Obama answers citizens" questions in Google "hangout road trip"
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Hangout dubbed ‘first-ever presidential hangout road trip’ by White House as president took friendly questions from nine Americans
We need to know why this should happen twice in 10 months”, says Yvette Cooper
Labour is urging the government to explain how a terror suspect under surveillance went missing after changing into a burka at a mosque.
Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, 27, who was subject to an order restricting his movements, was last seen leaving the site in Acton, west London, on Friday.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper described the situation as “extremely serious”.
Home Secretary Theresa May will make a statement in the Commons at 15:30 GMT.
CCTV images show Somali-born Mr Mohamed, who is said to now be a UK citizen, leaving the mosque with his face fully covered.
Police say Mr Mohamed, who has been linked to the Somali militant group al-Shabab, should not be approached but do not believe he poses a direct threat.
He was subject to a terrorism prevention and investigation measures (TPim) notice, which is aimed at protecting the public from people the home secretary believes to have engaged in terrorism-related activity but who it is not deemed feasible to prosecute or deport.
The Home Office would not confirm what had happened to the GPS tag he would have been issued with as part of the order.
The TPims system is under intense scrutiny on several fronts.
The disappearance of Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed raises questions as to whether the regime, dubbed “control orders-lite”, is in fact too light.
Mohamed is the second suspect to abscond. On Boxing Day 2012, Ibrahim Magag vanished after reportedly hiring a black cab. He has not been seen since.
There are also doubts about the robustness of the electronic tags that suspects have to wear.
Last week, prosecutions against three men, accused of tampering with their tags, were dropped when it emerged they may have inadvertently come loose.
Then there’s the wider question: How will police and MI5 monitor suspects when their TPims expire after the maximum two years?
Ms Cooper said: “Clearly police and security agencies will be doing everything possible to locate this terror suspect and ensure public safety.
“The home secretary also needs to provide information about the decisions made over Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed’s TPim, how he was able to abscond and what the risks to the public are.”
She called for the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson, to “investigate urgently what has happened and the adequacy of the controls and powers in this case”.
Mr Mohamed arrived at the An-Noor Masjid and Community Centre, in Church Road, Acton, at approximately 10:00 GMT on Friday, and was seen inside at 15:15 GMT.
CCTV images issued by Scotland Yard showed him arriving wearing a jacket and trousers and then leaving the mosque in the burka. He is 5ft 8in tall and of medium build.
The Metropolitan Police advised anyone who saw Mr Mohamed not to approach him and to call 999.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “The Counter Terrorism Command immediately launched inquiries to trace Mr Mohamed and these continue.
“Ports and borders were notified with his photograph and details circulated nationally. Public safety remains our priority.”
Security minister James Brokenshire said: “National security is the government’s top priority and the police are doing everything in their power to apprehend this man as quickly as possible.
“The police and security services do not believe that this man poses a direct threat to the public in the UK.
“The home secretary, on police advice, applied to the High Court for an order protecting anonymity to be lifted in order to assist with their investigation.”
Lib Dem peer Lord Carlile, the former reviewer of anti-terror laws, said: “We were assured by the government that extra money would be spent on surveillance to ensure that exactly this kind of event did not occur.
“Yet the person concerned was able to walk in the front door of a mosque as a man and out through another door as a woman, on CCTV which was not seen, apparently, by the authorities.”
The court-approved Tpim orders include a requirement that their subjects report daily to the authorities, stay overnight at a specified address, wear a GPS tag, and face restrictions on travel, movement, association and communication.
They were introduced in January 2012 to replace control orders, which had been in place for seven years and also included the power to relocate suspects.
A court-imposed anonymity order banning the publication of Mr Mohamed’s name was lifted on Saturday to allow police to make a public appeal for information.
When the TPims order was obtained, Mr Mohamed was said to have received terrorist training in Somalia and fought on the front line in support of al-Shabab.
Court documents also say he supported a UK-based network supporting terrorist-related activity in Somalia and had been involved in attack planning against Western interests in east Africa.
Last December, Ibrahim Magag, who was subject to a TPim control measure, went missing in north London and has still not been found.
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) departs after a full-Senate briefing by Director of the National Security Agency General Keith Alexander (not pictured), at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, June 13, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Years ago, the government snooped on my phone calls. It happened in Soviet Russia, where, at 16, I already knew it was dangerous to have politically risky conversations even near the telephone, let alone on it. Shortly after my parents sought permission to emigrate in 1979, we received startling accidental proof that Big Brother was listening. While on the phone with a friend, my mother suddenly heard mysterious clicks—followed by a playback of her own conversation. Moments later a strange voice asked, “Are you recording?”, and then the sound was cut off.
Given such experiences, the idea of the state monitoring private communications in my adopted country is unquestionably disturbing—but so is hyperbolic rhetoric about an American police state.
At this point, there is much we don’t know about the telephone and Internet data collection by the National Security Agency. What is being monitored and on what scale? Can the NSA eavesdrop without a warrant, or merely keep track of who’s communicating with whom? Does the fact that the special courts overseeing foreign intelligence surveillance approve nearly all requests for wiretapping warrants mean that their oversight amounts to rubber-stamping—or that most requests are well-founded? Is it true the NSA programs have helped prevent major terror attacks, including a New York subway bombing in 2009?
Polls show that Americans lean toward supporting surveillance, though within limits. In a Pew poll earlier this month, 56 percent approved of NSA tracking of phone calls while 41 percent disapproved; only 45 percent, however, agreed that the government should be able to “monitor everyone’s email to prevent possible terrorism.” (The figure might have been higher if the wording had clearly referred to tracking email rather than indiscriminately reading it). When the question was posed in broader terms—“Which is more important, to investigate terrorist threats or not intrude on privacy?”—nearly two-thirds opted for the former.
It’s easy to mock supporters of extensive national security programs as docile “sheeple,” especially when a substantial number of both Republicans and Democrats seem to shift their stance on the issue depending on which party is in power. But the inescapable fact is that the terror threat is very real. Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001. A successful attack on the New York subway could have caused devastating damage. The specter of biological or nuclear terrorism is not just science fiction.
Critics of the “surveillance state” often charge that our response is out of proportion to the threat, since we handle far deadlier perils without compromising our freedom or privacy. In a recent column making this argument on The Atlantic’s website, Conor Friedersdorf cites fatalities from drunk driving, diabetes, guns, and food poisoning. But the analogy is deeply flawed.
Terrorism is very different from the unavoidable vicissitudes of life such as diseases and accidents. We have a degree of control over these dangers; while this control is obviously limited, it is not illusory. We can do many things to lower our risk of premature death from disease. We can minimize the risk of dying in a drunk driving accident if we don’t drive drunk or ride with a drunk driver. (For better or worse, we also accept tangible incursions on individual freedom to combat drunk driving, from age restrictions on alcohol sales to sobriety checkpoints.) We can take basic precautions against food poisoning. The risk of death by firearm is cut in half if you don’t commit suicide, and drops even lower if you are not involved in crime.
Catastrophic events that strike unpredictably and are completely outside our control are inherently more terrifying—especially when they kill on a mass scale. This is true even when those events are accidental: imagine the outcry, and the calls for action, if food contamination or a building collapse killed hundreds of Americans in a single day. With terrorism, the impact is magnified by the knowledge that we are being deliberately targeted and that the perpetrators will likely seek new, more efficient ways to cause harm. In the words of Bloomberg.net columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, “The fear of terrorism isn’t motivated solely by what terrorists have done, but what terrorists hope to do.”
That is why, even if this fear is disproportionate to the actual death toll from terror attacks, it makes a fair amount of sense. Dismissing it as “irrational cowardice”—as Friedersdorf does—is not only condescending but wrong, and policy proposals based on such an outlook are doomed. Persuading people to treat terrorism as an acceptable everyday risk on a par with traffic accidents and food poisoning would require reengineering the human psyche. We remember how well that worked out for the communists.
Does this mean that we should simply trust the government not to misuse its power and its access to private information? Certainly not. While there is zero evidence that either the Bush or the Obama Administration has used surveillance data improperly—for instance, against political opponents or critics—the potential for abuse exists despite legislative and judicial oversight. (Of course, a government nefarious enough to target political opponents would also be nefarious enough to conduct surveillance no matter how illegal.)
We need federal legislation that provides strong penalties for any misuse of data obtained through national security programs. We also need more public accountability and public debate on these issues—which is why NSA leaker Edward Snowden, whatever his motives and morals, has performed a valuable service.
The libertarian critique provides an essential check on the surveillance state. But liberty cannot survive unless a free society can be defended. And, if libertarians downplay the threat posed by our enemies, they undercut their credibility in opposing the threat posed by the intrusive state.
Years ago, the government snooped on my phone calls. It happened in Soviet Russia, where, at 16, I already knew it was dangerous to have politically risky conversations even near the telephone, let alone on it. Shortly after my parents sought permission to emigrate in 1979, we received startling accidental proof that Big Brother was listening. While on the phone with a friend, my mother suddenly heard mysterious clicks—followed by a playback of her own conversation. Moments later a strange voice asked, “Are you recording?”, and then the sound was cut off.
Given such experiences, the idea of the state monitoring private communications in my adopted country is unquestionably disturbing—but so is hyperbolic rhetoric about an American police state.
At this point, there is much we don’t know about the telephone and Internet data collection by the National Security Agency. What is being monitored and on what scale? Can the NSA eavesdrop without a warrant, or merely keep track of who’s communicating with whom? Does the fact that the special courts overseeing foreign intelligence surveillance approve nearly all requests for wiretapping warrants mean that their oversight amounts to rubber-stamping—or that most requests are well-founded? Is it true the NSA programs have helped prevent major terror attacks, including a New York subway bombing in 2009?
Polls show that Americans lean toward supporting surveillance, though within limits. In a Pew poll earlier this month, 56 percent approved of NSA tracking of phone calls while 41 percent disapproved; only 45 percent, however, agreed that the government should be able to “monitor everyone’s email to prevent possible terrorism.” (The figure might have been higher if the wording had clearly referred to tracking email rather than indiscriminately reading it). When the question was posed in broader terms—“Which is more important, to investigate terrorist threats or not intrude on privacy?”—nearly two-thirds opted for the former.
It’s easy to mock supporters of extensive national security programs as docile “sheeple,” especially when a substantial number of both Republicans and Democrats seem to shift their stance on the issue depending on which party is in power. But the inescapable fact is that the terror threat is very real. Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001. A successful attack on the New York subway could have caused devastating damage. The specter of biological or nuclear terrorism is not just science fiction.
Critics of the “surveillance state” often charge that our response is out of proportion to the threat, since we handle far deadlier perils without compromising our freedom or privacy. In a recent column making this argument on The Atlantic’s website, Conor Friedersdorf cites fatalities from drunk driving, diabetes, guns, and food poisoning. But the analogy is deeply flawed.
Terrorism is very different from the unavoidable vicissitudes of life such as diseases and accidents. We have a degree of control over these dangers; while this control is obviously limited, it is not illusory. We can do many things to lower our risk of premature death from disease. We can minimize the risk of dying in a drunk driving accident if we don’t drive drunk or ride with a drunk driver. (For better or worse, we also accept tangible incursions on individual freedom to combat drunk driving, from age restrictions on alcohol sales to sobriety checkpoints.) We can take basic precautions against food poisoning. The risk of death by firearm is cut in half if you don’t commit suicide, and drops even lower if you are not involved in crime.
Catastrophic events that strike unpredictably and are completely outside our control are inherently more terrifying—especially when they kill on a mass scale. This is true even when those events are accidental: imagine the outcry, and the calls for action, if food contamination or a building collapse killed hundreds of Americans in a single day. With terrorism, the impact is magnified by the knowledge that we are being deliberately targeted and that the perpetrators will likely seek new, more efficient ways to cause harm. In the words of Bloomberg.net columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, “The fear of terrorism isn’t motivated solely by what terrorists have done, but what terrorists hope to do.”
That is why, even if this fear is disproportionate to the actual death toll from terror attacks, it makes a fair amount of sense. Dismissing it as “irrational cowardice”—as Friedersdorf does—is not only condescending but wrong, and policy proposals based on such an outlook are doomed. Persuading people to treat terrorism as an acceptable everyday risk on a par with traffic accidents and food poisoning would require reengineering the human psyche. We remember how well that worked out for the communists.
Does this mean that we should simply trust the government not to misuse its power and its access to private information? Certainly not. While there is zero evidence that either the Bush or the Obama Administration has used surveillance data improperly—for instance, against political opponents or critics—the potential for abuse exists despite legislative and judicial oversight. (Of course, a government nefarious enough to target political opponents would also be nefarious enough to conduct surveillance no matter how illegal.)
We need federal legislation that provides strong penalties for any misuse of data obtained through national security programs. We also need more public accountability and public debate on these issues—which is why NSA leaker Edward Snowden, whatever his motives and morals, has performed a valuable service.
The libertarian critique provides an essential check on the surveillance state. But liberty cannot survive unless a free society can be defended. And, if libertarians downplay the threat posed by our enemies, they undercut their credibility in opposing the threat posed by the intrusive state.
