Shift in Pentagon's security-privacy balance?

The end of its TALON database on antiwar activists may signal more emphasis on civil liberties.

from the August 28, 2007 edition

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In December 2005, the Defense Department undertook its own comprehensive review of the TALON database. Soon afterward, it announced it was purging "a large amount of information" deemed to have been kept inappropriately.

A report by the Defense Department's inspector general released in June found that more than 5,000 of the 13,000 files in the database had been purged as of April 2007. A source within the Pentagon who asked not to be quoted says that after the public controversy, reporting to the TALON program also dropped off. The combination of factors led the Pentagon to announce last week that it would shut down the program in September and would forward perceived domestic threats to the military and to law-enforcement agencies.

"The analytic value of the reporting system had declined significantly," says Maj. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman. Major Ryder declined to comment on whether concerns about civil liberties played a role in the decision, but added: "Civil liberties are always a concern within the department."

The ACLU contends that the Pentagon's stated reason for the program's closure is irrelevant. "People are cautiously optimistic [that] the tide is turning," says Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project. "But you have to see that TALON program in the context of the many other surveillance programs that have been introduced over the last five years. We're in a bizarre situation where, for the first time, the government is demanding more and more information about individuals and at the same time making it more difficult for them to get the information that they need in order to evaluate the government and whether it's acting within the law."

Conservatives' point of view

Some conservatives say that in a time of national crisis, some individual liberties have to be surrendered for the security of the whole nation. But others believe equally aggressive tactics can be taken that don't violate constitutional guarantees.

"The Constitution allows for the most aggressive techniques to be used, but with checks and balances to ensure that in undertaking this fight, we don't destroy our freedoms and democracy," says Bruce Fein, a top Justice Department official under President Reagan who is now chairman of the American Freedom Agenda, a conservative civil liberties advocacy group.

For Hordynski, who immigrated to this country from Poland at age 8, the experience has taught him about the importance of vigilance in the fight for individual rights. "I definitely never thought anything like this could happen in this country," he says. "It's sadly and strangely reminiscent of the stories I heard about Communism when I was growing up. Obviously, I wouldn't want to compare those times, yet it says a lot about the state of our country that we can even talk about those things in the same sentence."

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