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

[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.