Hudson, Audrey. "Homeland Security Revives Supersnoop." Washington Times, 8 Mar. 2007. [http://www.washingtontimes.com]
"Homeland Security officials are testing a supersnoop computer system [called ADVISE -- Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement] that sifts through personal information on U.S. citizens to detect possible terrorist attacks, prompting concerns from lawmakers who have called for investigations. The system uses the same data-mining process that was developed by the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project that was banned by Congress in 2003 because of vast privacy violations."
Hulnick, Arthur S. Keeping Us Safe: Secret Intelligence and Homeland Security. Westport, CT: Praeger Greenwood, 2004.
According to Peake, Studies 49.2 (2005), the focus here "is on assessing the role of intelligence in domestic security." The author "does not suggest that the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the solution to the problems identified, but he concludes that whatever its role, it will require an intelligence element." Hulnick's "is not ... a detailed, case-oriented treatment. Problems are identified, but only the nature of solutions are suggested." The work "is more a primer on the intelligence process that the author thinks should be applied to homeland security problems."
Marrin, IJI&C 18.3 (Fall 2005), finds the strength of this work in "its breadth rather than [its] depth, [as] very little in th[e] book is new." However, "it is a splendid introductory text for the general reader." For Jeffreys-Jones, I&NS 20.2 (Jun. 2005), this book "is a useful primer for those interested in the field.... But the book is more than a repository of useful facts. It is a treasury of wise and sensible remarks."
Kaplan, David E. "Spies Among Us." U.S. News & World Report, 8 May 2006, 40-49.
"Despite a troubled history, police across the nation are keeping tabs on ordinary Americans.... U.S. News has identified nearly a dozen cases in which city and county police, in the name of homeland security, have surveilled or harassed animal-rights and antiwar protesters, union activists, and even library patrons surfing the Web."
Includes sidebar, D.E.K., "When the Cops Only Saw Red," p. 48, on the local "Red Squads" of 1950s and 1960s.
Lehman, John. "Five Years Later: Are We Any Safer?" U.S. Naval Institute Proccedings 132, no. 9 (Sep. 2006): 18-22.
The former Secretary of the Navy and 9/11 commission member does not really answer the question raised in the title. Other than that, however, this article is a powerful indictment of how Congress and the White House mishandled the intelligence reform effort. His most pointed criticisms are directed at the FBI ("Our attempt to reform the FBI has failed.") and the failure to create a strong DNI.
Lichtblau, Eric. "F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show." New York Times, 20 Dec. 2005. [http://www.nytimes.com]
According to newly available documents, FBI "[c]ounterterrorism agents ... have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief."
Lichtblau, Eric. "Judges on Secretive Panel Speak Out on Spy Program." New York Times, 29 Mar. 2006. [http://www.nytimes.com]
On 28 March 2006, five former judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, "including one who resigned in apparent protest over President Bush's domestic eavesdropping, urged Congress ... to give the court a formal role in overseeing the surveillance program.... [S]everal former judges who served on the panel also voiced skepticism .... about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order."
Lichtblau, Eric. "New Guidelines Would Give F.B.I. Broader Powers." New York Times, 21 Aug. 2008. [http://www.nytimes.com]
"[F]our Democratic senators told Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey in a letter on [20 August 2008] that they were troubled by what they heard" about a Justice Department plan that "would loosen restrictions" on the FBI "to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion.... The Justice Department said ... that in light of requests from members of Congress for more information," Mukasey "would agree not to sign the new guidelines before a Sept. 17 Congressional hearing."
Lichtblau, Eric. "Senate Approves Bill to Broaden Wiretap Powers." New York Times, 10 Jul. 2008. [http://www.nytimes.com]
"The Senate gave final approval on [9 July 2008] to a major expansion of the governments surveillance powers.... The measure, approved by a vote of 69 to 28,... includes ... legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program [President Bush] approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.... [Bush] promised to sign the measure into law quickly....
"The measure gives the executive branch broader latitude in eavesdropping on people abroad and at home who it believes are tied to terrorism, and it reduces the role of [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] in overseeing some operations.... The legislation also expands the governments power to invoke emergency wiretapping procedures. While the N.S.A. would be allowed to seek court orders for broad groups of foreign targets, the law creates a new seven-day period for directing wiretaps at foreigners without a court order in 'exigent' circumstances if government officials assert that important national security information would be lost. The law also expands to seven days, from three, the period for emergency wiretaps on Americans without a court order if the attorney general certifies there is probable cause to believe the target is linked to terrorism."
Lichtblau, Eric. "Senate Votes to Expand Spy Powers." New York Times, 13 Feb. 2008. [http://www.nytimes.com]
On 12 February 2008, the U.S. Senate voted 68 to 29 "to broaden the governments spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bushs program of eavesdropping without warrants.... The House approved a surveillance bill in November [2007] that intentionally left out immunity for the phone companies, and leaders from the two chambers will now have to find a way to work out significant differences between their two bills."
See Eric Lichtblau, "Senate Approves Bill to Broaden Wiretap Powers," New York Times, 10 Jul. 2008.
Lichtblau, Eric. "Terror Plan Would Give F.B.I. More Power." New York Times, 13 Sep. 2008. [http://www.nytimes.com]
On 12 September 2008, the Justice Department announced "a plan to expand the tools the Federal Bureau of Investigation can use to investigate suspicions of terrorism inside the United States, even without any direct evidence of wrongdoing.... Under existing guidelines, F.B.I. agents cannot use certain investigative tools in conducting so-called threat assessments as a precursor to a preliminary or full inquiry. The revisions would allow agents to conduct public surveillance of someone, do 'pretext' interviews -- pose as someone other than an agent or disguise the purpose of the questions -- or send in an undercover source to gather information."
Liptak, Adam, and Eric Lichtblau. "U.S. Judge Finds Wiretap Actions Violate the Law." New York Times, 18 Aug. 2006. [http://www.nytimes.com]
On 17 August 2006, U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that NSA's "program to wiretap the international communications of some Americans without a court warrant violated the Constitution, and she ordered it shut down.... Judge Taylor did give the government a minor victory, rejecting on national security grounds a challenge to a separate surveillance program involving data mining. That ruling is consistent with recent decisions of federal courts in San Francisco and Chicago."