From 11 September to the pandemic, the price of security
After almost two years of a pandemic, we are still living in a state of emergency, in many ways unjustified. By virtue of this condition, we see before our eyes a further expansion of public intervention in daily life. Intrusions legitimized on the pretext that the prolonged emergency requires constraints in the name of collective security.
At the same time, in the past few days we have remembered the twenty years since 11 September 2001.
It would not seem risky then to link these two realities, wondering what the real price of security is. The inevitable conflict between individual freedom and national security arose from the day after the al-Qaeda attacks on the heart of the United States of America.
The more libertarian current of the Republican Party, with figures such as Senator Ron Paul, has always criticized the massive meddling of the federal government in the lives of Americans after those tragic events. Then President George W. Bush repeatedly reassured the nation that collective security would be his administration's top priority. And so the issue of national security remained the protagonist of the political debate for a long time.
The doubts that still arise today are related to the means used by politics to defend Americans from internal danger. For many commentators, including Patrick G. Eddington of the Cato Institute , the perennial surveillance state after 9/11 is still alive and well today. In his recent speech, "Twilight of Liberty," Eddington illustrates a counter-terrorism machine that is anything but respectful of citizens' freedoms, as well as the fourth amendment to the Constitution.
The Patriot Act of 2001 (acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act ) forced many retailers to report private details of their customers and their purchases to the FBI. But it was in 2002, with the arrival of the Department of Homeland Security, that a bureaucratic mechanism was triggered, the extent of which made government intrusiveness an element of questionable validity. Among other things, according to Eddington, the Department in question did not achieve the expected results:
"[…] A completely new, huge bureaucracy cobbled together by stripping existing agencies and departments from one place on the federal organization chart and putting them under one Secretary of Homeland Security, DHS has never foiled a single terrorist attack on the US in the since its creation ".
Last, but not least, is the issue of assessments . These are those new investigative tools in the hands of the FBI to keep an eye on any possible terrorist threat, conducting authentic physical surveillance.
On the other hand, a large part of public opinion has welcomed the massive protection system set in motion after the horrendous attacks of 2001. Proof of this is Bush's reappointment to the White House in the 2004 elections. Thomas Sowell teaches us, that thanks to protection we can afford the luxury of ignoring the extent of the danger:
"Unfortunately, people who are protected from dangers often conclude that there are no dangers".
Even today the debate remains open and perhaps the surveillance policy to which individual freedom must submit seems to have won, even more so in a digitized era like ours.
We have learned this closely over the past couple of years, and we seem to accept it without much dismay. The similarities between the fight against terrorism and the current pandemic condition are therefore evident. In both cases it is legitimate to ask when the state of emergency will end; or whether the means employed to protect us have been worth the loss of important civil liberties.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/dall11-settembre-alla-pandemia-il-prezzo-della-sicurezza/ on Thu, 23 Sep 2021 03:50:00 +0000.