Disputing tastes?
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner was at NYU on Monday to discuss his new book on preventing terrorism.
The book makes three interesting and generally well received points:
1. We have to understand probabilities if we are going to fight terrorism effectively. The Bush Administration's "One-Percent Doctrine"--which holds that if the probability of a particular terrorist threat is at least 1%, we must act to prevent it--is silly according to cost-benefit analysis. A .5% chance of a nuclear weapon hitting Manhattan within the next 10 years is significantly more serious (and thus should engender serious preventive measures) than a 2% chance of a subway bomb in the same time period.
2. Organizational theory can tell us a lot about the structure of our counterterrorism agencies. Posner offered two examples. First, the Director of National Intelligence is responsible not only for heading the 16-member intelligence community (a full-time job requiring the herding of cabinet-level cats), but also for advising the President on national security issues. It's just too much for one person to do.
More importantly, Posner points out the need for a domestic intelligence agency separate from the police force (i.e., the FBI). The FBI's incentives diverge from the nation's, he argues, because the FBI (and individual FBI agents) wants to show objective successes--namely, arrests and convictions. There's nothing wrong with this, except that it systematically results in premature arrests. In some cases, we would be better off waiting and watching suspected terrorists to learn the full extent of their network. Thus, Posner concludes, we should have an independent domestic intelligence agency, with a single official above both it and the FBI who makes decisions about when to arrest potential terrorists and when to let their plans proceed further. An entirely reasonable proposal, I think, and one that almost every other Western nation has adopted.
3. We can't be overly restricted by legalisms when formulating our counterterrorism strategies. Most of the "constitutional law" cited by civil libertarians opposing responses to terrorism are just judicially created doctrines. Moreover, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
In connection with this third point, Posner argued that the value most people place on privacy is irrational for two reasons. First of all, under current constitutional doctrine, most of the things people treat as "private"--e-mail, internet browsing history, and the like--are not really private. Once they're stored on someone else's server, you've lost your privacy. If people are so cavalier in these areas, why are they so paranoid about domestic wiretapping?
Posner's second argument is the one I find more interesting. He argues that the only logical reason to desire privacy is to control what others know about us and thereby manipulate how others treat us. On this rationale, terrorists and others engaged in illegal activity have significantly more to gain from privacy than the average citizen. Thus, if the average citizen were being rational, she would value privacy much less than polls suggest she does.
My question is this: Does Posner's argument violate what is to him the nearly inviolable principle of de gustibus non est disputandum?
The book makes three interesting and generally well received points:
1. We have to understand probabilities if we are going to fight terrorism effectively. The Bush Administration's "One-Percent Doctrine"--which holds that if the probability of a particular terrorist threat is at least 1%, we must act to prevent it--is silly according to cost-benefit analysis. A .5% chance of a nuclear weapon hitting Manhattan within the next 10 years is significantly more serious (and thus should engender serious preventive measures) than a 2% chance of a subway bomb in the same time period.
2. Organizational theory can tell us a lot about the structure of our counterterrorism agencies. Posner offered two examples. First, the Director of National Intelligence is responsible not only for heading the 16-member intelligence community (a full-time job requiring the herding of cabinet-level cats), but also for advising the President on national security issues. It's just too much for one person to do.
More importantly, Posner points out the need for a domestic intelligence agency separate from the police force (i.e., the FBI). The FBI's incentives diverge from the nation's, he argues, because the FBI (and individual FBI agents) wants to show objective successes--namely, arrests and convictions. There's nothing wrong with this, except that it systematically results in premature arrests. In some cases, we would be better off waiting and watching suspected terrorists to learn the full extent of their network. Thus, Posner concludes, we should have an independent domestic intelligence agency, with a single official above both it and the FBI who makes decisions about when to arrest potential terrorists and when to let their plans proceed further. An entirely reasonable proposal, I think, and one that almost every other Western nation has adopted.
3. We can't be overly restricted by legalisms when formulating our counterterrorism strategies. Most of the "constitutional law" cited by civil libertarians opposing responses to terrorism are just judicially created doctrines. Moreover, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
In connection with this third point, Posner argued that the value most people place on privacy is irrational for two reasons. First of all, under current constitutional doctrine, most of the things people treat as "private"--e-mail, internet browsing history, and the like--are not really private. Once they're stored on someone else's server, you've lost your privacy. If people are so cavalier in these areas, why are they so paranoid about domestic wiretapping?
Posner's second argument is the one I find more interesting. He argues that the only logical reason to desire privacy is to control what others know about us and thereby manipulate how others treat us. On this rationale, terrorists and others engaged in illegal activity have significantly more to gain from privacy than the average citizen. Thus, if the average citizen were being rational, she would value privacy much less than polls suggest she does.
My question is this: Does Posner's argument violate what is to him the nearly inviolable principle of de gustibus non est disputandum?
posted by Garrett at 9:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home