...Judging by the terrorist conspiracies uncovered since 9/11, violent radicalization has yielded very few recruits. Indeed, the level of terrorist activities in the United States was much higher in the 1970s than it is today. Fashioning national strategies to deal with handfuls of diverse misfits may be counterproductive. Therefore, as I concluded my
April 5, 2007 testimony with some basic principles, let me conclude here by underscoring some principles to guide the proposed commission’s work:
• Improving national security must be accomplished without degrading our enduring values.
• Updating legal mechanisms to deal with Internet-era technology should be done, but more ambitious and more sensitive proposals for social engineering should be extensively analyzed for their intended and unintended, positive and negative consequences.
• The criterion for any proposed measure should be a very high level of confidence that it will be effective, that the risks of adverse consequences will be very small, and that it will include mechanisms to prevent and remedy the abuse if things go wrong.
Finally, efforts should be primarily local, albeit with federal assistance.
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