The False Trade-Off Between Security and Liberty

"What if Congress had accepted the recommendation? Hardened cockpits would have made impossible the 9/11 attacks in the form they took. If so, instead of being grateful to the Gore commission, we today might well mock hardened cockpit doors as a classic example of government waste—of looking in the wrong directions for threats that never came. The better security works, the less we appreciate the need for it. The more effectively we are protected against harm, the less gratitude we feel to our protectors."

This argument would be much better settled if these were the measures adopted. Instead we get the TSA. Regulations like "don't open cockpit doors" or "make things bullet and knife proof" are much less intrusive and freedom-protecting than the TSA or other behavioral traps.

"It’s precisely to protect the rights of cartoonists like Charlie Hebdo’s that governments deploy surveillance against potential terrorists."

This would be great if governments were surveilling only terrorists, instead of literally everyone, including their own citizens.

The article makes not justification for its title "the false trade-off betweent security and liberty." It only says it's ok because we don't hear about the attacks that are prevented. That's not good enough.

Given the ease with which many magazines and newspapers have managed to get explosives and weapons through all the security checkpoints at major transportation centers, the total shock the west was in during all the different transitions of power and politics during the "Arab Spring", and the complete lack of warning the West had for the terrorist attacks we've seen, isn't it more likely that like many experts claim, very little if any terrorist attacks have actually been stopped by all this spying?

Well, that's one take on it.

"This resolution derives its emotional force from a broad sentiment among British people that they are more monitored and controlled than were their parents and grandparents, more harried and bullied. These feelings are amply justified. Not since the age of the village stocks and the ducking stool have people been as surveilled by their neighbors—or as exposed to public humiliation."

Right. So largely, people believe they are more controlled than before. This makes them unhappy, among other things. I guess somehow the author expects this sentiment to be ignored for the purposes of "security" if we merely divert blame from GCHQ to Facebook (a private entity). This attempt to derail the thrust of the problem is debunked by the well-known fact that Facebook collaborates extensively and exhaustively with intelligence organizations. Facebook isn't identical to GCHQ, but it's certainly a major input into their activities. The idea that community-based shunning is the primary oppressor of people doesn't quite mesh with the ability for people to sequester themselves among like-minded people more easily than ever thanks to the internet.

"By contrast, the security measures adopted by the British government to protect its people from terrorism are reasonable, minimally intrusive, and appropriate to the scale of the threat. They are not sacrifices of liberty. They are bulwarks for liberty—bulwarks against the would-be totalitarians of our time."

No. The security measures are part of a larger trend of oppressive behavior. Remember when the UK banned certain kinds of pornography? That wasn't related to "security"-- it was intrusive, not necessary, and a sacrifice of liberty. On that note, it doesn't support any security purposes to spy on what kind of porn people consume, but of course they do it anyway (check the Snowden files) because such information is a powerful tool for blackmail. Knowledge of this kind of program completely invalidates any claims of mass invasive spying being necessary for security.

The article fails to argue that mass-surveillance is a required and proportional way to counter the threats mentioned. I think instead we should debate what level of suspicion should be required to form a basis to conduct a surveillance on someone instead of the "we have to monitor everyone including the innocent continuously" dogma.

just like the author claims that we do not appreciate the good consequences of surveillance because, when it works well, it's invisible, i can claim the same about it's negative consequences. e.g., if congressmen and -women are changing their votes on intelligence budgets because some spy found out they hired a prostitute some time ago and blackmailed them. indeed, when it works well, it is invisible.

the core of the issue is limiting the spy's power, and giving them appropriate oversight.

If I understand this correctly, the claim is that the massive surveillance is preventing deep, complicated plots like 9/11, so that what we get instead are more situations where one person does a (somewhat) mass shooting. It's not "mass" on the scale of 9/11, though - not even all of them put together are. So in terms of people's lives, it's a net win.

And in terms of freedom to just get on with your life, it's a net win for most of us... so far.

The problem is, if you give the government enough power to spy on people in order to prevent terrorism, sooner or later someone might use it for other than the intended purpose. And here the article's argument works exactly: You don't know how much tyranny has been prevented by denying the government the power to spy on citizens.

This is a nice load of shit from a pretty well-accomplished bullshitter (he almost made Bush look not-retarded) that really says nothing other than the police/government/military can do no wrong and we should sacrifice everything for security, even when many of the threats to security are made up.

He even manages to use a quote directed just against such people as himself and his former boss: “We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.” Those selfish people are the real terrorists. The real terrorists are the ones who started international wars without any basis. They are the people who constantly continue to abuse the American people and enslave them with both draconian laws and such bullshit drivel as this article. Yes, we are aware of those assholes, it's just really hard to do anything about it when the majority of idiots in the world (and especially in the US) buy the bullshit sold in "articles" like this.

Some of the examples given seem either unrelated or rather disturbing if they are related. Specifically, the reference to Tim Hunt and Justine Sacco seem to be there to promote a "Free expression and liberty are under attack!" narrative, which is a seemingly true enough point, but hopefully not relevant to the topic of counter-terrorism legislation. Should Britain have located and arrested everyone who contributed to those stories blowing up? If not, then why are these incidents being brought up in this governmental context?

Mob justice is antithetical to free expression, but is messy and complicated, and governmental action is too blunt a tool to fight it with.

Government rifling through our underwear provides only part of the justification for the pervasive mistrust of government. Hand-in-hand with the forced mass transparency of the proles has been the increasing opacity of even mundane functions of government. It seems everything is done in secret nowadays. Trade agreement negotiations, standardized test scores, you name it, surely to protect "sources and methods."

How are we to know what to support as citizens? What's worse, cyberterrorism due to fundamentally insecure cryptography infrastructure, or physical terrorism due to a lack of spying capability? I am marginally more afraid of what terrorists can do with computers than what they can do with guns and bombs.

This is a very confused set of remarks. I rather hope he lost the debate.

For one thing, neither the Tim Hunt nor the Justine Sacco cases have anything to do with "national security", unless Frum is further going to argue that the government has an interest in preventing the act of saying stupid things from having consequences. There was not even anything criminal involved. The Le Pen and Essex University events, while I don't particularly care for efforts to prevent someone from speaking, were rather in the nature of the whole freedom-of-speech thing. Protests do happen. And when he goes on to wonder "if British thinkers, writers, and artists dread economic reprisal," I feel compelled to point out that he's gone completely off the rails: if

"We are gathered here today to discuss the state of liberty in the United Kingdom—and the purported threat to those liberties from measures to promote the nation’s security, especially against terrorism."

then the majority of his comments aren't even in the same county, much less the building holding the debate.

Now, he does manage to touch on the actual topic when he says, "And if we consider other liberties also cherished by free people—[...] the right of a nation’s citizens to be free of punishment by their nation except in accordance with positive law applied with due process [...]" but he consistently fails to actually make any argument on that topic. Well, sort of. Unfortunately, "they do it, too, and worse" is not really compelling.

Now, I do get his side points. I was a system administrator for many years, and if you want an example of a job that is only noticed when you dramatically screw up, it is a fine one. And I'm not one to think that "security" and "liberty" are in eternal and unforgiving opposition: I also get that meaningful liberty is impossible without a solid base of security. (I also get that Frum would disagree strongly with me about the details; given his little attacks on anti-discrimination and environmental protection, we might have a problem over the definition of the liberty to employ and to be employed or the right to enjoy property.)

But I'm afraid Frum doesn't get that, in a free society, the answer to Abraham Lincoln’s famous question: “Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts—while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert?” is a pretty solid "Yup." Perhaps followed by "Them's the risks if you don't want to be the target yourself." You certainly can't yell "Fire!" unnecessarily in a crowded theater, but if you're as confused about the difference between a military threat, a criminal threat, a social or economic threat, and perfectly legitimate disagreement as Frum, it's entirely too easy and tempting to declare "Packing too many people into a single room is bad" as a threat requiring a military response. Been down that road before, in fact.

If you don't buy that, consider the "Prevent" program he describes as "an effort worth applauding". The linked article mentions,

"But one of the biggest knocks to Prevent came when it emerged four years ago that CCTV cameras in Muslim areas of Birmingham - 72 of them hidden - were partly funded by Home Office counter-terrorism cash.

"The loss of confidence and trust in police was enormous."

It shouldn't be a wild surprise that

"Mr Khan said: 'Most young people are seeing [Prevent] as a target on them and the institutions they associate with.'"

And that is what is hard to reconcile with "the right of a nation’s citizens to be free of punishment by their nation except in accordance with positive law applied with due process".

If the terrorist threat were as severe as we are led to believe, there would be a lot more terrorist attacks.