Security vs. Liberty

There is not enough evidence to show that terrorism has evolved into something more threatening since the 1960s and 70s. Governments are likely to take advantage of anti-terrorist mania and seize the moment to strengthen their regimes. Modern government bodies fighting terrorism are sophisticated enough to counteract terrorism with little use of ‘draconian’ measures. It is not acceptable to curb citizen rights because of isolated events.

Many evil events in history started with good intentions and few cases of injustice. Allowing even a few abuses as an acceptable side effect of improved security will change the tolerance level of the public and lead to a belief that rights such as the presumption of innocence and habeas corpus (which prevents the state from imprisoning someone without charging them with a crime and then trying them) are a negotiable luxury. Furthermore, abuses of the system are likely to victimise certain minority groups (e.g. Muslims, Arab-Americans) in the same way that Japanese-Americans were persecuted in World War II, something about which Americans are now rightly ashamed.

If the US, the example-setting country of cherished civil liberties, allows the loss of its liberties to terrorism, it will show that terrorists have succeeded in forcing us to change our way of life. Lots of apparently minor measures can quickly add up to a significant loss of liberty. Other countries will take their cue from the US and use security as an excuse for a crackdown on political opposition movements and minority groups (examples of this can be found in Russia, China, Hong Kong, India, Liberia and the Central Asian republics). Rights mean nothing if they are ignored and eroded as soon as hard cases come along.

The great increase in international travel requires faster and more efficient work from customs services all over the world. Heightened security measures make control procedures slower and cause lots of frustration among travellers, particularly those who are on business trips. There have been lots of cases when customs officers were not able to finish check in processes prior to the scheduled time of the departure of an aircraft. As a result, flights are delayed or the clients are left behind. It is, of course, of a great inconvenience for travellers, but also hugely costly for the air companies who are obliged to change the ticket. Recently many new security devices has been introduced in an attempt to fight with terrorism. Terrorists and smugglers, however, are becoming more and more inventive and knowledgeable about how to carry through the prohibited articles aboard without being detected by those machines. Security persons themselves recognise inefficiency of the devices they have introduced as a method of fighting with terrorism. Others fear that terrorists will no longer have to smuggle weapons or explosives on to a flight to succeed in hijacking an airliner, but can do so by overcoming an armed “sky marshal” and using their weapon.

Fruitless random searches of elderly women, toddlers, and uniformed airline pilots have become mainstream in U.S. airports as more and more innocent passengers are treated like suspects rather than customers. Some of the red flags for CAPPS system are person’s last name; methods of payment (tickets paid in cash are highly suspect); whether a rental car is waiting. Those criteria that one can find online are very vague, do not allow the targeting of real suspects but harass many.

Governments are likely to use terror as a convenient excuse for tightening laws and restricting freedoms in order to crack down in areas such as immigration, drug smuggling, fraud, etc, with insufficient public debate. Such an erosion of liberties has a long-term impact and, in practice, is unlikely ever to be reversed as it is not the nature of state bureaucracies ever to give up power. Democratic mandates are insufficient reason to erode liberties; a key purpose of civil liberties is to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority.