Stewart A. Baker Authors Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism

Former US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Stewart A. Baker authored a new book titled Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism, published by Hoover Institution Press. In his book, Mr. Baker examines vulnerabilities created by computer networks and biotechnology as they relate to US national security and outlines glaring weaknesses in our nation’s security defenses—which, if exploited by terrorists, could cripple the United States and other developed countries.

“The United States has already paid a high price for ignoring known threats,” said Mr. Baker, partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP. “But the same people who have kept us from dealing with eroding border security are campaigning to keep us from dealing with cyber security and biotech risks that dwarf 9/11 in scope. We are skating for a fall, too in love with the speed and power of skating on stilts to see the danger.”

As the first assistant secretary for policy at DHS and as general counsel of the National Security Agency, Mr. Baker draws on his counterterrorism, national security, and legal expertise. In Skating on Stilts, Baker examines technologies people are so accustomed to—jet travel, computer networks, and biotech—and finds they are likely to empower new forms of terrorism unless we change our course and overcome resistance to change from business, foreign governments, and privacy advocates.

Skating on Stilts echoes many of the themes the author has explored since 2008 on his popular blog of the same name, skatingonstilts.com.

The book has already received warm reviews from the mainstream media and security community:

One of the biggest privacy battles began in June 2006 after the New York Times disclosed the highly classified CIA-Treasury program to monitor al Qaeda finances by way of the Belgium-based financial clearinghouse known as Swift. The program, an intelligence-gathering operation, was perfectly legal and was conducted with court-approved warrants…The Times story obviously compromised the secret effort to monitor terrorist finances, and it spurred the European Commission to try to shut it down. "European privacy bureaucrats," Mr. Baker says, "crowed that they had crippled the American program…"

What accounts for such behavior? Mr. Baker castigates civil libertarians of the left and right who, though blaming the government for its supposedly alarmist policies, were themselves alarmist about the policies' threat to liberty. Such people claimed, as Mr. Baker puts it, that "a frightened U.S. government . . . [launched] a seven-year attack on our privacy that a new administration is only slowly (too slowly, say the advocates) beginning to moderate." Mr. Baker tells a different story, of officials urgently trying to solve post-9/11 security problems while unfairly attacked at every turn.

Mr. Baker's argument is the more persuasive one, not least in the wake of recent events—in Fort Hood (Nidal Malik Hasan), in the skies over Detroit (Umar Abdulmutallab), in Times Square (Faisal Shahzad) and in the New York City subways (Najibullah Zazi). The Obama administration, to its credit, has left in place the policies that Mr. Baker fought for, and we are safer for it.

— Gabriel Schoenfeld (Hudson Institute), The Wall Street Journal (click here for full review)  

"Skating on Stilts" is full of ... anecdotes, and Baker, who was a key Homeland Security player from 2005 to 2009, makes a persuasive case against the privacy absolutists. He reprises his successful effort to pry airline passenger data out of the Europeans, who are even more uncompromising about privacy than American activists. He tells the story of how the wall erected between intelligence-gathering by the FBI and law enforcement, though designed to protect civil liberties, ended up blinding authorities to the unfolding 9/11 plot. And he recounts how other agencies blocked, on privacy grounds, DHS' bid to maintain and update a database to continually screen the backgrounds of scientists who work with deadly biological pathogens.

Baker deftly skewers the original legal theorist behind the right to privacy, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who was scandalized in 1890 by the fact that newspapers published flattering details about a party at his house. Brandeis also found it outrageous that a newspaper could take and publish a photo of a person without his permission. Obviously, the idea of what constitutes an invasion of privacy has evolved dramatically. Baker portrays privacy advocates as fussy Luddites.

When the government collects information about people, Baker acknowledges, some bureaucrats may improperly access it, as when State Department employees rifled Barack Obama's passport file during the 2008 presidential campaign. But the employees were easily caught and disciplined, Baker notes. The answer is to hold bureaucrats accountable for abuses, he says, not deny them important security tools.

—Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times (click here for the full review).

Privacy protection has its place but putting too much emphasis on it can stop counterterrorism forces in their tracks.

At least, that's a central idea explored time and again in a new book from Stewart Baker, the former assistant secretary of policy at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The book—Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren't Stopping Tomorrow's Terrorism—largely deals with Baker's firsthand experiences with major developments in various elements of homeland security, ranging from cybersecurity to bioterrorism to aviation security.

Yet the book tells its tales as a means of looking forward. Baker, an infatigable intellectual, often appears to be an endless source of methodical musings on the challenges of DHS and counterterrorism measures generally in person. His book captures his ability to be proactively prescriptive while reflecting on policy debates old and new.

Despite the serious nature of the subject matter, however, Baker enhances his reputation as a raconteur by enjoying himself. He is well served by his ability personalize the obstacles that continue to daunt homeland security efforts, making them seem relevant to the reader. This makes the book so easy to read that you may find yourself revisiting past chapters of policy battles fought and pondering their relevance to homeland security today, much like the author himself.

—Mickey McCarter, Homeland Security Today (click here for the full review).

In his upcoming book, Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism, Baker offers an intriguing view of our homeland security posture that ties back to the central theme that technology is both our savior and our enemy as it empowers not only us but our foes. Coming from Baker, who has been described by the Washington Post as “one of the most techno-literate lawyers around,” the analysis of homeland security technology from a policy/legal prism is refreshing.  This is not a Luddite’s view of why technology harms, but an expert’s finely woven story of “how the technologies we love eventually find new ways to kill us, and how to stop them from doing that…”

Stewart Baker provides insight into a DC perspective of homeland security and the struggle of a Department to tackle technology, privacy, and information sharing. The book provides some valuable lessons for those who are on the frontlines of homeland security policy as they attempt to tackle future threats. For an observer of homeland security development, Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism is a must-read. 

—Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, Homeland Security Watch (click here for the full review).

Please click here to order a copy of Skating on Stilts from Amazon.com.