Suspension of Civil Liberties for National Security Research Paper

Introduction

A national security issue has been in controversy since the time when democracies of Europe and North America arise. While Americans have suffered from many problems since then, the worst fears have been realized to succumb to international terrorism. That clearly indicates us to the point where enacted or renewed special powers or security forces have expanded their jurisdictions, and most states increased protection around certain installations and important persons. So it might be argued that in these and other ways, the democracies of civil liberty emerged subtly less free, and in other words, we can argue that the consequences of imposing civil jurisdictions uphold its own limitations that start from being less democratic.

While many countries, despite applying civil liberties, have failed to achieve a balance between effective countermeasures against international terrorism and the protection of democratic practices and civil liberties, therefore it indicates that terrorism, whether in the name of national security or international sanctuaries, has been unable to get hold of.

My standpoint that terrorism does not justify the suspension of civil liberties does not require any emotional reasoning devoid of any logical or factual justification, but those grounds that defend certain countermeasures to be examined. In the name of national security, such measures that perturb the general public include special powers implications, negotiations with terrorist groups, international collaborative measures, intelligence methods, target-hardening, and military or paramilitary actions (Charters: 3).

This study would assess the impact of these measures on the democratic character of the imposed limits on individual rights that not only impose restrictions on the media but also widens the intrusive investigative powers of police and other security forces, which provide a free hand to law enforcement and judicial procedures to the detriment of democracy and civil liberties.

When we talk about preserving civil freedom, we need to talk about the significance of the social realm between civil society and the state. This social realm is accountable for providing the civil society with intermediate institutions that include businesses, unions, voluntary associations, educational facilities, media, charities, and religious institutions (Bendle, 52:115). In turn, civil society helps in maintaining balanced economic and cultural forces and helps in preserving individual and group interests and differences.

Problem Statement

According to Ignatieff’s quote in The Financial Times on September 12, “As America has realized now being at war with an enemy which has no face and no name, it must concern about keeping a balance between liberty and security in the battle with terrorism” (Pearlstein, 15:7). Preserving civil liberty in the age of terrorism is the biggest obstruction in bridging up the gap between providing national security and coping up with terrorism countermeasures.

According to chief justice Rehnquist, what a civilized society requires is to maintain a proper balance between freedom and law and order (William Rehnquist, 1998). However, today’s foreign and national policies lack such balancing powers and abuse civil liberty. The best example is the aftermath of 9/11, which affected not only Americans but brought an insecure regime to the rest of the world. Researchers, while considering the significance aftermath of 9/11, analyzed those pressing issues that we’re concerned with civil rights abuses in the pursuit of terrorism. The nature of foreign policies in a unipolar world restricted Americans from moving freely, even in their own motherland.

On the one hand, liberal democracies are viewed as ‘insufficient’ when it comes to alleviating civil wrongs, thereby compromising democracy, whereas, on the other end, war, crisis, and imposing law and order result in employment and migration restrictions. The aftermath of terrorist attacks like 9/11 eroded not only peace but also put American securities at stake and disrupted the economic as well as physical conditions of the country (Buckley & Fawn: 54).

The outcome of suspending fundamental civil liberties in the name of terrorist attacks in many cases are followed by public unease resulting in restrictions like banning religious groups (this is what happened when a new Section 129 b in the anti-terror paragraph of the criminal code was introduced in the 1970s to cope up with left-wing terrorism). Such authorities, in the name of ‘war against terror,’ gave the police the power to pursue suspected terrorists residing in Germany but plotting against other countries. Resulting in the alleviation of civil freedom, it resulted in ‘improving’ air safety by more rigorous checking on the background of airport employees by monitoring their subsequent behavior, which disrupted their personal activities and improving baggage checks due to which public claimed timing problem. In addition, banking security was toughened due to amendments in banking regulations, and there was no privacy left for the American public in buildings. Furthermore, police were allowed to gain access to personal information gathered by government agencies, thereby breaking a long-held taboo.

The negative effect of suspensions on civil liberties

Though methods and practices which are usually adopted for preventing acts of terrorism are for the safety of the public sector, it also results in disrupting their freedom of speech, press, and religion and does not protect against any unreasonable search and seizure. Countermeasures include traditional law enforcement approaches to investigate crimes, proactive attitudes, and provoke many civil and community issues like racial profiling, immigration problems, etc. (Ronczkowski: 4).

Sacrificing civil liberties to combat terrorism is reflected in Patriot Act which is experienced as a new deal with the war on terrorism. There are logical examples before us that justify technological neutrality when we do investigations. For example, there was a time when the old law was followed which allowed Americans to follow a trap-and-trace or pen register technique, a method of making guesses to telephone numbers. If someone received a phone call, but over the internet, he had to adopt a different kind of court order which is named as technological neutrality according to American Criminal Law Review (2002) and therefore restricts the public from utilizing any new means of investigative technique.

Information sharing has also been criticized for it does not allow a common American citizen to investigate and discover something regarding terrorism. For example, while sitting in a grand, if one finds out something fishy that a group of people has some particular plans to blow up a building, the law would prohibit the person from calling the Department of Defense. Before suspending any civil freedom, it is necessary to analyze the fact that in the name of preventing terrorist acts when our law tries to prosecute the real culprits even before they commit terrorism, we must be legally free to exchange information so as to bring together all of the knowledge in the U.S. government which is scattered due to the fact that part of the information is in one department and part is in another department, and they are not talking to each other (Patriot Act, 39: 1501).

Terrorism at the cost of liberty

One example of the intense implication of suspending civil freedom is various changes in immigration laws. The United States where on the one hand, depends heavily on foreign trade and immigration; on the other hand, the rapid changes in immigration laws so far have affected its own legal immigrants. Even who cares about those five million illegal immigrants, out of which 2.7 million remain undocumented (Cordesman: 40).

Economically ‘the war on terrorism has made things only worst for the United States. A common example is that of a large number of foreign students who are respecting open borders used to come to study. Suspending and changing civil laws has exploited this situation due to the risk the jurisdiction feels that a small minority has taken advantage of their student status to support terrorist activity despite so many measures to combat security issues, which takes into account those millions who legally visit the country and who is responsible for the four million persons who are illegal residents and are never caught. Immigration laws so far have no account for half of the illegal residents who entered the country without inspection.

The controversial detention provision under the influence of which a Pakistani student was picked up by the FBI just for the reason he was taking an unnecessary interest in using small planes for anthrax is just an example before us the way the FBI arrests and treats overseas students. This is a critical situation that is influencing the U.S economy globally (Policy, 2001).

Technological developments are another area that has been affected by civil rights suspension in a way that has allowed only law-abiding citizens and terrorists to curse freedom. In this sense, such developments are ‘liberalizing’ because they have disrupted many public authorities’ abilities to conduct investigations. Even cyberspace has been affected by the limitations law enforcement agencies have put on the general public, which has made them ‘suspicious’ in their own country.

Means of identification have created difficulties for civilians where in the case of driver’s licenses, which are supposed to be issued for traffic safety, have now been used for identifying people who seek to cash checks for homeland security purposes. Different security measures and uses require varying levels of confidence in the civilians, but driver’s licenses have not been supposed to use against a higher level of security needed for the war against terrorism.

Many civil libertarian organizations are the examples before us who have blamed the Government’s interest after 9/11 in obtaining new destructive powers and have called their desires as ‘insatiable appetite’ with lack of transparency, alleviating equality under law and order and removing checks and balances of foreigners. One such organization is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (Etzioni: 9). Civil libertarian organizations do not imply that we should cease or put a ban to encourage human rights or civil liberty, but rather our policymakers should realize that there are severe limits on how much progress can be made by imposing such policies without disrupting public privacy.

Many researchers like Peabody (2002) suggest that in resolving the problem of civil liberty in terrorism, military tribunals may be more appropriate than ordinary civil courts because they might balance the nation’s interest in security and order with targeted concerns about liberty (Peabody, 66: 90). Now despite possessing the power of military defense tribunals, many still doubt the details of the administration’s specific proposal that seem alarming in preserving civilian rights. Peabody (2002), while assessing such tribunals, names their proposals as “moving targets” (Peabody, 66: 90).

No doubt law enforcement officials after September 11 resisted every reasonable effort to find some balance between the requirements of security and those of liberty, but during the course of negotiations, when put forward important and practical suggestions about protecting civil liberty, none were taken seriously (Halperin, 12: 10).

Many authors on this topic present themselves as pragmatic civil libertarians who not only are keen to take an interest in preserving civil liberty but are also willing to make those tough compromises that are made to preserve security and prevent severe rights violations in the name of ‘war on terrorism. Roth (2006) highlights their claim to fulfill a detailed and thoughtful balance between liberty and security and raises the question of a demanding transaction (Roth, 28: 80).

The threat of losing Democracy

Past decades have witnessed many concerns about helping democracy to grow in countries that have had little previous experience dealing with such situations where terrorism has remained a threat too. Such forms of Governance have fought many wars in balancing the scope between terrorism measures and retaining democratic powers and have lost in being democratic. These losses have remained germane as it is believed by Government officials and policymakers that in order to survive future waves of terrorist attacks, it is essential to turn our free societies into garrison states, though civilians might be reluctant to accept such a trade-off.

Democracy, when viewed in terms of internal developments, it does not go along with any empirical data or basis to study the conditions under which democracy has actually lost, and there is a reason for it. Since democracy or civil liberty has never been lost due to internal developments, it has only an external threat. Analyzing the external threats, Hays (2007) suggests that attempts to create institutional safeguards would likely protect American civil liberties for war on terror does not existentially pose a threat on real terrorists but an internal threat to civilians (Hays, 37: 783).

The fourth Amendment example before us does not state that Congress is restricted to make no law allowing search and seizure or anything like that; what it states is that there should be no unreasonable searches. Therefore it shows how important it is to take into account the consideration of public interest. According to Etzioni (2004), “Our jurisdiction and courts have long recognized the matter of our future and safety by acknowledging our right to privacy has to be weighed against our need for public safety” (Etzioni: 4). Therefore today, legal authorities elaborate how unreasonable it is to argue that we should not sacrifice our rights for our security. Such facts according to our jurisdiction count towards a highly misleading way of framing this issue, just as it would be misleading for someone to argue that we should sacrifice our security to protect our rights.

It would not be wrong to say that reasonable security-enhancing measures are still not sufficient in our society; in fact, there are measures that it taken are not to be blamed for violating civil rights. Suppose implemented such measures never allow a civilian to be searched, stopped, or fingerprinted.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, we have observed that civil liberties should not be restricted in a free and democratic society unless the threats are logically proven. Practically, such decisions to restrict civil liberties should be taken only after a proper analysis of the available alternatives based on the grounds of seriousness, immediacy, specificity, and likelihood of the threat.

In order to maintain a balance between civil rights and conducting a war on terror, it is necessary for civil liberties to be proportional to the threat. Galgan & Greene (2004) suggests that “while determining whether a measure is proportional, one should consider the degree of intrusiveness of the measure, the duration of the intrusion, the proportion of the population affected, and the fundamentality of the right or liberty implicated” (Galgan & Greene: 86).

Civil liberties should not be suspended at all; however, they can be restricted to the least extent to satisfy certain criteria. Firstly, the restriction must not be imposed in the interest of national defense only; it must ensure national security as proportional to the specific threat and must be well suited to counter the threat. Secondly, it must fulfill a certain procedure to allow restrictions on civil liberties in an as open and transparent manner as possible, thereby providing accountability in a timely and meaningful manner.

Work Cited

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