Page 117 - Privacy in a Cyber Age Policy and Practice

LIBERAL COMMUNITARIAN APPROACH TO PRIVACY AND SECURITY 105

that some of these individuals will act on their beliefs. At the same time, al
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Qaeda has regrouped and established new affiliates in Africa, the Arabian
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Peninsula, and in other parts of the world. 14
Worse, there is a significant danger that these hostile groups might get
their hands on a weapon capable of inflicting far more damage than the
planes that brought down the Twin Towers—which is to say, a nuclear
weapon. Both Russia and Pakistan have less-than-fully secured nuclear
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arms within their borders. The situation in the latter nation seems to
pose a particular threat, as the government has so far been either unable
or unwilling to combat terrorists within its borders and has experienced at
least six serious terrorist attempts to penetrate its nuclear facilities. 16
In 2009, Najibullah Zazi—a Denver cab driver who was trained in
explosives by al Qaeda—was caught constructing bombs that he planned
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to detonate in the New York City subways. The NSA intercepted an e-mail
between Zazi and an al Qaeda operative that tipped the government off to
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the plot and prevent it from being carried out, apparently only days before
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Zazi and his accomplices planned to carry out the attack. At the same
time, a similar plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange was also foiled
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by the government’s surveillance. Overall, U.S. intelligence officials claim
that PRISM (an NSA surveillance program, revealed by the Snowden leaks,
that collects the Internet communications of non–U.S. nationals) and the
collection of phone company metadata disrupted fifty-four terrorist plots,
one-fifth of which were to be carried out within the borders of the United
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States. This number does not include the plots that were foiled by using
more traditional methods or those that were successfully carried out, such
as the Boston Marathon bombing. To conclude, it is impossible to reliably
measure the scope of the terrorist threat, even for those who have full access
to all available intelligence. However, given the evidence just cited, it seems
that the time has not yet come to rebalance by reducing security measures.
To turn to the second criterion, once it has been established that national
security needs shoring up, one had best seek to establish whether this goal
can be achieved without introducing new limits on privacy. For instance,
it would satisfy this balancing criterion to store data so that it would be
available on very short notice if needed to track the movements and where-
abouts of a particular individual, but encrypt and secure data, and making
it accessible only with a court order—a procedure reportedly followed by
those overseeing and carrying out the NSA program that holds American
phone records. 22
Third, to the extent that privacy-curbing measures must be introduced,
they should be as nonintrusive as possible. For example, in 2013, the TSA
gave up its use of body scanners that revealed almost nude images and
began using instead scanners that produce “cartoon-like” images, on which