Global Crime and Justice by David Jenks & John Randolph Fuller

Author:David Jenks & John Randolph Fuller [Jenks, David & Fuller, John Randolph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Cultural Policy, Criminology, Social Science, Political Science, Law, General
ISBN: 9781315439556
Google: tTIlDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 33341284
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

Policing Terrorism

Policing terrorism falls almost entirely on groups at the national or federal level. This does not mean that state and local law enforcement do not police terroristic activities, simply that federal officials are usually at the forefront of collating information so that links can be made. For example, one of the major criticisms of U.S. law-enforcement agencies after the September 11 attacks was that the event was preventable and that officials knew that many of the perpetrators were in the country and planning an attack. The problem was that, although the information was being gathered, it was being gathered by several different agencies that did not communicate classified information among themselves. The U.S. government attempted to resolve this issue by combining a large portion of the intelligence-gathering under a single agency called the Department of Homeland Security. This was a major change for the intelligence analysts, officers, and agents in how they communicated information, but the standard practices of how information was gathered remained the same.

One of the major techniques for gathering information is surveillance. Surveillance is any technique in which agents of the government and/or government officials gather information about a particular individual or group of individuals by monitoring their behavior. This can include phone taps, audio bugs, video recording, questioning friends and family, and monitoring Internet traffic, including requests for information from Internet service providers. This process of information-gathering is heavily regulated in the United States under the auspices of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA. FISA created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or FISC. FISC differs from other U.S. courts in that it does not issue warrants, but rather issues special court orders. In 2001, the USA Patriot Act amended FISA so that surveillance could be used to gather intelligence serving a “significant purpose,” altering the original condition which required that intelligence be gathered as the “primary purpose” of the investigation. There is continued debate in the United States regarding how much leeway this change gives to law enforcement. For example, local police officers could seek help from the FBI claiming that a suspect was affiliated with known terrorist organizations and effectively bypass the Fourth Amendment requirement for a search warrant.

This type of legal loophole in U.S. law is not unprecedented. In Weeks v. the United States (1914), the U.S. Supreme Court held that it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment to search a person’s home without a warrant or extenuating circumstances. The Weeks decision established what came to be known as the “exclusionary rule.” Under the exclusionary rule, any evidence seized in violation of a person’s Fourth Amendment rights must be excluded from trial. The exclusionary rule, however, was only applicable to federal law-enforcement officers. This created a situation in which federal law-enforcement officers who could not obtain a warrant to conduct a search would simply make the request of the state or local officer. For a local officer, illegal search and seizure was not subject to the exclusionary rule, so any evidence seized was admissible in a federal trial.

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