Security vs. Freedom
- www.khouse.org
Our dream of living in a completely free society is stymied by the necessity of having borders. We are not "free" to randomly walk across those borders. We are not "free" to go faster than the speed limit, as well as a myriad of other restrictions we call "laws." For a "safe AND secure" society, the reality is that certain restrictions are necessary.
This changes over time. In times without threat, freedom can be bold. We can, if only for a little while, release the grip on our vigilance of outside or inside aggression. We enjoy the rest from the general distrust so much that when a threat begins to arise, we resist awakening and proceed into a period of denial. At this point, history usually takes the opportunity to wake and refocus us by providing an event of sufficient shock and overt aggression as to prevent our continued "sleep."
We then go on high alert, deal with the threat and then gradually proceed back through the cycle again. If we are lucky there are those that will remember as the next cycle comes back around. The tendency is to forget. This is where history starts repeating itself.
The Creation of Monsters
In the well-known movie, "A Few Good Men," Jack Nicholson plays a sad, dangerous, but possibly necessary character who stays vigilant for society's security when the rest of us "sleep well at night." He is portrayed as the "bad guy." He makes seemingly immoral decisions under the justification of our common good.
This is the backside of the cycle of which we spoke. In the severe reaction to overt threat, a society, if only temporarily, is willing to trade "freedom" for "security." In this slice of the cycle there are people put in place and organizations created who are given wide-ranging latitude to violate societal restrictions the rest of us must adhere to.
If they are successful in thwarting the threat, then the "end justifies the means" and we go back to our peaceful existence. If it doesn't, we escalate the type and "flexibility" of the resources until success is achieved.
The difficulty with bureaucracies, no matter how clandestine, is that they act just like any organism. They have defense mechanisms that assure their survival and continuity. We have many historical examples of this social reality.
History Still Repeats
In June of 1942, The enormous Japanese Imperial Fleet was directed to seize the island of Midway. This move was a direct threat to Pearl Harbor and what small fleet we had. We had to respond. The only advantage we had obtained was the breaking of the Japanese communications code. With this electronic advantage we were able to defeat a much larger fleet, which changed the balance of power in the Pacific for the remainder of the war.
This success was followed closely by the breaking of the German codes that had a similar outcome in Europe. Even in a time when electronic communication was in its infancy, this small advantage underscored the importance of stealing, deciphering and reading the communications of not only your enemies but anyone remotely untrustworthy.
The National Intelligence Agency (NSA) evolved through other post-war organizations who were tasked with this surveillance. It was formed in 1951 as an umbrella under which to organized these many separate groups. It was tasked with knowing what Russia, led by Joseph Stalin, and China, with which we were then fighting, were saying within their electronic communication.
After World War II the electronic revolution was "jump started." But the threat was still seen as from individual nation-states. The NSA focused on the internal communications of those obvious nations that were suspect. This was the seminal beginning of the NSA mandate "to know all."
As we have moved ever so more quickly into an electronically dominated world culture, the NSA mission has not changed, but is has expanded. As types of new electronic communication were created, and new creative ways of encryption developed, it became necessary to expand in size and latitude. Remember, this was all in response to a perceived threat to our national security interests.
The fear of what happened at Pearl Harbor has guided our security posture through the Cold War and up to our present predicament in which there are no longer only two nuclear powers, but many. Much like the Jewish reaction to the Holocaust, the rallying cry was "Never again." Nagasaki and Hiroshima scared us as much as the rest of the world. Never again would we be caught by surprise. The NSA was tasked with ensuring this.
Having survived the Cold War era, we were drifting off into our collective peaceful repose, when the unimaginable happened. The 9/11 attacks occurred. Over three thousand Americans were killed, on American soil no less. We were jerked to alertness. Clearly, the entire intelligence apparatus was taken by surprise. Our worst fears were realized. An intelligence community that had protected us fairly well for nearly 60 years had failed us again. Collectively we needed someone to blame.
In the immediate aftermath of this event we made many hasty decisions. Not only did we allow passage of the Patriot Act, which greatly undermines individual rights, but once again we broadened the scope and latitude of the Intelligence Community. It should have been no surprise (and probably wasn't) to Congress and the rest of the country that the NSA had been recording everything and everybody. We allowed, asked for, and approved it all.
Maybe that was a different "space and time," but the bureaucracy only knows what it has been tasked with. It strives to maintain that tact hoping that that will ensure its continued existence. "Never again."
This in no way justifies violating the Constitutional protections we are afforded. But, as a society, allowing, and cheering on the agencies that intimately do, and then vilifying them for the very actions we condoned, is unfair. There are untold (literally "untold") numbers of NSA agents that have died for this country trying to protect our freedom to "rest in peace."
What we presently need to do is clean house. We need to clean it of the bureaucracies that were an overreaction to events. We need to clean it of organizations that were clearly for a different time and place. We need to sweep out every corner. We need to pull every weed, no matter how stubborn and ingrown. Most of all, we need to take responsibility for our nation's actions and reactions.
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