Salt Lake City's alternative City Weekly newspaper has an interesting editorial today on the growing relationship between the U.S. military and local law enforcement, which some critics say presents difficult civil liberties concerns. During the recent National Sheriff's Association meeting in Salt Lake City, the newspaper reports an abundance of military technology on the showroom floor as well as briefings on cooperative relationships designed to improve the military's fight in the war on terrorism such as the Pentagon's new Irregular Warfare Support Program.

Developed in 2006 as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review, IWS is the offspring of the Special Operations/Low-Intensity-Conflict Combating Terrorism Technology Support program. According to the Defense Department's fiscal year 2008 budget request, the department is shifting internal resources toward IWS. DOD has requested a total of $13.4 million for IWS from fiscal 2007 through fiscal 2013. The House added $12 million to the IWS budget in its version of the FY-08 bill.

DOD's FY-08 budget justification documents say, "The IWS develops cross-domain blended capabilities necessary to enable sustained counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. This program leverages ongoing research efforts of US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), the military departments, Defense agencies, and other federal agencies to analyze, modify, design, and demonstrate enduring counterinsurgency technical and operational capabilities. Projects support efforts to: conduct counter organization warfare, develop counter motivation capabilities, coordinate infrastructure and sanctuary denial options, and provide counter enterprise and counter financing capability to the tactical counterinsurgent warfighter. The program blends several disciplines including surveillance, operations, policy, information, training and technology. "

At least one of these IWS projects, City Weekly reports, is to learn from the Pinellas County, Fla., advanced facial recognition technology. IWS program officials are using the Pinellas County system as a technology test bed. A Pinellas analyst says the system has more than 4.5 million faces, making it one of the most advanced biometrics programs in the country.

Yet another presentation by a former British soldier gave sheriff's association attendees ideas on crowd control based on the British army's experience in Northern Ireland.

City Weekly reports on the implications for Americans:

"Critics of this drift toward paramilitary police forces say that the increased training and equipping of police with military tactics and hardware may have deep and lasting influence on the philosophy and actions of the men and women who uphold the law.

"'They collect all of these innovative tools and weapons and they figure, ‘OK, now we have to use them,’ says Brian Barnard, a civil-rights attorney in Salt Lake City who has watched the growth of SWAT teams over the past 30 years. Still, he can’t quantify how much, or if, this has adversely impacted the public. But, he says, it’s a possibility. 'Do you really need 50 police dressed as ninjas raiding a house in the middle of the night because someone sold a pound of marijuana a week ago?'

"Other critics of militarization say it has more philosophical implications. In a brief on the subject for the Cato Institute, a Washington D.C.-based Libertarian research foundation, Diane Cecilia Weber wrote that the most troubling effect of this change might be one of mentality: 'The sharing of training and technology by the military and law-enforcement agencies has produced a shared mindset, and the mindset of the warrior is simply not appropriate for the civilian police officer charged with enforcing the law.'"