It is perhaps not surprising that an event like last Friday’s Paris attack would raise questions about why government surveillance didn’t spot such a sweeping and apparently coordinated assault in advance. But the speed with which intelligence and law enforcement professionals worked to play down their own possible shortcomings — and in some cases invoke the attacks in a play for broader powers — has caught the attention of security experts, privacy rights advocates and editorial boards.
Editors at The New York Times called this turn of events “a wretched yet predictable ritual,” singling out statements made Monday by CIA Director John Brennan as “a new and disgraceful low.” Brennan went to the press with complaints that recent “policy and legal” moves have made it harder to spot and disrupt potential terror plots.
But Brennan hasn’t been alone in making such statements in the week since the violence that killed 130 and wounded hundreds more.
Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the National Security Agency (NSA) and an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under former President George W. Bush, has taken to twitter to voice opposition to limiting government collection of metadata.