#pagename#

Overview

Project Guardian will examine technology policy issues that are associated with maintaining our civil liberties. This multidisciplinary effort will provide a public forum to examine the balance between civil liberties and national security. Project Guardian will endeavor to provide practical and workable recommendations to policymakers for accomplishing both the protection of our civil liberties, and the enabling technology to enhance the aggressive pursuit of terrorists.

As the nation seeks to protect itself from more terrorist strikes, new uses of technology to counter foreign terrorist threats may be needed. There are many new technologies that may reasonably help our government find terrorists as they operate in vast and perplexing arrays of information networks. Authorities are exploring the use of such advanced and emerging techniques to effectively deter terrorism through the use of detection, identification and interdiction. But it is of equal and fundamental importance that the privacy and constitutional rights of every American are protected in this process.

The Potomac Institute seeks to find a balance between the information technology available to track terrorists and the protection of American civil liberties. The Potomac Institute will structure and conduct an informed, robust, non-partisan public debate that seeks reasonable solutions to the many competing issues that characterize this intriguing technological challenge.