Anonymity is the state of being unnamed . 121 The right to public anonymity is the assurance that , when in public, one is unremarked and part of the undifferentiated crowd as far as the government is concerned . 122 That right is usually surrendered only when one does or says something that merits government attention, which most often includes criminal activity. 123 But when that attention is gained by surreptitiously operated UASs that are becoming more affordable for local law enforcement agencies, 124 " it evades the ordinary checks that constrain abusive law enforcement practices ... : 'limited police resources and community hostility."' 12 5 This association of public anonymity and privacy is not new. 126 Privacy expert and Columbia University Law professor Alan F. Westin points out that "anonymity [] occurs when the individual is in public places or performing public acts but still seeks, and finds, freedom from identification and surveillance." 127 Westin continued by stating that: [A person] may be riding a subway, attending a ball game, or walking the streets; he is among people and knows that he is being observed; but unless he is a well-known celebrity, he does not expect to be personally identified and held to the full rules of behavior and role that would operate if he were known to those observing him. In this state the individual is able to merge into the "situational landscape." 128 While most people would share the intuition of Chief Justice Rehnquist and professor Westin that we expect some degree of anonymity in public, there is no such right to be found in the Constitution. Therefore, with a potentially handcuffed judiciary, the protection of anonymity falls to the legislature. Based on current trends in technology and a keen interest taken by law enforcement in the advancement of UAS integration into national airspace, it is clear that drones pose a looming threat to Americans' anonymity. 129 Even when UASs are authorized for noble uses such as search and rescue missions, fighting wildfires, and assisting in dangerous tactical police operations, UASs are likely to be quickly embraced by law enforcement for more controversial purposes. 130 What follows are compelling interdisciplinary reasons why the legislature should take up the call to protect the subspecies of privacy that is anonymity. A. Philosophic: The Panopticon Harm Between 1789 and 1812, the Panopticon prison was the central obsession of the renowned English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's life. 131 The Panopticon is a circular building with cells occupying the circumference and the guard tower standing in the center. 132 By using blinds to obscure the guards located in the tower, "the keeper [is] concealed from the observation of the prisoners ... the sentiment of an invisible omnipresence."'133 The effect of such architectural brilliance is simple: the lone fact that there might be a guard watching is enough to keep the prisoners on their best behavior. 134 As the twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault observed, the major effect of the Panopticon is "to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power."'135 In Bentham's vision, there is no need for prison bars, chains or heavy locks; the person who is [khirn] pg. 4


subjected to the field of visibility of the omnipresent guard plays both roles and he becomes the subject of his own subjection. 136 For Foucault, this "panopticism" was not necessarily bad when compared to other methods of exercising control as this sort of "subtle coercion" could lead people to be more productive and efficient members of society. 137 Following Foucault's reasoning, an omnipresent UAS circling above a city may be similar to a Panopticon guard tower and an effective way of keeping the peace. The mere thought of detection may keep streets safer and potential criminals at bay . However , the impact on cherished democratic ideals may be too severe . For example, in a case regarding the constitutionally vague city ordinance that prohibited "nightwalking," Justice Douglas commented on the importance of public vitality and locomotion in America: The difficulty is that [walking and strolling] are historically part of the amenities of life as we have known them. They are not mentioned in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence. 138 As Justice Douglas understood, government surveillance stifles the cherished ideal of an American society that thrives on free-spiritedness in publi c. 39 Without the right to walk the streets in public, free from the fear of high surveillance, our American values would dissipate into that resembling a totalitarian state that attacks the idea of privacy as immoral, antisocial and part of the dissident cult of individualism . 140

E. Dehumanization is an intrinsic element of drone use- removes inhibitions on killing Burow JD candidate 2013 (Matthew L [Candidate for JD @ New England School of Law]; The Sentinel Clouds above the Nameless Crowd: Prosecuting Anonymity from Domestic Drones; 39 New Eng. J. on Crim. & Civ. Confinement 443; kdf)This Note has explored the philosophical and psychological effects of panoptic surveillance and the need for protection.2 29 A mere suspicion of a UAS flying high in sky can have a chilling effect on democracy that most Americans would consider intolerable. 230 But what about the psychological changes UASs will bring about in law enforcement?

The following is an excerpt from a news report on the mindset of UAS pilots who operate military drones in overseas combat missions: Bugsplat is the official term used by US authorities when humans are killed by drone missile s .... [I]t is deliberately employed as a psychological tactic to dehumanise targets so operatives overcome their inhibition to kill .... It was Hitler who coined this phraseology in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust . In Mein Kampf, Hitler refers to Jews as vermin (volksungeziefer) or parasites (volksschtidling). In the infamous Nazi film, Der ewige

Jude, Jews were portrayed as harmful pests that deserve to die. Similarly, in the Rwandan genocide, the Tutsis were described as "cockroaches." This is not to infer genocidal intent in US drone warfare, but rather to emphasise the dehumanising effect of this terminology in Nazi Germany and that the very same terms are used by the US in respect of their Pakistani targets. 231 Will John and Jane Doe-the casual saunterer-become part of the next group of bugs that must be swatted in the name of effective law enforcement ? In answering that question, we should look to the skies once again and pray to the better angels of our nature for a worthy answer.

G. Privacy protections are crucial to avoid a totalitarian police state Schneier prof Harvard ‘6 – Harvard Prof (Bruce, "The Eternal Value of Privacy," Wired, 5-18-6, http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/05/70886)The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?" Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect. Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemie s -- whoever they happen to be at the

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http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/05/70886


time. Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance. We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need. A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right . Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty. For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable. How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we

laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered. This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives. Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny . Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

H. Ignore negative arguments- they are drone lobby propaganda Greenwald 2013 (Glenn [former columnist on civil liberties and US national security issues for the Guardian. An ex-constitutional lawyer]; The US Needs To Wake Up To Threat Of Domestic Drones; Mar 30; http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/29/domestic-drones-unique-dangers; kdf)The use of drones by domestic US law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in terms of numbers and types of usage. As a result, civil liberties and privacy groups led by the ACLU - while accepting that domestic drones are inevitable - have been devoting increasing efforts to publicizing their unique dangers and agitating for statutory limits. These efforts are being impeded by those who mock the idea that domestic drones pose unique dangers (often the same people who mock concern over their usage on foreign soil). This dismissive posture is grounded not only in soft authoritarianism (a religious-type faith in the Goodness of US political leaders and state power generally) but also ignorance over current drone capabilities , the ways drones are now being developed and marketed for domestic use, and the activities of the increasingly powerful domestic drone lobby. So it's quite worthwhile to lay out the key under-discussed facts shaping this issue. I'm going to focus here most on domestic surveillance drones, but I want to say a few words about weaponized drones. The belief that weaponized drones won't be used on US soil is patently irrational . Of course they will be. It's not just likely but inevitable . Police departments are already speaking openly about how their drones "could be equipped to carry nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun." The drone industry has already developed and is now aggressively marketing precisely such weaponized drones for domestic law enforcement use. It likely won't be in the form that has received the most media attention: the type of large Predator or Reaper drones that shoot Hellfire missiles which destroy homes and cars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and multiple other countries aimed at Muslims (although US law enforcement agencies already possess Predator drones and have used them over US soil for surveillance). Instead, as I detailed in a 2012 examination of the drone industry's own promotional materials and reports to their shareholders, domestic weaponized drones will be much smaller and cheaper, as well as more agile - but just as lethal. The nation's leading manufacturer of small "unmanned aircraft systems" (UAS), used both for surveillance and attack purposes, is AeroVironment, Inc. (AV). Its 2011 Annual Report filed with the SEC repeatedly emphasizes that its business strategy depends upon expanding its market from foreign wars to domestic usage including law enforcement: AV's annual report added: "Initial likely non-military users of small UAS include public

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safety organizations such as law enforcement agencies. . . ." These domestic marketing efforts are intensifying with the perception that US spending on foreign wars will decrease. As a February, 2013 CBS News report noted, focusing on AV's surveillance drones: "Now, drones are headed off the battlefield. They're already coming your way. "AeroVironment, the California company that sells the military something like 85 percent of its fleet, is marketing them now to public safety agencies." Like many drone manufacturers, AV is now focused on drone products - such as the "Qube" - that are so small that they can be "transported in the trunk of a police vehicle or carried in a backpack" and assembled and deployed within a matter of minutes. One news report AV touts is headlined "Drone technology could be coming to a Police Department near you", which focuses on the Qube. But another article prominently touted on AV's website describes the tiny UAS product dubbed the "Switchblade", which, says the article, is "the leading edge of what is likely to be the broader, even wholesale, weaponization of unmanned systems." The article creepily hails the Switchblade drone as "the ultimate assassin bug". That's because, as I wrote back in 2011, "it is controlled by the operator at the scene, and it worms its way around buildings and into small areas, sending its surveillance imagery to an i-Pad held by the operator, who can then direct the Switchblade to lunge toward and kill the target (hence the name) by exploding in his face." AV's website right now proudly touts a February, 2013 Defense News article describing how much the US Army loves the "Switchblade" and how it is preparing to purchase more. Time Magazine heralded this tiny drone weapon as "one of the best inventions of 2012", gushing: "the Switchblade drone can be carried into battle in a backpack. It's a kamikaze: the person controlling it uses a real-time video feed from the drone to crash it into a precise target - say, a sniper. Its tiny warhead detonates on impact." What possible reason could someone identify as to why these small, portable weaponized UAS products will not imminently be used by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the US? They're designed to protect their users in dangerous situations and to enable a target to be more easily killed. Police agencies and the increasingly powerful drone industry will tout their utility in capturing and killing dangerous criminals and their ability to keep officers safe, and media reports will do the same . The handful of genuinely positive uses from drones will be endlessly touted to distract attention away from the dangers they pose. One has to be incredibly naïve to think that these "assassin bugs " and other lethal drone products will not be widely used on US soil by an already para-militarized domestic police force. As Radley Balko's forthcoming book "Rise of the Warrior Cop" details, the primary trend in US law enforcement is what its title describes as "The Militarization of America's Police Forces". The history of domestic law enforcement particularly after 9/11 has been the importation of military techniques and weapons into domestic policing. It would be shocking if these weapons were not imminently used by domestic law enforcement agencies. In contrast to weaponized drones, even the most naïve among us do not doubt the imminent proliferation of domestic surveillance drones. With little debate, they have already arrived. As the ACLU put it in their recent report: "US law enforcement is greatly expanding its use of domestic drones for surveillance." An LA Times article from last month reported that "federal authorities have stepped up efforts to license surveillance drones for law enforcement and other uses in US airspace" and that "the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it had issued 1,428 permits to domestic drone operators since 2007, far more than were previously known." Moreover, the agency "has estimated 10,000 drones could be aloft five years later" and "local and state law enforcement agencies are expected to be among the largest customers." Concerns about the proliferation of domestic surveillance drones are typically dismissed with the claim that they do nothing more than police helicopters and satellites already do. Such claims are completely misinformed. As the ACLU's 2011 comprehensive report on domestic drones explained: "Unmanned aircraft carrying cameras raise the prospect of a significant new avenue for the surveillance of American life." Multiple attributes of surveillance drones make them uniquely threatening. Because they are so cheap and getting cheaper, huge numbers of them can be deployed to create ubiquitous surveillance in a way that helicopters or satellites never could. How this works can already been seen in Afghanistan, where the US military has dubbed its drone surveillance system "the Gorgon Stare", named after the "mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them". That drone surveillance system is "able to scan an area the size of a small town" and "the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence that [can] seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity". Boasted one US General: "Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see everything." The NSA already maintains ubiquitous surveillance of electronic communications, but the Surveillance State faces serious limits on its ability to replicate that for physical surveillance. Drones easily overcome those barriers. As the ACLU report put it: I've spoken previously about why a ubiquitous Surveillance State ushers in unique and deeply harmful effects on human behavior and a nation's political culture and won't repeat that here (here's the video (also embedded below) and the transcript of one speech where I focus on how that works). Suffice to say, as the ACLU explains in its domestic drone report: "routine aerial surveillance would profoundly change the character of public life in America" because only drone technology enables such omnipresent physical surveillance. Beyond that, the tiny size of surveillance drones enables them to reach places that helicopters obviously cannot, and to do so without detection. They can remain in the sky, hovering over a single place, for up to 20 hours, a duration that is always increasing - obviously far more than manned helicopters can achieve. As AV's own report put it (see page 11), their hovering capability also means they can surveil a single spot for much longer than many military satellites, most of which move with the earth's rotation (the few satellites that remain fixed "operate nearly 25,000 miles from the surface of the earth, therefore limiting the bandwidth they can provide and requiring relatively larger, higher power ground stations"). In sum, surveillance drones enable a pervasive, stealth and constantly hovering Surveillance State that is now well beyond the technological and financial abilities of law enforcement agencies. One significant reason why this proliferation of domestic drones has become so likely is the emergence of a powerful drone lobby. I detailed some of how that lobby is functioning here, so will simply note this passage from a recent report from the ACLU of Iowa on its attempts to persuade legislators to enact statutory limits on the use of domestic drones: "Drones have their own trade group, the Association for [khirn] pg. 7


Unmanned Aerial Systems International, which includes some of the nation's leading aerospace companies. And Congress now has 'drone caucuses' in both the Senate and House." Howie Klein has been one of the few people focusing on the massive amounts of money from the drone industry now flowing into the coffers of key Congressional members from both parties in this "drone caucus". Suffice to say, there is an enormous profit to be made from exploiting the domestic drone market, and as usual, that factor is thus far driving the (basically nonexistent) political response to these threats. What is most often ignored by drone proponents, or those who scoff at anti-drone activism, are the unique features of drones: the way they enable more warfare, more aggression, and more surveillance. Drones make war more likely precisely because they entail so little risk to the war-making country. Similarly, while the propensity of drones to kill innocent people receives the bulk of media attention, the way in which drones psychologically terrorize the population - simply by constantly hovering over them: unseen but heard - is usually ignored, because it's not happening in the US, so few people care (see this AP report from yesterday on how the increasing use of drone attacks in Afghanistan is truly terrorizing local villagers). It remains to be seen how Americans will react to drones constantly hovering over their homes and their childrens' schools, though by that point, their presence will be so institutionalized that it will be likely be too late to stop. Notably, this may be one area where an actual bipartisan/trans-partisan alliance can meaningfully emerge, as most advocates working on these issues with whom I've spoken say that libertarian-minded GOP state legislators have been as responsive as more left-wing Democratic ones in working to impose some limits. One bill now pending in Congress would prohibit the use of surveillance drones on US soil in the absence of a specific search warrant, and has bipartisan support. Only the most authoritarian among us will be incapable of understanding the multiple dangers posed by a domestic drone regime (particularly when their party is in control of the government and they are incapable of perceiving threats from increased state police power). But the proliferation of domestic drones affords a real opportunity to forge an enduring coalition in defense of core privacy and other rights that transcends partisan allegiance, by working toward meaningful limits on their use. Making people aware of exactly what these unique threats are from a domestic drone regime is the key first step in constructing that coalition.

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1AC ECONA. Despite growth the global economy remains fragile The Economist 2015 (Watch out: It is only a matter of time before the next recession strikes. The rich world is not ready; Jun 13; www.economist.com/news/leaders/21654053-it-only-matter-time-next-recession-strikes-rich-world-not-ready-watch?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/watch_out; kdf)THE struggle has been long and arduous. But gazing across the battered economies of the rich world it is time to declare that the fight against financial chaos and deflation is won. In 2015, the IMF says, for the first time since 2007 every advanced economy will expand. Rich-world growth should exceed 2% for the first time since 2010 and America’s central bank is likely to raise its rock-bottom interest rates. However, the global economy still faces all manner of hazards , from the Greek debt saga to China’s shaky markets. Few economies have ever gone as long as a decade without tipping into recession—America’s started growing in 2009. Sod’s law decrees that, sooner or later, policymakers will face another downturn . The danger is that , having used up their arsenal, governments and central banks will not have the ammunition to fight the next recession. Paradoxically, reducing that risk requires a willingness to keep policy looser for longer today. The smoke is clearing The good news comes mainly from America, which leads the rich-world pack. Its unexpected contraction in the first quarter looks like a blip, owing a lot to factors like the weather (see article). The most recent data, including surging vehicle sales and another round of robust employment figures, show that the pace of growth is rebounding. American firms took on 280,000 new workers last month. Bosses are at last having to pay more to find the workers they need. In other parts of the rich world things are also looking up. In the euro zone unemployment is falling and prices are rising again. Britain’s recovery has lost a bit of puff, but strong employment growth suggests that expansion will continue. Japan roared ahead in the first quarter, growing by 3.9% at an annualised rate. A recovery so broad-based and persistent is no fluke. Inevitably fragilities remain. Europe is deep in debt and dependent on exports. Japan cannot get inflation to take hold. Wage growth could quickly dent corporate earnings and valuations in America. Emerging economies, which accounted for the bulk of growth in the post-crisis years, have seen better days. The economies of both Brazil and Russia are expected to shrink this year. Poor trade data suggest that Chinese growth may be slowing faster than the government wishes. If any of these worries causes a downturn the world will be in a rotten position to do much about it. Rarely have so many large economies been so ill-equipped to manage a recession , whatever its provenance, as our “wriggle-room” ranking makes clear (see article). Rich countries’ average debt-to-GDP ratio has risen by about 50% since 2007. In Britain and Spain debt has more than doubled. Nobody knows where the ceiling is, but governments that want to splurge will have to win over jumpy electorates as well as nervous creditors. Countries with only tenuous access to bond markets, as in the euro zone’s periphery, may be unable to launch a big fiscal stimulus. Monetary policy is yet more cramped . The last time the Federal Reserve raised interest rates was in 2006. The Bank of England’s base rate sits at 0.5%. Records dating back to the 17th century show that, before 2009, it had never fallen below 2%; and futures prices suggest that in early 2018 it will still be only around 1.5%. That is healthy compared with the euro area and Japan, where rates in 2018 are expected to remain stuck near zero. When central banks face their next recession, in other

words, they risk having almost no room to boost their economies by cutting interest rates. That would make the next downturn even harder to escape.

B. In the absence of federal privacy protections states will ban drones completely Sorcher Editor 2013 (Sara [Deputy editor of CSMPasscode, covering security & privacy in the digital age]; The backlash against drones; Feb 21; www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-backlash-against-drones-20130221; kdf)The Seattle Police Department’s planned demonstration of its small surveillance drones quickly devolved into a noisy protest. Angry residents attending the community meeting in October chanted “No drones!” drowning out officers’ attempts to explain how the unmanned aerial vehicles would support certain criminal investigations, help out during natural disasters, and assist in search-and-rescue operations. Now it’s clear that Seattle’s drones, purchased with federal grants, won’t be flying over the metro area anytime soon. Amid backlash from civil-liberties advocates and citizens worried about government invasion of their privacy, the mayor earlier this month tabled any drone ambitions—for now. Public concerns are not limited to Seattle. Lawmakers in at least 11 states want to restrict the use of drones because of fears they will spy on Americans, and some are pushing to require warrants before the robots collect evidence in investigations. Just this month, the Virginia General Assembly passed a two-year moratorium on drones. The outcry comes after the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued last year for a list of drone applicants within the U.S. When that information went public, staff attorney Jennifer Lynch says, “it really got people up in arms about how drones are being used, and got people to question their city councils and local law-enforcement agencies to

[khirn] pg. 9


ask for appropriate policies to be put in place to regulate drone usage.” Drones change the game: Nearly continuous surveillance could be possible without a physical intrusion such as a property search or an implanted listening device. The flying robots can carry high-powered cameras, even facial-recognition software or thermal imaging to “see” through walls. They can hover, potentially undetected, for hours

or days at a time. As of yet, however , there are no laws governing the use of domestic drones when it comes to privacy . Unless Congress or the executive branch moves to regulate the robots’ use before they take to the skies en masse, states will likely continue to try to limit or ban drone use altogether, which could stymie their potential for other, beneficial uses. And failing to enact privacy limits only increases the likelihood of an incident in which the public perceives that the technology is being misused . The Federal Aviation Administration, which is charged with overseeing drone implementation in the U.S., says its focus is “totally on safety,” not privacy worries. “We are concerned about how it’s being used only to the extent it would affect the safety of the operation,” says FAA spokesman Les Dorr. As it happens, domestic drone operations are relatively limited because of safety concerns. The FAA has issued nearly 1,500 permits since 2007 for the use of drones by public entities, such as law enforcement or fire departments, or by universities conducting research. Of those, 327 are active. For example, Customs and Border Protection uses drones to keep tabs on the border with Mexico, and NASA deploys them to monitor hurricanes. But the sky will open to drones in 2015. A federal law signed last year directs the FAA to safely integrate the unmanned vehicles into the U.S. airspace by then, paving the way for businesses and other private entities to fly their own drones. With the agency estimating that some 10,000 commercial drones could be flying by 2017, picture this: news outlets surveying damage from natural disasters, or paparazzi snooping on celebrities. And all 18,000 state and local law-enforcement agencies could be potential customers. The FAA last week began searching for six locations to test drones and is asking for input on privacy protections for these sites. While the agency acknowledges that privacy is an issue that must be addressed, it does not claim overall rule-making authority. “It’s unclear who’s responsible for privacy issues at this point and time,” says Gerald Dillingham, director of civil-aviation issues at the Government Accountability Office. “No one has stepped up to the plate.” GAO recommends that the FAA, along with the Justice and Homeland Security departments, discuss privacy parameters. “If we wait until there’s a crisis, oftentimes the rules and regulations that are made in crisis aren’t our best showing,” Dillingham says. Congress can also act; Reps. Ted Poe, R-Texas, and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., introduced a bill last week requiring warrants for the use of drones in criminal investigations. The American Civil Liberties Union sees momentum building to put privacy protections in place before the drones become commonplace. It insists that law-enforcement agencies should not use them for investigations unless authorities have reasonable suspicion they will turn up a specific criminal act. This is a lower threshold than a warrant, staff attorney Catherine Crump says, because it does not require officers to go to a judge. “We think that standard is what is necessary to prevent law-enforcement agents to engage in purely suspicionless use of drones, flying them around to see what’s going on.” As it stands, “there’s really not a lot in American privacy law that’s going to be much of a barrier to using drones,” University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo says. Court cases invoking the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches, largely hold that a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in public, or from a public vantage point, such as from an aircraft overhead, Calo says. There are signs, however, that the Supreme Court is reexamining this doctrine. In a case decided last term, five of the justices objected to police affixing a GPS device to a car without a warrant, and four more objected to the continuous surveillance of a suspect. Drones can achieve the same

goals without touching a vehicle. Calo thus believes that drones could be the catalyst for much-needed changes to privacy laws in a nation in which targeted , unchecked surveillance is becoming increasingly possible . The danger lies in it becoming the norm.

C. State drone prohibition will devastate the economy Wolfgang 2013 (Ben; Drone industry predicts explosive economic boost; Mar 12; www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/12/drone-industry-predicts-explosive-economic-boost/?page=all; kdf)Drones as weapons and drones as spies remain matters of intense debate across the country, but the controversial aircraft are poised to make an impact as something else: economic engines . Private-sector

drones — also called unmanned aerial systems or UAVs — will create more than 70,000 jobs within three years and will pump more than $82 billion into the U.S. economy by 2025, according to a major new study commissioned by the industry’s leading trade group. But the report, authored by aerospace specialist and former George Washington University professor Darryl Jenkins, assumes that the White House and Congress stick to the current schedule and have in place the necessary legal and regulatory frameworks. Current law calls for full drone integration into U.S. airspace by September 2015, but many key privacy questions surrounding UAVs have yet to be answered. There’s also growing doubt that the Federal Aviation Administration can meet the congressionally mandated timetable. If deadlines are met and drones become commonplace in American skies, some states will be especially big winners. Virginia, for example, stands to gain nearly 2,500 jobs by 2017. It also could take in $4.4 million in tax revenue and see more than $460 million in overall economic activity by 2017, the report says. Virginia would gain the eighth-most jobs of any state as a result of drone integration. Maryland isn’t far behind, with projections of more than 1,700 new jobs by 2017. California would be by far the biggest winner in terms of jobs, with more than 12,000 expected. Florida, Texas, New York, Washington, Connecticut, Kansas, Arizona and Pennsylvania are also expected to be benefit greatly from the

coming drone economy. “This is an incredibly exciting time for an industry developing technology that will benefit society, as well as the economy,” said Michael Toscano, president and CEO of the Association for Unmanned

Vehicle Systems International, a trade group that has existed for more than 40 years but has come into the public eye only recently. Drone [khirn] pg. 10


expansion “means the creation of quality, high-paying American jobs,” Mr. Toscano continued. But the motivation behind Tuesday’s report — arguably the most sweeping look ever at the economic potential of drones — runs deeper than just dollars and cents. The industry faces an uncertain future in light of growing public paranoia surrounding the craft — paranoia that has only been heightened by the debate over whether the Obama administration would ever consider using a drone to kill an American on U.S. soil. While the drones that will be employed by U.S. companies or law enforcement agencies are far different than the military-style UAVs equipped with Hellfire missiles, those distinctions aren’t always clear. Tuesday’s report not only offered the industry a chance to shine the spotlight on drones’ positive uses and economic potential, but also served as an opportunity — or, perhaps a warning — to lawmakers seeking to limit UAVs. More than 20 states are considering bills to establish strict guidelines for what drones can do. Virginia is mulling a measure that would put a two-year moratorium on all government use of drones. Such a measure would be especially harsh because first-responders such as police and fire departments are expected to be one of the largest markets for UAVs. Like other growing and thriving sectors of the economy, the drone business likely will set up shop in friendly environments. “While we project more than 100,000 new jobs by 2025, states that create favorable regulatory and business environments for the industry and the technology will likely siphon jobs away from states that do not,” said Mr. Jenkins, the report’s lead author who used to head George Washington University’s Aviation Institute and also is a former professor at Embry-Riddle University. On another front, the FAA appears to be in danger of missing the congressionally mandated 2015 deadline for drone integration. The agency just recently began taking applications for its test-site program, where drones will be studied to see how they respond in different climate conditions and at different altitudes. More than 30 states have expressed interest in the program, but it’s unclear when it will be fully established; further delays put the 2015 date in even greater jeopardy. “ Every year that we delay integration, the U.S. will lose more than $10 billion in total economic impact,” Mr. Jenkins said.

D. The aviation sector is crucial to the US economy Bristol FAA 14 (Teri L. [Chief Operating Officer Air Traffic Organization Federal Aviation Administration]; The Economic Impact of Civil Aviation on the U.S. Economy; June 2014; https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/media/2014-economic-impact-report.pdf; jw)Flying is an inspiring part of American life. It’s a symbol of our freedom, pioneering spirit, and economic success. As the nation continues to revitalize itself following the most recent recession , civil aviation has outpaced the national economy . In 2012, aviation accounted for 5.4% of our gross domestic product ( GDP ), contributed $1.5 trillion in total economic activity, and supported 11.8 million jobs . Aviation manufacturing also continues to be the nation’s top net export . The nation’s economic success depends on having a vibrant civil aviation industry . To support this effort, the FAA remains committed to ensuring the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world. We’re focused on the following four strategic priorities: making aviation safer and smarter, delivering benefits through technology and infrastructure, enhancing global leadership, and empowering the FAA’s workforce so we can innovate. We’re in the process of transforming the airspace system by deploying the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). NextGen will make aviation more fuel and cost efficient, and more environmentally friendly. This concise report, ideal for policymakers and industry officials, offers the latest data on the economic impact of civil aviation. It discusses the economic benefits of passenger and cargo transportation, from activities by commercial airlines, air couriers, airports, tourism, and manufacturing. This version also estimates the economic impact of general aviation, a uniquely American achievement. In addition to 2012, this report also includes revised economic impact estimates for the years 2000 to 2009 and newly estimated economic impacts for 2010 and 2011. Flying remains an economic frontier for America. We see unmanned aircraft and commercial space launches on the horizon. Through these innovations, civil aviation will continue to inspire the next generation, and bring economic prosperity to our lives.

E. US economic growth resolves every major impact Richard N. Haass 13, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, 4/30/13, “The World Without America,” http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/repairing-the-roots-of-american-power-by-richard-n--haassLet me posit a radical idea: The most critical threat facing the United States now and for the foreseeable future is not

a rising China, a reckless North Korea, a nuclear Iran, modern terrorism, or climate change. Although all of these constitute potential

or actual threats, the biggest challenges facing the US are its burgeoning debt, crumbling infrastructure, second-rate primary and

secondary schools, outdated immigration system, and slow economic growth – in short, the domestic foundations of American power . Readers in other countries may be tempted to react to this judgment with a dose of schadenfreude, finding more than a little satisfaction in

America’s difficulties. Such a response should not be surprising. The US and those representing it have been guilty of hubris (the US may often be the indispensable nation, but it would be better if others pointed this out), and examples of inconsistency between America’s practices and its principles understandably provoke charges of hypocrisy. When America does not adhere to the principles that it preaches to others, it breeds resentment. But, like most temptations, the urge to gloat at America’s imperfections and

struggles ought to be resisted. People around the globe should be careful what they wish for. America’s failure to deal with its internal challenges would come at a steep price. Indeed, the rest of the world’s stake in American success is nearly as large as that of the US itself. Part

of the reason is economic. The US economy still accounts for about one-quarter of global output. If US growth accelerates, America’s capacity to consume other countries’ goods and services will increase, thereby boosting growth around the world. At a time when Europe is drifting and Asia is slowing, only the US (or, more broadly, North

[khirn] pg. 11

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/repairing-the-roots-of-american-power-by-richard-n--haass

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/repairing-the-roots-of-american-power-by-richard-n--haass

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/media/2014-economic-impact-report.pdf


America) has the potential to drive global economic recovery . The US remains a unique source of innovation. Most of the world’s citizens communicate with mobile devices based on technology developed in Silicon Valley; likewise, the Internet was made in America. More recently, new technologies developed in the US greatly increase the ability to extract oil and natural gas from underground formations. This technology is now making its way around the globe, allowing other societies to increase their energy production and decrease both their reliance on costly imports and their carbon emissions. The US is also an invaluable source of ideas.

Its world-class universities educate a significant percentage of future world leaders. More fundamentally, the US has long been a leading example of what market economies and democratic politics can accomplish. People and governments around the world are far more likely to become more open if the American model is perceived to be succeeding. Finally, the world faces many serious challenges, ranging from the need to halt the spread of w eapons of m ass d estruction , fight climate change, and maintain a functioning world economic order that promotes trade and investment to regulating practices in cyberspace, improving global health, and preventing armed conflicts . These problems will not simply go away or sort themselves out. While Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” may ensure the success of free markets, it is powerless in the world of geopolitics . Order requires the visible hand of leadership to formulate and realize global responses to global challenges . Don’t get me wrong: None of this is meant to suggest that the US can deal effectively with the world’s problems on

its own. Unilateralism rarely works. It is not just that the US lacks the means; the very nature of contemporary global problems suggests that only collective responses stand a

good chance of succeeding. But multilateralism is much easier to advocate than to design and implement. Right now there is only one candidate for this role: the US. No other country has the necessary combination of capability and outlook. This brings me back to the argument that the US must put its house in order –

economically, physically, socially, and politically – if it is to have the resources needed to promote order in the world. Everyone should hope that it does: The alternative to a world led by the US is not a world led by China, Europe, Russia, Japan, India, or any other country, but rather a world that is not led at all . Such a world would almost

certainly be characterized by chronic crisis and conflict . That would be bad not just for Americans, but for the vast majority of

the planet ’s inhabitants.

Plan: The United States federal government should curtail its aerial surveillance by ruling that drone surveillance constitutes a search within the Fourth Amendment and is unreasonable without a warrant, barring exigent circumstances.

[khirn] pg. 12


1AC SOLVENCYA. Court ordered warrant requirements protect privacy and guide law enforcement Celso JD candidate 2014 (Joel [JD Candidate U of Baltimore Law]; DRONING ON ABOUT THE FOURTH AMENDMENT: ADOPTING A REASONABLE FOURTH AMENDMENT JURISPRUDENCE TO PREVENT UNREASONABLE SEARCHES BY UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS; 43 U. Balt. L. Rev. 461; kdf)IV. ENSURING A REASONABLE FUTURE BY PREVENTING UNREASONABLE UAS SURVEILLANCE Speaking for the Supreme Court in Kyllo, Justice Scalia acknowledged that technological advances have reduced the privacy [*489] protections granted by the Fourth Amendment. n252 In Justice Scalia's mind, the primary issue facing the Court was "what limits there are upon this power of technology to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy." n253 Attempting to determine how courts might decide the constitutionality of warrantless UAS surveillance of the home and its curtilage is context-dependent, and ultimately speculative. n254 As one author has noted, if UAS surveillance is not a Fourth Amendment search, then the "realm of g uaranteed privacy" referred to by Justice Scalia would not just be shrunk, but eliminated . n255 Even if UAS surveillance is currently a search subject to the Fourth Amendment that status may be lost as UAS flights become routine. n256 Furthermore, the Fourth Amend ment does not currently protect anyone's privacy from UAS surveillance, even for extended periods, when they are in public or other open areas. n257 To ensure that privacy will be protected from the threat posed by UAS surveillance, a new rule should be added to current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Courts should hold that all UAS surveillance by law enforcement constitutes a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant. n258 Under this rule, all warrantless UAS surveillance used for law enforcement purposes such as criminal investigation, targeted surveillance, and monitoring property or zones, would violate the Fourth Amendment regardless of where the surveillance took place. n259 [*490] The justification for this rule should be grounded in the unprecedented technological capabilities of UAS and the unique threat they represent to privacy . n260 Although the Supreme Court has heard challenges to law enforcement's use of aerial surveillance, sense enhancing devices, and electronic tracking, it has never considered anything like UAS, which combine all three capabilities. n261 Historically, the cost of using personnel for traditional surveillance placed a practical limitation on police surveillance which acted to protect privacy. n262 The affordability of UAS could eliminate this constraint on excessive police presence and dramatically increase the potential for abuses. n263 In addition, UAS' small size and silent operation allow them to operate in relative stealth. n264 Citizens could be observed by law enforcement without ever knowing they were under surveillance. n265 Although UAS are not invasive by causing "undue noise ... wind, dust, or threat of injury," they may actually be more intrusive than conventional aircraft. n266 Because people will not have notice of UAS' approach or presence, they will be unable to keep private those activities which they do not wish to expose to public view. n267 UAS technology has been described as providing law enforcement with "permanent, multi-dimensional, multi-sensory surveillance of citizens twenty-four hours per day." n268 Some have gone as far as claiming that UAS give law enforcement capabilities reserved for deities. n269 As such, UAS present the potential for unprecedented law enforcement abuses which would be prevented by the warrant requirement proposed here. [*491] Not only will this proposed rule ensure that the Fourth Amendment remains the guarantor of privacy , but it provides other

advantages as well. n270 First, it draws a bright-line rule for police who will not have to determine in advance whether or not their actions are constitutional each time they want to use a UAS in a new context, or when they are armed with a new technology. n271 Similarly, the courts will not lag behind each new technological advance in UAS technology because a warrant will always be required. n272 Finally, and most importantly, the rule will accomplish what current jurisprudence cannot: it will prevent Fourth Amendment protections from being left "at the mercy of advancing technology."

n273 The Supreme Court has established precedent for adopting the rule proposed here . n274 In Katz, the Court shifted the basis of finding that a Fourth Amendment search had occurred from a physical trespass to an intrusion on a reasonable expectation of privacy. n275 In doing so, the Court demonstrated its willingness to adopt new rules to ensure that privacy is protected from threats posed by new technologies. By adopting the rule proposed here, the courts would be acting in accordance with the precedent from Katz and would guarantee that UAS technology remains within the scope of Fourth Amendment protections.[khirn] pg. 13


B. The plan sets a precedent for effective, minimal regulation of mass surveillance technology – its goldilocks Rushin PhD candidate 2011 (Stephen [PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program; J.D., University of California, Berkeley]; THE JUDICIAL RESPONSE TO MASS POLICE SURVEILLANCE; 2011 U. Ill. J.L. Tech. & Pol'y 281; kdf)To begin with, skeptics allege that legislations can more carefully analyze a problem, investigate potential solutions, impanel experts, and make far-reaching, nuanced policies. n362 Unlike the legislature, which may "command the resources of an extensive bureaucracy ... a judge is generally limited to a secretary and one or two recent law school ... [graduate clerks]." n363 Kerr has thus argued that the courts simply do not have the resources to engage in this kind of careful analysis necessary to develop a comprehensive and responsive policy on Fourth Amendment technologies. n364 On its face, this type of analysis is persuasive, especially considering the fact that the courts lack the funding to do sweeping investigations into the efficacy of an emerging technology. Nonetheless, this logic ignores a pivotal tactic used by courts in previous iterations of successful policymaking - the adoption of standards already implemented by other institutions. n365 Malcolm Feeley and Edward Rubin explained that when the courts attempted to create extensive judicial policy [*325] regulating American prisons, judges turned to the American Correctional Association and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. n366 Indeed, "Federal judges turned to these standards because they wanted to impose detailed, administrative-style rules of any sort but lacked the resources to design the rules themselves." n367 Unlike the prison reform context described by Feeley and Rubin, where the courts created extensive and detailed policy, the judicial response I argue for in this Article does not require extensive investigation or uniform implementation. I merely argue for a judicially mandated floor , which establishes the minimum amount of regulation required for surveillance technologies . Additionally, there is domestic and international precedent , most notably in Maine, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Germany, that the courts could use as a model to craft a broad solution . n368 Once the courts lay out a broad policy objective, police departments and local legislatures would be incentivized to develop their own, individual policies to implement this judicially mandated, regulatory floor. States would be free to develop more complex, detailed, and even more stringent protections against data collection. Some states have already done just that. n369 This pattern can be seen in other areas of criminal judicial policymaking, such as Miranda requirements. The Court handed down broad general requirements - departments, in implementing the Miranda decision, often went above and beyond the Court's minimal requirements. Next, critics of judicial regulation of emerging technologies have argued that judges are not as technically sophisticated as the legislature. Judges often "rely on the crutch of questionable metaphors to aid their comprehension" of complex technology cases, meaning that "it is easy for judges to misunderstand the context of their decisions and their likely effect when technology is in flux." n370 But in the unique situation outlined in this Article, judges do not need to be experts in these technological fields to understand the capabilities of technologies like ALPR and facial recognition software. The danger I discuss in this article is that police will keep a digital dossier of every single person's movements. This type of monitoring would facilitate fishing expeditions, increase the likelihood of corrupt behavior by law enforcement, and facilitate some types of racial profiling. There is little reason to believe that, with the assistance of knowledgeable advocates, judges could not sufficiently understand the potential harms posted by digitally efficient investigative technologies to develop a coherent constitutional floor of protection. And even though the legislature has a broader array of resources at its disposal, the legislature is an unsatisfactory avenue to protect the unique counter-majoritarian issues at stake. Finally, some scholars have contended that judicial regulations of [*326] emerging technologies rarely hold up in different factual scenarios. Under this rationale, critics of this judicial response may contend that while this protection could work when applied to ALPR or facial recognition software, it would not necessarily be a workable standard for future technological developments. This view certainly has merit. "By the time the courts decide how a technology should be regulated ... the factual record of the case may be outdated, reflecting older technology rather than more recent developments." n371 Stuart Benjamin has argued that "rapidly changing facts weaken the force of stare decisis by undermining the stability of precedents." n372 This provides a forceful case against judicial micromanagement of emerging technologies. But the judicial response argued for in this Article is sufficiently broad to avoid the predictable antiquation of other, narrower judicial solutions - it merely distinguishes between observational comparison and indiscriminate data collection, while broadly regulating the identification of data and interactions with private data aggregators. The collection of extensive, indiscriminate surveillance data is a widespread, pervasive occurrence common amongst countless investigative technologies. The development of digital dossiers is not a trending fad that will simply disappear in the near future. We should not expect the legislature to step in and address a problem that may disproportionately affect unpopular minorities. The Court has long recognized that when making policy in the field of emerging technologies, "the rule we adopt must take account of more sophisticated systems that are already in use or in development." n373 The judicial response presented does not prevent the use of surveillance technologies for observational comparison, but merely offers a sufficiently broad and generalized constitutional limit on indiscriminate data collection , which can be reasonably exported and applied to future,

[khirn] pg. 14


more sophisticated technologies. Once more, critics of judicial policymaking seem tacitly concerned that the limited applicability of judicial rules in the future will weaken the force of stare decisis, thereby undermining the judiciary's legitimacy. But nothing could further de-legitimize the judiciary more than a failure to serve its fundamental role as a protector against the tyranny of majoritarian preferences. The courts are therefore the best-positioned actor within our decentralized federal system to protect against the threat of extensive, indiscriminate data collection. Concerns about the judiciary's institutional competence seem misplaced. And though the courts have limited resources, there is not enough convincing evidence of a "judicial information deficit" n374 so as to overcome the judiciary's important role as protectors of discrete and insular minorities.C. Re-conceptualizing the Current Privacy Doctrine in Light of the Digitally Efficient Investigative State A judicial response is a step in the right direction in addressing the [*327] growing threat posed by mass police surveillance. But the proposed judicial response should only be the beginning in a broader shift in our privacy dialogue. The digitally efficient investigative state has wide-ranging social implications for the entire study of privacy law. I argue that, given the mounting evidence of efficient retention of public surveillance data and data centralization, it is finally time to re-conceptualize outdated privacy law assumptions - principal among them the antediluvian notion that an individual has no reasonable expectation to privacy in public movements. To be clear, I am not arguing that, descriptively, people currently have an honest expectation to privacy in public in today's world. In the age of GPS, smart phones, Facebook, and Twitter, our socially reasonable expectation to privacy is weaker than ever. Instead, it is time for a normative reassessment of our entire privacy doctrine. Of course, I am not the first to propose such an argument. Professor Solove has already observed: Privacy is not simply an empirical and historical question that measures the collective sense in any given society of what is and has long been considered private. Without a normative component, a conception of privacy can only provide a status report on existing privacy norms rather than guide us toward shaping privacy law and policy in the future. If we focus simply on people's current expectation of privacy, our conception of privacy would continually shrink given the increasing surveillance in the modern world. n375 The judiciary can and should play a fundamental role in protecting a normatively forceful conception of privacy in all regards. Do we reasonably expect a person to assume the risk that, every time they enter a public space, the state can monitor their every movement with ALPR? Do we reasonably expect a person to assume the risk that the state will keep extensive, centralized data on their movements indefinitely? Or perhaps the more important question is should we expect individuals to completely abandon all anonymity in public? I believe the clear, normative answer to these questions is a resounding no, and the implications of the digitally efficient investigative state only add weight to the claims previously made by Professor Solove and others. Ultimately, this Article only scratches the surface of the broader social implications of the digitally efficient investigative state. Questions remain about the relative criminological benefits of observational comparison as compared to wholesale data retention. There is an increasing need for empirical research on the effects these emerging technologies have on individual behavior. And there is a dearth of concrete data on the extent to which law enforcement use these technologies. I offer only a brief glimpse into this new technological order, the relevant case law, and some general normative recommendations. This should only be the beginning of the conversation about the sociological, psychological, criminological, and legal impacts of the increasingly efficient police surveillance. [*328] VI. Conclusion Neither judicial responses nor "legislative rulemaking is ...a panacea." n376 Even if the judiciary successfully recognizes a remedy similar to that discussed in this Article, the legislatures must play a critical role in developing more nuanced and specific enactments to implement this constitutional floor. The potential harms of the digitally efficient investigative state are real. There is legitimate concern that the broad and integrated use of these technologies can create a mass surveillance state. Central to this debate is the proper role of the judiciary in regulating policy activity. Courts have previously relied upon an often fragile dichotomy between technologies that merely improve police efficiency and those that offer officers a new, extrasensory ability. For the first time, the judiciary may be forced to limit the efficiency of law enforcement technologies. Implicit in this action will be the recognition that sometimes improvements in efficiency can be, quite simply, so efficient as to be unconstitutionally harmful. Unregulated efficiency can facilitate police wrongdoing, discrimination, and calumniate political dissenters. Unregulated efficiency in policing technology undermines central protections and tenants of a democratic state. The relationship between efficiency of criminal investigations and privacy rights will be a new frontier for the courts in the coming decades. The courts should forcefully, but prudently, protect against the unregulated efficiency of emerging investigative and surveillance technologies. The judicial response offered in this Article would be but one more example of the courts exercising their proper role as a limited but effective policymakers.

C. Drones are the litmus test for overall 4th amendment protections Celso 2014 (Joel [JD Candidate U of Baltimore Law]; DRONING ON ABOUT THE FOURTH AMENDMENT: ADOPTING A REASONABLE FOURTH AMENDMENT JURISPRUDENCE TO PREVENT UNREASONABLE SEARCHES BY UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS; 43 U. Balt. L. Rev. 461; kdf)[*493] The Katz reasonable expectation of privacy test has been criticized for its circular nature. n284 As long as UAS surveillance remains sufficiently rare, an individual's expectation of privacy is considered reasonable and it is protected from government intrusion by the Fourth Amendment. n285 Once UAS flights become routine , the expectation of privacy is no longer reasonable and its

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protection is removed. n286 The result becomes a "paradoxical situation in which law enforcement overreach is legitimized once it becomes routinized. " n287 This could happen as early as 2015 when UAS can be fully integrated into U.S. airspace. n288 Equally disconcerting is the fact that the Supreme Court's

estimation of what society considers reasonable is not necessarily accurate. n289 Justice Scalia facetiously observed that "unsurprisingly, those "actual (subjective) expectations of privacy' "that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable' bear an uncanny resemblance to those expectations of privacy that this Court considers reasonable." n290 For example, poll results indicate that the American public opposes the use of UAS for routine police work. n291 According to the Court however, if the police used UAS to track people in public, they would lack constitutional protection because those people have no reasonable expectation of privacy . n292 Considering these problems with the Katz formulation, some have argued that the protection of privacy, especially pertaining to sophisticated technologies such as UAS, should be removed from the courts and given to the legislature. n293 The problem with this solution is that it essentially concedes that, in the absence of legislation, the [*494] Fourth Amendment cannot protect privacy rights against the government's use of sophisticated technologies . n294

Instead , the courts need to adopt a novel jurisprudence to protect actual privacy expectations, rather than defer to Congress. V. CONCLUSION Under the Supreme Court's current jurisprudence, it is only a matter of time before the Fourth Amendment will no longer be able to provide protection from warrantless UAS surveillance, even in the home . n295 The answer to the question posed by Justice Scalia in Kyllo should not be that technology has the power to "shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy" to the point of elimination. n296 This is especially true given the Court's articulated concern that it "assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted." n297 Although the original

degree of privacy is difficult to ascertain, allowing the government to use a UAS outfitted with facial recognition software or high-powered cameras to silently track individuals for extended periods of time without a warrant hardly seems to qualify. n298 Equally unlikely is the idea that Congress, rather than the

Constitution, was expected to be the guarantor of privacy protections at the time the Fourth Amendment was adopted. n299 It is clear that the courts need a new approach to their Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to protect privacy from a technological onslaught . Requiring a warrant for all UAS surveillance will ensure that even the widespread use of UAS will not erode society's legitimate privacy expectations .

D. The terror DA is irrational fear mongering- assign it zero risk Scheer, Prof USC, 2015 (Robert [Prof @ USC’s School of journalism and communication]; They Know Everything About You; Nation Books; p. 208-212; kdf)WE MUST CHALLENGE THE ASSUMPTION THAT PROTECTING national security requires sacrificing the constitutional rights of the individual. As pointed out in this book, the Fourth Amendment does not contain an absolute· ban on searches and seizures but, rather, requires a court-authorized warrant based on probable cause of a crime before invading an individual's private space. All Yahoo was asking of the court was that the searches of its company's customers meet this requirement. Instead, the government responded that the so-called War on Terrorism could not be won on that basis, and the secret FISA court endorsed the view. As Stewart Baker, the former NSA general counsel and Homeland Security official in the Bush administration, told the Washington Post after the Yahoo case documents were released: "I'm always astonished how people are willing to abstract these decisions from the actual stakes." He went on to say that "[w]e're talking about trying to gather information about people who are trying to kill us and who will succeed if we don't have robust information about their activities. "26 As demonstrated in previous chapters, however, there is simply no serious evidence that the mass surveillance program initiated under President Bush provided the sort of "robust information" Baker claims was required to identify the people "trying to kill us ." Yet, as this book goes to press, we have been presented with still another case study in the rise of a terrorist movement-the Islamic State oflraq and Syria (ISIS), whose members are creating considerable mayhem in Iraq and Syria-for which the mass surveillance techniques of the NSA left us totally unprepared. They appeared suddenly, startlingly so, these black-clad men of ISIS, beheading journalists and others27 as they formed their proclaimed Sunni Caliphate over a broad swath of Syria and lraq. 28 Once again, as with the al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, the fearsome spectacle of a terrorist enemy drove reason from the stage and the chant of war was in the air . The New York Times carried the text ofObama's speech to the nation on September 10, 2014, in which he vowed to "destroy the terrorist group."29 Defense Secretary Chuck Hegel said that ISIS poses an "imminent threat to every interest we have."30 Suddenly, all the arguments for peace and restraint were cast aside and the defense of privacy and civil liberty

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seemed an unaffordable indulgence in the rush to combat an enemy of such awesome power and mystery. Lost in the moment of fear-induced passion was the fact that these men of ISIS who so alarmed us, like their cousins in al Qaeda, were hardly unknown or mysterious beings, but instead monsters partially of our own creation. Adam Gopnik reinforced this point in an August 2014 article in the New Yorker. "ISIS is a horrible group doing horrible things, and there are many factors behind its rise," he wrote. "But they came to be a threat and a power less because of all we didn't do than because of certain things we did do-foremost among them that massive, forward intervention, the Iraq War. (The historical question to which ISIS is the answer is: What could possibly be worse than Saddam Hussein?)"31 Now, once again-and this time as compared to 9 I 11, when the public was so ill-served with alarmist information about the extent of the terrorist threat-the president was presumably in possession of that vast trove of intelligence data collected by the NSA and analyzed with the brilliant software of the best Silicon Valley datamining companies such as the media-celebrated Palantir. And yet there is no evidence that this costly and intrusive effort was the least bit useful in predicting the rise of ISIS. Clearly, there is a disturbing disconnect between the zeal with which big data is collected and the lack of scientific precision in utilizing that data to make sound policy decisions and to inform the public as to the necessity of action . It is also difficult to see just how that data, based as it is on the minutiae of the lives of much of the world's population, is useful to an understanding of this threat. This book explains the continued rise of a military-intelligence complex that, through the assertion of a pressing danger to national security after 9 I 11, made an unfettered and largely unchallenged claim upon the vast amount of private data collected in a wired world by government and private enterprises. It is a claim based on the unquestioned assumption that what passes for military intelligence is sufficiently and uniquely productive of useful insight to warrant the costs to our democracy as well as our federal budget, and that less invasive means of research such as scholarship, journalism, and traditional shoe-leather spy and detective work are inherently inadequate to the task of protecting us in a cyberworld. It is a commonly persuasive argument and difficult to challenge given that the high-tech surveillance is cloaked in such tight secrecy. In the wake of the Snowden revelations, when there was a much-heightened public awareness of the threat to privacy and a willingness, even on the part of Congress, to address the issue more vigorously, all it took was the appearance of a renewed terrorist threat to develop anew a consensus that privacy needed to be surrendered as an unaffordable risk to the nation's security. Just the opposite is the case. What now passes for military intelligence is a tech -driven oxymoron that denies the place of historical contemplation, cultural and religious study, political complexity, and ethical restraints in assessing dangers to a nation. Never has our nation's foreign policy been so poorly served as in the era of the Internet, with its enormous potential to enlighten us; but the collusions of war-mongering fanatics and profiteers are beyond the comprehension of even the most powerful machines. They must not be beyond the purview of public awareness, however. A fully informed public is the best safeguard against the hazardous foreign entanglements that our founders warned were the main threat to the health of the republic. That is why they enshrined the constitutional protections against unbridled government power they believed would subvert the American experiment in representative governance. We must heed the wisdom of the EFF's senior attorney Lee Tien, who as much as any constitutional lawyer has battled on behalf of those rights. As he summed up in an interview: "We need to fix the national security classification system that has classified so much information that we don't know what's going on. It's hard to know what we should do, but we should all agree that knowing what's happening is the first step. It's dangerous to propose a solution when you don't know what the extent of the problem is. If you asked me before the Snowden revelations, my answer would be different. There are no personal solutions to this; there is nothing we can do individually." "This is a systemic problem," he continued. "It's an institutional problem, it's a political problem. There can only be collective action. That's it. That means we need to call on all of them-individuals, Internet companies, politicians, the government-to fix it, and we need to organize. You can't have a democracy if you don't have sufficient information. We're fighting for the soul of this democracy."

The plan is the catalyst that makes privacy possibleAhsanuddin et al 2014 (Sadia - principal investigator for the report and MPAC research fellow; Domestic Drones: Implications for Privacy and Due Process in the United States; Sep 8; www.mpac.org/publications/policy-papers/domestic-drones.php; kdf)Simultaneously, the IHSS survey respondents indicated apprehensiveness over any domestic drone operations: two-thirds expressed concern over potential surveillance in homes or public areas; 65 percent were concerned about safety; and 75 percent were concerned about the government’s ability to regulate use.82 The rapid pace at which drone technology is developing, the lack of clear guidelines protecting privacy and civil liberties, and public concern over these issues indicate an urgent need for action in Congress and state legislatures. Privacy experts agree. In an article in the Stanford Law Review Online, Professor Ryan Calo of the University of Washington School of

Law states that drones “may be just the visceral jolt society needs to drag privacy law into the twenty-first century.” American privacy law has developed at a “slow and uneven” pace,

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whereas technology has developed at a rapid speed. In spite of the development of computers, the Internet, Global-Positioning Systems (GPS), biometrics, gigapixel cameras, face recognition technology, and the widespread use of e-mail and other forms of electronic communication, there has been no attendant development in privacy law. Because drones “threaten to perfect the art of surveillance,” they make for a good catalyst to update privacy law. The need for legislation is clear. With recent revelations that the federal government has been conducting surveillance of the American public on an unprecedented level, the threat that unregulated and immensely capable technologies pose to civil liberties is profound. The law must catch up with technology.

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2AC PRIVACY ADVOur impacts aren’t hyperbolic, ground in histScheer 2015 (Robert [Prof @ USC’s School of journalism and communication]; They Know Everything About You; Nation Books; p. 176; kdf)WE ARE A NATION THAT HAS LONG CELEBRATED DISSIDENTS throughout the world who dare, often at great risk, to expose the secret actions and challenge the legitimacy of repressive governments. In some cases, we even provide legal sanctuary or asylum for such people. However, when Americans dissent in such radical ways, the opposite is often the case-they are vilified as disloyal and as a threat to our collective security or stability. The assumption, embraced so widely, must be that our system never requires such a fundamental challenge to its authority, as represented by the actions of a Daniel Ellsberg, Thomas Drake, Chelsea Manning, or Edward Snowden. We know, however, from so many historical examples-the Roman Empire, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union-that unchallenged authority not only will violate human rights but also will ultimately sow the seeds of its own ruin , increasingly blind to its own limitations and flaws . Despite our historically innovative constitutional

checks on government power, we are nevertheless always flirting with imperial hubris . We see this

clearly in the pattern of lies that defined US foreign policy after 9/11; it is quite apparent that leaving those lies largely unchallenged in the name of classification s eriously weakened the position of the U nited S tates in the world.

Util only thinking makes life not worth living Albright ’14 – Research Analyst (Logan, "The NSA's Collateral Spying," Freedom Works, 7-8-15, http://www.freedomworks.org/content/nsas-collateral-spying)In short, the report, based on information obtained by Edward Snowden, reveals that during the course of its ordinary, otherwise legal surveillance operations, the NSA also collected data on large numbers of people who were not specifically targeted. The agency calls this practice “incidental surveillance.” I call it “collateral spying.” The report found that,

on average, 9 out of every 10 people spied on were not the intended target . The NSA has the legal authority to obtain a warrant based on probable cause in order to surveil an individual. No one is disputing that. But when this targeting results in collateral spying on vast numbers of innocents, in the absence of probable cause and the corresponding warrants, that is a major problem. The NSA has asserted that such incidental data collection is inevitable, and to a certain extent that’s likely true. It is understandable that in some situations the NSA may learn information about people other than the direct target, but this should obviously be minimized as far as possible, and at the very least the information should be immediately purged from government databases, not stored for years on end. In any case, the whole situation is indicative of the agency’s cavalier attitude towards individual rights. While national security is a concern we all share, t he ends do not justify the means when those means involve violate the constitutional protections afforded to citizens by our nation’s founders. It is not okay to violate the rights of an innocent in the process of achieving a broader goal, even if that goal is noble. The way the NSA has been behaving is Machiavellian in the most literal sense. In his 16th century political treatise, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli recognized

a harsh reality of politics that still plagues us half a millennium later, writing, “ A prince wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil. ” Taking Machiavelli’s advice as a green light for immoral behavior has been the

problem with governments throughout history, a problem the founding fathers sought to avoid by setting down precise guidelines for what the government could and could not do in the form of a Constitution. The disregard of these rules, and the argument that there should be a national security exception to the Fourth Amendment, undermines the entire purpose of the American experiment, and restores the European-style tyrannies the revolutionaries fought against.

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http://www.freedomworks.org/content/nsas-collateral-spying


2AC SOLVENCYGovernment surveillance is unique and invites tyrannyRobertson 2015 (James [served on the FISC from 2002 to 2005, resigning the day after warrantless wiretaps were exposed]; Forward of What went wrong with the FISA court; https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/What_Went_%20Wrong_With_The_FISA_Court.pdf; kdf)Many people are surprised to learn that there is no “right to privacy” in the Constitution. Privacy is more of a cultural construct than a legal one in this country, and we are aiding and abetting its steady erosion with our dependence on the Internet, our credit cards and smartphones, our flirtation with social media, and our capitulation to commercial exploitation of Big Data . In a sense, we are all under surveillance, all the time — our whereabouts, activities, and transactions

reduced to metadata and available to anyone who can break the code — and we have brought it upon ourselves. Surveillance by the government, however, is another matter . Distrust or at least wariness of a government that collects data about us lies deep in the amygdala of our civic consciousness . This administration may be operating lawfully and with full regard to our rights and privileges, but what about that one? Have we been reading too many novels, or is there a real threat of tyranny? Here, of course, is where the Constitution comes in, with the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” I have no criticism of the FISA Court. I know and deeply respect every one of its presiding judges for the last 30 years, and I am well acquainted with many of the other FISA judges who have served. They are, every one of them, careful and scrupulous custodians of the extraordinary and sensitive power entrusted to them. The staff that supports the FISA Court, the Justice Department lawyers who appear before the FISA Court, and the FBI, CIA and NSA personnel who present applications to the FISA Court are superb, dedicated professionals. What I do criticize is the mission creep of the statute all of those people are implementing.

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2AC CPCP doesn’t solve privacyCelso 2014 (Joel [JD Candidate U of Baltimore Law]; DRONING ON ABOUT THE FOURTH AMENDMENT: ADOPTING A REASONABLE FOURTH AMENDMENT JURISPRUDENCE TO PREVENT UNREASONABLE SEARCHES BY UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS; 43 U. Balt. L. Rev. 461; kdf)Despite a strong argument that UAS surveillance should not constitute a search as long as it shows nothing more or different than what is revealed by naked-eye observation, n240 it is not clear that courts would accept technological surveillance as an equivalent substitute for manned surveillance. n241 In fact, in holding that the use of a camera to photograph an open industrial area is not a search, the Supreme Court emphasized that commercial property does not have the same heightened expectation of privacy as the home and stated that "the photographs here are not so revealing of intimate details as to raise constitutional concerns." n242 However, given the expectation of privacy in the home and the Supreme Court's assertion that "in the home ... all details are intimate details," n243 it could be that any [*488] UAS surveillance taken through skylights, windows, or open doors constitutes a search . n244 Finally, and most importantly, in Kyllo, the Supreme Court may have opened the door to warrantless UAS surveillance of the home at some point in the not-too-distant future . n245 In holding that the use of thermal imaging constitutes a search, the Court provided an important caveat by stating that when the technology used is available to the general public, it does not constitute a search. n246 Therefore, it appears that the Court's bright-line rule drawn at the entrance to the home may have been written in "disappearing ink." n247 To date, UAS are not in general public use. n248 That is about to change since certain government agencies are allowed to operate them, the FAA is required to fully integrate them into U.S. airspace by 2015, and their decreasing cost makes them more widely accessible. n249 Once the use of UAS becomes commonplace, the government may be able to use them to photograph or scan the interior of a home without a warrant, regardless of whether the information revealed could not have otherwise been obtained without a physical intrusion. n250 Therefore, under the Supreme Court's current jurisprudence, an expectation of privacy from unmanned aerial surveillance of the home could become unreasonable, removing Fourth Amendment protections from the place that has historically enjoyed the greatest protection. n251

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2AC TERRORISMNo link - Drones are inefficient mechanism to solve terrorismRothfuss 2014 (Ian F [George Mason School of Law]; Student Comment: An Economic Perspective on the Privacy Implications of Domestic Drone Surveillance; 10 J.L. Econ. & Pol'y 441; kdf)ConclusionU.S. citizens want to be safe from terrorist attacks and other threats, but not at the expense of their privacy rights. Therefore, a delicate balance must be achieved between privacy and security interests. Drones represent a surveillance technology advancement that threatens to dramatically alter the balance between these interests. As discussed in this comment, the current legal framework does not adequately protect privacy from the widespread surveillance that will likely result from the unrestricted domestic use of drones. Therefore, prompt legislative action is necessary to address the fundamental privacy challenges presented by the use of drones. Such legislation should allow for constructive use of drones within a framework that contains restrictions to protect individual privacy rights. While widespread general surveillance could make the nation safer from crime and terrorism, such extensive surveillance will ultimately be inefficient. The surveillance that could result from the domestic use of drones would detract from individual privacy and cause individuals to reduce productive activities and invest in countermeasures. Such "privacy disutility" will outweigh the societal benefits unless domestic drone surveillance is restricted. Therefore, [*462] without legislative action we may soon live in a world where "every time we walk out of our front door we have to look up and wonder whether some invisible eye in the sky is monitoring us . " n175

Their “experts” have motive to exaggerate the likelihood of an attack Weiss 2015 (Leonard [visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation]; On fear and nuclear terror; Mar 3; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2015, Vol. 71(2) 75–87; kdf)There is a tendency on the part of security policy advocates to hype security threats to obtain support for their desired policy outcomes. They are free to do so in a democratic society, and most come by their advocacy

through genuine conviction that a real security threat is receiving insufficient attention. But there is now enough evidence of how such advocacy has been distorted for the purpose of overcoming political opposition to policies stemming from ideology that careful public exposure and examination of data on claimed threats should be part of any such debate. Until this happens, the most appropriate attitude toward

claimed threats of nuclear terrorism, especially when accompanied by advocacy of policies intruding on individual freedom, should be one of skepticism . Interestingly, while all this attention to nuclear terrorism goes on, the United States and other nuclear nations have no problem promoting the use of nuclear power and national nuclear programs (only for friends, of course) that end up creating more nuclear materials that can be used for weapons. The use of civilian nuclear programs to disguise national weapon ambitions has been a hallmark of proliferation history ever since the Atoms for Peace program (Sokolski, 2001), suggesting that the real nuclear threat resides where it always has resided-in national nuclear programs; but placing the threat where it properly belongs does not carry the public-relations frisson currently attached to the word “terrorism.”

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2AC KFramework—Role of the ballot is to weigh the plans merits—rejecting the aff because parts of our advocacy are imperfect is not productive—allowing them to choose the debate’s focus wrecks ground—undermines deliberation

CP causes racism Cyril 2015 (Malkia Amala [under and executive director of the Center for Media Justice (CMJ) and co-founder of the Media Action Grassroots Network]; Black America's State of Surveillance; Mar 30; www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americas-state-surveillance; kdf)Today, media reporting on government surveillance is laser-focused on the revelations by Edward Snowden that millions of Americans were being spied on by the NSA. Yet my mother’s visit from the FBI reminds me that, from the slave pass system to laws that deputized white civilians as enforcers of Jim Crow, black people and other people of color have lived for centuries with surveillance practices aimed at maintaining a racial hierarchy . It’s time for journalists to tell a new story that does not start the clock when privileged classes learn they are targets of surveillance. We need to understand that data has historically been overused to repress dissidence, monitor perceived criminality, and perpetually maintain an impoverished underclass. In an era of big data, the Internet has increased the speed and secrecy of data collection. Thanks to new surveillance technologies, law enforcement agencies are now able to collect massive amounts of indiscriminate data. Yet legal protections and policies have not caught up to this technological advance. Concerned advocates see mass surveillance as the problem and protecting privacy as the goal. Targeted surveillance is an obvious answer—it may be discriminatory, but it helps protect the privacy perceived as an earned privilege of the inherently innocent. The trouble is, targeted surveillance frequently includes the indiscriminate collection of the private data of people targeted by race but not involved in any crime. For targeted communities, there is little to no expectation of privacy from government or corporate surveillance. Instead, we are watched, either as criminals or as consumers. We do not expect policies to protect us. Instead, we’ve birthed a complex and coded culture—from jazz to spoken dialects—in order to navigate a world in which spying, from AT&T and Walmart to public benefits programs and beat cops on the block, is as much a part of our built environment as the streets covered in our blood. In a recent address, New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton made it clear: “2015 will be one of the most significant years in the history of this organization. It will be the year of technology, in which we literally will give to every member of this department technology that would’ve been unheard of even a few years ago.” Predictive policing, also known as “Total Information Awareness,” is described as using advanced technological tools and data analysis to “preempt” crime. It utilizes trends, patterns, sequences, and affinities found in data to make determinations about when and where crimes will occur. This model is deceptive, however, because it presumes data inputs to be neutral. They aren’t. In a racially discriminatory criminal justice system, surveillance technologies reproduce injustice. Instead of reducing discrimination, predictive policing is a face of what author Michelle Alexander calls the “New Jim Crow”—a de facto system of separate and unequal application of laws, police practices, conviction rates, sentencing terms, and conditions of confinement that operate more as a system of social control by racial hierarchy than as crime prevention or punishment. In New York City, the predictive policing approach in use is “Broken Windows.” This approach to policing places an undue focus on quality of life crimes—like selling loose cigarettes, the kind of offense for which Eric Garner was choked to death. Without oversight, accountability, transparency, or rights, predictive policing is just high-tech racial profiling—indiscriminate data collection that drives discriminatory policing practices . As local law enforcement agencies increasingly adopt surveillance technologies , they use them in three primary ways: to listen in on specific conversations on and offline; to observe daily movements of individuals and groups ; and to observe data trends. Police departments like Bratton’s aim to use sophisticated technologies to do all three. They will use technologies like license plate readers, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation found to be disproportionately used in communities of color and communities in the process of being gentrified. They will use facial recognition, biometric scanning software, which the FBI has now rolled out as a national system, to be adopted by local police departments for any criminal justice purpose. They intend to use body and dashboard cameras, which have been touted as an effective step toward accountability based on the results of one study, yet storage and archiving procedures, among many other issues, remain unclear. They will use Stingray cellphone interceptors. According to the ACLU, Stingray technology is an invasive cellphone surveillance device that mimics cellphone towers and sends out signals to trick cellphones in the area into transmitting their locations and identifying information. When used to track a suspect’s cellphone, they also gather information about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby. The same is true of domestic drones, which are in increasing use by U.S. law enforcement to conduct routine aerial surveillance . While drones are currently unarmed, drone manufacturers are considering arming these remote-controlled aircraft with weapons like rubber bullets, tasers, and tear gas. They will use fusion centers. Originally designed to increase interagency collaboration for the purposes of counterterrorism, these have instead become the local arm of the intelligence community. According to Electronic Frontier Foundation, there are currently seventy-eight on record. They are the clearinghouse for increasingly used “suspicious activity reports”—described as “official documentation of observed behavior reasonably indicative of [khirn] pg. 23


pre-operational planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity.” These reports and other collected data are often stored in massive databases like e-Verify and Prism. As anybody who’s ever dealt with gang databases knows, it’s almost impossible to get off a federal or state database, even when the data collected is incorrect or no longer true. Predictive policing doesn’t just lead to racial and religious profiling—it relies on it. Just as stop and frisk legitimized an initial, unwarranted contact between police and people of color, almost 90 percent of whom turn out to be innocent of any crime, suspicious activities reporting and the dragnet approach of fusion centers target communities of color. One review of such reports collected in Los Angeles shows approximately 75 percent were of people of color. This is the future of policing in America, and it should terrify you as much as it terrifies me. Unfortunately, it probably doesn’t, because my life is at far greater risk than the lives of white Americans, especially those reporting on the issue in the media or advocating in the halls of power. One of the most terrifying aspects of high-tech surveillance is the invisibility of those it disproportionately impacts. The NSA and FBI have engaged local law enforcement agencies and electronic surveillance technologies to spy on Muslims living in the United States. According to FBI training materials uncovered by Wired in 2011, the bureau taught agents to treat “mainstream” Muslims as supporters of terrorism, to view charitable donations by Muslims as “a funding mechanism for combat,” and to view Islam itself as a “Death Star” that must be destroyed if terrorism is to be contained. From New York City to Chicago and beyond, local law enforcement agencies have expanded unlawful and covert racial and religious profiling against Muslims not suspected of any crime. There is no national security reason to profile all Muslims. At the same time, almost 450,000 migrants are in detention facilities throughout the United States, including survivors of torture, asylum seekers, families with small children, and the elderly. Undocumented migrant communities enjoy few legal protections, and are therefore subject to brutal policing practices, including illegal surveillance practices. According to the Sentencing Project, of the more than 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, more than 60 percent are racial and ethnic minorities. But by far, the widest net is cast over black communities. Black people alone represent 40 percent of those incarcerated. More black men are incarcerated than were held in slavery in 1850, on the eve of the Civil War. Lest some misinterpret that statistic as evidence of greater criminality, a 2012 study confirms that black defendants are at least 30 percent more likely to be imprisoned than whites for the same crime. This is not a broken system, it is a system working perfectly as intended, to the detriment of all. The NSA could not have spied on millions of cellphones if it were not already spying on black people, Muslims, and migrants. As surveillance technologies are increasingly adopted and integrated by law enforcement agencies today, racial disparities are being made invisible by a media environment that has failed to tell the story of surveillance in the context of structural racism.

[khirn] pg. 24


1AR CASEGreenwald goes affGreenwald 2014 (Glenn [Constitutional lawyer- patriot]; CONGRESS IS IRRELEVANT ON MASS SURVEILLANCE. HERE’S WHAT MATTERS INSTEAD; Nov 19; https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/19/irrelevance-u-s-congress-stopping-nsas-mass-surveillance/; kdf)3) U.S. court proceedings. A U.S. federal judge already ruled that the NSA’s domestic bulk collection program likely violates the 4th Amendment, and in doing so, obliterated many of the government’s underlying justifications. Multiple cases are now on appeal, almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court. None of this was possible in the absence of Snowden disclosures. For a variety of reasons, when it comes to placing real limits on the NSA, I place almost as little faith in the judiciary as I do in the Congress and executive branch. To begin with, the Supreme Court is dominated by five right-wing justices on whom the Obama Justice Department has repeatedly relied to endorse their most extreme civil-liberties-destroying theories . For another, of all the U.S. institutions that have completely abdicated their role in the post-9/11 era, the federal judiciary has probably been the worst, the most consistently subservient to the National Security State. Still, there is some chance that one of these cases will result in a

favorable outcome that restores some 4th Amendment protections inside the U.S. The effect is likely to be marginal, but not entirely insignificant.

[khirn] pg. 25

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/19/irrelevance-u-s-congress-stopping-nsas-mass-surveillance/



NEG CARDS

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1NC TERRORFirst off is the Terror DA –

Terror threats against the US are mountingBolton, UN Ambassador, 2015 (John R [served as the US Permanent Representative to the UN and as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security]; NSA activities key to terrorism fight; Apr 28; www.aei.org/publication/nsa-activities-key-to-terrorism-fight/; kdf)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 a n 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.

The plan blocks drones from usefully intervening to prevent domestic terrorism McNeal (Gregory [prof at Pepperdine University]; 2014 Drones and Aerial surveillance: Considerations for Legislators; Nov; www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/11/drones-and-aerial-surveillance; kdf)To counter the threat of surveillance, privacy advocates have focused solely on requiring warrants before the use of drones by law enforcement. Such a mandate oftentimes will result in the ground ing of drone tech nology in circumstances where law enforcement use of drones would be beneficial and largely non-controversial . For example, in light of the Boston Marathon bombing, police may want to fly a drone above a marathon to ensure the safety of the public. Under many bills, police would not be allowed to use a drone unless they had a warrant, premised upon probable cause to believe a crime had been or was about to be committed. This requirement exceeds current Fourth Amendment protections with regard to the reasonableness of observing activities in public places. What this means is that the police would need to put together a warrant application with sufficient facts to prove to a judge that they had probable cause. That application would need to define with particularity the place to be searched or the persons to be surveilled. All of this would be required to observe people gathered in a public place, merely because the observation was taking place from a drone, rather than from an officer on a rooftop or in a helicopter. In a circumstance like a marathon, this probable cause showing will be difficult for the police to satisfy . After all, if the police knew who in the crowd was a potential bomber, they would arrest those individuals. Rather, a marathon is the type of event where the police would want to use a drone to monitor for unknown attackers, and in the unfortunate event of an attack, use the footage to identify the perpetrators. This is precisely the type of circumstance where the use of drone could be helpful , but unfortunately it has been outlawed in many states. To make matters worse, this type of drone surveillance would pose little to no harms to privacy. A marathon is a highly public event, the event is televised, it takes place on streets where there are surveillance cameras and spectators are photographing the event. Moreover, in the states where drones have been banned (unless accompanied by a warrant), the police have not been prohibited from using any other type of surveillance equipment --- just drones. This technology centric approach has done little to protect privacy, but will certainly harm public safety , depriving law enforcement of a tool that they could use to protect people.

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Robust drone surveillance key to prevent terror attacks against the US Koerner 2015 (Matthew R [Duke University School of Law, J.D. expected 2015]; DRONES AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT: REDEFINING EXPECTATIONS OF PRIVACY; 64 Duke L.J. 1129; kdf)Senator Dianne Feinstein, a staunch advocate of governmental surveillance n1 and Chairman of the 113th Congress's Senate Intelligence Committee, n2 recently found herself, rather ironically, as the target of surveillance. n3 One day at her home, Senator Feinstein walked to the window to check on a protest that was taking place outside. n4 Much to her surprise, a small drone n5 hovered on the other side of the window, only inches away, spying on her. n6 The drone immediately flew away. n7 Senator Feinstein's experience is just one example of drones being used for surveillance within the United States. But her story and others like it n8 have sparked significant controversy over the use of drones for domestic surveillance, which falls within a broader debate [*1131] on privacy and governmental surveillance programs. n9 Advocates of robust federal surveillance policies champion governmental surveillance as the only way to prevent terrorist and cyber attacks against the U nited S tates . n10 President Barack Obama defended these surveillance programs as ""modest encroachments on privacy'" that "strike the "right balance' between national security and civil liberties." n11 In comparison, privacy advocates envision these surveillance programs leading to a dystopian, totalitarian government watching over its citizenry - undetected but omnipresent. n12 References to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four n13 abound. n14 [*1132] Apart from the surrounding privacy-concerns debate, drones currently provide many practical benefits and their projected applications seem limitless . n15 Based on their obvious advantage of being unmanned, drones have the capability to conduct missions previously considered too risky, dangerous, or impracticable. These applications are also provided at continuously decreasing costs and with the latest technological sophistication , such as the capability to see through physical obstructions, to detect various chemical and biological agents in the air, to recognize human faces and license plates , and to

fly in strategic, coordinated formations. n16

Terrorist can easily get WMD --- attacks escalate and cause global nuclear warMyhrvold, chief tech officer at Microsoft, 2014 (Nathan P [chief executive and founder of Intellectual Ventures and a former chief technology officer at Microsoft]; Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action; cco.dodlive.mil/files/2014/04/Strategic_Terrorism_corrected_II.pdf; kdf)Technology contains no inherent moral directive—it empowers people, whatever their intent, good or evil. This has always been true: when bronze implements supplanted those made of stone, the ancient world got scythes and awls, but also swords and battle-axes. The novelty of our present situation is that modern technology can provide small groups of people with much greater lethality than ever before. We now have to worry that private parties might gain access to weapons that are as destructive as —or possibly even more destructive than — those held by any nation-state. A handful of people , perhaps even a single individual, could have the ability to kill millions or even billions . Indeed, it is possible, from a technological standpoint, to kill every man, woman , and child on earth. The gravity of the situation is so extreme that getting the concept across without seeming silly or alarmist is challenging. Just thinking about the subject with any degree of seriousness numbs the mind. The goal of this essay is to present the case for making the needed changes before such a catastrophe occurs. The issues described here are too important to ignore. Failing nation-states — like North Korea —which possess nuclear weapons potentially pose a nuclear threat . Each new entrant to the nuclear club increases the possibility this will happen, but this problem is an old one, and one that existing diplomatic and military structures aim to manage. The newer and less understood danger arises from the increasing likelihood that stateless groups , bent on terrorism, will gain access to nuclear weapons, most likely by theft from a nation-state. Should this happen, the danger we now perceive to be coming from rogue states will pale in comparison. The ultimate response to a nuclear attack is a nuclear counterattack . Nation states have an address, and they know that we will retaliate in kind. Stateless groups are much more difficult to find which makes a nuclear counterattack virtually impossible. As a result, they can strike without fear of overwhelming retaliation, and thus they wield much more effective destructive power. Indeed, in many cases the fundamental equation of retaliation has become reversed. Terrorists often hope to provoke reprisal attacks on their own people , swaying popular opinion in their favor. The aftermath of 9/11 is a case in point . While it seems likely that Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hoped for a massive overreaction from the United States, it is unlikely his Taliban hosts anticipated the U.S. would go so far as to invade Afghanistan. Yes, al-Qaeda lost its host state and some personnel. The damage slowed the organization down but did not destroy it. Instead, the stateless al-Qaeda survived and adapted. The United States can claim some success against al-Qaeda in the years since 9/11, but it has hardly delivered a [khirn] pg. 28


deathblow. Eventually, the world will recognize that stateless groups are more powerful than nation-states because terrorists can wield weapons and mount assaults that no nationstate would dare to attempt. So far, they have limited themselves to dramatic tactical terrorism: events such as 9/11, the butchering of Russian schoolchildren, decapitations broadcast over the internet, and bombings in major cities. Strategic objectives cannot be far behind.

[khirn] pg. 29


1NC COUNTERPLAN

The United States federal government should limit the persistent use of aerial surveillance, require law enforcement agents to delete impertinent information after 48 hours, and mandate that aerial surveillance occur at least 350 feet above the ground. The United States federal government should ban weaponized aerial surveillance vehicles.

The counterplan solves the aff, but avoids by terror DA by retaining some unwarranted surveillanceMcNeal 2014 (Gregory [prof at Pepperdine University]; Drones and Aerial surveillance: Considerations for Legislators; Nov; www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/11/drones-and-aerial-surveillance; kdf)

While warrants are appealing to privacy advocates, the enactment of overly broad restrictions on drone use can curtail non-invasive , beneficial uses of drones . Legislators should reject a warrant-based , technology centric approach as it is unworkable and counterproductive . Instead,

legislators should follow a property rights centric approach, coupled with limits on persistent surveillance , data retention procedures , transparency and accountability measures and a recognition of the possibility that technology may make unmanned aerial surveillance more protective of privacy than manned surveillance. This paper makes five core recommendations: Legislators should follow a property rights approach to aerial surveillance. This approach provides landowners with the right to exclude aircraft, persons, and other objects from a column of airspace extending from the surface of their land up to 350 feet above ground level. Such an approach may solve most public and private harms associated with drones. Legislators should craft simple , duration-based surveillance legislation that will limit the aggregate amount of time the government may surveil a specific individual . Such legislation can address the potential harm of persistent surveillance, a harm that is capable of being committed by manned and unmanned aircraft. Legislators should adopt data retention procedures that require heightened levels of suspicion and increased procedural protections for accessing stored data gathered by aerial surveillance . After a legislatively determined period of time, all stored data should be deleted. Legislators should enact transparency and accountability measures, requiring government agencies to publish on a regular basis information about the use of aerial surveillance devices (both manned and unmanned). Legislators should recognize that technology such as geofencing and auto-redaction, may make aerial surveillance by drones more protective of privacy than human surveillance.

[khirn] pg. 30


1NC KRITIKNext off, the K

Small surveillance reforms like the aff normalize post-Orwellian politics, in which the illusion of privacy means people willingly cede political agency to the surveillance state. The alternative’s politics of dissent channels progressive politics towards massive collective struggle. Giroux, writes debate cards professionally, 14 [Henry A., Global TV Network Chair Professor at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University, “Totalitarian Paranoia in the Post-Orwellian Surveillance State,” Truthout, 10 February 2014, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21656-totalitarian-paranoia-in-the-post-orwellian-surveillance-state]

Under the rubric of battling terrorism, the US government has waged a war on civil liberties, privacy and democracy while turning a blind eye to the ways in which the police and intelligence agencies infiltrate and harass groups engaged in peaceful protests, particularly treating those groups denouncing banking and corporate institutions as criminal activities.73 They also have done nothing to restrict those corporate interests that turn a profit by selling arms, promoting war and investing surveillance apparatuses addicted to the mad violence of the war industries. Unfortunately, such legal illegalities and death-oriented policies are not an Orwellian fiction but an advancement of the world Orwell prematurely described regarding surveillance and its integration with

totalitarian regimes. The existence of the post-Orwellian state, where subjects participate willingly and surveillance connects to global state and corporate sovereignty , should muster collective outrage among the American public and generate massive individual resistance and

collective struggles aimed at the development of social movements designed to take back democracy from the corporate-political-military extremists that now control all the commanding institutions of American society. Putting trust in a government that makes a mockery of civil liberties is comparable to throwing away the most basic principles of our constitutional and democratic order . As Johnathan Schell argues:Government officials, it is true, assure us that they will never pull the edges of the net tight. They tell us that although they could know everything about us, they won't decide to. They'll let the information sit unexamined in the electronic vaults. But history, whether of our country or others, teaches that only a fool would place faith in such assurances . What one president refrains from doing the next will do ; what is left undone in peacetime is done when a crisis comes .74

History offers alternative narratives to those supported by the new authoritarians. Dangerous counter-memories have a way of surfacing unexpectedly at times and, in doing so, can challenge to the normalization of various forms of tyranny , including the mechanisms of a surveillance state defined by a history of illegal and criminal behavior. As the mainstream press recently noted, the dark shadow of Orwell's dystopian fable was so frightening in the early 1970s that a group of young people broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, stole as many records as possible, and leaked them to the press. None of the group was ever caught.75 Their actions were not only deeply rooted in an era when dissent against the Vietnam war, racism and corporate corruption was running high but also was suggestive of an era in which the politics of fear was not a general condition of society and large groups of people were mobilizing in numerous sites to make power accountable on a number of fronts, extending from college campuses to the shaping of foreign policy. The 1971 burglary made clear that the FBI was engaging in illegal and criminal acts aimed primarily against anti-war dissenters and the African-American community, which was giving voice in some cities to the Black Power movement. What the American people learned as a result of the leaked FBI documents was that many people were being illegally tapped, bugged, and that anti-war groups were being infiltrated. Moreover, the leaked files revealed that the FBI was spying on Martin Luther King Jr. and a number of other prominent politicians and activists. A couple of years later Carl Stern, an NBC reporter, followed up on the information that had been leaked and revealed a program called COINTELPRO , which stands for Counterintelligence Program, that documented how the FBI and CIA not only were secretly

[khirn] pg. 31

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21656-totalitarian-paranoia-in-the-post-orwellian-surveillance-state



harassing, disrupting, infiltrating and neutralizing leftist organizations but also were attempting to assassinate those considered domestic and foreign enemies.76 COINTELPRO was about more than spying, it was an illegally sanctioned machinery of violence and assassination.77 In one of the most notorious cases, the FBI worked with the Chicago Police to set up the conditions for the assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, two members of the Black Panther Party. Noam Chomsky has called COINTELPRO, which went on from the 1950s to the '70s, when it was stopped, "the worst systematic and extended violation of basic civil rights by the federal government," and "compares with Wilson's Red Scare."78 As a result of these revelations, Sen. Frank Church conducted Senate hearings that exposed the illegalities the FBI was engaged in and helped to put in place polices that provided oversight to prevent such illegalities from happening again. Needless to say, over time these oversights and restrictions were dismantled, especially after the tragic events of 9/11.What these young people were doing in 1971 is not unlike what Snowden and other whistle-blowers are doing today by making sure that dissent is not suppressed by governments who believe that power should reside only in the hands of government and financial elites and that all attempts to make authoritarian power accountable should be repressed at almost any cost. Many of these young protesters were influenced by the ongoing struggles of the civil rights movement and one of them, John Raines, was heavily influenced by the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed by the Nazis. What is crucial about this incident is that it not only revealed the long historical reach of government surveillance and criminal activity designed to squash dissent, it also provides a model of civic courage by young people who acted on their principles in a nonviolent way to stop what they considered to be machineries of civil and social death. As Greenwald argues, COINTELPRO makes clear that governments have no qualms about "targeting citizens for their disfavored political views and trying to turn them into criminals through infiltration, entrapment and the like" and that such actions are "alive and well today in the United States."79 Governments that elevate lawlessness to one of the highest principles of social order reproduce and legitimate violence as an acceptable mode of action throughout a society. Violence in American society has become its heartbeat and nervous system, paralyzing ideology, policy and governance, if not the very idea of politics. Under such circumstances, the corporate and surveillance state become symptomatic of a form of tyranny and authoritarianism that has corrupted and disavowed the ideals and reality of a substantive democracy. Dissent is crucial to any viable notion of democracy and provides a powerful counterforce to the dystopian imagination that has descended like a plague on American society; but dissent is not enough. In a time of surging authoritarianism, it is crucial for everyone to find the courage to translate critique into the building of popular movements dedicated to making education central to any viable notion of politics . This is a politics that does the difficult work of assembling critical formative cultures by developing alternative media , educational organizations , cultural apparatuses , infrastructures and new sites through which to address the range of injustices plaguing the United States and the forces that reproduce them. The rise of cultures of surveillance along with the defunding of public and higher education, the attack on the welfare state and the militarization of everyday life can be addressed in ways that not only allow people to see how such issues are interrelated to casino capitalism and the racial-security state but also what it might mean to make such issues meaningful to make them critical and transformative. As Charlie Derber has written, "How to express possibilities and convey them authentically and persuasively seems crucially important" if any viable notion of resistance is to take place.80Nothing will change unless the left and progressives take seriously the subjective underpinnings of oppression in the United States . The power of the imagination, dissent , and the willingness to hold power accountable constitute a major threat to authoritarian regimes . Snowden's disclosures made clear that the authoritarian state is deeply fearful of those intellectuals , critics , journalists and others who dare to question authority ,

expose the crimes of corrupt politicians and question the carcinogenic nature of a corporate state that has hijacked democracy: This is most evident in the insults and patriotic gore heaped on Manning and Snowden.

Post-Orwellian politics negate life and allow endless warfareEvans, professional Foucault hack, and Reid 13 [Brad, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Bristole, and Julian, “Dangerously exposed: the life and death of the resilient subject,” Resilience, 2013, Vol. 1 (2), pp. 83-98]

Resilient subjects are subjects that have accepted the imperative not to resist or secure themselves

from the difficulties they are faced with but instead adapt to their enabling conditions . This renders

[khirn] pg. 32


them fully compliant to the logics of complexity with its concomitant adaptive and emergent qualities.

Resistance here is transformed from being a political capacity aimed at the achievement of freedom from that which threatens and endangers to a purely reactionary impulse aimed at increasing the capacities of the subject to adapt to its dangers and simply reduce the degree to which it suffers. This conflation of resistance with resilience is not incidental but indicative of the nihilism of the underlying ontology of vulnerability at work in contemporary policies concerned with climate change and other supposedly catastrophic processes. What is nihilism, after all, if it is not a will to nothingness drawn from a willing reactive enslavement to forces deemed to be beyond our control as one merely lives out the catastrophic moment? It also alerts us to the fundamentally liberal nature of such policies and framings of the phenomenon of climate change defined, as liberalism has been since its origins, by a fundamental mistrust in the abilities of the human subject to secure itself in the world .10 Liberalism, as we have both explored extensively elsewhere,

is a security project .11 From its outset, it has been concerned with seeking answers to the problem of how to secure itself as a regime of governance through the provision of security to the life of populations subject to it.12 It will, however, always be an incomplete project because its biopolitical foundations are flawed ; life is not securable . It is a multiplicity of antagonisms and for some life to be made to live , some other life has to be made to die .13 That is a

fundamental law of life which is biologically understood. This is the deep paradox that undercuts the entire liberal project while inciting it to govern ever more and ever better, becoming more inclusive and more assiduous at the provision of security to life, while learning how better to take life and make die that which falls outside and threatens the boundaries of its territories. Liberal regimes, in essence and from the outset, thrive on the insecurities of life which their capacity to provide security to provides the source of their legitimacy, becoming ever more adept at the taking of life which the provision of security to life requires .14 It is no accident that the most advanced liberal democracy in the world today, the United States of America,

is also the most heavily armed state in the world . And not just the most heavily armed state today, but also

the most heavily armed in human history. Liberal regimes do not and cannot accept the realities of this paradox . Which is why, far from being exhausted, the liberal project remains and has to be, in order for it to

be true to its mission, distinctly transformative. Not only of the world in general and hence its endless resorts to war and violence to weed out those unruly lives that are the source of insecurity to the life that is the font of its security , but also, and yet more fundamentally, of the human subject itself; for this is a paradox which plays out, not just territorially, socially or between individuals, but within the diffuse and ultimately unknowable domain of human subjectivity itself. The liberal subject is divided and has to be in order to fulfil its mission, critically astute at discerning the distinctions within its own life between that which accords with the demands made of it in order to accord with liberal ways of living and those which do not comply with its biopolitical ambitions.15 Being divided means the liberal subject will always be incomplete, needing work, critical, insecure and mistrustful of itself for the purpose of its own self-improvement.

The liberal subject is a project ; one that renders life itself a project, subject to an endless task of critique and self-becoming, from cradle to grave . Sadly, many still find the concept of life appealing and even utopian. We are taught to think that we ought to choose life over emptiness or negation, Renton’s law.16 In fact, it is the source of the world’s greatest nihilisms. Liberalism too is and has always been a nihilism. Perhaps it is the greatest of all nihilisms . In giving us over to life, it gives us no ends to live for but the endless work on the self that contemporarily permeate our ways of living devoid of any meaning as such .

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1NC SOLVENCY

Reform attempts just provide a veneer of legitimacy for national security officials --- they’ll circumvent the plan Glennon, -- Professor of International Law at Tufts, 14 (Michael, Harvard National Security Journal, “National Security and Double Government,” http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf, JMP)VI. ConclusionU.S. national security policy has scarcely changed from the Bush to the Obama Administration. The theory of Walter Bagehot explains why. Bagehot described the emergence in 19th-century Britain of a “disguised republic” consisting of officials who actually exercised governmental power but remained unnoticed by the public, which continued to believe that visible, formal institutions exercised legal authority.601 Dual institutions of governance, one public and the other concealed, were referred to by Bagehot as “double government.”602 A similar process of bifurcated institutional evolution has occurred in the United States, but in reverse: a network has emerged within the federal government that exercises predominant power with respect to national security matters . It has evolved in response to structural incentives rather than invidious intent, and it consists of the several hundred executive officials who manage the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies responsible for protecting the nation’s security. These officials are as little disposed to stake out new policies as they are to abandon old ones. They define security more in military and intelligence terms rather than in political or diplomatic ones. Enough examples exist to persuade the public that the network is subject to judicial, legislative, and executive constraints. This appearance is important to its operation, for the network derives legitimacy from the ostensible authority of the public , constitutional branches of the government . The appearance of accountability is , however, largely an illusion fostered by those institutions’ pedigree, ritual , intelligibility, mystery, and superficial harmony with the network’s ambitions. The courts, Congress, and even the presidency in reality impose little constraint . Judicial review is negligible ; congressional oversight dysfunctional ; and presidential control nominal . Past efforts to revive these institutions have thus fallen flat . Future reform efforts are no more likely to succeed , relying as they must upon those same institutions to restore power to themselves by exercising the very power that they lack. External constraints—public opinion and the press—are insufficient to check it. Both are manipulable, and their vitality depends heavily upon the vigor of constitutionally established institutions, which would not have withered had those external constraints had real force. Nor is it likely that any such constraints can be restored through governmental efforts to inculcate greater civic virtue, which would ultimately concentrate power even further. Institutional restoration can come only from an energized body politic. The prevailing incentive structure, however, encourages the public to become less , not more, informed and engaged .

Corporate and international surveillance fills in for the aff – that’s comparatively worse for privacyGiroux 14 [Henry A., Global TV Network Chair Professor at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University,

[khirn] pg. 34

http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf,%20JMP)


“Totalitarian Paranoia in the Post-Orwellian Surveillance State,” Truthout, 10 February 2014, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21656-totalitarian-paranoia-in-the-post-orwellian-surveillance-state]

Everything that moves is monitored, along with information that is endlessly amassed and stored by private and government agencies. No one , it seems, can escape the tentacles of the NSA or the spy agencies that are scouring mobile phone apps for personal data and intercepting computer and cellphone shipments to plant

tracking devices and malware in them.11 Surveillance is now global , reaching beyond borders that no longer provide an obstacle to collecting information and spying on governments, individuals, prominent politicians, corporations and pro-democracy protest groups. The details of our daily lives are not only on full display but are being monitored , collected and stored in databanks waiting to be used for commercial, security or political purposes. At the same time, the right to privacy is eagerly given up by millions of people for the wonders of social networking or the varied seductions inspired by consumer fantasies . The loss of privacy, anonymity and confidentiality also has had the adverse effect of providing the basis for what Bauman and David Lyons call the undemocratic process of " social sorting ," in which different populations are subject to differential treatment extending from being protected by the state to being killed by drone attacks launched under the auspices of global surveillance and state power .12

Privacy is no longer a principled and cherished civil right. On the contrary, it has been absorbed and transformed within the purview of a celebrity and market-driven culture in which people publicize themselves and their innermost secrets to promote and advance their personal brand. Or it is often a principle invoked by conservatives who claim their rights to privacy have been trampled when confronted with ideas or arguments that unsettle their notions of common sense or their worldviews. It is worth repeating that privacy has mostly become synonymous with a form of self-generated, nonstop performance - a type of public relations in which privacy makes possible the unearthing of secrets, a cult of commodified confessionals and an infusion of narcissistic, self-referencing narratives, all of which serve to expand the pleasure quotient of surveillance while normalizing its expanding practices and modes of repression that Orwell could never have imagined. Where Orwell's characters loathed the intrusion of surveillance, according to Bauman and Lyons, today We seem to experience no joy in having secrets, unless they are the kinds of secrets likely to enhance our egos by attracting the attention of researchers and editors of TV talk shows, tabloid front pages and the....covers of glossy magazines….Everything private is now done, potentially, in public - and is potentially available for public consumption; and remains available for the duration, till the end of time, as the internet 'can't be made to forget' anything once recorded on any of its innumerable servers. This erosion of anonymity is a product of pervasive social media services , cheap cell phone cameras, free photo and video Web hosts , and perhaps most important of all, a change in people's views about what ought to be public and what ought to be private .13Orwell's 1984 looks subdued next to the current parameters, intrusions, technologies and disciplinary apparatuses wielded by the new corporate-government surveillance state. Surveillance has not only become more pervasive, intruding into the most private of spaces and activities in order to collect massive amounts of data, it also permeates and inhabits everyday activities so as to be taken-for-granted . Surveillance is not simply pervasive, it has become normalized . Orwell could not have imagined either the intrusive capabilities of the the new high-

powered digital technologies of surveillance and display, nor could he have envisioned the growing web of political , cultural and economic partnerships between modes of government and corporate sovereignty capable of collecting almost every form of communication in which human beings engage . What is new in the post-Orwellian world is not just the emergence of new and powerful technologies used by governments and corporations to spy on people and assess personal information as a way to either attract ready-made customers or to sell information to advertising agencies, but the emergence of a widespread culture of surveillance. Intelligence networks now inhabit the world of Disney as well as the secret domains of the NSA and the FBI.I think the renowned intellectual historian Quentin Skinner is right in insisting that surveillance is about more than the violation of privacy rights, however important. Under the surveillance state , the greatest threat one faces is not simply the

[khirn] pg. 35




violation of one's right to privacy, but the fact that the public is subject to the dictates of arbitrary power it no longer seems interested in contesting. And it is precisely this existence of unchecked power and the wider culture of political indifference that puts at risk the broader principles of liberty and freedom, which are fundamental to democracy itself. According to Skinner, who is worth quoting at length: The response of those who are worried about surveillance has so far been too much couched, it seems to me, in terms of the violation of the right to privacy. Of course it's true that my privacy has been violated if someone is reading my emails without my knowledge. But my point is that my liberty is also being violated, and not merely by the fact that someone is reading my emails but also by the fact that someone has the power to do so should they choose. We have to insist that this in itself takes away liberty because it leaves us at the mercy of arbitrary power. It's no use those who have possession of this power promising that they won't necessarily use it, or will use it only for the common good. What is offensive to liberty is the very existence of such arbitrary power.14

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1NC PRIVACY

Requiring warrants for drone policy isn’t key to privacy – it’s well within ordinary bounds of police action McNeal 2014 (Gregory [prof at Pepperdine University]; Drones and Aerial surveillance: Considerations for Legislators; Nov; www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/11/drones-and-aerial-surveillance; kdf)Legislators should reject calls for a blanket requirement that all drone use be accompanied by a warrant . If legislators forgo the property rights approach detailed in Part A. above, they should eschew proposals that require warrants for the use of drones. Such prohibitions are overbroad and ill-advised.[50] Legislation that requires warrants for drones treats the information from a drone differently than information gathered from a manned aircraft, differently than that gathered by a police officer in a patrol car, or even from an officer on foot patrol. Under current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, police are not required to shield their eyes from wrongdoing until they have a warrant . Why impose such a requirement on the collection of information by drones? Much of the anti-drone activists efforts are aimed at the threat of persistent and pervasive surveillance of the population by the government, an understandable fear. But what is an unreasonable fear, and should not work its way into legislation, is a ban on ordinary aerial observations that are only controversial because they take place with a remote controlled helicopter rather than a manned one. If anybody in a Cessna can see the pollution pouring from a factory, or if the police flying in a helicopter can see a cartel’s drug operations or human trafficking ring --- and such observations can be admitted as evidence in a criminal trial, shouldn’t citizens and the police be able to make the same observations and expect that the evidence won’t be excluded merely because it is collected with a remote control aircraft? For example, imagine a police officer was on patrol in her patrol car. While driving, she witnesses the car in front of her strike a pedestrian and speed off. Until witnessing the crime she did not have probable cause (the predicate level of suspicion for a warrant), or even reasonable suspicion (the predicate level of suspicion for a brief investigatory stop) to believe the vehicle in front of her would be involved in a crime. Let’s further assume that her dash camera recorded the entire incident. Nonetheless, that dashcam video may be used as evidence against the driver in a subsequent criminal proceeding. However, under broadly worded proposals that have been introduced in many state legislatures and the U.S. Congress, the same piece of evidence if gathered by a drone would be inadmissible in court because police did not have a warrant. Consider another example. Police receive an anonymous tip that someone is growing marijuana in their backyard. A police officer attempts to view the backyard from the ground but his view is blocked by a 10 foot tall fence. The officer next decides to fly a commercially available remote controlled helicopter[51] over the backyard and from a vantage point that does not violate FAA regulations observes marijuana plants growing in the yard. This observation would be unlawful under proposals that require a warrant for observations from a drone. However, these facts are nearly identical to the facts in the Supreme Court’s 1986 California v. Ciraolo[52] decision which upheld aerial surveillance (discussed above). The only difference is that in Ciraolo, the officer flew over the backyard in an airplane, rather than using a drone. In fact, in Ciraolo the Court noted that not only would observation of the marijuana plants from the air (as described above) be lawful, police officers peering over the fence from the top of a police truck would also be behaving lawfully, and by extension, observation of the marijuana plants by police from the third floor of a neighboring home would also be lawful. But under proposals requiring a warrant for observations by a drone, this evidence would be inadmissible. The examples above raise questions about what public policy goals are advanced by the suppression of evidence of a crime when documented by a drone, when the same evidence if recorded by a dashcam, observed from an airplane, or viewed from a neighboring home would be admissible in court. Such examples highlight the requiring warrants for evidence gathered by drones, when other methods of gathering the same evidence would not require a warrant.

Their evidence is fearmongering – no way that police use of drones makes the united states entirely totalitarian or is so utterly dehumanizing to turn the US into nazi Germany

Prefer utilitarianism --- consequences matter, and you should prioritize life because value is subjective and could improve in the future Tännsjö 11 [Torbjörn, the Kristian Claëson Professor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University, 2011, “Shalt Thou Sometimes Murder? On the Ethics of Killing,” online: http://people.su.se/~jolso/HS-texter/shaltthou.pdf][khirn] pg. 37

http://people.su.se/~jolso/HS-texter/shaltthou.pdf


I suppose it is correct to say that, if Schopenhauer is right, if life is never worth living, then according to utilitarianism we should all commit suicide and put an end to humanity. But this does not mean that, each of us should commit suicide. I commented on this in chapter two when I presented the idea that util itarianism should be applied , not only to individual actions, but to collective actions as well.¶ It is a well-known fact that people rarely commit suicide. Some even claim that no one who is mentally sound commits suicide. Could that be taken as evidence for the claim that people live lives worth living? That would be rash. Many people are not utilitarians. They may avoid suicide because they believe that it is morally wrong to kill oneself. It is also a possibility that, even if people lead lives not worth living, they believe they do. And even if some may believe that their lives , up to now, have not been worth living , their future lives will be better. They may be mistaken about this. They may hold false expectations about the future.¶ From the point of view of evolutionary biology, it is natural to assume that people should rarely commit suicide. If we set old age to one side, it has poor survival value (of one’s genes) to kill oneself. So it should be expected that it is difficult for ordinary people to kill themselves. But then theories about cognitive dissonance, known from psychology, should warn us that we may come to believe that we live better lives than we do.¶ My strong belief is that most of us live lives worth living.

Regulating the use of drones normalizes broader violence and military intrusionsTrombly 12 [Dan, Associate Analyst @ Caerus Analytics, National Security/International Affairs Analyst, “The Drone War Does Not Take Place,” NOVEMBER 16, 2012, http://slouchingcolumbia.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/the-drone-war-does-not-take-place]

I’ll try to make this a bit shorter than my usual fare on the subject, but let me be clear about something. As much as I and many others inadvertently use the term, there is no such thing as drone war. There is no nuclear war, no air war, no naval war. There isn’t really even irregular war. There’s just war. There is, of course, drone warfare, just as there is nuclear warfare, aerial warfare, and naval warfare. This is verging on pedantry, but

the use of language does matter. The changing conduct and character of war should not be confused with its nature, as Colin Gray strives to remind us in so many of his writings. When we believe that some aspect of warfare changes the nature of war – whether we do so to despair its ethical descent or praise its technological marvels, or to try to objectively discern some new and irreversible reality – we lose sight of a logic that by and large endures in its political and conceptual character. Hence the title (with some, but not too much, apology to

Baudrillard). There is no drone war, there is only the employment of drones in the various wars we fight under the misleading and conceptually noxious “War on Terror.” Why does this matter? To imbue a weapons system with the political properties of the policy employing it is fallacious , and to assume its mere presence institutes new political realities relies on a denial of facts and context. This

remains the case with drones. The character of wars waged with drones is different – the warfare is different – but the nature of these wars do not change, and very often this argument obscures the wider military operations occurring . Long before the first drone strikes occurred in Somalia, America was very much at war there. Before their availability in that theater, the U.S. had deployed CIA and SOF assets to the region. It supported Ethiopia’s armies and it helped bankroll and coordinate proxy groups, whether they were Somali TFG units, militias, or private contractors. It bombarded select Somali targets with

everything from naval guns to AC-130 gunships to conventional strike aircraft. It deployed JSOC teams to capture or kill Somalis. That at some point the U.S. acquired a new platform to conduct these strikes is not particularly relevant to the character of that war and even less to its nature. We sometimes assume drones inaugurate some new

type of invincibility or some transcendental transformation of war as an enterprise of risk and mutual violence. We are incorrect to do so. The war in Somalia is certainly not risk free for the people who the U.S. employs or contracts to target these drones. It is not risk free for the militias, mercenaries, or military partners which follow up on the ground. Nor is it risk free for those who support the drones. Just ask Abu Talha al-Sudani, one of the key figures behind the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, who sent operatives to case Camp Lemonier and launch a commando raid – one which looks, in retrospect, very much like the one that crippled Marine aviation at Camp Bastion recently – that might have killed a great many U.S. personnel on a base then and now

critical to American operations in the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden. The existence of risk is an inherent product of an enemy whose will to fight we have not yet overcome. The degree of that inherent risk – whether it is negligible or great – is a product of relative military capabilities and war’s multifarious external contexts. Looked at through this lens, it’s not drones that reduce U.S. political and material risk, it’s the basic facts of the conflict. In the right context, most any kind of military technology can significantly mitigate risks. A 19th century ironclad fleet could shell the coast of a troublesome principality with basic impunity. When Dewey said, “You may fire when ready, Gridley,” at Manila Bay, according to most history and much legend he lost only one man – due to

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heatstroke! – while inflicting grievous casualties on his out-ranged and out-gunned Spanish foes. That some historians have suggested Dewey may have concealed a dozen casualties by fudging them in with desertions, which were in any case were a far greater problem than casualties since the Navy was still in the habit of employing foreign sailors expendable by the political standards of the day is even more telling. Yes, there are always risks and almost always casualties even in the most unfair fights, but just as U.S. policymakers wrote off Asian sailors, they write off the victims of death squads which hunt down the chippers, spotters, and informants in Pakistan or the contractors

training Puntland’s anti-piracy forces. And no, not even the American spooks are untouchable, the fallen at Camp Chapman are testament to that. This is hardly unique to drones or today’s covert wars. The CIA’s secret air fleet in Indochina lost men, too, and the Hmong suffered mightily for their aid to the U.S. in the Laotian civil war. The fall of Lima Site 85, by virtue or demerit of policy, resonated little with the American public but deeply marks the intelligence community and those branches of the military engaging in clandestine action. The wars we wage in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia are not drone wars any more than our war in Laos was an air war simply because Operation Barrel Roll’s bombers elicit more attention than the much more vulnerable prop-driven spotting aircraft or Vang Pao’s men on the ground.

There is a certain hubris in thinking we can limit war by limiting its most infamous weapons systems. The taboo and treaties against chemical weapons perhaps saved men (but not the Chinese at Wuhan, nor the Allied and innocents downwind of the SS John Harvey at Bari) from one of the Great War’s particular horrors, but they did nothing appreciable to check the kind of war the Great War was, or the hypersanguinary consequences of its sequel but a generation later. The Predators and Reapers could have never existed, and very likely the U.S. would still be seeking ways to carry out its war against al Qaeda and its affiliates under the auspices of the AUMF in all of today’s same theaters. More might die from rifles, Tomahawks, Bofors guns or Strike Eagles’ JDAMs than remotely-launched Griffins, and the tempo of strikes would abate. But the same fundamental problems – the opaque decisions to kill, the esoteric legal justifications for doing so, the obtuse objectives these further – would all remain . Were it not for the

exaggerated and almost myopic focus on “killer robots,” the U.S. public would likely pay far less attention to the victims, excesses, and contradictions. But blaming drones qua drones for these problems, or fearing their proliferation at home, makes little more sense than blaming helicopters for Vietnam, or fearing airmobile assaults when DC MPD’s MD-500s buzz over my neighborhood. That concern that proliferation of a weapons system equates to proliferation of the outcomes associated with them, without regard to context, is equally misleading. Nobody in America should fear the expansion of the Chinese UAV fleet because, like the U.S. UAV fleet, it is merely going to expand their

ability to do what similar aircraft were already doing. Any country with modern air defenses can make mincemeat of drone-only sorties, and for that reason China, which unlike Yemen and Pakistan would not consent to wanton U.S. bombing of its countryside, need not fear drones. For an

enormous number of geographical, political, and military reasons, the U.S. ought fear the “drone war” coming home even less. Drones do not grant a country the ability to conduct the kind of wars we conduct against AQAM. The political leverage to build bases and clear airspaces, and the military and intelligence capabilities to mitigate an asymmetric countermeasure operation do. If another country gains that ability to conduct them

against a smaller country, even, it is not because they lacked the ability to put weapons on planes, but because of the full tapestry of national power and military capabilities gave them such an ability. It was not asymmetry in basic technical ability that made the U.S.

submarine blockade of Japan so much more effective than the Axis’s attempts to do the same against America’s shores, but the total scope of the assets in the field and context

of their use. It was not because of precedent or moral equivalence , or lack thereof that the Axis could bomb Britain or lose the ability to do so, but because of the cumulative effect of military capabilities and the judgments guiding them. What might expand the battlefield of a “drone war” is much the same. America’s enemies do not refrain from attacking bases in CONUS or targeting dissidents in the U.S. (not that they have not before), they wait for an

opportunity and practical reason to do so, and that has very little to do with drones in particular and even less the nature of the war itself. Fearing that the mere use of a weapons system determines the way in which our enemies will use it without regard to this context is not prophetic wisdom. It is quasi-Spenglerian hyperventilation that attributes the decision to use force to childlike mimesis rather than its fundamentally political purposes. Iran and Russia do not wait on drones to conduct extrajudicial targeted killings, and indeed drones would be of much less use to them in their own political contexts. Focusing on drones and the nature of targeted killings as some sort of inherent link ignores those contexts and ultimately does a disservice to understanding of wars past, present, and future, and by doing so, does little help – and possibly a great deal of harm – to understanding how to move forward .

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1NC ECONGrowth now --- the economy is building strength Reuters 2015 (Ann Saphir; U.S. economy isn't as weak as estimates suggest, Fed paper says; www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/18/us-usa-fed-gdp-idUSKBN0O31T520150518; kdf)The U.S. economy is probably not as weak as current estimates suggest , a paper published Monday by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco said, potentially adding to arguments for raising interest rates sooner rather than later. A government report late last month put first-quarter growth at a mere 0.2 percent, far below economists' expectations and uncomfortably close to an outright contraction like that experienced in the first quarter of 2014. But by running a series of statistical corrections for the way the government accounts for seasonal variations in output, the paper's authors found "a good chance that underlying economic growth so far this year was substantially stronger than reported." A chart in the paper suggested first-quarter growth may have been closer to 1.8 percent. That's still below the economy's potential but not dramatically so. A stronger economy suggests a lower hurdle for the Fed to raise interest rates that have been near zero since December 2008. San Francisco Fed President John Williams, whose chief research economist co-authored Monday's paper, has said he believes the economy will bounce back this quarter and may be strong enough for the Fed to begin raising interest rates even as soon as June. The paper's conclusions are at odds with the findings published last week by economists at the Washington-based Federal Reserve Board. They argued that the recent pattern of first-quarter economic slowdowns isn't a reflection of a statistical fluke in the way U.S. gross domestic product is measured.

Current laws solve but the plan destroys the drone industry more broadly Berry 2014 (Michael [partner in the Philadelphia office of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz LLP]; THE DRONES ARE COMING: ... AND FOR NOW WE SHOULD GET OUT OF THEIR WAY; 36 Pennsylvania Lawyer 50; kdf)

In the meantime state and local governments around the country have begun to consider drone legislation. By the end of 2013, 43 states, including Pennsylvania, had considered drone legislation, with nine passing laws. All nine of those states have placed restrictions on the government's use of drones. Most of those laws regulate law enforcement, permi tting drones to be used only in limited circumstances such as when the police have a warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement applies. Three states have placed limits on the private use of drones. Oregon allows private property owners to file suit against drone operators under certain circumstances if the drones are flown less than 400 feet above their property. Texas allows people and companies to use drones to capture images in some circumstances (such as for scholarly research, mapping land or monitoring gas utilities). But Texas law makes it a crime to use a drone to capture an image of a person or private property "with the intent to conduct surveillance." Idaho has gone even farther, banning people from using drones to photograph or film others without their consent for the purpose of publication. Pennsylvania should not rush to follow these states' examples of restricting private drone use. The Texas and Idaho laws pose serious constitutional questions. People can take photographs of others in places where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, whether their subjects consent or not. This principle is deeply etched into the law and has proven essential to newsgathering and reporting on matters of public concern. Legislators should not trample this fundamental legal principle. Second, these laws are unnecessary here. Pennsylvania already has a number of laws in place to protect people against the harms those other states are seeking to prevent. For example, our stalking, harassment and "Peeping Tom" laws already make it illegal for people to use drones in potentially nefarious ways. If someone believes he or she has been victimized by a drone, Pennsylvania already provides an array of remedies. Some examples: If a person claims that a drone operator invaded his or her privacy by filming the person in a private place, the person would have a remedy through a claim for an intrusion. If that private footage were then tortiously broadcast, the person could file a claim for publication of private facts. Similarly, if a person were physically injured by someone's drone, that person could file a claim for battery. And if a person claims that drones are interfering with enjoyment of his or her property, that [*54] person can file a claim for nuisance. When it comes to private use of drones, there is simply no need to rush to pass new state laws. Finally, rushing to enact new laws could threaten to extinguish the nascent drone industry before it gets off the ground and before we fully understand drones' potential uses and benefits . We should see how drones develop, what we learn from the FAA test sites and what rules the FAA proposes and implements. We should not act before we have a more complete record. In the meantime, if problems arise, we should allow existing laws to do their job. Drones are coming. As they begin to arrive, let's monitor their progress and get out of their way for now.

[khirn] pg. 40


No impact to econ collapseDrezner ’14 (Daniel Drezner, IR prof at Tufts, The System Worked: Global Economic Governance during the Great Recession, World Politics, Volume 66. Number 1, January 2014, pp. 123-164)

The final significant outcome addresses a dog that hasn't barked: the effect of the Great Recession on cross-border conflict and violence. During the initial stages of the crisis, multiple analysts asserted that the financial crisis would lead states to increase their use of force as a tool for staying in power.42 They voiced genuine concern that the global economic downturn would lead to an increase in conflict—whether through greater internal repression, diversionary wars, arms races, or a ratcheting up of great power conflict . Violence in the Middle East, border disputes in the South China Sea, and even the disruptions of the Occupy movement fueled impressions of a surge in global public disorder. The aggregate data suggest otherwise , however . The Institute for

Economics and Peace has concluded that "the average level of peacefulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in 2007 ."43 Interstate violence in particular has declined since the start of the financial crisis, as have military expenditures in most sampled countries. Other studies confirm that the Great Recession has not triggered any increase in violent conflict , as Lotta Themner and Peter Wallensteen conclude: "[T]he pattern is one of relative stability when we consider the trend for the past five years."44 The secular decline in violence that started with the end of the Cold War has not been reversed. Rogers Brubaker observes that "the crisis has not to date generated the surge in protectionist nationalism or ethnic exclusion that might have been expected."43

Empirics disprove escalation Barnett ‘9 (Thomas P.M. Barnett, senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC, “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis,” 8/25/2009)

When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen

ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the global recession . Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn, occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up: * No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); * The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); * Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); * No great improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); * A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and * No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that is likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political

radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center -left

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or center-right political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade . In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the W orld T rade O rganization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward f ree- t rade a greement s have not slowed . Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order.

[khirn] pg. 42


2NC CASEOur 1NC card assumes the courts, but their author agrees that the courts serve no checking function:Greenwald 2014 (Glenn [Constitutional lawyer- patriot]; CONGRESS IS IRRELEVANT ON MASS SURVEILLANCE. HERE’S WHAT MATTERS INSTEAD; Nov 19; https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/19/irrelevance-u-s-congress-stopping-nsas-mass-surveillance/; kdf)3) U.S. court proceedings. A U.S. federal judge already ruled that the NSA’s domestic bulk collection program likely violates the 4th Amendment, and in doing so, obliterated many of the government’s underlying justifications. Multiple cases are now on appeal, almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court. None of this was possible in the absence of Snowden disclosures. For a variety of reasons, when it comes to placing real limits on the NSA, I place almost as little faith in the judiciary as I do in the Congress and executive branch. To begin with, the Supreme Court is dominated by five right-wing justices on whom the Obama Justice Department has repeatedly relied to endorse their most extreme civil-liberties-destroying theories. For another, of all the U.S. institutions that have completely abdicated their role in the post-9/11 era, the federal judiciary has probably been the worst, the most consistently subservient to the National Security State .

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1NR TURNS CASETerror attacks incite racism domestically, regardless of who attacksAkrahm and Johnson 2002 (Susan M [Associate Clinical Prof @ Boston U School of Law] and Kevin R [Associate Dean for Academic Affairs@ UC Davis, Prof of Law and Chicana/o Studies]; RACE, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND IMMIGRATION LAW AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: THE TARGETING OF ARABS AND MUSLIMS; Nov 2; www.privacysos.org/sites/all/files/akram.pdf; kdf)Times of crisis are often accompanied by hostility toward minorities in the United States. For Arabs and Muslims, this may be even more problematic, as perpetrators of hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims frequently fail to differentiate among persons based on religion or ethnic origin, from Pakistanis, Indians, Iranians, and Japanese to Muslims, Sikhs and Christian Arabs.89 The widespread perception in the United States is that Arabs and Muslims are identical and eager to wage a holy war against the United States.90 In fact, according to a 1993 report, only 12% of the Muslims in the United States at that time were Arab,91 and Arab Muslims are even a minority in the Arab-American community.92 Although there are Muslim “extremists,” the majority of Muslims are “decent, law-abiding, productive citizens.”93 Because of the lack of differentiation between different types of Arabs

and Muslims, terrorist acts by small groups of Arabs and Muslims often have been followed by generalized hostility toward entire communities of Arabs and Muslims in the United States. For example, after Lebanese Shi’a gunmen in 1985 highjacked TWA Flight 847 to Beirut, beat an American on the plane to death, and held the remaining passengers hostage for over two weeks,94 violent attacks against persons of Arab and Muslim origin occurred across the United States.95 Islamic centers and Arab-American organizations were vandalized and threatened. A Houston mosque was firebombed. A bomb exploded in the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee office in Boston, severely injuring two policemen.96 Later that same year, after terrorists hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise liner and murdered a passenger, a wave of anti-Arab violence swept the country, including the bombing of an AmericanArab Anti-Discrimination Committee office that killed its regional executive director.97 In 1986, in apparent response to the Reagan Administration’s “war on terrorism” directed at Libya,98 another episode of anti-Arab harassment and violence broke out. The same night of a U.S. bombing raid on Libya, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee national office in Washington received threats. Shortly thereafter, the Detroit American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee office, the Dearborn Arab community center, and the Detroit Arab-American newspaper received bomb threats.99 Threats, beatings and other violent attacks on Arabs were reported across the U nited S tates. 100 At this time, someone broke into a Palestinian family’s home, set off a smoke bomb inside the house, and painted slogans such as “Go Back to Libya” on the walls.101 The Gulf War intensified anti-Arab hostility in the United States. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee reported four anti-Arab hate crimes for 1990 before the invasion of Kuwait in August.102 Between the invasion and February 1991, the Committee reported 175 incidents.103 When U.S. intervention commenced in January 1991, Arab and Muslim businesses and community organizations were bombed, vandalized, and subjected to harassment.104

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1NR LINKTechnology and algorithms check data overload --- info is keyMarritz 2013 (Ilya; Verizon Call Logs Controversy: No Such Thing As Too Much Information; June 6; www.wnyc.org/story/297513-verizon-call-logs-controversy-no-such-thing-too-much-information/; kdf)The news that Verizon is providing the government with data about its customers on a daily basis has reignited the debate between balancing individual privacy and national security. Barry Steinhardt of the group Friends of Privacy USA said the surveillance itself is not so surprising, but the volume of material gathered is. “The government seems to think the way to find the needle in the haystack is to pour more hay on the stack ,” Steinhardt said. That idea might seem counter-intuitive. But too much information is increasingly a thing of the past , as powerful computer programs tease patterns out of bigger and bigger pools of data.

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1NR EPISTEMOLOGYEven if they win the K – it is just impact mitigation, not a reason to vote AffLewis 2014 (James Andrew [senior fellow and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at CSIS]; Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate; Dec; http://csis.org/files/publication/141209_Lewis_UnderestimatingRisk_Web.pdf; kdf)The phrase “terrorism” is overused, and the threat of terrorist attack is easily exaggerated , but that does not mean this threat it is nonexistent . Groups and individuals still plan to attack American citizens and the citizens of allied countries. The dilemma in assessing risk is that it is discontinuous. There can be long periods where no activity is apparent, only to have the apparent calm explode in an attack. The constant, low-level activity in planning and preparation in Western countries is not apparent to the public, nor is it easy to identify the moment that discontent turns into action. There is general agreement that as terrorists splinter into regional groups, the risk of attack increases. Certainly, the threat to Europe from militants returning from Syria points to increased risk for U.S. allies. The messy U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and (soon) Afghanistan contributes to an increase in risk.24 European authorities have increased surveillance and arrests of suspected militants as the Syrian conflict lures hundreds of Europeans. Spanish counterterrorism police say they have broken up more terrorist cells than in any other European country in the last three years.25 The chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, who is better placed than most members of Congress to assess risk, said in June 2014 that the level of terrorist activity was higher than he had ever seen it.26 If the United States overreacted in response to September 11, it now risks overreacting to the leaks with potentially fatal consequences. A simple assessment of the risk of attack by jihadis would take into account a resurgent Taliban, the power of lslamist groups in North Africa, the continued existence of Shabaab in Somalia, and the appearance of a powerful new force, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Al Qaeda, previously the leading threat, has splintered into independent groups that make it a less coordinated force but more difficult target. On the positive side, the United States, working with allies and friends, appears to have contained or eliminated jihadi groups in Southeast Asia. Many of these groups seek to use adherents in Europe and the United States for manpower and funding. A Florida teenager was a suicide bomber in Syria and Al Shabaab has in the past drawn upon the Somali population in the United States. Hamas and Hezbollah have achieved quasi-statehood status, and Hamas has supporters in the United States. Iran, which supports the two groups, has advanced capabilities to launch attacks and routinely attacked U.S. forces in Iraq. The United Kingdom faces problems from several hundred potential terrorists within its large Pakistani population, and there are potential attackers in other Western European nations, including Germany, Spain, and the Scandinavian countries. France, with its large Muslim population faces the most serious challenge and is experiencing a wave of troubling anti-Semitic attacks that suggest both popular support for extremism and a decline in control by security forces. The chief difference between now and the situation before 9/11 is that all of these countries have put in place much more robust surveillance systems , nationally and in cooperation with others, including the United States, to detect and prevent potential attacks . Another difference is that the failure of U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the opportunities created by the Arab Spring have opened a new “front” for jihadi groups that makes their primary focus regional. Western targets still remain of interest, but are more likely to face attacks from domestic sympathizers. This could change if the well-resourced ISIS is frustrated in its efforts to establish a new Caliphate and turns its focus to the West. In addition, the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen (al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) continues to regularly plan attacks against U.S. targets. 27 The incidence of attacks in the United States or Europe is very low, but we do not have good data on the number of planned attacks that did not come to fruition. This includes not just attacks that were detected and stopped, but also attacks where the jihadis were discouraged and did not initiate an operation or press an attack to its conclusion because of operational difficulties.

T hese attacks are the threat that mass surveillance was created to prevent . The needed reduction in public anti-terror measures without increasing the chances of successful attack is contingent upon maintaining the capability provided by communications surveillance to detect, predict, and prevent attacks. Our opponents have not given up; neither should we.

Threats real – threat inflation would get our authors fired Earl C. Ravenal 9, distinguished senior fellow in foreign policy studies @ Cato, is professor emeritus of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He is an expert on NATO, defense strategy, and the defense budget. He is the author of Designing Defense for a New World Order. What's Empire Got to Do with It? The Derivation of America's Foreign [khirn] pg. 46

http://csis.org/files/publication/141209_Lewis_UnderestimatingRisk_Web.pdf


Policy.” Critical Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Politics and Society 21.1 (2009) 21-75The underlying notion of “ the security bureaucracies . . . looking for new enemies” is a threadbare concept that has somehow taken hold across the political spectrum, from the radical left (viz. Michael Klare [1981], who

refers to a “threat bank”), to the liberal center (viz. Robert H. Johnson [1997], who dismisses most alleged “threats” as “improbable dangers”), to libertarians (viz. Ted Galen Carpenter [1992], Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy of the Cato Institute, who wrote a book entitled A Search

for Enemies). What is missing from most analysts’ claims of “threat inflation,” however, is a convincing theory of why , say, the American government significantly(not merely in excusable rhetoric) might magnify and even invent threats (and, more seriously, act on such inflated threat estimates). In a few places, Eland (2004, 185) suggests that such behavior might stem from military or national security bureaucrats’ attempts to enhance their personal status and organizational budgets, or even from the influence and dominance of “the military-industrial complex”; viz.: “Maintaining the empire and retaliating for the blowback from that empire keeps what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex fat and happy.” Or, in the same section:¶ In the nation’s capital, vested interests, such as the law enforcement bureaucracies . . . routinely take advantage of “crises”to satisfy parochial desires. Similarly, many corporations use crises to get pet projects— a.k.a. pork—funded by the government. And national security crises, because of people’s fears, are especially ripe opportunities to grab largesse. (Ibid., 182)¶ Thus, “bureaucratic-politics” theory, which once made several reputa- tions (such as those of Richard Neustadt, Morton Halperin, and Graham Allison) in defense-intellectual circles, and spawned an entire sub-industry within the field of international relations,5 is put into the service of dismissing putative security threats as imaginary. So, too, can a surprisingly cognate theory, “public choice,”6 which can be considered the right-wing analog of the “bureaucratic-politics” model, and is a preferred interpretation of governmental decision- making among libertarian observers. As Eland (2004, 203) summarizes:¶ Public-choice theory argues [that] the government itself can develop separate interests from its citizens. The government reflects the interests of powerful pressure groups and the interests of the bureaucracies and the bureaucrats in them. Although this problem occurs in both foreign and domestic policy, it may be more severe in foreign policy because citizens pay less attention to policies that affect them less directly.¶ There is, in this statement of public-choice theory, a certain ambiguity, and a certain degree of contradiction: Bureaucrats are supposedly, at the same time, subservient to societal interest groups and autonomous from society in general.¶ This journal has pioneered the argument that state autonomy is a likely consequence of the public’s ignorance of most areas of state activity (e.g., Somin 1998; DeCanio 2000a, 2000b, 2006, 2007; Ravenal 2000a). But state autonomy does not necessarily mean that bureaucrats substitute their own interests for those of what could be called the “national society” that they ostensibly serve. I have argued (Ravenal 2000a) that, precisely because of the public-ignorance and elite-expertise factors, and especially because the opportunities—at least for bureaucrats (a few notable post-government lobbyist cases nonwithstanding)—for lucrative self-dealing are stringently fewer in the defense and diplomatic areas of government than they are in some of the contract-dispensing and more under-the-radar-screen agencies of government, the “public-choice” imputation of self-dealing, rather than working toward the national interest (which, however may not be synonymous with the interests, perceived or expressed, of citizens!) is less likely to hold. In short, state autonomy is likely to mean, in the derivation of foreign policy, that “state elites” are using rational judgment, in insulation from self-promoting interest groups—about what strategies, forces, and weapons are required for national defense.¶ Ironically, “public choice”—not even a species of economics, but rather a kind of political interpretation—is not even about “public” choice, since, like the bureaucratic-politics model, it repudiates the very notion that bureaucrats make truly “public” choices; rather, they are held, axiomatically, to exhibit “rent-seeking” behavior, wherein they abuse their public positions in order to amass private gains, or at least to build personal empires within their ostensibly official niches. Such sub- rational models actually explain very little of what they purport to observe. Of course, there is some truth in them, regarding the “behavior” of some people, at some times, in some circumstances, under some conditions of incentive and motivation. But the factors that they posit operate mostly as constraints on the otherwise rational optimization of objectives that, if for no other reason than the playing out of official roles, transcends merely personal or parochial imperatives.¶ My treatment of “role” differs from that of the bureaucratic-politics theorists, whose model of the derivation of foreign policy depends heavily, and acknowledgedly, on a narrow and specific identification of the role- playing of organizationally situated individuals in a partly conflictual “pulling and hauling” process that “results in” some policy outcome. Even here, bureaucratic-politics theorists Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow (1999, 311) allow that “some players are not able to articulate [sic] the governmental politics game because their conception of their job does not legitimate such activity.” This is a crucial admission, and one that points— empirically—to the need for a broader and generic treatment of role.¶ Roles (all theorists state) give rise to “expectations” of performance. My point is that virtually every governmental role, and especially national-security roles , and particularly the roles of the uniformed military, embody expectations of devotion to the “national interest”; rationality in the derivation of

policy at every functional level; and objectivity in the treatment of parameters, especially external parameters such as “ threats ” and the power and capabilities of other nations. ¶ Sub-rational models (such as “public choice”) fail to take into account even a partial dedication to the “national” interest (or even the possibility that the national interest may be honestly misconceived in more parochial terms). In contrast, a n official’s role connects the individual to the (state -level) process, and moderates the (perhaps otherwise) self-seeking impulses of the individual. Role-derived behavior tends to be formalized and codified; relatively transparent and at least peer- reviewed , so as to be consistent with expectations; surviving the particular individual and trans- mitted to successors and ancillaries; measured against a standard and thus corrigible; defined in terms of the performed function and therefore derived from the state function; and uncorrrupt, because personal cheating and even egregious aggrandizement are conspicuously discouraged.¶ My own direct observation suggests that defense decision-makers attempt to “frame” the structure of the problems that they try to solve on the basis of the most accurate intelligence . They make it their business to know where the threats come from. Thus, threats are not “socially constructed ” (even though, of course, some values are).¶ A major reason for the rationality, and the objectivity, of the process is that much security planning is done, not in vaguely undefined circumstances that offer scope for idiosyncratic, subjective behavior, but rather in structured and reviewed organizational frameworks. Non-rationalities (which are bad for understanding and

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prediction) tend to get filtered out. People are fired for presenting skewed analysis and for making bad predictions. This is because something important is riding on the causal analysis and the contingent prediction . For these reasons, “public choice” does not have the “feel” of reality to many critics who have participated in the structure of defense decision-making. In that structure ,

obvious, and even not-so-obvious,“ rent-seeking” would not only be shameful; it would present a severe risk of career termination . And, as mentioned, the defense bureaucracy is hardly a productive place for truly talented rent-seekers

to operatecompared to opportunities for personal profit in the commercial world. A bureaucrat’s very self-placement in these reaches of government testi- fies either to a sincere commitment to the national interest or to a lack of sufficient imagination to exploitopportunities for personal profit.

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