********** From: "James Lucier" <James.Lucierat_private> To: "Declan McCullagh" <declanat_private> Subject: stewart baker in WSJ online: Don't give up security for a false sense of liberty. Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 08:55:12 -0400 Opinionjournal.com is free content from the WSJ. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=95001279 TRADE-OFFS Dangerous Secrets Don't give up security for a false sense of liberty. BY STEWART BAKER Friday, October 5, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT For weeks, pundits have been warning us against new legislation that would sacrifice essential liberties in the name of a false security. Judging by the reaction to the Bush administration's antiterrorism bill, the real question is whether we'll be sacrificing essential security in the name of false civil-liberties concerns. Perhaps the most pointed example of this is Congress's handling of the administration proposal to let law-enforcement authorities share grand jury information with national security and intelligence agencies. Senate negotiators stalled the entire bill over this issue, and the House has already modified the proposal in a way that renders it nearly meaningless. The concerted opposition to this proposal is hard to justify. Barriers to information-sharing between intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have already cost us dearly in the fight against terror. [...] The real question is not whether this trade-off between civil liberties and security is justified. The real question is why Bush administration negotiators didn't work harder to push through the change. Here, I can only speculate that the Justice Department, at least at the start, wasn't wholeheartedly behind the measure. [..] Mr. Baker, former general counsel of the National Security Agency, practices law in Washington. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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