Nathan Hodge's article in 'The Wired':http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009...ks/#more-19759 is an interesting commentary on the 'COIN can help LE' debate, mainly applied to Washinton DC. I would have thought there were many other placesin need in front of DC; taking a longer view the Mexican border states.

He cites:
Want to see what a place looks like when counterinsurgency starts to seep into policing? For a softer example, take a look at the United Kingdom...has a pretty expansive surveillance system that in part was developed in response to IRA terror. (It also has a more robust Official Secrets Act.)
Yes some of the surveillance the UK has can be traced back to Ulster and IRA attacks, such as automatic number plate readers (ANPR) and CCTV. A lot more weight should be added to the massive changes in IT, data management and technology is running far ahead of customer, public and political understanding.

The surveillance - which I am sure could, maybe is happening in the USA and elsewhere - has to be looked at in different ways:

1) pre-incident or preventive surveillance (mainly CCTV)
2) post incident use evidentially
3) matching suspects to crimes (from CCTV, DNA, official documents)
4) providing a starting point for intelligence gathering / investigation

The curious fact is that much of the CCTV surveillance system here has little deterrent value, the vast majority of the imagery is useless and countermeasures are simple.

There are also whole community sub-groups that are largely beyond it's "eyes", young black males and illegal immigrants to cite two.