"Information is the key to the prevention of terrorist attacks." So said Viet Dinh, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy in the Justice Department, who delivered the executive keynote speech at the 2002 Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC). Addressing the crowd of federal librarians and other information specialists, Dinh said, "The overriding objective of the Justice Department is to prevent terrorist attacks, and those of you in this room are our critical partners in this effort. You must help educate the citizenry by disseminating the true policies of our government. It is critical that citizens be fully engaged in the war on terrorism."
The assistant attorney general acknowledged the balancing act between privacy and national security. "Within the framework of the Constitution, how can we prevent terrorism?" he asked. He said he believes the answer lies in having a comprehensive plan to exchange information that not only protects the nation's core values as articulated in the Constitution, but also provides law enforcement with the tools it needs to combat terrorism.
This issue was addressed by Congress in the USA Patriot Act of 2001 (P.L.107-56), which the president signed into law in October. The purpose of the legislation, which, according to Dinh, was enacted in "record time," is to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools in order to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world.
"The act relaxed the legal barriers that prevent information sharing between the criminal side and the intelligence side [of an investigation]," said Dinh. "Information cannot just be gathered and lay dormant. It must be shared with the proper defense personnel. The president has said that this is a long-term war, and all hands must be on deck. In that case, the left hand must know what the right hand is doing, and that includes the state and local law enforcement agencies that are on the front line."
Dinh also stressed the need to update the laws to reflect the latest technologies. "The laws governing criminal surveillance were developed in 1968 in an era of rotary phones and analog technology," he noted. According to Dinh, Congress recently addressed this issue by updating existing laws so that cable companies are treated like telephone companies, thereby making them subject to Title II wiretapping laws.
"We seek to deliver to Americans freedom from fear, but we must protect that freedom through the law," he said. "We have a common set of values that are under attack. But if we lose these values [in the process of crafting security policy] the terrorists will have won."
Prior to assuming his current position in the Justice Department, Dinh was a professor of law and deputy director of Asian law and policy studies at the Georgetown University Law Center. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he served as a law clerk to Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
