After Paris attacks, CIA director rekindles debate over surveillance

In response to the Paris attacks, a top U.S. intelligence official on Monday renewed a debate on government surveillance and privacy, denouncing “hand-wringing” over intrusive spying and saying that leaks of classified information had made it harder to identify terrorists.

John O. Brennan, the director of the CIA, appeared to be speaking in part about the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of phone and Internet communications that were disclosed by Edward J. Snowden in 2013. Those disclosures prompted sharp criticism and new restrictions on electronic spying both in the United States and in Europe.

Brennan also seemed to be pushing back against complaints from privacy advocates in light of a growing threat from the Islamic State against Western countries, exemplified by the gun and bomb assaults in Paris that killed 129 people on Friday night.

“In the past several years, because of a number of unauthorized disclosures, and a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal and other actions that have been taken that make our ability collectively, internationally, to find these terrorists much more challenging,” Brennan said after a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research organization.

The CIA director, who was responding to questions about the Paris attacks, also suggested that the classified documents on NSA programs given to journalists by Snowden, a former NSA contractor now living in Russia, had taught terrorists how to hide from the authorities.

“There has been an increase in the operational security of a number of operatives of these terrorist networks as they have gone to school on what it is that they need to do in order to keep their activities concealed from the authorities,” he said, an apparent reference to both the use of encryption and the avoidance of electronic communications altogether by plotters. He spoke of “intentional” gaps in surveillance and complained about what he called the “misrepresentation” of intelligence programs.

Brennan’s remarks, and the emotional public response to the massacre in France, reignited a debate that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks over just how far the government should go in invading individuals’ privacy in the hunt for terrorist plots. Civil libertarians expressed concern that the Paris attacks might prompt a rush to more intrusive spying, on phone calls and Internet messages generally or possibly on Muslims specifically.

“As far as I know, there’s no evidence the French lacked some kind of surveillance authority that would have made a difference,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “When we’ve invested new powers in the government in response to events like the Paris attacks, they have often been abused.”

While most counterterrorism experts believe the United States is safer from jihadi attacks than Europe, Brennan was one of a number of officials and commentators who have cited the Paris attacks as a reason to step up surveillance and other security measures in the United States and Europe. On Sunday, Rep. Peter T. King, R-N.Y., who serves on the House Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees, called for increased surveillance specifically of Muslims, which Brennan did not.

“This shows the absolute need to have top surveillance, to stop criticizing the NSA,” King said on Fox News Sunday. “We have to put political correctness aside,” he added. “We have to have surveillance in the Muslim communities. That’s where the threat is coming from.”

Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, a legal and civil rights group, said it made no sense to target all Muslims.

“I think all Americans want to be kept safe from violence of any kind,” she said. “But we know that blanket surveillance of people based on religion and race doesn’t work.”

Based on arrests of Islamic State supporters in the United States in recent years, Khera said “the common thread is not that they are Muslims but that they are lonely, vulnerable young people.” In some cases, she said, they are not from Muslim families but “have become Muslim online” after exposure to propaganda from the Islamic State.

Many security experts believe that the United States is at far lesser risk than Europe for a large-scale jihadi attack directed from Syria for two reasons. First, flights into the United States and controls at the Mexican and Canadian borders make it much harder for would-be attackers to reach American soil. Second, the Muslim community in the United States is smaller proportionally and is widely seen as better integrated and more prosperous than in France and some other European countries.

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 10:37 PM with the headline "After Paris attacks, CIA director rekindles debate over surveillance."