Is the Justice Dept.’s New Program to Find Homegrown Terrorists Wonderful or Worrisome (or Both)?

Today Attorney General Eric
Holder introduced the public to a “pilot program” the Department of
Justice is rolling out to better attempt to track down people
living in the United States who may be considering running off to
join ISIS and becoming terrorists. Guess the mass surveillance and
those fusion centers aren’t working out after all (if there were
any doubts following the Boston Marathon Bombing). Holder’s
announcement is typically vague and full of Pablum about how we
Americans are all the same and are working together and share the
same ideals, unnecessarily padding out the word count. Here’s an
excerpt
that appears to contain the most substance:

Today, I am announcing that the Department of Justice is
partnering with the White House, the Department of Homeland
Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center to launch a new
series of pilot programs in cities across the nation.  These
programs will bring together community representatives, public
safety officials, religious leaders, and United States Attorneys
to  improve local engagement; to counter violent extremism;
and – ultimately – to build a broad network of community
partnerships to keep our nation safe.  Under President Obama’s
leadership, along with our interagency affiliates, we will work
closely with community representatives to develop comprehensive
local strategies, to raise awareness about important issues, to
share information on best practices, and to expand and improve
training in every area of the country.

Already, since 2012, our U.S. Attorneys have held or attended
more than 1,700 engagement-related events or meetings to enhance
trust and facilitate communication in their neighborhoods and
districts.  This innovative new pilot initiative will build on
that important work.  And the White House will be hosting a
Countering Violent Extremism summit in October to highlight these
and other domestic and international efforts.  Ultimately, the
pilot programs will enable us to develop more effective – and more
inclusive – ways to help build the more just, secure, and free
society that all Americans deserve.

We know that bulk collection of metadata has been
ineffective in actually combating home-grown terrorism. We know
that actually old-fashioned policing and communicating with the
community is vital to tracking down actual threats. This shouldn’t
be a “pilot” program at all but rather something that law
enforcement agencies should have been doing all along.

And yet, when we look at the Department of Justice’s own tactics
as well as behavior from folks like the New York Police Department,
it’s difficult to imagine that this program is going to be about
things like “facilitating communication.” This is a Department of
Justice that has blocked efforts to challenge its no-fly and watch
lists that make travel miserable for thousands of Americans despite
having
no known connection to any terrorist organization. When the
American Civil Liberties Union challenged the federal no-fly list,
some of the people they represented testified that they had been
told they could get their rights back in exchange for
becoming informants for the federal government. The New York
Police Department’s surveillance on Muslim communities in the city
and in New Jersey had
other problems with its use of informants. If this program is
about drawing more informants into the government fold, we should
be concerned about what tactics they’ll use to get information.

For that matter, we should most assuredly be concerned about
what tactics they’ll use to actually catch suspects. The FBI has
notoriously broken up “terrorist plots” that they had
actually created themselves to draw in subjects who have
expressed anger and rage at the United States but lacked the
resources (and possibly the intelligence) to actually orchestrate
anything dangerous. And then they foil the “plot,” arrest the guy,
and send him to prison. Given that this is a big pilot project with
a public rollout, there’s going to be pressure for outcomes.
Catching people and putting them in jail is what they’re going to
want to brag about.

McClatchy’s coverage of today’s announcement highlights the
“challenge” that the Justice Department has to “tamp down fears
that the push for improved communication is a ruse to make it
easier for law enforcement agencies to conduct domestic spying
activities.” The Department of Justice and the National Security
Agency currently do not have the best reputation for honesty and
transparency right now. Why would anybody believe Holder’s
intentions at this point?

A video of Holder’s statement is here.