Legal Impediments to Surveillance for Biological Threats and Countering Terrorism

The law observes jurisdictional boundaries as well as national and state boundaries, unlike biological agents. The threat of biological agents cannot be successfully controlled through surveillance technologies without removing the current impediments to a national public health approach. Public health law, traditionally and constitutionally a reserved power of the states, leaves our national defense as a combination of fifty, independently administered spheres of activity, designed by each state. However, the U.S. Constitution through a reading of The Federalist Papers, opens the door to a Congressional solution. The lack of coordination at the national level, coupled with the federalism issues has left us with no system at all.