"Privocrats" on the right and left are subverting the war on terror, says Heather MacDonald in the spring edition of City Journal. More data-mining and "pattern analysis" are necessary; we need to counter the widespread intimidation of info-tech wizards who can build high-tech analytical capabilities to identify terrorist suspects for closer surveillance, MacDonald argues. Read the whole shebang, it's titled, "What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us." She concludes:

Proposals for assessing risk in such areas as aviation do not grow out of an omnivorous desire to 'rank citizens' but out of a concrete need to protect people from a clear threat. If the government assigns different security risks to an Iowa music teacher traveling to her high school reunion and to a Pakistani-American funder of Islamic madrassas and host to radical sheiks from Morocco, it is not out of a passion for 'hierarchy' but because of the reality of Islamic terrorism.

Information technology can help government in its constitutional responsibilities to protect the nation; indeed the congressional joint inquiry into September 11 found that 'a reluctance to develop and implement new technical capabilities aggressively' was a cause of the pre-9/11 intelligence failures. The report added: 'While technology remains one of this nation’s greatest advantages, it has not been fully and most effectively applied in support of U.S. counterterrorism efforts.'

The privocrats will rightly tell you that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; trouble is, they are aiming their vigilance at the wrong target.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at April 18, 2004 01:18 PM

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Tracked on April 19, 2004 10:04 AM