Hunters not Gatherers: Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century

Because of its origins in a sort of anti-Elizabethan paranoia against centralised government, the United States is poorly set up institutionally to cope with the major danger to itself in the twenty-first century: the threat posed by Islamist terrorism. The Director of Central Intelligence is neither central nor fully directing. A large part of the intelligence community, especially in terms of budgets and supervision, is outside his direct control. There is a 'waters edge' separation between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the CIA. Essentially the CIA collects foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence overseas. The FBI, primarily a crime-oriented organisation, has had only a secondary function of domestic counter-intelligence. It is a case-oriented agency focused on establishing past facts in order to bring suspects to justice. It is psychologically ill-adapted to conceptualising threats that lie upstream, that is, in the future. In this context, September 11 can be most properly described as a failure of imagination. Remedies being proposed range from creating an internal security service à la Britain's MI5 to establishing a semi-autonomous domestic counter-intelligence agency within the FBI. In the field of covert action, intelligence in the twenty-first century likely will be characterised by what could be termed an offensive hunt strategy. Put in another way, intelligence operatives in the twenty-first century will become hunters, not gatherers. They will not simply sit back and gather information that comes in, analyse it, and then decide what to do about it. Rather they will have to go and hunt out intelligence that will enable them to track down or kill terrorists. This will involve sending operatives into countries with which we are not at war, indeed in some cases countries with which we have correct relations. In many circumstances, however, terrorist leaders will be hunted down with the help of host country elements. The likelihood is that this new strategy will be implemented primarily in terms of Special Forces operations aided by CIA elements. Modalities will have to be worked out between the Department of Defense and the CIA as to how such offensive hunt operations are to be carried out and how congressional oversight will be exercised.     

A Retrospective Approach to Valuation of Natural Resources in Wildland Fire Litigation

Wildland fires in California have been growing larger, more intense, and harder to control, and monetary damages sought and recovered by the government have been greater than ever. Intangible environmental damages is the category with the widest range of potential liability for which no quantification technique currently exists for use in fire litigation. In this article, we present our retrospective analysis of eight cases for which monetary awards have been made for wildfire-related intangible environmental damages. We developed a scale for intangible damages ranging from $18/acre to $1,600/acre that is aligned with environmental attributes of the affected forest land.     

The Financial Health of Political Parties in English Constituencies, 2004–05

Limited data have been available on the financial situation of the constituency branches of England's main political parties. Using recent annual accounts for all constituency parties with a turnover of £25,000 per annum or more in 2005, this paper reviews their financial health. It finds very little evidence of substantial financial turnover for the vast majority of local Labour parties and only a slightly better situation for the Liberal Democrats: many more local Conservative parties meet the reporting threshold but, even so, in almost half of all English constituencies none of the three parties reported a turnover of £25,000 or more. Local Conservative parties also differ substantially from the other two in their income sources and expenditure patterns.     

Photojournalism, fair use and fair dealing

A Massachusetts decision applying the US fair use principlesto unlicensed broadcasts of news photographs highlights thespecial protection given to news photographs, but not news videos,under UK copyright law.     

Driving across campus: Assessing the impact of drivers' race and gender on police traffic enforcement actions

This study examined the effect of drivers' race and gender on officers' decision to search a driver/vehicle and invoke a legal sanction, controlling for legal and extralegal factors. Logistic regression analyses of 10,210 traffic stops on a university campus indicated that drivers' race and gender had a significant effect on officers' decision to search a driver/vehicle and invoke a legal sanction. Black male drivers were more likely than White drivers to be searched, but were less likely to receive a legal sanction. Unexpectedly, the results showed that Asian drivers were less likely to be searched, but more likely to receive legal sanctions than White drivers. Findings, however, indicated that legal and extralegal factors (i.e., types of traffic violation, time, officer type) were found to have significant effects on officers' decisions during traffic stops.     

Economic Sector Stabilization

Using a dynamic competitive disequilibrium model this paper determined that centrally directed sector resource stabilization or planning probably could not shorten the time for a developed economy to reach equilibrium. This is due to the disaggregation of data available centrally, an old concern. Therefore, the old issues of freedom and corruption under planning appear moot.