Trading civil rights for a safer society...

[mrph]

Various politicians and columnists seem to be talking about how swapping some civil rights for increased protection from terrorists is a fair trade.

There are lots of reasons why I don't agree with that, but here's one of the main ones: would it actually work? Has anyone got a case study, an example of a country that's actually done this and seen some tangible benefits as a result?

Because right now, I'm having real trouble thinking of one...

Comments

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's prior examples of this. We did it in Ireland in response to the terrorist threat. Not only did it not work; it meant we jailed a whole bunch of people who later turned out to be innocent.

[taoist-goth.livejournal.com]

Think of it the other way round. How about we gain more rights and freedoms at the expense of being slightly more vulnerable to terrorists? Mmm sounds good to me.

[giggly-teapot.livejournal.com]

and me.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

I have an easy response to this issue when I'm dealing with people I know I won't convince but can't avoid commenting.

"The most valuable things bear the highest prices."

Personally, I think freedom and personal rights are worth a risk, if it could even be proven one existed. However, I also firmly believe that letting the government run roughshod over the citizenry never really makes them "safer" anyway.

As example, I cite the ridiculous New York City Subway Voluntary Random Bag Check that ran through after the bombings in London. The procedure was this. The police would randomly select subway stations, and descend on them. They would then select random individuals from those attempting to get to their bloody train on time, and search any bags or briefcases they had. There was a promise there would be no racial profiling, despite a decided history of exactly that in area policework. Further, in a nod to make it something other than blatantly illegal search and seizure, you could refuse to be searched - you would not be allowed to board the train if you did, but you could turn and leave the station instead.

So, uh, who sees the flaw here?
A) It's only specific, "randomly chosen" stations. So, there's still a massive number exposed even by their standards.
B) Random searches. Meaning that, should they be lucky enough to pick the right station "randomly" in the first place, if they search 1 person in 100, truly randomly, they have a 99% chance of missing any actual terrorists trying to board.
C) Voluntary searches. So if you were a terrorist trying to do anything, you could refuse the search and leave scot free. Meaning that, unless they were blatantly stupid, it would never once actually catch a terrorist. Side note/corollary: Nothing prevents you from coming back and trying again tomorrow, really, nor is there a mechanism to keep you from walking a couple blocks aboveground and getting on at the next, unwatched station, going the other direction.
D) All of the above.

So, yeah, basically, all that accomplishes is forcing people who're already rushed and harried to submit to invasions of their privacy (and already, those searches have been used as an excuse to harrass individuals about bag contents that are completely innocuous). The only people it affects are the majority of law-abiding citizens, and the overarching goal it could reasonably accomplish is merely to acclimate reasonable people to the idea that the police can randomly search your person and possessions for no good reason at all.

*pant, pant* Uh... whoops. Probably shouldn't rant in the LJ of someone who probably wouldn't know me from Adam. Point is, I've never seen any evidence that a stringent police state does anything but cause more suffering for its citizenry.

[jruske.livejournal.com]

Despite the opposition to profiling, people need to just accept the fact that profiling works. Businesses use it, governments use it, individuals use it.

If there was no basis for stereotypes then we wouldn't have stereotypes.

As for the effectiveness of random searches... this is an attempt to introduce a fluxuating variable into a smooth running terrorist cell's operation. Does it work? Not really. Let's be honest, in London if one of the bombers had been held up by officiers searching bags what would he have done? Oh. That's right. He got held up by delays so he blew up a bus.

Not a particularly effective tactic against determined individuals. The governments in North America and Europe are still struggling with the simple fact that you cannot "scare off" terrorists. You have to deal with them, and the usual crowd intimidation approaches (big beefy security guards roaming around or random police searches) aren't effective except as PR.

The Israelis had to come to grips with this years ago. After all, if you are so lucky as to actually stop a suicide bomber at a checkpoint then the bomber doesn't politely turn himself/herself in. The bomber blows up the checkpoint. We are going to have to consider how we as a society deal with that type of fanatic.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

This is my essential beef with all the money that gets spent on "anti-terrorism." Not a jot of it prevents actual terrorist acts. At best, it makes the less analytical feel moderately safer - when they are, in fact, in as much danger as before. While that's great PR for a government, it's crap for the folks whose lives are actual in danger when they don't know it. All the big shows and displays I've seen are laughably easy to get around. I recall when the rivets in my jeans set off the metal detectors at JFK after the security crackdowns. They had me stand, unattended, in the middle of the streaming mass of folks headed to planes, surrounded by a flimsy plastic cordon. Had I had some small contraband (an ampule, say, or a single piece of a firearm), passing it to a co-conspirator would not be difficult. Or, again, if I were a suicide bomber, I'd be prevented from blowing up a plane... and instead I'd blow up the terminal and all the people headed to that same plane.

And of course, you can't have knitting needles or nail trimmers on a plane now. That's some clever thinking. Imagine half a dozen terrorists threatening a plane full of passengers and possibly an armed marshall with knitting needles. Frankly, since 9/11, I like to think that even the astonishingly complacent American populace realizes that if a terrorist these days gets control of your plane, you're going to die. And I'd like to think, that being so, enough people would be willing to risk death to prevent certain death, and overwhelm the aggressors.

But the paradigms never update fast enough. The current war is always fought based on the tactics of the last one. And it's going to take a lengthy period for the foolishness to become obvious and something to be done about it. The US would never be willing to learn from any other country. I remember the initial response to the bombings, when I thought "Well, now might be the time to consult with the many, many other nations of the world that have dealt with exactly this kind of problem. This is, comparative to the size and wealth of America, not much bigger than the regular problems elsewhere." But of course, there was no conception that we might similar study violence elsewhere. America is too special, we're too different. We've got our own way of doing things.

And it's a stupid way, in the end.

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

Actually profiling doesn't work. Research done on areas where it has been used show it doesn't. It doesn't work for this reason:

It makes people look at what people are rather than what they are doing.

And it's what people are doing that matters.

[(Anonymous)]

Politicians talking about having to restrict rights as a way to protect the People from "The Threat" - thats usually how police states/dictatorships get started. They get elected, are faced by "the threat" have to (Reluctantly) restrict peoples rights to deal with it and then afterwards can't restore all the rights ("the threat" might come back / we might discover another threat) - btw you no longer have the right to argue with the Govenment any more.

"Those that don't learn from the Mistakes of History are doomed to repeat them"

[jruske.livejournal.com]

There's really no evidence that less civil liberties and less privacy leads to more protection.

The problem is a one-two knock out punch of bad logic:

1) Less privacy and less civil liberties allows law enforcement to have more information to intervene and act to prevent a crime,
2) If you prevent the crime then you cannot convict the intended criminals, so you cannot enforce the law against them.

That said, there has always been an argument which suggests that strict enforcement of existing law establishes a society which self-reports. I.e. if you strictly enforce anti-drug laws consistently then over time people will call in or report on people whom they see involved in drug related activities.

This of course didn't happen in the USA over the past two decades. Despite massive spending and enforcement exercises, the bottom line was that the mainstream society (including the televised version) never saw the harm in drugs or other outlawed substances and as such more and more money being poured into enforcement led to spotty operations that usually had more PR than impact. At best we boosted convictions of committed crimes in direct relationship with the dollars spent and the rolling back of civil liberties.

So to say spending massive amounts of money to create an anti-terrorist push at the federal level in the USA will lead to terrorism being prevented, and arguing that a reduction of civil liberties will enable this further... well that's just bunk. The prior activities support that you cannot even convict people who haven't committed a recorded and documented crime (Gitmo) and preventing/intervening in a crime destroys the credibility of the evidence. Furthermore the reaction of communities accused of sponsoring and harboring terrorists is exactly what you would expect. Those communities use the press and other means to vehemently oppose the accusations, to state or suggest conspiracy theories over why they are being blamed, play the minority entitlement and discrimination card, etc.

Even after video confessions of the terrorists from their community are played by mass media outlets.

The answer for domestic and internal terrorism is not likely at the government level. The government level can work on international and cross border terrorism with some success. But internal terrorism is most effectively addressed by people knowing their neighbors and students and co-workers, paying close attention, and tipping off local authorities if something is just plain wrong.

Whether the local authorities are enabled to do anything with that information is a different problem. That's where civil liberties come into play. And the existing wiretap and survellience laws in the US and the UK are sufficient for that purpose. Along with the protections built into those.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Those communities use the press and other means to vehemently oppose the accusations, to state or suggest conspiracy theories over why they are being blamed, play the minority entitlement and discrimination card, etc. Even after video confessions of the terrorists from their community are played by mass media outlets.

Which is something we've seen before anyway, back in the days when people were Suspiciously Irish. Part of the problem is these aren't things that are discussed openly within a community - because the terrorists know that most of the community won't agree with them. And part of the problem is the - sometimes justified - belief that the authorities haven't got a clue.

If you're certain your co-worker is up to something, you report him (as jambon_gris pointed out a while back, one would-be extremist got reported by his imam when he started shooting his mouth off at the mosque...). If you're just... unsure... which is probably far more likely, you might not report him if you think that could lead to a miscarriage of justice for an innocent man (seven shots to the head, for example). Basically: do you trust the system?

Can the government persuade British muslims that it's after the genuine extremists, not just looking to silence free speech and jail/deport a few convenient people so that it looks like it's making progress? If they can do that, the community will work with them. If not, the community will be busy trying to stand together and less concerned with policing itself.

IMHO, of course. But with 3% of the UK population muslim, I don't think any other response is practical. Looking for a handful of needles in a worried and unhelpful haystack just won't work. And yes, I know I'm mangling my metaphors... :)

Whether the local authorities are enabled to do anything with that information is a different problem. That's where civil liberties come into play. And the existing wiretap and survellience laws in the US and the UK are sufficient for that purpose. Along with the protections built into those.

Agreed (although wiretap evidence is something of an issue here, I think). In fact, most of the UK laws are sufficient. I think it's just easier for the goverment to make a lot of noise about new ones - to prove that they're doing something - than to point out that adequate laws have been there all along and they're just having trouble catching and prosecuting people (or haven't bothered to try to enforce them).

[ninshubur.livejournal.com]

I don't really have any study to point you at. But looking at the 30 year history of the Rote Armee Fraktion in Germany, the strong-arm tactics of the government against everybody even vaguely on their political wavelength and the questionable way the government delt with the real terrorists they actually got, mostly had the effect of driving more people to symphatise with the RAF, and some of them to become active members of the later generations of the organisation.

Interestingly enough the public picture of toughness that was painted by the governement about these laws and measures to make its citizens feel safer probably contributed as much if not more to their long term inefficiency than the measures themselves, which by the way were not that successful to begin with, even ignoring the side-effects. Often the measures were just a reworded version of something which was possible to do for the state anyway and where it wasn't they quite often didn't get away with it in the high court anyway. I certainly see a parallel to recent UK legislation here.

Once the government discovered this and noticed that dealing more silently with the problem using the normal legal, invetigative and intelligence instruments and just treated the people who actually did something criminal as criminals and kept a close, but fairly discreet eye on those people who they thought might do something, the support for the RAF in the public waned which led to its official dissolution after a rather long time of relative inactivity in 1998.

I don't know how much of this you can apply to the phenomenon of Al-Quaida-style terrorism, but upping the pressure on certain groups of people and cutting down on their civil liberties might possibly be a short term win. But in the long run these measures will only serve to enlarge the pool of people drawn to this kind of action and hence actually increase the problem they are designed to solve.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed
In Most countries the law allows sufficent tools for Law Enforcement / Intellegence personnel to track down and obtain the information required to convict such individuals through the courts - the problem is General Intellegence to enable an investigation to be targeted accurately.
However Govenments in reaction to a major attack "need" to be seen to be doing something to avoid critisism and hence look to introduce new legislation to give Police etc the Extra Powers "they need" to catch those responsible.
Historicaly Knee jerk reactions (as pointed out above) can actually generate sympathy (and even recruits) from the Minority community within which the terrorists shelter. In fact it can generate sufficent support that it can (by some more ruthless organisations) be considered worth helping along the Isolation of that community - the release to an islamic tv stn of one of the 7th July Bombers video with him calmly rationalising why he believed he had to do what he was doing was a step in this direction.

The major problem with detection of the present threat is that while you may be able to eventually track down the organiser's & Bomb makers (the support organisation) and shut them down. One of the traditional ways of doing this - by capturing a bomber and getting him to talk, by the nature of present attack method is eliminated (unless like the 2nd batch there is a fault in the devices - and we won't get a break like that again). So it does boil down to traditional law enforcement techniques - it's going to be slow and people need to realise that.

[kest]

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Ben Franklin