Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren't Stopping Tomorrow's Terrorism

by Stewart Baker

Overview

Stewart A. Baker, a former Homeland Security official, examines the technologies we love—jet travel, computer networks, and biotech—and finds that they are likely to empower new forms of terrorism unless we change our current course a few degrees and overcome resistance to change from business, foreign governments, and privacy advocates. He draws on his Homeland Security experience to show how that was done in the case of jet travel and border security but concludes that heading off disasters in computer networks and biotech will require a hardheaded recognition that privacy must sometimes yield to security, especially as technology changes the risks to both.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817911546
Publisher:	Hoover Institution Press
Publication date:	06/01/2010
Series:	HOOVER INST PRESS PUBLICATION
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Stewart A. Baker was the first assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009. He now practices law at Steptoe & Johnson in Washington, D.C., and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. His law practice covers homeland security, international trade, cybersecurity, data protection, and foreign investment regulation. Baker has also served as general counsel of the Robb-Silberman Commission investigating intelligence failures before the Iraq war (2004–5), as general counsel of the National Security Agency (1992–94), and as deputy general counsel of the Education Department (1979–81). He clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court and Judge Frank M. Coffin on the First Circuit Court.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Part One: The Road to 9/11

Introduction: The Gift
1 Skating on Stilts
2 Atta’s Soldier
3 To the Wall
4 Never Again

Part Two: Flight and Facts

5 Europe Picks a Privacy Fight
6 To the Brink
7 Al Qaeda’s Frequent Traveler Program
8 Privacy Victims in the Air

Part Three: Tomorrow’s Terrorism

9 Moore’s Outlaws
10 Big Brother’s Revenge
11 Invested in Insecurity
12 Smallpox in the Garage

Part Four: The Privacy Problem

13 What’s Wrong with Privacy?
14 Privacy for the Real World

Endnotes
About the Author
Index