NSA Surveillance

November 20, 2014|

When They’re Too Good at Their Job . . .

In response to: Competency in Administration: James Q. Wilson and American Bureaucracy

The 25th anniversary of James Q. Wilson’s Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It marks an appropriate occasion to reflect on the contributions of this work to our understanding of bureaucratic behavior and performance, and the extensive—and, at least in some areas, growing—presence of the administrative state in the lives of American citizens. Jeremy Rabkin’s essay does both admirably. Rabkin lays out the complex picture of bureaucratic behavior painted by Wilson, and teases out the insights that might help us understanding recent high profile instances of apparent bureaucratic incompetence or misconduct. I would like to use this short…

How to Make the Bureaucracy More Accountable

by John O. McGinnis

Jeremy Rabkin has written a fine essay about the continuing relevance of James Q. Wilson’s 1989 book Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It. I have been fortunate enough to benefit from Wilson’s analysis in my own writing on the Justice Department’s Office of the Solicitor General. His framework showed why the…

Bureaucracy and Some Bureaucracy Problems

by Kimberly Hendrickson

It’s Bureaucracy’s twenty-fifth birthday. To celebrate, let’s state some basic facts that correspond with James Q. Wilson’s thinking. Americans want a lot from their government. We want more than we’ve wanted before. It doesn’t ultimately matter where these desires come from (rising standards of living? the inner logic of democracy? interest groups? politicians?). What matters…

Falling Down

by Jeremy A. Rabkin

All the participants in this discussion seem to agree that James Q. Wilson’s book, Bureaucracy, still offers valuable insights, a quarter century after its initial publication. At the same time, we all seem to agree that Wilson’s book didn’t prepare readers for the scale of dysfunction we now see in the federal bureaucracy. We have…

December 29, 2013|Judge Richard Leon, Judge William Pauley, NSA Surveillance, Terrorism, War on Terror

Whither Surveillance if Terrorism Isn’t as Big a Risk as They Say?

by Greg Weiner|

The Supreme Court will ultimately have to resolve the competing rulings, Friday’s from the Southern District of New York and the previous week’s from the D.C. District Court, on the NSA metadata program. Both are well reasoned; this issue is not constitutionally obvious, and bombast from either side will not be helpful in resolving it. But neither will emotional appeals to 9/11 such as the one with which Judge William Pauley opened his ruling upholding the program:

The September 11th terrorist attacks revealed, in the starkest terms, just how dangerous and interconnected the world is. While Americans depended on technology for the conveniences of modern life, al-Qaeda plotted in a seventh-century milieu to use that technology against us. It was a bold jujitsu. And it succeeded because conventional intelligence gathering could not detect diffuse filaments connecting al-Qaeda.

There are multiple reasons this retrospective appeal to 9/11 is unpersuasive. Regardless, the issue policymakers are going to have to confront sooner or later is whether the potential for terrorism is actually sufficiently large and unique to justify the potential cost to liberty imposed by this policy.

December 24, 2013|Antiterror Policy, NSA Surveillance, War on Terror

NSA Surveillance, Retrospective Risk Analysis and the Terrorism Trump

by Greg Weiner|

There are surely good arguments for the NSA metadata collection program. The bare assertion—evident on the Sunday shows last weekend—that it would have prevented 9/11 is not one of them.

It is, for starters, highly speculative. The pre-9/11 problem was not a lack of data but a lack of coordination. One need not engage in retrospective blame to observe that clues generated by the old technology—larger needles in a smaller haystack—seem, in searing hindsight, not to have been lacking.

The deeper problem is retrospective risk analysis. Its concomitant is the attempt to use 9/11 as a rhetorical trump. It is intended to stop conversation rather than start it, as in Rep. Peter King’s understandable display of pathos on Meet the Press: “I live in New York. I lost about 150 friends, neighbors and constituents on September 11. If the NSA had had this metadata in 2001, that attack probably wouldn’t have happened.”

The Congressman’s personal loss deserves both sympathy and honor. But the distance of a dozen years provides adequate space for deliberate rather than impassioned consideration, and the simple assertion—which is hindsight working in hindsight—that surveillance would have prevented the attacks cannot conclude the issue in foresight for the simple reason that, looking forward, preventing attacks can never be all that matters.

December 19, 2013|Barack Obama, FISA, FISA Court, NSA Surveillance

Lashing Presidents to the Mast

by Greg Weiner|

Odysseus Lashed to the Mast

The report presented to the President on surveillance and privacy yesterday makes two things clear: First, while many of the most important recommendations are legislative, the Administration could implement a broad array of them without waiting for Congress. Second, no Administration should be trusted to. President Obama now has an opportunity to do what no modern Chief Executive has done: shrink the powers of his office, lashing himself and future occupants of the Oval Office to a statutory mast. That would be a legacy.

August 5, 2013|Executive Prerogative, Frank Church, George Washington, James Madison, Justin Amash, NSA Surveillance, Publius, Rand Paul, Thomas Jefferson

Publius and the NSA Surveillance Program

by Stephen F. Knott|

Editor’s Note: This is the first of two posts that will offer contrasting opinions on the NSA electronic surveillance programs. Angelo Codevilla’s essay will appear tomorrow.

On July 24th, 2013, the United States House of Representatives defeated an amendment to the Defense Department’s Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2014 that called for greater restrictions on the National Security Agency’s ability to gather electronic information, including phone records of American citizens. Ninety-four Republicans and 111 House Democrats voted in favor of the amendment, while 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats voted against it. The amendment’s sponsors shared very little in common, other than the fact that they are both from Michigan. Republican Justin Amash, a devotee of free markets and limited government, joined forces with John Conyers, a perennial opponent of American foreign and defense policy since he was first elected to Congress in 1964.

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

When They’re Too Good at Their Job . . .

In response to: Competency in Administration: James Q. Wilson and American Bureaucracy

More Responses

How to Make the Bureaucracy More Accountable

Bureaucracy and Some Bureaucracy Problems

Falling Down

Whither Surveillance if Terrorism Isn’t as Big a Risk as They Say?

NSA Surveillance, Retrospective Risk Analysis and the Terrorism Trump

Lashing Presidents to the Mast

Publius and the NSA Surveillance Program

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