What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us

Immediately after 9/11, politicians and pundits slammed the Bush administration for failing to "connect the dots" foreshadowing the attack. For two years now, left- and right-wing advocates have shot down nearly every proposal to use intelligence more effectively--to connect the dots--as an assault on "privacy." Though their facts are often wrong and their arguments specious, they have come to dominate the national security debate virtually without challenge. The consequence has been devastating: just when the country should be unleashing its technological ingenuity to defend against future attacks, scientists stand irresolute, cowed into inaction. "No one in the research and development community is putting together tools to make us safer," says Lee Zeichner of Zeichner Risk Analytics, a risk consultancy firm, "because they're afraid" of getting caught up in a privacy scandal. The chilling effect has been even stronger in government. "Many perfectly legal things that could be done ...