lingo needs amendments

"Last year, Senator Specter went so far as to say that he hoped the courts would strike down as unconstitutional the bill he just voted for"

Here's a thought. Maybe if something isn't agreeable, isn't serviceable under the supreme law of the land, then perhaps it shouldn't be voted FOR. Unfortunately, the bill the Senator was describing was a surveillance bill, titularly attacking terrorism. There are several glaring problems with surveillance, and really all forms of intel we are gathering in this fight against global terrorist cells. Sadly, in the language of politics, voting against surveillance somehow supports terrorism, when in fact it merely undermines American liberty and does very little to oppose or support terrorism at all.

First, intelligence based on communications is nice. But a simple military war game several years ago showed that a clever enemy can communicate and coordinate forces just fine thank you without cell phones, email, and satellites (couriers and light signals, etc). Terrorists who are dumb don't accomplish anything because they get caught (or they're the ones with explosives on their backs). Terrorists who are smart, they learn. That's why the pawns go first, as they say. Systems of surveillance will always be beaten over time and newer ones will have to take their places because our enemy here is not an organized predictable foe, but a disjointed partially coordinated force.

One line here from Munich stands out, "you do what the terrorists do, you think they report back to base, they don't". Second point here. Once a trained killer is set loose, they don't have to receive instructions at all. No orders from on high, and even those orders can be via the blanket proclamations Osama or his followers issue. I'm very concerned that we believe watching our own populace or monitoring communications is going to catch people prior to their activities. A few yes, but not most. It's mostly useful after the fact in retracing steps and so forth, catching accomplices, etc. It is rarely useful as a preventative step, precisely because our opposition here doesn't need to do anything. A clever opponent doesn't stand out, appears as normal and undisposed to action as anyone else. The only difference is the will to act. Will is not something that can be manifestly seen without a lot of direct intel. Which brings me to point three.

Direct intel is really all that matters in a fight like this. Directly catching or observing the activities of a potential target, as they have been doing with us. That requires people on the ground. Overlooked in the budgets of intelligence agencies is our dependence on things like satellites and communications monitoring. This sort of intel is great for fighting wars. We don't fight wars anymore. Nobody is that stupid to take us on, even China uses diplomatic and economic pressures instead. Instead, the budgets have become bloated with analysts and administrative costs for various projects rather than expended on the most basic and generally substantive force of information, human intel.

As disturbing as it might be to consider that random people (meaning spies or FBI) out there might be gathering information on us by direct observation, its much more disturbing to picture the overall surveillance portrait of America taken by a creeping series of programs, cameras, and wiretaps. Already we have experienced serious problems with traffic cameras and fraudulent setups designed to illicit more public funding for example. Does anyone reasonably care to think that wiretaps and cameras and email searches aren't going to creep along into places that have no bearing on international crimes against humanity? A system of surveillance is useful in catching criminals after the fact. But a camera doesn't stop a 7-11 robbery anymore than it will stop people from running red lights. How exactly is it going to stop a determined jihadist from blowing up a building? I can answer that immediately, it won't. Zero attacks will be stopped by monitoring everything systematically, because obviously nobody cares what the punishment is for their crimes when they are willing to die in the commission of the act.

Could someone please explain how these are necessary steps in the fight against terrorism and not simply vast impediments to human liberty, that lost cause which we have supposedly championed in our invasions of sovereign nations?