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President? The United States was blind-sighted in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack which resulted in the death of 2,977 innocent Americans. This was the largest attack in the history of the U.S. on our soil and although the signs were there for the intelligence community to see, it was mistakenly not put together. Much of the attack stemmed from communications between terrorist or those connected and working with terrorist within our Country, and this was unacceptable. In order to defend against such communications, according to Lichtblau & Risen (2005), “Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible ‘dirty numbers’ linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications”. The sole purpose of the NSA program was to safeguard our national security in a more expansive, efficient manner. The center on law and security (2007) states “…this requirement to demonstrate all of the substantive and procedural elements of FISA to the Attorney General's satisfaction before any surveillance can begin, would fatally impair the President's ability to carry out his constitutional responsibility to collect foreign intelligence to protect our Nation from attack” (p. 9). Any implementation involving citizen’s privacy is assured to draw controversy, and the root of the problem with this program was a management
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A plan should have been in place to deal with leaks to the public of the changes, and a more detailed description of the amendment to the policy should have been created and kept under lock and key. Intelligence collection involves many activities that citizens (lacking all of the facts), may deem unconstitutional. The problem with this is most of the time the facts are not available to the general population, media, and even certain members of the Congressional oversight committees, for fear of an operation leak. Much of what the IC does must remain secret, at least until the aftermath (which could be years later). In regards to the topic at hand, authorization of warrantless wireless intercept by the NSA, the main problem arose due to management failures in the implementation of such a controversial topic. The center on law and security (2007) states, “Critics of the NSA program do not necessarily object to the type of surveillance, but rather to the way in which it has been authorized, and to the absence of any oversight”
A plan should have been in place to deal with leaks to the public of the changes, and a more detailed description of the amendment to the policy should have been created and kept under lock and key. Intelligence collection involves many activities that citizens (lacking all of the facts), may deem unconstitutional. The problem with this is most of the time the facts are not available to the general population, media, and even certain members of the Congressional oversight committees, for fear of an operation leak. Much of what the IC does must remain secret, at least until the aftermath (which could be years later). In regards to the topic at hand, authorization of warrantless wireless intercept by the NSA, the main problem arose due to management failures in the implementation of such a controversial topic. The center on law and security (2007) states, “Critics of the NSA program do not necessarily object to the type of surveillance, but rather to the way in which it has been authorized, and to the absence of any oversight”