A Study on The Effects of Sacrificing Privacy and Freedom for The Purpose of Better Security

“People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.”

Introduction

In the nearly sixteen years that have passed since September 11th, 2001, the world has experienced a much different version of international relations, military action, and liberal democracy than that experienced by the world prior to this date. September 11th and the subsequent so-called war on terror changed the way in which liberal democracy is put into practice.

For many, the security offered by the state in the wake of this terrible terrorist attack is considered to have come at the cost of giving up the freedom and privacy ostensibly guaranteed by liberal democracy. For others, the security measures taken by Western states are a necessary part of keeping society secure. But can democratic societies like Canada and the United States simultaneously have both security from terrorist threats and foreign nations and the privacy and freedoms and privacy guaranteed by liberal democracy? This is the major question that this discussion paper seeks to address.

More specifically, the paper addresses whether or not the security measures that have been taken by Western democratic states like Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States can be reconciled with the ideas and practice of liberal democracy. In response, the paper argues that these intrusions into freedom and privacy cannot be justified if the true nature of a liberal democracy is to be maintained in these countries.

As the quote from Benjamin Franklin, one cannot fully trade in freedom for security, even temporarily, and expect to retain it or gain it back. While the measures taken by the governments mentioned above have not yet reached the point of a complete compromise of liberal democracy, the measures taken in the past decade and a half put these states and respective societies at risk of losing both security and the freedom guaranteed by liberal democracy.

Using both specific examples of security measures that compromise the essence of liberal democracy and academic journal articles discussing the topic, this discussion paper aims at supporting this contention with substantive evidence and a clear line of logic. While certainly not exhaustive, this paper serves as the beginnings of a larger discussion regarding the value of liberal democracy placed against the necessity for security.

Difficulty of the Question

Assessing the military incursions, privacy intrusions, and overall shift in legislation regarding the security and privacy of private citizens is no easy task. As one scholar writes, “The wake of 9/11, the war on terrorism, practices of ‘homeland security,’ and the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq together produce a complex set of questions about what to think, what to stand for, and what to organize” (Brown, 2003, 1353).

This was written in the immediate wake of the terrorist attack in 2001, and the issue has become no simpler in the proceeding years. With the Western world not appearing any safer today than it did in the years leading up to the September 11th attacks, one wonders if the efforts of the past decade and a half have truly been worth it. This more liberal sentiment stands in contrast to another academic article, which states that “If one insight apparently transcends the current partisan rancor, it is that the effort to secure America against terrorist attacks requires better intelligence” and that “the intelligence services should gather more information and share it more widely” (Kreimer, 2004, 133).

This statement, too, appears logical – after all, antiterrorism is dependent on intelligence. But at what cost has this intelligence come? Still another, more recent, journal article states that “Public access to government records is essential for democratic self-governance” (Cuillier & Piotrowski, 2009, 441).

Thankfully, this transparency is granted to some degree by the Freedom of Information Act – but has that been enough? Cases like those revealed by the now infamous Edward Snowden and Julian Assange make the answer to this cloudy. The fact that many security measures enacted in the wake of 9/11 were supported by the general public makes the question all that more difficult (Hetherington & Suhay, 2011).

All of these questions are not meant to further complicate the main discussion question of this paper – instead, they are simply aimed at showing how difficult the question of security versus freedom and privacy can be, from a political, moral, personal and even philosophical point of view. Now that this has been established, the paper can turn to specific examples of how freedom and privacy have been compromised in the name of national security.

Examples of Incursions

The years from the past decade and a half are filled with examples of how the war on terror have made incursions on the rights, privacy, and freedoms of American, Canadian, and European citizens. The most noteworthy example is the infamous NSA program revealed by the documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013, known as PRISM. The revelations from the documents reported on thanks to Snowden rocked the Western world, and certainly gave a voice to the debate surrounding privacy and security.

As one scholar states, “In 2013, the Snowden revelations worked as a catalyst for some of the major ongoing issues surrounding the Internet” (Salvo, 2015, n.p.). In a nutshell, the PRISM program gave access to the US National Security Agency) to “electronic communications data held by private companies” (Kuner, Cate, Millard, & Svantesson, 2013, 1). More specifically, the program allowed the NSA to acquire the records of citizens’ digital activity from companies like Facebook, Twitter and even Google. Of course, the Obama administration was “quick to assure the American public that PRISM and similar surveillance systems are only targeted at non-Americans” (Kuner, Cate, Millard & Svantesson, 2013, 2).

This did not stop American citizens from being concerned about their privacy, and even raised suspicions in those outside of the United States. The concern was only underlined by the fact that Snowden’s leaked documents also revealed that nearly every phone company in the United States was providing the phone records of their customers to the NSA. Unsurprisingly, no legislative reform regarding these so-called security measures has been seen until the last couple of months of this year.

As the article quoted above concludes, “A serious dialogue about all of these issues is essential if fundamental rights – to both privacy and security – are to be protected and individuals throughout the world are to have confidence in the rule of law” (Kuner, Cate, Millard & Svantesson, 2013, 3). Inother words, American citizens and other citizens of liberal democracies must take a hard look at the issue of security versus privacy, if their freedom is to be maintained.

Another example of the security measures of the war on terror impeding liberal democracy is from during the Bush administration with the passage of the Patriot Act. The legislation was passed in the immediate wake of September 11th, the law had three key provisions: the allowance of roving wiretaps, the legal searches of business records, and the authorization to conduct surveillance of lone wolves, or those individuals suspected of “terrorist-related activities not linked to terrorist groups” (Rackow, 2002, 1652).

The resemblance to a George Orwell novel or at the very least the years of Mcarthy is striking. However, The support for this legislation was staggering: the day after the September 11th attacks, a poll found that “two out of three Americans are willing to surrender civil liberties to stop terrorism” (Rackow, 2002, 1651). This statistic, more than anything, begs the question of how much freedom citizens of liberal democracy are willing to give up in the name of security.

The answer, it appears, is quite a bit. As a study the following year states, “Mourning the loss of so many lives, and faced with warnings of additional terrorist attacks, Americans called for legislative action in the hope that new laws would grant the government sufficient surveillance capabilities to catch terrorists hiding on U.S. soil, thereby leading to greater security at home” (Rackow, 2002, 1652). It seems that the result, more than a decade later, was the collection of phone records and surveillance of online activity. The fact that the Patriot Act was renewed by the Obama administration in 2011 and only slightly reformed this year makes it clear that security takes precedence over privacy and freedom.

Conclusion

This research paper has examined the way the freedom and privacy ostensibly guaranteed by liberal democracy have been scarified in the name of security during the war on terror over the last decade and a half. More specifically, the paper examined this question in reference to the PRISM program revealed by Snowden and the provisions of the Patriot Act from 2001. While the question of privacy versus security is a difficult one, as discussed above, overall this paper has shown that the intrusions into personal freedoms and privacy cannot be justified within liberal democracy.

Freedom, privacy and autonomy are at the core of liberal democracy, and any intrusion into these inherent rights means that liberal democracy is not being justly realized. In fact, one could say that the past decade and a half has seen a shift in the political economy, first from liberal democracy to neo-conservativism, and then from neo-conservativsim to neo-liberalism. It remains to be seen whether true liberal democracy will survive at all.