Third Party Doctrine NEG Counterplans Counterplans Congress Repeal FISA CP( FISA repeal CP k2 Solv ) Courts fail to protect rights—in February, Supreme Court deemed surveillance abuse as “speculative” and dropped the case—only Congress solves

Kaminski 13 (Margot Kaminski is the executive director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, “Prism’s legal basis: how we got here and what we can do to get back,” The Atlantic, June 7, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/prisms-legal-basis-how-we-got-here-and-what-we-can-do-to-get-back/276667/)

The first instinct might be to look to federal courts to protect our constitutional rights. But in February of this year, the Supreme Court effectively closed that avenue of recourse at least with respect to PRISM in Clapper v. Amnesty International. The majority of the Court found that the group of lawyers, journalists, and human rights advocates who challenged the constitutionality of the law that authorizes PRISM could not show that they had been injured by it. The Court explained that the alleged surveillance was too speculative; the group could not get into court unless it showed that surveillance of its members was "certainly impending." One might think that a new lawsuit could show that surveillance is "certainly impending," because we now know that the PRISM program exists. But this is not clear. Any plaintiffs would probably still face the significant hurdle of showing that the government has spied on them in particular, or their foreign correspondents. And while the existence of a similarly pervasive spying program led the Ninth Circuit to find that a similar lawsuit could proceed, that case came down before the recent Supreme Court opinion. The best solution, then, is Congress. Congress must repeal the FISA Amendments Act, which it regrettably reauthorized in 2012. Otherwise the revelation that the government can and does spy on Americans through Internet companies will chill expression, chill free association, and threaten our society's growing reliance on cloud computing for everything from intimate communications to business transactions. And Congress should reevaluate the secrecy surrounding our entire foreign intelligence-gathering system, because if the past two days have shown anything, it is that lack of oversight leads to extraordinary abuses.

Privacy-Protected Surveillance CPPrivacy-Protected Surveillance allows us to protect privacy rights – while still solving for terrorism

Betts and Sezer 14 (Jennifer Betts, Sakir Sezer, writers for Queen’s University Belfast, http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jennifer_Betts/publication/263013766_Ethics_and_Privacy_in_National_Security_and_Critical_Infrastructure_Protection/links/02e7e539963e847cdb000000.pdf, Ethics and Privacy in National Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection, May 2014)

Privacy by Design [3] is well documented and was recognised in October 2010 as the global standard at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners. Its developer has co-authored a paper outlining Privacy Protective Surveillance (PPS) [5], a privacy protective alternative to current counter-terrorist surveillance. Based on the Privacy by Design framework, it utilizes current technology tools combining cryptography with machine learning techniques. PPS [5] has three main technological components. Firstly, ‘intelligent virtual agents’ search online and transactional databases for suspicious activities. If suspicious activity is detected, any associated personal information associated with it would be encrypted and flagged up for further investigation. Secondly, a system using “Secure Multi-Party Computation methods” would interrogate the encrypted data searching for links between activities and individuals. “Homomorphic encryption” is the suggested encryption method. This would be valuable in allowing data to be analysed while still encrypted, although it is an area requiring technical expertise to decide on its practicality for this purpose. Finally, “probabilistic graphical models”, Cavoukian gives the example of Bayesian networks, would perform inferential analysis on the anonymised data to calculate the likelihood of a terrorist threat from the previous analysis of suspicious linked activities. It is only at this point that a warrant would be sought to decrypt any personally identifiable information. The reputation of internet companies such as Google and Facebook have been damaged by the release of the Snowden files. Public trust has been further eroded following media reports that they accepted sums of money from the NSA for their co-operation [24]. Cavoukian believes PPS could improve public perception if, ultimately, internet companies were able to use the methodology to carry out anti-terrorist surveillance on their users’ data without having to hand it over to the government. PPS avoids the mining of vast sums of data looking for previously unknown patterns of behaviour. While this can be useful for marketing and profiling for targeted advertising, it produces too many false positives for mass surveillance. The specifically targeted nature of the PPS data analysis technique could therefore help to restore public trust. The proposed methodology attempts to address the ethical area of privacy and trust. Well designed and developed “probabilistic graphical models” could achieve targeted data analysis that would minimise the risk of false positive results and the data of innocent internet users being exposed. Analysis has only been conducted on encrypted data up to the point where there is sufficient suspicion for a warrant to be requested. At the stage where a warrant is issued and data unencrypted, further privacy safeguards could restrict access to the data. The model enables a minimisation of human contact with personally identifiable information that could be further developed. V. CONCLUSION The release of the Snowden files have moved ethical concerns in relation to privacy and trust to a new political level. The ethical concerns of society today shape the policies and legislation of tomorrow, although the events of 2013 have produced a political urgency not generally associated with the slow progress of policy and legislation normally the subject of prolonged consultation and debate. Privacy concerns related to mass data surveillance cannot be fully addressed by politicians and governments. Nor, we believe, should they be. Our paper presents an ethical challenge to researchers and the technology industry. We highlight how a privacy impact assessment tool can be used in critical infrastructure protection to measure the effectiveness of technical security solutions. We also identify the PPS solution with which it is possible to develop policies and technologies that can prevent mass data surveillance violating the privacy a majority of law-abiding citizens have a right to expect. The availability of these solutions challenges policy makers, researchers, engineers and industry to progress their implementation with the objective of promoting and protecting both national security and privacy. If there is not a willingness to do this, we have to ask ourselves why?

Court Legitimacy DAOFFCourts will ‘narrow’ rulings in digital surveillance as applying to pre-digital technology --- Riley sent a signal

Re 14 (Richard M. – Assistant Professor of Law at UCLA Law School, “Narrowing Precedent and the Digital Fourth Amendment,” in Res Judicata, 11-24-14, https://richardresjudicata.wordpress.com/2014/11/24/narrowing-precedent-and-the-digital-fourth-amendment/)

My new paper, “Narrowing Precedent in the Supreme Court,” is now posted online. (Thanks to LTB for publicizing it!) The basic idea is that the Supreme Court frequently narrows its precedents, including in “liberal” directions, and that doing so is often both legitimate and desirable. In this post, I’d like to make a prediction: in the near future, we are going to see a lot of narrowing in the area of digital surveillance and the Fourth Amendment. Here’s the paper’s abstract, broken into paragraphs: “Narrowing” occurs when a court declines to apply a precedent even though, in the court’s own view, the precedent is best read to apply. In recent years, the Roberts Court has endured withering criticism for narrowing in areas such as affirmative action, abortion, the exclusionary rule, campaign finance, and standing. This practice— often called “stealth overruling”—is widely condemned as deceptive, as well as contrary to stare decisis. On reflection, however, narrowing is not stealthy, tantamount to overruling, or even uncommon. Instead, narrowing is a distinctive feature of Supreme Court practice that has been accepted and employed by virtually every Justice. Besides promoting traditional stare decisis values like correctness, fidelity, and candor, legitimate narrowing represents the decisional-law analogue to the canon of constitutional avoidance. As a rule, an en banc appellate court, including the Supreme Court, engages in legitimate narrowing when it adopts a reasonable reading of precedent without contradicting background legal principles. Under this rule, most if not all instances of narrowing during the Roberts Court are readily defensible—including frequently overlooked decisions by the Court’s more liberal members. Moreover, prominent cases involving narrowing can be grouped into four categories: experimental narrowing, narrowing rules, narrowing to overrule, and aspirational narrowing. Far from being unusual or unwarranted, narrowing is a mainstay of Supreme Court practice— and a good thing, too. In the paper, one type of narrowing I discuss pertains to defeasible holdings–that is, holdings that can be read as containing implicit exceptions or limitations. This kind of narrowing is likely to be relevant in future digital Fourth Amendment cases. The reason is that pre-digital holdings are often written broadly, but without digital technologies in mind. Some might cite this circumstance as a reason to conclude that the best reading of the old cases is that they just don’t apply to then-unforeseen digital technologies. For people who hold that view, pre-digital cases can simply be distinguished, without resorting to narrowing. In the recent Supreme Court case Riley v. California, the Court seemed to take that view, in that it declined to “extend” a pre-digital case to new digital technologies. However, many sophisticated lawyers have taken a broader view of pre-digital cases. Before Riley, for instance, many judges, commentators, and scholars believed that precedents like United States v. Robinson empowered police to search any object on the person of an arrestee. Period. For the many people holding that view–some of whom may have been on the Supreme Court–Riley narrowed Robinson by reasonably reading its expressly “categorical” holding as implicitly limited to pre-digital technologies. For instance, in rejecting the argument “that a search of all data stored on a cell phone is ‘materially indistinguishable’ from searches … of physical items,” the Court didn’t parse Robinson or any other precedent. Instead, the Court said: “That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.” Because smart phones were “nearly inconceivable just a few decades ago,” when Robinson and related cases “were decided,” the Court was unconstrained by precedent. Shortly after Riley, I suggested that the Supreme Court had effectively signaled to lower courts that other pre-digital precedents were susceptible to similar treatment. To be sure, “vertical” narrowing–that is, a lower court’s narrowing of a higher court’s precedent–is generally more objectionable than the Supreme Court’s “horizontal” narrowing of its own precedent. That’s partly because the Supreme Court can overrule its own cases, whereas lower courts can’t just reject the contents of the US Reports. Yet Riley points toward a special context in which vertical narrowing makes sense. In cases involving new technologies and the Fourth Amendment, trial courts and courts of appeals seem to have special license to draw on Riley‘s treatment of digital technologies in reading Supreme Court precedents narrowly. This kind of pro-defendant narrowing is already happening and is bound to accelerate. The most visible recent examples have involved the third-party doctrine. Cases like Smith v. Maryland have long been widely understood to mean that consumers have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their telephone records. Period. But Smith of course predates the modern digital world and so is susceptible to narrowing on that ground. In my view, narrowing provides the best way of understanding recent arguments, like Judge Leon’s in Klayman v. Obama, that find Smith inapplicable in light of new technologies. As Judge Leon put it, modern cell phones and the new surveillance technologies that track them “are unlike anything that could have been conceived” when Smith was decided. Therefore, Smith‘s ostensibly broad holding is defeasible. We can expect even more decisions in this vein in the years ahead, including from the Supreme Court. On reflection, there’s nothing odd about all this. It’s how precedent often changes: visibly, without overruling, and with ample legitimacy.

The plan overrules Smith v. Maryland

Baker 14 (Stewart – former Assistant Secretary for Policy at the United States Department of Homeland Security, “The third grade and third-party doctrine,” in the Washington Post, 1-22-14, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/01/22/the-third-grade-and-third-party-doctrine/)

Randy Barnett argues that NSA’s metadata program is bad because the government will use the information to target people for their political views and to embrace mission creep. His solution is to leave the metadata in the hands of the phone company. But really, what good would that do? Suppose that, as Randy fears, Congress wakes up one day and decides to use phone metadata to suppress dissent and gun ownership across America. The fact that the data is stored in four or five phone companies’ databases rather than NSA’s will forestall the Dark Night of Fascism for, oh, about 90 minutes. For the sake of that speedbump, we should give up our ability to identify cross-border terror plots? Randy’s solution to that problem is to overrule a line of Supreme Court cases (Smith v. Maryland) holding that no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in information they’ve disclosed to a third party. With Smith v. Maryland set aside, the government would need a search warrant to see the metadata.

Overruling uniquely decimates Court legitimacy

Kozel 10 (Randy J. – Associate Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame, “ARTICLE: Stare Decisis as Judicial Doctrine,” 67 Wash & Lee L. Rev. 411, 2010, LexisNexis)

A more widely debated example comes from Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, where the Court rejected the argument that Roe v. Wade's central holding should be overruled. n302 The majority was frank in its desire to protect the Court's "capacity to exercise the judicial power and to function as the Supreme Court of a Nation dedicated to the rule of law." n303 It explained that the Court's "power lies . . . in its legitimacy, a product of substance and perception that shows itself in the people's acceptance of the [*463] Judiciary as fit to determine what the Nation's law means and to declare what it demands." n304 That legitimacy, in turn, "depends on making legally principled decisions under circumstances in which their principled character is sufficiently plausible to be accepted by the Nation." n305 And while the country ordinarily tolerates the Court's occasional need to revisit precedents, where a decision "resolve[s] the sort of intensely divisive controversy reflected in Roe and those rare, comparable cases," that decision must receive "equally rare precedential force to counter the inevitable efforts to overturn it and to thwart its implementation." n306 Casey thus made clear that at least in "rare" situations of acute "national controversies," the Court will be extraordinarily reluctant to overrule its precedents based on concerns over perceived legitimacy. n307

Judicial credibility is critical to democracy, the environment, and gun control

Jawando, Vice President of Legal Progress at the Center for American Progress, 15

(Michele, Sean Wright is the Policy Analyst for Legal Progress at the Center, “Why Courts Matter,” https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/report/2015/04/13/110883/why-courts-matter-2/)

No matter the issue—whether it’s marriage equality, voting rights, health care, or immigration—the U.S. federal courts play a vital role in the lives of all Americans. There are two types of courts: state and federal. The federal courts are those established to decide disagreements that concern the Constitution, congressional legislation, and certain state-based disputes. Although most Americans are familiar with the lifetime appointment of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, many are surprised to learn that more than 900 judges have lifetime appointments to serve on lower federal courts, where they hear many more cases than their counterparts on the Supreme Court. Each year, the Supreme Court reviews around 100 of the most significant cases out of the nearly 30 million cases resolved by state and federal courts. These courts hear the majority of cases and, most of the time, they have the final say. That is why, along with the Supreme Court’s justices, the judges who sit on the nation’s federal district and circuit courts are so important. At any given time, there are vacancies on U.S. federal courts that need to be filled. If they are not filled, federal caseloads get backlogged, and as a result, Americans’ access to justice is limited. As of March 9, 2015, there were 50 current vacancies on U.S. federal courts. These seats have been vacant for a total of 22,222 days, resulting in a backlog of 29,892 cases. The Administrative Office of the United States Courts has designated 23 of these pending vacancies as judicial emergencies, meaning that filling them is a critical task. As the Center for American Progress has noted, “in practical terms,” these are the judicial districts “where judges are overworked and where justice is being significantly delayed for the American public.” The Constitution dictates that the president appoints federal judges while the Senate advises and consents on these appointments. The result is a delicate balance between the desires of the White House, deference to home-state senators, and the power of the party that controls the Senate. Recently, politics has played a big role in the pace at which judicial nominees are confirmed. In an attempt to slow President Barack Obama’s effect on the federal courts, Senate Republicans have obstructed the president’s judicial nominees at unprecedented levels by attempting to prevent or delay a vote through filibustering a record number of nominees and making them await confirmation for long periods of time. The reason many Senate Republicans have played politics with President Obama’s judicial nominees is because they know the dramatic impact the judiciary can have on policies, including marriage equality and reproductive choice. The fewer judges that President Obama appoints to fill federal judicial vacancies, the greater leverage the next president will have in deciding the make-up of these courts. Yet in the face of unprecedented obstruction, President Obama has made great strides to fill vacancies and to ensure that federal judges meaningfully reflect the dynamic diversity of the nation. A diverse federal bench improves the quality of justice and instills confidence that judges understand the real-world implications of their decisions. Americans have different backgrounds, as well as an assorted set of professional, educational, and life experiences. It is important that the federal courts reflect the diversity of the public they serve. As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor once wrote, “The dynamism of any diverse community depends not only on the diversity itself but on promoting a sense of belonging among those who formerly would have been considered and felt themselves outsiders.” Furthermore, scholars have found that judges often change their minds during the deliberative process. In one study, researchers concluded that having a woman on the panel affected “elements of both deliberation and bargaining—alternative perspectives, persuasive argument, and horse trading.” Not only do the federal courts play a vital role in preserving democracy, but who sits on the courts has an effect too. This issue brief examines the ways in which our federal courts influence important policy issues and illustrates how judges’ decisions are often aligned with the legal philosophy of the presidents who appoint them. This fact drives home one of the reasons why courts matter: The decisions of federal judges have repercussions on people’s lives. Through its review of how the federal courts affect three specific policy issues—gun violence, money in politics, and voting rights—this issue brief shines a light on how important the federal courts are for the progressive community. Federal courts affect the issues that progressives care about Gun violence Gun violence has become all too familiar in America. However, research shows that reasonable gun control efforts decrease its occurrence. In particular, the Center for American Progress has determined that there is “a clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws,” and that “the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have an aggregate level of gun violence that is more than twice as high—104 percent higher, in fact—than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.”In short, evidence shows that with more guns, there are more gun deaths. U.S. federal courts play a significant role in determining whether states can impose reasonable gun regulations. For 70 years, the Supreme Court never took a case that dealt with the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. But in 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents changed course, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm unconnected with militia service. Four justices appointed to the Court by Democratic presidents disagreed. Less than one day after the decision, gun rights activists began to flood courts with lawsuits that challenged any and all gun regulations. According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, since the Heller decision, federal and state courts have issued more than 700 decisions on Second Amendment challenges. In many of these cases, judges appointed by Republican presidents have struck down gun regulations, while judges appointed by Democratic presidents have interpreted the Supreme Court’s decision less broadly and upheld them. For example, there is an ongoing debate over the states’ right to impose regulations on applicants for concealed-carry permits. Prior to Heller, many states required a permit applicant to show “good cause” or a “justifiable need” to carry a gun in public. After reviewing these common-sense laws, panels of the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 7th and 9th Circuit struck them down. In Peruta v. County of San Diego, two judges appointed by Republican presidents struck down California’s requirement that concealed-carry permit applicants show “good cause” before carrying guns in public, with the majority interpreting the Second Amendment in an expansive manner. This prompted Judge Sidney Thomas, who was appointed by a Democratic president, to author a vigorous dissent: This case involves California’s “presumptively lawful” and longstanding restrictions on carrying concealed weapons in public and, more specifically, an even narrower question: the constitutionality of San Diego County’s policy of allowing persons who show good cause to carry concealed firearms in public. When we examine the justification provided for the policy, coupled with Heller‘s direction, our conclusion must be that the County’s policy is constitutional. Unfortunately, the majority never answers the question posed. Instead, in a sweeping decision that unnecessarily decides questions not presented, the majority not only strikes down San Diego County’s concealed carry policy, but upends the entire California firearm regulatory scheme. The majority opinion conflicts with Heller, the reasoned decisions of other Circuits, and our own case law. Therefore, I must respectfully dissent. As Judge Thomas noted, other courts have upheld state laws that promote public safety. Judges on the Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Circuit have found that laws requiring permit applicants to show “good cause” do not interfere with the Second Amendment and instead promote balancing gun use with safety. In each of the decisions, judges appointed by Democratic presidents upheld longstanding permit regulations that are utilized by states across the country. The Heller decision emboldened gun rights groups. One particular organization, the Second Amendment Foundation, or SAF, has adopted a legal strategy of “swinging for the fences and often making very broad constitutional arguments.”[xxiv] Alan Gottlieb, the SAF’s founder, has said, “Our feeling is strike while the iron is hot … [t]hen weave [the case law] into a spider web that’s strong enough so our opponents can’t get through it.” Money in politics America’s representative democracy rests on the notion that elected officials are responsive to the people who elect them. Currently, however, political campaigns and elections are dominated by large amounts of money from individuals, corporations, and special interests that politicians rely on to run for office. During the 2014 election cycle, mega-donors dominated spending, with the top 100 campaign donors pouring in nearly enough money to match some 4.75 million small donors combined.[xxvi] The Center for Responsive Politics found that “just 666,773 individuals had donated more than $200 to campaigns, parties and political action committees in the 2014 election cycle.” This means that only 0.2 percent of the population financed the midterm elections. This is concerning because, as a recent study detailed, “the preferences of economic elites … have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.” New research makes clear that members of Congress are more likely to meet with a constituent if they say they are a campaign donor. As Adam Lioz wrote in The American Prospect, “[T]he wealthy prefer policies that make them even richer … and government responds almost exclusively to their preferences. He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Why has the United States seen such an expansion of special interest money in its electoral system? One does not have to look much further than the federal courts. In a series of high-profile decisions, the Supreme Court has turned campaign finance law upside down. In a 1976 case known as Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court determined that spending money for political campaign purposes was a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. This money-is-speech rationale was used to strike down portions of the campaign finance reforms that followed the Watergate scandal. It has also been used to open the floodgates for more money in politics. In the now infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, five justices appointed by Republican presidents held that, although entities such as corporations could not contribute directly to individual political campaigns, they could contribute unlimited amounts of money to independent political action committees, or PACs. This decision caused an “explosion of political money,” epitomized by the continued growth of super PACs—independent entities that can raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions, and individuals but are prohibited from coordinating with a political candidate’s campaign. This ruling prompted an impassioned dissent by Justice John Paul Stevens and three justices appointed by Democratic presidents. They lamented that, “While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.” The Supreme Court continued to loosen restrictions on campaign funding in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, in which the same five justices appointed by Republican presidents struck down the aggregate campaign contribution limits, which restricted how much money a donor could contribute to all candidates for federal office combined. The Court held that this limitation was a violation of the First Amendment. In McCutcheon, four justices appointed by Democratic presidents dissented and would have upheld the reasonable contribution limits that Congress imposed. The lower federal courts have been obligated to follow the decision, prompting one federal judge to exclaim, “Today’s reality is that the voices of ‘we the people’ are too often drowned out by the few who have great resources.” These two opinions bookend the campaign finance revolution that has taken place under Chief Justice John Roberts. All told, the Roberts Court has struck down seven campaign finance regulations. This revolution has had dire consequences. To campaign finance expert Richard Briffault, “[t]he rise of super PACs suggests that the real impact of Citizens United may be the re-validation of the unlimited use of private wealth generally in elections, not just spending by corporations and unions.” The last presidential election is a case in point. During the 2012 election cycle, super PACs “spent more than $1 billion, including more than $300 million contributed by donors whose identities were never disclosed.” These amounts triple the amounts spent by outside groups in either 2008 or 2010. And it seems that the amount of money corporations and shady super PACs spend on elections will only continue to increase. Unfortunately, Justice Stephen Breyer’s concern in McCutcheon appears to be prophetic: “Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard.” Voting rights In the years of Jim Crow and segregation, voters faced overt challenges to their right to vote, including grandfather clauses, poll taxes, literacy tests, and blatant intimidation and violence. In response to these oppressive and undemocratic practices, legal protections, such as the Voting Rights Act, or VRA, of 1965, were passed in order to help ensure that eligible voters could exercise their right to vote. The VRA has been called the nation’s most powerful civil rights law. However, as a nation, we are still far from ensuring that all Americans have equal access to the polls. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, in 2013 alone, 33 states introduced at least 92 restrictive voting bills. On top of that, researchers found that higher voter turnout among minorities in a given state increased the likelihood that the state would propose restrictive voting laws. These restrictive measures have been found to have a disproportionate effect on people of color, those for whom English is a second language, young people, the indigent, and the elderly. U.S. federal courts play a large role in enforcing the laws that protect voters from discrimination and intimidation. In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents gutted the VRA by ruling that the formula stipulated in Section 4(b) to determine which states were subject to Section 5 “preclearance” before the implementation of changes to state or local voting laws was unconstitutional. The ruling made it harder for the federal government, including the courts, to hold states accountable for discriminatory voting practices. The four justices appointed by Democratic presidents wanted to keep the VRA protections in place. Although Shelby County was a setback for voters, other sections of the VRA still exist and are being used to fight voting-related discrimination and to require states to provide appropriate assistance to large populations of eligible voters that speak foreign languages. Recently in Texas, a federal judge who was appointed by a Democratic president determined that the state’s new voting law intentionally discriminated against communities of color, violated the VRA, and constituted an unconstitutional poll tax that could disenfranchise nearly 600,000 registered Texans. For this reason, America’s federal courts will continue to determine how to apply these protections in order to help ensure that all voters have an equal right to vote. Conclusion In 1929, legendary civil rights lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston said, “A lawyer’s either a social engineer or … a parasite on society.” He described a social engineer as “a highly skilled, perceptive, sensitive lawyer who [understands] the Constitution of the United States and [knows] how to explore its uses in the solving of problems of … local communities” and in “bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens.” In this light, Houston believed that lawyers should use their training and their prestige in the community to better society and to promote justice. When articulating the ideal temperament of a judge, President Obama evoked Houston’s sentiments by listing “empathy” as a key trait. Collectively, this means that judges must understand the real-world implications of legal decisions. This is a critical ability because the federal courts have an impact on every issue that affects Americans’ daily lives. U.S. federal courts ensure equality, defend civil rights, protect the environment, affect the health of America’s democracy, and keep the nation safe. While Americans often feel that the federal courts are untouchable, it is important to know that they can play a large role in how these courts rule, as those responsible for filling the benches of U.S. federal courts are responsive to the democratic process and the input of American citizens. Presidents nominate judges who share their beliefs and values. And because they serve for life, federal judges have a huge impact on the issues that affect the lives of all Americans. Control of the Senate also matters, as senators are responsible for confirming or rejecting the president’s nominees. Senators play a large role in identifying lawyers for the White House to nominate and can control the pace of the nomination process. The first step in the process toward confirming judges who understand the real-world implications of legal decisions is to continue working to appoint judges who meaningfully reflect America’s diverse experiences. The United States needs its courts to be staffed with Houston’s social engineers—those who faithfully adhere to the rule of law but who are equally faithful to their constitutional obligations to promote justice and fairness. Instead of siding with ideological pursuits, America’s judges must uphold the Constitution and the nation’s laws.

Strong gun control measures are key to Latin-American Relations, U.S.-Mexico Relations, and preventing Latin American instability

Sweig 13 – Julia E., Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies @ the Council on Foreign Relations, “A Strategy to Reduce Gun Trafficking and Violence in the Americas” http://www.cfr.org/arms-industries-and-trade/strategy-reduce-gun-trafficking-violence-americas/p31155

The flow of high-powered weaponry from the United States to Latin America and the Caribbean exacerbates soaring rates of gun-related violence in the region and undermines U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere. Though the Senate rejected measures to expand background checks on firearms sales, reinstate a federal assault-weapons ban, and make straw purchasing a federal crime, the Obama administration can still take executive action to reduce the availability and trafficking of assault weapons and ammunition in the Americas. The Problem With the launch of the Merida Initiative in 2007, the U.S. and Mexican governments agreed to a regional security framework guided by the principle of shared responsibility. Among its domestic obligations, the United States committed to intensify its efforts to combat the illegal trafficking of weapons and ammunition to Mexico and elsewhere in the Americas. Six years later, little has changed: the U.S. civilian firearms market continues to supply the region's transnational criminal networks with high-powered weaponry that is purchased with limited oversight, especially from unlicensed individuals at gun shows, flea markets, pawn shops, and on the Internet. Lax U.S. gun laws enable straw purchasers, including those under investigation in Operation Fast and Furious, to legally procure thousands of AK-47 and AR-15 variants every year and traffic them across the border to sell them illegally to criminal factions. U.S. government data highlights the problem. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) Web-based firearm trace request and analysis system, eTrace, enables law enforcement officials to collaborate with ATF to track the path of recovered weapons from the manufacturer or importer though the distribution chain to the first retail purchase. Over 70 percent of the ninety-nine thousand weapons recovered by Mexican law enforcement since 2007 were traced to U.S. manufacturers and importers. Likewise, 2011 eTrace data for the Caribbean indicates that over 90 percent of the weapons recovered and traced in the Bahamas and over 80 percent of those in Jamaica came from the United States. The ATF has not released data for Central America, but the numbers are likely similar. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reports that easy access to firearms is a major factor influencing homicide trends in Latin America and the Caribbean; the gun-related homicide rate in Latin America exceeded the global average in 2010 by more than 30 percent. The World Bank estimates that crime and violence cost Central America nearly 8 percent of its GDP when accounting for the costs of law enforcement, security, and health care. The U.S. government has empowered law enforcement in the region to recover and investigate the source of weapons used by criminal factions. In December 2009, the ATF introduced the Spanish version of eTrace. Since 2012, the State Department has funded the Organization of American States' (OAS) program to provide firearm-marking equipment and training to law enforcement in twenty-five countries. Yet, these efforts notwithstanding, Mexican authorities intercepted only 12.7 percent of the roughly 250,000 guns smuggled into Mexico between 2010 and 2012, while the ATF intercepted no more than 2 percent. In effect, the United States undermines its own efforts at preventing arms trafficking with its unwillingness to strengthen oversight of the firearms industry and lukewarm support for multilateral agreements. The United States is one of three countries that have not ratified the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials (CIFTA). In addition to requiring parties to criminalize the illegal manufacture, import, or export of high-powered weapons, the treaty encourages information exchange and cooperation on initiatives including the marking and tracing of weapons and the identification of criminal transit routes. President Bill Clinton signed CIFTA in 1997 and submitted it for ratification to the Senate, where it has lingered for over a decade. Likewise, although the United States voted in favor of the United Nations' Arms Trade Treaty in April 2013, it has yet to sign or ratify the treaty. Given the political complexity of legislative action to reduce arms trafficking, Latin American governments have moved to disarm criminal networks by tightening their own gun codes: Mexico prohibits the sale of handguns with calibers greater than .38 and Colombia bans civilians from carrying firearms in Medellin and Bogota. Brazil, Mexico, and El Salvador have implemented gun buyback programs. At the 2012 Summit of the Americas, heads of state demanded a new approach to the failed war on drugs, including greater efforts to disarm criminal networks. U.S. allies have repeatedly urged the United States to reinstate the federal assault-weapons ban and take action against weapons trafficking. Their patience—and the United States' credibility as a responsible partner—is waning. U.S. action will strengthen those regional heads of state who want to work with the United States and who also regard lax U.S. gun laws as fueling violence and anti-Americanism among their own publics. Across the board, Latin American governments are turning toward the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the Union of South American Nations, which pointedly exclude the United States, to handle regional political and security dilemmas. Stronger action to regulate the southward flow of weapons represents an opportunity for the Obama administration to enhance U.S. relevance in the region, especially at the early stages of new regional institutions and security protocols. Recommendations In the absence of major legislative action, the Obama administration should pursue the following executive and diplomatic actions—consistent with the Second Amendment—to reduce the trafficking of firearms that contribute to crime and violence across the Americas: Expand nationwide the state-level multiple-sale reporting requirement for assault weapons. In 2011, the Obama administration adopted a federal rule that requires gun dealers in California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico to report sales of more than two semiautomatic rifles to the same person within a five-day period. Unintentionally, the rule shifted gun sales to states not covered by the requirement, prompting the need for improved oversight of all suspicious semiautomatic firearm sales. Incorporate strategies to reduce existing stocks of illegal firearms into U.S.-Brazil dialogue on defense and security. As home to the two largest firearms industries in the hemisphere, the United States and Brazil have a mutual interest in incorporating this topic into their ongoing bilateral policy dialogues. For example, sharing best practices regarding gun buyback programs in border regions on the U.S.-Mexican and Brazilian-Bolivian borders will build mutual confidence between the two largest Hemispheric powers. Exclude firearms and ammunition products from the Export Control Reform Initiative. As currently crafted, President Barack Obama's reform initiative may make it easier for U.S. manufacturers to export military-style weapons to allies. Liberalizing export restrictions on firearms poses a serious security risk to the Americas; potential reexport of firearms without U.S. oversight could jeopardize local law enforcement efforts to keep weapons from criminal groups and rogue security forces in the region. Apply the "sporting test" standards of the 1968 Gun Control Act. This provision prohibits the import of weapons not "suitable or readily adaptable for sporting purposes," including but not limited to military-style firearms. Throughout the 1990s, under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the ATF adhered to the sporting test guidelines, preventing thousands of assault weapons from entering the U.S. firearms market. Enforcement of the test lapsed under President George W. Bush and has not been reestablished under President Obama. Continue to support federal, state, and local initiatives to improve regulation of the U.S. civilian firearms market. As grassroots organizations prepare their long-term legislative strategies, the White House should back state and local legislation, based on reforms in Maryland and Connecticut, which bans the sale of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, broadens existing background check requirements for firearm purchases, and modernizes gun-owner registries by requiring, among others, that buyers submit their fingerprints when applying for a gun license. While piecemeal regulation of the U.S. civilian firearms market does not represent a comprehensive solution, passage of state and local measures, including gun buyback programs, will reduce the number of weapons in circulation and available for smuggling and generate momentum for a broader federal approach over the long run. Conclusion Strengthening U.S. gun laws will not eliminate gun violence in Latin America, where weak judiciaries and police forces, the proliferation of gangs and black markets, and deep inequality exacerbate violent conflict. Nonetheless, lax U.S. gun regulations do enable international trafficking. While the effects of tighter regulation will not be felt overnight, such steps will offset widespread regional views that the United States remains indifferent to its own role in exacerbating one of Latin America's most significant challenges. Although recent federal gun control measures have run aground on congressional opposition, the Obama administration retains considerable leeway in the foreign policy arena, where concerted action can help U.S. allies in Latin America make the case to their constituents and to other skeptical governments that the United States can be a legitimate partner in combating transnational crime. At a juncture in U.S.-Latin American relations that again features both tension and opportunity, these actions will demonstrate that the United States is prepared, if imperfectly, to fulfill its shared responsibility for regional security and enhance American standing and positive influence in Latin America.

Great power war

Krepinevich & Lindsey 13 Dr. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. is the President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which he joined following a 21- year career in the U.S. Army. He has served in the Department of Defense s ce of et Assessment, on the personal sta of three secretaries of defense, the ational Defense Panel, the Defense Science Board Task Force on Joint Experimentation, and the Defense Policy Board. He is the author of 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century and The Army and Vietnam. A West Point graduate, he holds an M.P.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard University—AND—Eric Lindsey is an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). His primary areas of interest concern U.S. and world military forces, both current and prospective, and the future strategic and operational challenges that the U.S. military may face. Since joining CSBA in 2009, Eric has contributed to a number of CSBA monographs. He most recently co-authored The Road Ahead, an analytical monograph exploring potential future challenges and their implications for U.S. Army and Marine Corps modernization. In conjunction with his research and writing, Eric has helped design and conduct dozens of strategic and operational-level wargames exploring a wide variety of future scenarios. He holds a B.A. in military history and public policy from Duke University and is pursuing an M.A. in strategic studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). “Hemispheric Defense in the 21ST Century, 2013

As the previous chapter demonstrates, for the past two hundred years the principal cause of concern for U.S. defense policymakers and planners thinking about Latin America has been the prospect that great powers outside the Western Hemisphere could exploit the military weakness and internal security challenges of the states within it to threaten U.S. security. While there is reason for optimism about the future of Latin America,58 there is also cause for concern. The region faces enduring obstacles to economic59 and political development60 as well as signicant internal security challenges. As General John Kelly, the commander of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM)61 noted in his March 2013 posture statement before Congress, Latin America: Is a region of enormous promise and exciting opportunities, but it is also one of persistent challenges and complex threats. It is a region of relative peace, low likelihood of interstate conicts, and overall economic growth, yet is also home to corrosive criminal violence, permissive environments for illicit activities, and episodic political and social protests.62 The instability and non-traditional security challenges that General Kelly cites provide potential opportunities for the United States’ major rivals to (borrowing a term from Monroe’s declaration) “interpose” themselves into the region and, by so doing, threaten regional stability and U.S. security. Two discernible trends suggest that current and prospective Eurasian rivals could seek to exploit regional conditions and dynamics in ways that could impose immense costs on the United States and divert its attention from more distant theaters overseas. The first trend is a return to a heightened level of competition among the “great powers” following two decades of U.S. dominance. The second trend concerns the growing cost of projecting power by traditional military means due to the proliferation of “anti-access/area-denial” (A2/AD) capabilities in general, and precision-guided munitions (PGMs) in particular. These trends suggest that, despite a possible decline in relative U.S. power, external forces will continue to nd it beyond their means to threaten the hemisphere through traditional forms of power projection. Far more likely is a return of a competition similar to that which the United States engaged in with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. During that period both powers sought to avoid direct conict with the other, given the risks of escalation to nuclear conict. Instead each focused primarily on gaining an advantage over the other through the employment of client states and non-state groups as proxies. Proxies were employed for reasons other than avoiding a direct clash, such as gaining positional advantage (e.g., enabling the sponsor to establish bases in its country, as the Soviets did in Cuba). Proxies were also employed as a means of diverting a rival’s attention from what was considered the key region of the competition and to impose disproportionate costs on a rival (e.g., Moscow’s support of orth Vietnam as a means of drawing o U.S. resources from Europe). This chapter outlines trends in the Western Hemisphere security environment that outside powers may seek to exploit to advance their objectives in ways that threaten regional stability and U.S. security. This is followed by a discussion of how these external powers might proceed to do so. Seeds of Instability Crime, Illicit Networks, and Under-Governed Areas Latin America has a long history of banditry, smuggling, and organized crime. As in the case of Pancho Villa and the 1916-1917 Punitive Expedition, these activities have occasionally risen to a level at which they inuence U.S. national security calculations. Rarely, however, have these activities been as pervasive and destabilizing as they are today. Although a wide variety of illicit activity occurs in Latin America, criminal organizations conducting drug tracking are the dominant forces in the Latin American underworld today, accounting for roughly 0 billion per year63 of an estimated 100 billion in annual illicit trade.6 Since the Colombian cartels were dismantled in the 1990s, this lucrative trade has been dominated by powerful Mexican cartels whose operations extend across the length and breadth of Mexico, as well as up the supply chain into the cocaine-producing regions of the Andean Ridge and through their wholesale and retail drug distribution networks across the United States.65 The cartels, along with countless smaller criminal organizations, comprise what the head of SOUTHCOM has described as, an interconnected system of arteries that traverse the entire Western Hemisphere, stretching across the Atlantic and Pacic, through the Caribbean, and up and down orth, South, and Central America . . . a vast system of illicit pathways that is used to move tons of drugs, thousands of people, and countless weapons into and out of the United States, Europe, and Africa with an eciency, payload, and gross prot any global transportation company would envy.66 That being said, the drug tracking underworld is by no means a monolithic entity or cooperative alliance. Rather, it is a fractious and brutally competitive business in which rival entities are constantly and literally ghting to maximize their share of the drug trade and for control of the critical transshipment points, or plazas, through which it ows. To attack their competitor’s operations and protect their own operations from rivals and the Mexican government’s crackdown that began in 2006, the cartels have built up larger, better armed, and more ruthless forces of hired gunmen known as sicarios. Using the billions of dollars generated by their illicit activities, they have acquired weapons and equipment formerly reserved for state armies or state-sponsored insurgent groups, including body armor, assault ries, machine guns, grenades, landmines, anti-tank rockets, mortars, car bombs, armored vehicles, helicopters, transport planes, and—perhaps most remarkably—long-range submersibles.67 The cartels’ prots have also enabled them to hire former police and military personnel, including members of several countries’ elite special operations units68 and, in several cases, active and former members of the U.S. military.69 These personnel bring with them—and can provide to the cartels—a level of training and tactical prociency that can be equal or superior to those of the government forces they face. As a result of this prociency and the military-grade weapons possessed by the cartels, more than 2,500 Mexican police ocers and 200 military personnel were killed in confrontations with organized crime forces between 2008 and 2012 along with tens of thousands of civilians.70 In the poorer states of Central America, state security forces operate at an even greater disadvantage.71 While their paramilitary forces enable the cartels to dominate entire cities and large remote areas through force and intimidation, they are not the only tool available. The cartels also leverage their immense wealth to buy the silence or support of police and government ocials who are often presented with a choice between plata o plomo—“silver or lead.” According to the head of the Mexican Federal Police, around 2010 the cartels were spending an estimated 100 million each month on bribes to police.72 By buying o ocials—and torturing or killing those who cannot be corrupted—the cartels have greatly undermined the eectiveness of national government forces in general and local police in particular. This, in turn, has undermined the condence of the population in their government’s willingness and ability to protect them. Through these means and methods the cartels have gained a substantial degree of de facto control over many urban and rural areas across Mexico, including major cities and large swathes of territory along the U.S.-Mexico border. In many of these crime-ridden areas the loss of condence in the government and police has prompted the formation of vigilante militias, presenting an additional challenge to government control.73 Meanwhile, in the “northern triangle” of Central America (the area comprising Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador through which the cartels transship almost all cocaine bound for Mexico and the United States) the situation is even more dire. Approximately 90 percent of crimes in this area go unpunished, while in Guatemala roughly half the country’s territory is eectively under drug trackers’ control.7 Further south, similar pockets of lawlessness exist in coca-growing areas in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. In Colombia and along its borders with Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru, much of the coca-growing territory remains under the control of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. A guerrilla organization founded in the 1960s as a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement dedicated to the overthrow of the Colombian government, the FARC embraced coca growing in the 1990s as a means of funding its operations and has subsequently evolved into a hybrid mix of left-wing insurgent group and prot-driven cartel.76 This hybrid nature has facilitated cooperation between the FARC and ideological sympathizers like the Bolivarian Alliance, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and other extremist groups77 as well as with purely criminal organizations like the Mexican cartels. Although the FARC has been greatly weakened over the past decade and no longer poses the existential threat to the Colombian government that it once did, it remains rmly in control of large tracts of coca-producing jungle, mostly straddling the borders between Colombia and FARC supporters Venezuela and Ecuador. In summary, organized crime elements have exploited under-governed areas to establish zones under their de facto control. In so doing they pose a signicant and growing threat to regional security in general and U.S. interests in particular. As SOUTHCOM commander General Kelly recently observed: The proximity of the U.S. homeland to criminally governed spaces is a vulnerability with direct implications for U.S. national security. I am also troubled by the signicant criminal capabilities that are available within them to anyone—for a price. Transnational criminal organizations have access to key facilitators who specialize in document forgery, trade-based money laundering, weapons procurement, and human smuggling, including the smuggling of special interest aliens. This criminal expertise and the ability to move people, products, and funds are skills that can be exploited by a variety of malign actors, including terrorists.78 Hezbollah and the Bolivarian Alliance Hezbollah in Latin America on-state entities recognized by the U.S. as terrorist organizations also operate in the region, most notably Lebanon-based Hezbollah, an Iranian client group. Hezbollah maintains an active presence in the tri-border area (TBA) of South America— the nexus of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay—stretching back to the 1980s. The TBA has traditionally been under-governed and is known by some as “the United ations of crime.”79 Eight syndicate groups facilitate this activity in South America’s so-called “Southern Cone,” overseeing legitimate businesses along with a wide range of illegal activities to include money laundering, drug and arms traf- cking, identity theft and false identication documents, counterfeiting currency and intellectual property, and smuggling. ot surprisingly they are linked to organized crime and to non-state insurgent and terrorist groups, such as the FARC.80 Estimates are that over 12 billion in illicit transactions are conducted per year, a sum exceeding Paraguay’s entire GDP by a substantial amount.81 Hezbollah achieved notoriety in the region in 1992 when it bombed the Israeli embassy in Argentina. This was followed with the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires two years later. Like many other terrorist organizations, as Hezbollah expanded it established relationships with drug cartels82 that it supports in a variety of ways. For example, the cartels have enlisted Hezbollah, known for its tunnel construction along the Israeli border, for help in improving their tunnels along the U.S.-Mexican border. In 2008, Hezbollah helped broker a deal in which one of Mexico’s major drug cartels, Sinaloa, sent members to Iran for weapons and explosives training via Venezuela using Venezuelan travel documents. 83 As the locus of the drug trade and other illegal cartel activities moved north into Central America and Mexico, Hezbollah has sought to move with it with mixed success. In October 2011, Hezbollah was linked to the eorts of an Iranian-American to conspire with Iranian agents to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. The plot involved members of the Los Zetas Mexican drug cartel.8 The would-be assassin, Mansour Arbabsiar, had established contact with his cousin, a Quds Force85 handler, Gen. Gholam Shakuri. The plot is believed by some to be part of a wider campaign by the Quds Force and Hezbollah to embark on a campaign of violence extending beyond the Middle East to other Western targets, including those in the United States.86 In early September 2012, Mexican authorities arrested three men suspected of operating a Hezbollah cell in the Yucatan area and Central America, including a dual U.S.-Lebanese citizen linked to a U.S.-based Hezbollah money laundering operation. 87A few months later, in December 2012, Wassim el Abd Fadel, a suspected Hezbollah member with Paraguayan citizenship, was arrested in Paraguay. Fadel was charged with human and drug tracking and money laundering. Fadel reportedly deposited the proceeds of his criminal activities—ranging from 50-200,000 per transaction—into Turkish and Syrian bank accounts linked to Hezbollah. In summary, Hezbollah has become a xture in Central and Latin America, expanding both its activities and inuence over time. It has developed links with the increasingly powerful organized crime groups in the region, particularly the narco cartels, along with radical insurgent groups such as the FARC and states like Venezuela who are hostile to the United States and its regional partners. Hezbollah’s principal objectives appear to be undermining U.S. inuence in the region, imposing costs on the United States, and generating revenue to sustain its operations in Latin America and elsewhere in the world. These objectives are shared by Iran, Hezbollah’s main state sponsor. The Bolivarian Alliance As noted above, geographic, economic, and cultural factors have traditionally helped to prevent the emergence in Latin America of any real military rival to the United States. Although there are no traditional military threats in the region, there are indigenous states whose actions, policies, and rhetoric challenge regional stability and U.S. security. Over the past decade, several states have come together to form the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), an organization of left-leaning Latin American regimes whose overarching purpose is to promote radical populism and socialism, foster regional integration, and reduce what they perceive as Washington’s “imperialist” influence in the region.89 Since its founding by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba in December 200, the Bolivarian Alliance has expanded to include Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Dominica, Ecuador, icaragua, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Although the members of the Bolivarian Alliance are militarily weak and pose almost no traditional military threat to the United States or its allies in the region,90 they challenge American interests in the region in other ways. First, they espouse an anti-American narrative that finds substantial support in the region and consistently oppose U.S. efforts to foster cooperation and regional economic integration.91 Second, in their efforts to undermine the government of Colombia, which they consider to be a U.S. puppet, ALBA states provide support and sanctuaries within their borders to coca growers, drug traffickers, other criminal organizations, and the FARC.92 Links to Hezbollah have also been detected.93 Perhaps of greatest concern, they have aligned themselves closely with Iran, inviting it and Syria to participate as “observer states” in the alliance. Other worrisome ALBA activities involve lifting visa requirements for Iranian citizens and hosting large numbers of Iranian diplomats and commercial exchange members that some observers believe to be Iranian intelligence and paramilitary Quds Force operatives.9 By hosting and cooperating with both foreign agents and violent non-state actors, the ALBA states have come to function as critical nodes in a network of groups hostile to the United States. A Coming Era of Proxy Wars in the Western Hemisphere? History shows that Washington has often emphasized an indirect approach to meeting challenges to its security in Latin America. Yet the United States has not shied away from more direct, traditional uses of force when interests and circumstances dictated, as demonstrated over the past half century by U.S. invasions of the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983), and Panama (1989) and the occupation of Haiti (199).Yet several trends seem likely to raise the cost of such operations, perhaps to prohibitive levels. Foremost among these trends is the diffusion of precision-guided weaponry to state and non-state entities. 92 The Second Lebanon War as “Precursor” War A precursor of this trend can be seen in the Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah.95 During the conict, which lasted less than ve weeks, irregular Hezbollah forces held their own against the highly regarded Israeli Defense Force (IDF), demonstrating what is now possible for non-state entities to accomplish given the proliferation of militarily-relevant advanced technologies. Hezbollah’s militia engaged IDF armor columns with salvos of advanced, man-portable, antitank guided missiles and other eective anti-armor weapons (e.g. rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) with anti-armor warheads) in great numbers. When the IDF employed its ground forces in southern Lebanon, its armored forces suered severe losses; out of the four hundred tanks involved in the ghting in southern Lebanon, forty-eight were hit and forty damaged.96 Hezbollah’s defensive line was also well equipped with latest-generation thermal and low-/ no-light enhanced illumination imaging systems, while frontline units were connected to each other and higher command elements via a proprietary, ber-optic based communications network, making collection of communications trac by Israeli intelligence extremely dicult. Perhaps most important, Hezbollah possessed thousands of short- and medium- range rockets, often skillfully hidden below ground or in bunkers that made detection from overhead surveillance platforms nearly impossible. During the brief conict Hezbollah’s forces red some four thousand unguided rockets of various types that hit Israel. Hezbollah’s rocket inventory enabled its forces to attack targets throughout the northern half of Israel. Over nine hundred rockets hit near or on buildings, civilian infrastructure, and industrial plants. Some two thousand homes were destroyed, and over fty Israelis died with several thousand more injured. The casualties would undoubtedly been greater if between 100,000 and 250,000 Israeli civilians had not ed their homes. Haifa, Israel’s major seaport had to be shut down, as did its oil renery.97 Hezbollah also employed several unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance of Israel, as well as C-802 anti-ship cruise missiles used to attack and damage an Israeli corvette. 98 The G-RAMM Battlefield The brief war between Israel and Hezbollah suggests that future irregular forces may be well-equipped with enhanced communications, extended-range surveillance capabilities, and precision-guided rockets, artillery, mortars and missiles (G-RAMM) 99 able to hit targets with high accuracy at ranges measured from the tens of kilometers perhaps up to a hundred kilometers or more. In projecting power against enemies equipped in this manner and employing these kinds of tactics U.S. forces—as well as other conventional forces— will find themselves operating in a far more lethal battlefield than those in either of the Gulf wars or in stability operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, currently constituted conventional forces typically depend on large fixed infrastructure (e.g., military bases, logistics depots, ports, airfields, railheads, bridges) to deploy themselves and sustain combat operations. These transportation and support hubs also serve as the nodes through which internal commerce and foreign trade moves within a country. This key, fixed infrastructure will almost certainly prove far more difficult to defend against irregular forces armed with G-RAMM weaponry. Indeed, had Hezbollah’s “RAMM” inventory had only a small fraction of G-RAMM munitions, say 10-20 percent, it would have been able to inict far greater damage than it did historically to Israeli population centers, key government facilities, military installations, and essential commercial assets such as ports, airelds, and industrial complexes. An irregular enemy force armed with G-RAMM capabilities in substantial numbers could seriously threaten Latin American governments as well as any U.S. (or external great power) forces and support elements attempting a traditional intervention operation. Implications for the U.S. and Other Major Powers The preceding narrative suggests that the combat potential of irregular forces is likely to increase dramatically in the coming years. As this occurs, the cost of operating conventional forces—especially ground forces—and defending key military support infrastructure is likely to rise substantially. Given these considerations the United States and other major powers external to the Western Hemisphere will have strong incentives to avoid the use of conventional forms of military power, particularly large ground forces, in favor of employing irregular proxy forces to advance their interests. Moreover, the high cost and questionable benet of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq are likely to create strong domestic opposition in the United States to such operations for some time to come. This must be added to the United States’ greatly diminished scal standing that has led to large cuts in planned investments in defense. These factors suggest that Washington will be much less likely to engage in direct military action in Latin America in the coming years than historically has been the case. At the same time, rivals of the United States like China and Russia may be incentivized by these trends, as well as the United States’ overwhelming military dominance in the Western Hemisphere, to avoid the direct use of force to expand their inuence in Latin America. Instead, like some of the Bolivarian Alliance members, they appear likely to follow the path taken by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and Iran today: supporting non-state proxies to impose disproportionate costs on the United States and to distract Washington’s resources and attention from other parts of the world. This is not to say that Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran would eschew future opportunities to establish bases in Latin America. As in the past, such bases can support efforts to accomplish several important objectives. They can, for example, further insulate a Latin American regime from the threat of direct U.S. military intervention, since Washington would have to account for the possibility that the conflict would lead to a direct confrontation with a more capable and potentially nuclear-armed power .100 Bases in the hemisphere can also enable external powers to conduct military assistance activities, such as training, more easily. Electronic surveillance of the United States and Latin American states could be accomplished more cheaply and eectively from forward positions. Finally, certain kinds of military capabilities, such as long-range ballistic missiles and attack submarines, could be protably stationed in Latin America by powers external to that region, particularly if they intended to create the option of initiating conict at some future date. These reasons, among others, have made preventing an extra-hemispheric power from establishing bases in Latin America an enduring U.S. priority. Players in a Latin American Great Game Given current trends, several powers external to the region may, either now or over the coming decade, have both the motive and the means to employ both state and non-state proxies in Latin American to achieve their interests. Principal among them is Iran, which is already engaged in supporting proxies against the United States and its partners in the Middle East and has long been developing proxies in Latin America. Additionally, there are reasons to think that China and Russia may be interested in cultivating and supporting Latin American proxies as well.

UQUQHistory proves --- the court has gradually narrowed rulings on surveillance to preserve legitimacy but avoided ruling on the scope --- the AFF reverses that

Martin 11 (Gus – Professor of Criminal Justice Administration at California State University, Dominguez Hills, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Terrorism, Second Edition, p. 213-214)

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed in 1978 to provide a statutory framework for foreign and domestic intelligence electronic surveillance. Although FISA has been established law for some time, new controversies surrounding the law and its implementation have arisen in the post-9/11 United States. Background Following the disclosure of domestic intelligence abuses by President Richard M. Nixon in the political scandal known as Watergate, the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities was established; it became known as the Church Committee because of its chairman, Senator Frank Church (D—ID). The Church Committee concluded, among other things, that the body of law regarding electronic surveillance was “somewhat uncertain.” For example, the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that protects against warrantless search and seizure was addressed as it applies to electronic surveillance in a 1928 U.S. Supreme Court case, Olmstead v. United States. The Court ruled that Fourth Amendment protection only applied to tangible things and not intan-gibles such as a conversation. However, in its 1967 decision in Katz v. United States, the Supreme Court reversed this decision. Although the Katz decision held that a search warrant is required for electronic surveillance even to capture conversations without physical intrusion, the ruling recognized the president’s constitutional authority to authorize warrantless surveillance and “did not extend [the requirement] to cases involving national security.” Title III of the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act regulates surveillance wiretaps in criminal investigations. The Church Committee expressed concern that Title III was not clear about a national security exception to warrant requirements for electronic surveillance. In United States v. United States District Court (1972), known as the Keith case, the Supreme Court narrowed its earlier position on warrantless electronic surveillance, writing that, to satisfy the Fourth Amendment, “prior judicial approval is required for the type of domestic security surveillance involved in this case.” However, the Court expressed no opinion as to “the scope of the President’s surveillance power with respect to activities of foreign powers, within or without this country.” Subsequent rulings further narrowed the scope of warrantless surveillance and drew a brighter line between surveillance warrants in domestic and foreign security intelligence. Nevertheless, there was little statue law supporting the federal courts. Therefore, subsequent to the Senate Watergate Report and the Church Committee Reports (the Church Committee reported on a variety of matters), the U.S. Congress passed, and President Jimmy Carter signed, FISA.

UQ—AT: Gay MarriageRobust political science research proves Supreme Court thumper is backwards --- creates consensus of support for gay marriage --- Bush v. Gore, previous gay rights rulings and empirical research

Ura 13 (Joseph D. – Pacific Standard reporter, “Supreme Court Decisions in Favor of Gay Marriage Would Not Go 'Too Far, Too Fast',” in Pacific Standard, 6-20-13, http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/supreme-court-tk-60537)

Though much of the public may sharply disagree with a decision of the Supreme Court, the decisions of the Court tend to lead public opinion over the long run.

In some respects, the moment seems ripe for the Court to make a bold move in favor of homosexuals’ constitutional rights—as well as their material and symbolic well-being. Polls conducted by nearly every major survey research organization in the country now show majority support for legally recognizing same-sex marriage. Equally as important, survey data shows rapid growth in support for same-sex marriage in recent years. For example, a Gallup poll conducted last month found that 53 percent of Americans agreed that same-sex marriages “should be ... recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages” (including 70 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds). Only 45 percent said that same-sex marriage “should not” be valid.

When Gallup first polled the public about gay marriage in 1996, only 27 percent of Americans favored legal same-sex unions. In less than two decades, support for same-sex marriage rights has effectively doubled, and strong support for marriage equality among younger Americans suggests that the trend toward support for same-sex marriage will continue. A decision in favor of marriage equality would therefore probably begin with majority support that is likely to grow over the coming years.

Still, some supporters of marriage equality worry that the trend in public support toward same-sex marriage may be undermined by a pair of strongly worded pro-equality decisions. In particular, they worry such decisions might produce a backlash against gay marriage that would reverse the trend in public opinion toward support for gay rights and provoke changes in public policy that work against marriage equality. This fear has found a public voice on the Supreme Court in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who has publicly claimed that other prominent decisions of the Court on social issues—most notably Roe v. Wade (1973)—"moved too far, too fast,” creating political tides that worked against the Court’s purposes. The New York Times’ Adam Liptak reports some speculation that this line of thinking may lead justices who support marriage equality to avoid the issue in the present cases and wait until some later date to address the constitutional status of same-sex marriage rights.

However, practical political concerns about the prospects of a backlash in support of gay rights following Supreme Court decisions advancing marriage equality are misplaced. Indeed, research in political science provides strong reasons to suspect that the Supreme Court may, in fact, lead public opinion over the long-run. This general pattern is evident in the public’s responses to the Supreme Court’s landmark case addressing homosexuals’ sexual rights, Lawrence v. Texas (2003). Together, both the general pattern of public responses to Supreme Court decisions and the dynamics of responses to the Court’s prior gay rights cases argue that fears that the Court might undermine support for gay rights by robustly embracing marriage equality have the issue backwards. If a majority of the Supreme Court’s justices lead on same-sex marriage, Americans are likely to follow.

JUSTICE GINSBERG’S UNEASE ABOUT the Court outpacing public opinion on social issues reflects a classic worry about American judicial power. Writing in Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville noted the Court’s dependence on the goodwill of its constituents:

[The] power [of the Supreme Court] is immense, but it is power springing from opinion. They are all-powerful, so long as the people consent to obey the law; they can do nothing when they scorn it. Now, of all powers, that of opinion is hardest to use, for it is impossible to say exactly where its limits come. Often it is as dangerous to lag behind as to outstrip it.

The federal judges ... must know how to understand the spirit of the age, to confront those obstacles that can be overcome, and to steer out of the current when the tide threatens to carry them away....

Though the Constitution provides the Supreme Court and its justices with substantial buffers against the whims of popular sentiment, the Court ultimately depends on public opinion to preserve its institutionalintegrity and to ensure compliance with its decisions.

Echoes of this sentiment are evident in Supreme Court decisions since the 19th century. In United States v. Lee (1882), Justice Miller wrote, “[the Supreme Court's] power and influence rest solely upon the public sense of ... confidence reposed in the soundness of [its] decisions and the purity of [its] motives.'' Likewise, Justice Frankfurter emphasized, “The Court's authority—possessed of neither the purse nor the sword—ultimately rests on sustained public confidence in its moral sanction'' (Baker v. Carr 1962). Justice O'Connor also shared the idea that “The Court's power lies ... in its legitimacy, a product of substance and perception that shows itself in the people's acceptance of the Judiciary as fit to determine what the Nation's law means” (Planned Parenthood v. Casey 1992).

Together, these statements suggest the logic of Justice Ginsberg’s comments. When the Court “outstrips” public opinion by making decisions contrary to the “spirit of the age,” it invites said opinion to turn against the Court and its decisions—and their policy implications. But this view of the Supreme Court’s relationship with public opinion is substantially wrong and almost precisely backwards both as a general matter and in regard to the Court’s prior gay rights cases.

AN ARRAY OF RESEARCH in political science—due substantially to James Gibson of Washington University, Gregory Caldeira of Ohio State University, and their collaborators—shows that the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is not dependent on agreement on individual questions of policy between the Court and the public. Instead, judicial legitimacy rests on the public’s perception that the Court uses fair procedures to make principled decisions—as compared to the strategic behavior of elected legislators. These perceptions are supported by a variety of powerful symbols representing the close association between the Supreme Court and the law and its impartiality, such as black robes, the image of blind justice, and the practice of calling the members “justices.”

The public’s response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, which resolved the contested presidential election in 2000, is perhaps the classic example of the nature and influence of the Court’s legitimacy. Despite the bitter partisan conflict that precipitated the case, the enormous political implications of the decision, the blatant partisan divisions on the Court, and the harsh tone of the dissenting justices, the best evidence available indicates that the public’s loyalty to the Supreme Court did not diminish as a result of the case. In particular, neither Democrats nor African-Americans significantly turned against the Court after the decision.

Judicial legitimacy is not merely a curiosity. It has powerful effects on American politics; Americans’ deep loyalty to the Supreme Court helps insulate it from efforts by those in the elected branches of government to curb or control judicial independence. Additionally—and more importantly here—the Supreme Court’s robust legitimacy in the public mind has important consequences for how the Court’s decisions interact with the public’s policy attitudes.

When the Supreme Court speaks on an issue, the weight of its “moral sanction” rests on a particular side of the relevant policy debate. Its decision enters public debate and—as the political scientist Ralph Lerner theorized nearly half a century ago—allows the “modes of thought lying behind [its] legal language” to “transfer to the minds of the citizens.” As a result, the Court unbalances public debate and, over the long run, pulls public opinion toward its policy positions.

Though much of the public may sharply disagree with a decision of the Supreme Court—producing an initial backlash against the policy implications of a particular ruling or set of rulings—the decisions of the Court tend to lead public opinion over the long run. In a recent analysis of more than 50 years of data on Americans’ collective responses to Supreme Court decisions, I find that public responses to important Supreme Court decisions were typically marked by a negative response in public opinion in the short-term that decays and is replaced by a long-run movement in public opinion toward the positions adopted by the Court.

In other words, on average, there is a backlash in public opinion against important decisions of the Supreme Court. However, these negative responses are relatively short lived. Over the long run, backlash against the Court’s decisions tends to be replaced by significant movement toward positions taken by the Supreme Court.

The public’s reaction to Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the landmark Supreme Court decision which held that police must inform criminal suspects of their constitutional rights to remain silent and to have a lawyer present during any questioning, is indicative of this pattern. The public’s initial reaction to Miranda was strongly negative. Shortly after the decision was handed down in 1966, a poll conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation asked Americans about their views regarding “the Supreme Court’s decision in the Miranda case.” A majority of Americans (56 percent) agreed that “police should again be allowed to be tougher with suspects than they can be now” while only 32 percent agreed that “the present restrictions on the police—since the Court's decision—are correct and fair.” New York University law professor Barry Friedman writes, “Between 1965 and 1968, polls showed a jump from 48 percent to 63 percent of Americans who thought the courts were too lenient with criminal defendants.”

And yet, in the years since Miranda was handed down, an overwhelming majority of Americans have come to embrace the decision. A survey conducted in 2000 by Princeton Survey Research Associates and Newsweek found that 85 percent of Americans agreed with the “recent decision upholding 'Miranda Rules' [Dickerson v. United States(2000)] requiring police to inform arrested suspects of their rights to remain silent and to have a lawyer present during any questioning.” University of Texas law professor Justin Driver summarizes the clear implication: “There can be little doubt, then, that the Supreme Court in this instance expanded the public’s conception of criminal defendants’ rights.”

SIMILAR PATTERNS ARE EVIDENT surrounding the Supreme Court’s most important decision expanding gay rights—Lawrence v. Texas, which, in 2003, invalidated state laws which prohibited same-sex sexual activities. Since 1977, Gallup has occasionally asked Americans, “Do you think gay or lesbian relations between consenting adults should or should not be legal?” (In 2008, Gallup replaced the term “homosexuals” with “gay and lesbian.”) It has posed this question at least annually since 2001. In addition to these annual assessments of public support for legal homosexual relations, Gallup also included it in several surveys throughout the second half of 2003 and into 2004.

The sporadic implementation of this question makes it very difficult to get a true sense of the dynamics of public support for this element of gay rights prior to 2001. But the more regular use of this question in Gallup surveys since then provides a reasonably clear picture of the recent history of Americans’ attitudes toward legal same-sex sex as well as a window into the public’s response to Lawrence v. Texas. The graph below shows the percentage of Gallup poll respondents, from May 2001 through May 2013, saying that homosexual (or gay and lesbian) relations should be legal.

Americans’ changing responses to Gallup’s “homosexual relations” question show the backlash and legitimation pattern. Public support for legal homosexual relations had bounced through the mid-50s in 2001 and 2002, peaking at 60 percent immediately before Lawrence in May 2003. Within three weeks, Gallup found that support for legal same-sex sex had dropped 10 percent. A few months later, in January 2004, support bottomed out at 46 percent, before be