Research

  • Five Squandered Years

    Aziz Huq

    The United States has two main resources to combat terrorism: The hard power of military might, and the soft power of diplomacy that comes from convincingly claiming the moral high ground. Five years after the 9/11 attacks, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the Bush Administration has gutted both.

    October 4, 2006
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling

  • The Warrant's Out on Judges

    Aziz Huq, James Sample

    Within hours of her decision to hold the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program unconstitutional, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor was subjected to relentless personal criticism. Even in the mainstream press, she has been accused of "pos[ing] for the cameras" (the Wall Street Journal), charged with "blithely ignoring [her] own obligations" (The New York Times) and dismissed as having produced merely unscholarly "angry rhetoric" (The Washington Post). Such deeply personal invective directed at Judge Taylor drowned out commentary either applauding or disputing the merits of the decision.

    August 30, 2006
    Liberty & National Security
    Privacy & Profiling

  • 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

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