Blog of Rights
Michael
German
03/20/2013
Radically Wrong: A Counterproductive Approach to Counterterrorism

Does Intelligence Have to be so Unintelligent?

By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:27pm

You would think that with an annual budget topping $70 billion, the intelligence community would employ the most rigorous scientific research methods and conduct exacting empirical studies to support its assumptions and evaluate the effectiveness of its programs. You would be wrong. Radically wrong.

In fact, our intelligence agencies do their best to avoid meaningful oversight or accountability, and setting empirically measurable benchmarks to evaluate the success or failure of particular programs would only invite the kind of scrutiny they eschew. Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously complained way back in 2003 that "we lack metrics to know whether we are winning or losing the global war on terror," but ten years later the intelligence community continues to avoid setting such metrics.

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02/14/2013
Radically Wrong: A Counterproductive Approach to Counterterrorism

Radically Wrong: A Counterproductive Approach to Counterterrorism

By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:52am

Governments often interpret radical ideas that challenge the existing social and political orthodoxy as threatening...

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12/10/2012
Government Surveillance

Who’s a Radical Now?

By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:10am

The Bipartisan Policy Center published a report last week called, “Countering Online Radicalization in America,” which strongly endorsed First Amendment principles in rejecting censorship as an appropriate tactic for addressing violent extremist content on the Internet.  The report evaluated the many methods governments around the world use to censor the Internet – including filtering or blacklisting online content, taking down websites (either through legal means, cyber attacks or appealing to private sector providers), and prosecuting Internet content producers – and rejected them all as both ineffective in stopping the spread of undesirable ideas, and an affront to American values: “For the United States, the cost-benefit analysis would be even clearer:  with its long and cherished tradition of free speech, the creation of a nationwide system of censorship is virtually inconceivable.”  But the BPC’s positive recommendations are potentially undermined by its continuing embrace of a radicalization theory that draws too close a causal connection between “radical” ideas and violent action.

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10/03/2012
Government Surveillance

Fusion Centers: Too Much (Bad) Information

By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:32pm

The official verdict is finally in, thanks to a congressional report out today: state and local law enforcement intelligence “fusion centers” funded by the Department of Homeland Security are failing to safeguard both our constitutional rights and our security.

Back in 2007, when the ACLU began investigating the growth of these centers, there was little public information available about where these centers were, who was in charge of them, who participated, what information they collected or what they did with it. Our first report highlighted “excessive secrecy” as one of the major problems with fusion centers, recognizing that a lack of public accountability has too often in the past allowed police intelligence operations to turn their focus away from suspected criminals and toward political activists, racial and religious minorities, and immigrant communities. In a 2008 follow-up report, we chronicled many of the early signs of trouble in these institutions.

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05/29/2012
Racial Mapping

Manufacturing a “Black Separatist” Threat and Other Dubious Claims: Bias in Newly Released FBI Terrorism Training Materials

By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:31pm

In a throwback to the J. Edgar Hoover-era COINTELPRO investigations targeting civil rights and anti-war activists, the FBI is now training its agents to be on the lookout for "Black Separatist" terrorists, according to FBI training materials released today by the ACLU. These new disclosures, obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation, are the latest in a growing flood of FBI training materials that include factually flawed and biased information.

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03/23/2012
Government Surveillance

Government Extends Time it Can Retain Info on Innocent Americans in Counterterrorism Databases

By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:29pm

The Obama administration has extended the time the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) can collect and hold on to records on U.S. citizens and residents from 180 days to five years, even where those people have no suspected ties to terrorism. The new NCTC guidelines, which were approved by Attorney General Eric Holder, will give the intelligence community much broader access to information about Americans retained in various government databases.

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03/09/2012
NYPD Muslim Surveillance

FBI Official Agrees with ACLU: Suspicionless Surveillance is Ineffective and Counterproductive

By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:11pm

This week a high-level FBI official made some welcome comments on the NYPD's spying on New York City's Muslim communities and organizations that mirror the ACLU's own position on the suspicionless surveillance.

As you know, we at the ACLU we have long raised concerns about increasing levels of suspicionless surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, whether enabled though legislation, like the Patriot Act, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, or proposed cybersecurity bills; or though policy and programs, like the amendments to Attorney General Guidelines (AGG) governing the FBI, state and local intelligence fusion centers, and "suspicious activity reporting" programs, to name but a few.

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12/01/2011

Reviewing Counterterrorism Training Materials, Biased and Not

By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:43am

As we noted yesterday, we are pleased that the White House has initiated a government-wide review of counterterrorism training materials, after the ACLU uncovered numerous FBI examples of training materials that falsely and inappropriately portray Arab and Muslim communities as monolithic, alien, backward, violent and supporters of terrorism. Subsequent reports by Wired revealed this problem existed in the Departments of Justice and Defense as well. Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the ACLU of Northern California and the Asian Law Caucus show that FBI use of these erroneous and biased materials spans from at least 2003 to 2011, and has been an integral part of the agency’s training programs.

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10/24/2011
Three Faces of Racial Profiling

Three Faces of Racial Profiling: Profiling Communities is Bad Law Enforcement

By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:46pm

A new ACLU website, "Mapping the FBI" exposes the bureau's nationwide racial and ethnic mapping program.

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09/13/2011
9/11 Blog Series

The Government's 9/11 Secrecy Obsession

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project & Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:16pm

Our government lost its way after 9/11 in many different respects. One of them was to worsen what had already been long apparent as one of the most significant problems with our security establishment: its out-of-control habit of secrecy.

The secrecy problem had been studied and decried for decades before 9/11, with nearly every government panel, commission, and committee that examined the issue concluding that the amount of information kept secret was far out of proportion to what was justifiable, and was harming our nation.

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