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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The challenge of balancing security and privacy is taking a new turn with battles in progress in Iraq.

Should technological measures designed to protect the United States from terrorism proceed unhindered, or should projects like data-mining programs be halted until ways to protect civil liberties are in place? Such questions were in focus at two conferences on technology and homeland security here Thursday.

Can the Law Keep Up?

Putting the brakes on technologies like the proposed Total Information Awareness program in the U.S. Department of Defense is not the answer, said Paul Rosenzweig, a senior legal research follow at conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.

"I think the answer ... is not prohibition, but you folks out here: extensive oversight, use of the mechanisms of Congress and the courts to restrain the misuses of power," Rosenzweig said to a room full of congressional staffers at a Congressional Internet Caucus luncheon on security against terrorism and privacy.

But Lance Hoffman, a computer science professor at George Washington University, questioned whether new laws could keep pace with technologies, including TIA and the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II) proposed by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration. He cited the example of file-trading on the Internet, where proposed laws have not been able to stop the illegal downloading of music.

"[Technology researchers] are pretty much under the radar screen until we do something that so changes things that we technologists are then noticed all of a sudden by legislators," Hoffman said. "Let me tell you, by that time it's too late."

Program With Caution

In addition to the lunch session at the Capitol, hours after the United States fired the opening shots in a war against Iraq, software vendor WebMethods hosted a panel discussion on Thursday morning called "Homeland Security: Can Technology Make Us Safer?" featuring five national security experts.

James Gilmore, chair of the National Advisory Commission on Terrorism and a former governor of Virginia, answered the conference's main question with an "obviously," but questioned the cost to civil liberties.

"Today, we have the capability of putting a camera almost everywhere," Gilmore said. "Do you believe that you would conduct yourself differently if you were on camera than if you weren't? I think so ... it wouldn't necessarily be something legal or illegal, but it would be different."

Although no one can guarantee a country's total security, technology could come close, Gilmore noted. "You'd give up everything by way of individuality, privacy, anonymity ... and even then you would not have total security."

Gilmore urged the tech executives in the audience to keep privacy and other civil liberties in mind when they design systems to protect against terrorism.

"I believe that as citizens we have an obligation ... to try to put together both security and freedom at the same time," he said. "That, it seems to me, is the great goal we as Americans have now: trying to figure out how we can maintain our character and values as Americans while at the same time applying technology to make us safer. That is a challenge that isn't much being discussed, and I don't think we have very many solutions."

Learning From Experience

But James Woolsey, a former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, said the security measures the U.S. government is taking now are much less intrusive than actions by other wartime presidents, from Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt put Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II, Woolsey noted.

"We are nowhere near, as far as I'm concerned, constitutional limitations in terms of what has been done so far in this war," he said. "We may have done some unwise things, that's a different question. We are going to have to make some other hard choices, as time goes on, about reconciling civil liberties and security, and realizing that, while we wish they didn't conflict in a war, they do."

He called the current war between Mideast terrorists and the United States World War IV--with World War III being the Cold War--and he predicted this war could last for decades. He pegged the start of World War IV at about ten years ago, when Muslim fundamentalists began attacking U.S. targets.

As that war drags on, U.S. citizens may have to make some compromises between civil liberties and security, Woolsey noted, and technology such as data mining and airline passenger profiling can play a positive role. But Woolsey also warned that lawmakers and U.S. citizens need to keep an eye on privacy and other rights.

When security measures fail, "people get scared," he said. "When the country gets scared, even very good leaders can do some things we look back on in future generations and say, 'How in the world could they have done that?'"

Suitable Solutions?

At the noon luncheon, one participant raised concerns over whether data-mining efforts like TIA will actually work. It's easy for Amazon.com to predict what books a customer will like, based on the preferences of millions of other customers, but terrorism databases wouldn't have millions of people to use to determine motives, said Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

"It's a much harder problem trying to determine illegal activity," he said. "The very first question is a question of effectiveness."

Much of the WebMethods conference ventured away from technology and into politics. Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, accused the George W. Bush administration of dragging its heels on taking security measures such as creating the Department of Homeland Security. Hart, co-chair of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, said his group recommended such a department two years ago, before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

But others, including Mark Forman, chief information officer of the Bush administration, said the United States is making progress in the homeland security arena, particularly with technology security. Forman noted the administration's goal of having 80 percent of the federal government's technology assets certified or accredited by the end of 2003.