The greatest threat

What is the greatest threat to U.S. security? The greatest threat to U.S. security is something that would upset the usefulness of the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), the consolidated U.S. government database of terrorist suspects around the world. The government uses that database to establish watch lists, no-fly lists, screen visa applicants at U.S. consulates, conduct surveillance, coordinate investigations with foreign and local partners, etc. It was the lack of such a database and its applications that permitted 9/11 to happen. Today, the TIDE database and the activities it supports is the U.S. government's most important counterterrorism tool.

According to a story in Sunday's Washington Post, TIDE information, in theory at least, is currently available to the public through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The intelligence community wants to end that possibility through legislation that will exempt TIDE information from FOIA disclosure. According to the story, several privacy interest groups are lobbying against passage of such an exemption.

What's the problem? An excerpt from the article:

"Here's the problem," [an intelligence] official said, discussing the matter on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. "If you've got somebody, including a suspected terrorist, who can FOIA that information, you're making intelligence-gathering methods vulnerable. You're possibly making intelligence agents and law enforcement personnel vulnerable. Suspects could alter their behavior and circumvent the surveillance."

The privacy interest groups opposing the TIDE FOIA exemption are well-meaning and are doing what they see as an important job, protecting the public against government intrusion into private lives. In my judgment this is not a case of "lawfare," where terrorist sympathizers attempt to use the legal system to thwart society's ability to defend itself. Further, I have much sympathy for those unfortunates who are wrongly listed on TIDE and cannot get on an airplane or open a checking account and must wrestle for years with a faceless bureaucracy to demonstrate their innocence.

Yet in spite of these problems, the greatest threat to safety would occur if legal or bureaucratic processes ground down over time the utility of the TIDE database and its applications. As I explained in an earlier post, even if General McChrystal could tomorrow turn Afghanistan into a Switzerland, that would not reduce by a fraction the need for TIDE. For even a Switzerland can be an unwitting host to a terror cell. The U.S. itself has hosted terror cells in the past, likely has some hanging around today, and will so in the future. A database, not a brigade combat team, is the only solution to that problem.