Disputing the Intelligence Community: America’s Spy Agencies Need a Shutdown

President Obama’s recent Executive Orders to enhance information sharing across agencies, as well as the efforts in recent years by the Department of Homeland Security to create intelligence and law enforcement fusion centers in each state make it highly probable that the CIA’s new Directorate will be actively engaged in laundering information from its analyses of online data through other agencies permitted to operate within American borders.  This information sharing exploits loopholes within the Patriot Act, National Defense Authorization Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allowing the FBI, for instance, to acquire actionable intelligence about alleged domestic criminals without probable cause, due process, or the appropriate court warrants.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the CFR in 2013. Photo Courtesy of CFR

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the CFR in 2013. Photo Courtesy of CFR

These developments within the CIA are also currently evident in a vital partner of the United States, Canada.  The Harper Regime’s Bill C-51 similarly eases the transfer of information across departments, allows the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to “disrupt” internal threats, and gives the Royal Canadian Mounted Police the ability to conduct “preventative arrests.”  Brennan touted the CIA’s relationships with foreign partners, and went so far as to state that the CIA was actively involved in “enhancing skills of partner state intelligence agencies, like the Department of Defense helps train foreign soldiers, and the Department of Justice assists in the development of their justice systems.”  The similarity of these two countries’ “enhancement” of intelligence gathering abilities, as well as the push to provide for operational arms capable of reacting to the information on the ground are cause for serious concerns for the direction the intelligence agencies are taking.

The new Net Neutrality rules also make it easier for the US government to monitor and collect information traveling through the world wide web.  Paula DiPerna of the NTR Foundation asked Brennan at the CFR presentation, “How feasible would it be to do a little selective internet disruption….a digital blockade?”  Brennan acknowledged freedom of speech concerns, and admitted that “technologically, it’s really quite challenging.”  However, we have already seen other governments, Egypt and Turkey for instance, block all internet transmissions.  China, as well, regularly restricts internet access.  Brennan immediately followed his downplay of the feasibility of an internet kill switch with assurances to DiPerna and the rest of the Council on Foreign Relations that Congress has been and is actively working on upgrades to legislation that would indemnify companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Apple for their complicity in any data collection or restrictions of servers or websites.