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Cato Dispatch for August 29, 2006

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(Links to outside sources were active as of the date of this dispatch; however, not all news sources maintain links to current stories indefinitely. Some links also may require registration.)

Expanding Homeland Security

In a Washington Post editorial, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff writes: "To defeat terrorists, we must limit their movement between countries and disable their worldwide networks by targeting our investigative resources... One way is by using more of the detailed information collected by airlines and travel agencies when an individual books a flight. These passenger name records contain information, such as travel itineraries and payment details that can be analyzed in conjunction with current intelligence to identify high-risk travelers before they board planes."

Chertoff continues: "Protecting personal privacy is a part of responding to the post-Sept. 11 world, but it should not reflexively block us from developing new screening tools." 

In the Cato book Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood, Jim Harper, Cato's director of information studies, recounts how the advance of identification technology -- biometrics, identity cards, surveillance, databases, and dossiers -- threatens privacy, civil liberties, and related human interests. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, demands for identification in the name of security have increased. Harper dissects identification processes and technologies, showing how identification works when it works and how it fails when it fails, and explodes the myth that identification can protect against future terrorist attacks. 

Corruption in Africa

The New York Times writes: "Barack Obama strode into a packed auditorium in Nairobi on Monday and attacked an issue that notoriously bedevils Kenyan society: corruption. He urged people to reject 'the insulting idea that corruption is somehow part of Kenyan culture' and 'to stand up and speak out against injustices.'"

In the Foreign Policy Briefing Paper "Underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of the Private Sector and Political Elites," Moeletsi Mbeki, deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs, argues: "A great deal of what is consumed by Africa's political elites and the states they control is imported. Such elite consumption of imports acts as a major drain of national savings that would otherwise have gone into productive investment in Africa. That is the secret to Africa's growing impoverishment despite its large private sector. The more the African political elites consolidate their power, and the more they strengthen their hold over the state, the more the peasants are likely to become poorer, and the more the African economies are likely to regress or, at best, stagnate." 

Anti-Drug Campaign Failure

USA Today reports: "A $1.4 billion anti-drug advertising campaign conducted by the U.S. government since 1998 does not appear to have helped reduce drug use and instead might have convinced some youths that taking illegal drugs is normal, the Government Accountability Office says. The GAO report, released Friday, urges Congress to stop the White House's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign unless drug czar John Walters can come up with a better strategy. President Bush's budget for 2007 asks Congress for $120 million for the campaign, a $20 million increase from this year."

In "Collateral Damage: The Wide-Ranging Consequences of America's Drug War," Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, writes: "Only incurable optimists would argue that America's thirty-years war against drugs has been a success. Although the percentage of Americans using illegal drugs is down from the peak levels of the late 1970s and early 1980s, use is still widespread and, indeed, is significantly higher than it was when Nixon issued his declaration of war. Despite the expenditure of more than $300 billion dollars by federal, state, and local governments over those three decades, (the federal government alone spent $16 billion in 1998) on efforts to stem the trade, drugs remain cheap and easily available throughout the United States. Prices of cocaine and other drugs have generally shown a downward trend--a reliable indicator of a plentiful supply."

Carpenter continues: "Some of the critics also blame the administration for a modest rise in the percentage of American teens using drugs. Although the substantive features of any alternative strategy -- other than a return to the fatuous 'just say no' propaganda campaign championed by First Lady Nancy Reagan in the mid-1980's -- remain vague, the rhetoric of the critics implies even more dangers to the health of civil liberties in the United States." 

In "Ads Won't Keep Kids off Drugs," Ryan H. Sager, a former Cato Institute intern, asserts: "[S]uch drug 'education' initiatives have become a joke among teenagers. Everything from D.A.R.E. to drug education classes to anti-drug advertisements is a target of ridicule for youth who see those efforts as nothing more than heavy-handed admonitions from hypocritical baby boomers." 

Nicole Kurokawa, editor, nkurokawa@cato.org