Of all the lame excuses offered for the failures ofU.S. intelligence and security that facilitated the attacks on the World TradeCenter and the Pentagon, the most disingenuous was the repeated claim thatantiterrorism efforts have been restrained by respect for America's freedoms.Tell that to the victims of harsh counterterrorism and immigration laws passed inthe aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing: the Arab Americans who werewrongfully imprisoned for several years on the basis of secret evidence; theasylum seekers who have been turned away from our borders by low-levelbureaucrats without ever receiving a hearing; the thousands of lawful immigrantsimprisoned and threatened with deportation for minor offenses committed yearsago. Tell it to the victims of racial profiling on our highways and in ourairports.
I don't doubt that some federal law-enforcement agents are honorableand respectful of individual freedom. But in general, the law-enforcementbureaucracy respects our freedoms grudgingly, only when it must, under courtorder or the pressure of bad publicity. Congress is often just as bad. While boththe House and the Senate include some staunch civil libertarians, they haven'thad nearly enough influence to stop the antilibertarian and highly ineffectivecounterterrorism and crime-control laws that recent Democratic and Republicanadministrations have embraced. Often, law-enforcement agents violate our rightsbecause they've been authorized to do so by law. [See "Taking Liberties," TAP, January-February 1999, and "GamesProsecutors Play," September-October 1999, both by Wendy Kaminer.]
Lawmakers have, in turn, been authorized by voters to sacrifice our personal liberties for the empty promise of public safety. Sixty-five percent of peoplesurveyed in 1995, after Oklahoma City, favored giving the FBI power toinfiltrate and spy on suspected terrorist groups without evidence of a crime.Fifty-eight percent wanted to give the government power to deport any noncitizensuspected of planning terrorism. Fifty-four percent agreed that in the fightagainst terrorism, the government should not be hampered by concern forindividual rights. I suspect that many more Americans support restrictions oncivil liberties today.
It's likely that when people agree to cede liberty for the sakeof order, they imagine ceding other people's liberties, not their own: If AfricanAmericans were an active political majority in this country, they would probablynot be the victims of racial profiling. But many Americans have been willing totolerate minor bureaucratic intrusions for the sake of feeling safer, even whenthe feeling is illusory.
Consider our submissive behavior in airports. I understand why weline up at security gates and run bags through an X ray; it's a minorinconvenience that seems to have a rational relationship to safety. But why do wedocilely hand over our government-issued picture IDs? The ID requirement doesn'tdeter terrorists; instead it discourages people from transferring their discounttickets. It probably increases revenue for the airlines more than it enhancessecurity for passengers. After all, terrorists who have access to explosives andother weapons have access to fake IDs. And they probably lie when asked if theirbags have been constantly in their possession or if they've received any itemsfrom strangers.
It's a small point, but the now passé notion that a picture-IDrequirement coupled with a stupid question routine was a meaningful securitymeasure epitomized our sloppy, thoughtless approach to airline safety. Securitylapses had nothing to do with the preservation of freedom, as recent reports oninadequate security at Boston's Logan Airport have shown. As The Boston Globe reported the day after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., low wages, poor benefits, high turnover, and inadequate background checks by the private companies that were hired to handle airport security contributed to the unsafe conditions at Logan--which had not gone unnoticed. According to The WallStreet Journal, in 1998 the Federal Aviation Administration investigated a private cleaning service employed by the Massachusetts Port Authority (which runs Logan). It fined Massport and major airlines $178,000 after a teenager successfully stowed away on a plane in 1999. The airlines themselves have resisted stronger federal oversight of security and mandates that would have affected their bottom lines. What hampered the fight against terrorism are the usual suspects, incompetence and venality--not respect for liberty.
Imagine if federal law enforcers spent all the time, money, and attentionthat they now devote to an ineffective, repressive war on drugs on understandingand deterring terrorism. Consider the corrosive effect the drug war has had onFourth Amendment freedoms and on foreign policy: Last spring the Bushadministration announced a $40-million gift to Afghanistan's Taliban governmentin consideration of its promise to ban opium production. If the administrationwants to prosecute people who aid and abet terrorists, it should turn itself inimmediately. There are evils to blame for the Trade Center attack, as thepresident observed, but many of them are domestic.
