The Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group (LA-TEW) and RAND Center for Global Risk and Security Presents the Third Annual Conference on Terrorism and Global Security at The RAND Corporation. The conference will include plenary sessions, keynote speakers, and breakout sessions on key related topics.
On May 8–9, RAND's new Center for Global Risk and Security, directed by Greg Treverton, hosted and co-sponsored the third annual Terrorism and Global Security Conference, a collaborative effort with the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group and the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism, also based in Los Angeles. This year's conference, held in RAND's Santa Monica office, featured 72 speakers and panelists, including a number of public officials, leading legal authorities, public health experts, security experts, and counterterrorism experts from the United States and abroad, and drew an audience of 229 attendees. RAND terrorism expert Brian Jenkins delivered the opening keynote address, and Michael Rich opened the second day. Other RAND presenters were Farhana Ali and Eric Larson.
The conference covered a wide range of issues, and participants had the opportunity to engage in discussions of topics in their respective areas of expertise. A unique feature was a panel composed of several sitting federal judges who had presided over terrorism cases (including the first case brought after 9/11 and the trial of suspect Jose Padilla). The discussion focused on issues of current concern, including the use of sensitive and classified information in trials, terrorist prosecution, executive oversight, the prosecution of terrorism researchers, constitutional and privacy rights related to domestic surveillance programs, and related topics.
Other areas of discussion included domestic intelligence needs and strategies (i.e., how to conduct domestic intelligence collection within the United States), public health responses to catastrophic events (i.e., how the public health system can respond to low-probability, high-consequence events, such as bioterrorist attacks and other major disasters or pandemics, and related concerns about strains on available resources), the evolving Muslim populations in the United States and Europe (i.e., the likelihood of unrest and the potential for violence, radicalization, and terrorist recruitment activities within these communities, as well as concerns about large-scale illegal immigration), and the protection of corporate infrastructure (i.e., how to protect vulnerable multinational corporate facilities and workers from threats targeting manufacturing, sales outlets, utilities, and a range of other critical infrastructure, including questions of how to maximize limited law enforcement resources. The discussion of domestic intelligence needs and strategies featured the findings of three ongoing national studies—by RAND, the Markle Foundation, and the Council on Foreign Relations—and presentations by several leading experts on intelligence systems, as well as noted legal scholars.
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