Research

  • Threat Assessment

    Aziz Huq

    Terrorism penetrates the psyche by being unpredictable. Terrorists rely not only on the element of surprise but also on a second-level uncertainty to strike so deep: The difficulty of knowing exactly who the terrorist might be. Background is no guide. Many of the 9-11 plotters had tertiary educations. Others, like the self-starting (and foiled) millennium bomber and former petty thief Ahmed Ressam, came from the social margins. Ethnic profiling, proposed again recently by New York Representative Peter King, hardly works. The July 2005 London attackers and the recent High Wycombe arrestees both defied racial stereotypes. Any halfway calculating terrorist group, moreover, will simply work around ethnic profiling.

    August 28, 2006
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling

  • Flying While Muslim

    Aziz Huq

    The partisan posturing began within hours of reports the British had arrested 20-odd suspects in connection with an alleged terrorist conspiracy to blow up passenger airplanes. Arrests were made in the U.K, not the U.S. The plot was hatched in the U.K. and Pakistan.

    August 17, 2006
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling

  • Wiretapping Unbound

    Aziz Huq

    Eighteen years ago , Justice Antonin Scalia assumed the prophet's cloak and forecast threats to the Constitution's core balance of powers. A threat, Justice Scalia explained, sometimes comes "in sheep's clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf." Today, another wolf scratches at the door: And it is a beast that has already inflicted heavy damage on the Constitution.

    July 24, 2006
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling
    Checks & Balances

  • Derelict on Domestic Spying

    Aziz Huq

    There is no "drift-net." There is only a "very specific and very targeted" collection of data. So said General Michael V. Hayden, former chief of the National Security Agency on Feb. 5 this year about the NSA's domestic activities. Without doubt, senators of both stripes stand ready to grill Gen. Hayden about these statements in light of USA Today's startling revelation that the NSA has been assembling a mammoth database detailing the source, destination and timing information on almost every telephone call made in the United States.

    May 16, 2006
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling
    Checks & Balances

  • Distracted by Moussaoui

    Aziz Huq

    In an Alexandria, Virginia, courtroom, Zacarias Moussaoui and the federal government are acting out for the nation and the world a small drama about revenge. It is hardly clear who will savor revenge more: the defendant who seems likely to be strapped to the executioner’s gurney soon, or the state that injects the lethal combination of fluids.

    April 20, 2006
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling

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