Metro Spirit national security blog

Martin Streetly, who edit's Jane’s Electronic Mission Aircraft, worries that overreliance on tactical signals intelligence spells trouble for future coalition warfare and for the health of society in general. An overview of his article is available here, but you need to be a subscriber to read the whole thing. (Nuts.)

Streetly writes:

A plausible scenario suggests that [war on terror] operations in southwest Asia are unlikely to long outlive the current Bush and Blair administrations, leaving a SIGINT capability that is overly developed in the tactical area playing catch-up in strategic realms, such as the monitoring of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and other global hotspots.

Who's worried about nuclear proliferation? We're all about nuclear proliferation.

The editor also sees "increasing danger inherent in the attractions of SIGINT as a tool to combat domestic terrorism, with all the inherent dangers for civil liberties such a 'surveillance' society offers."

Civil liber-wha?