Facing Reality: The Urgency of Security, Essay Example

Introduction

In most people’s minds, the defining moment of national security as a crucial concern came in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.  Before then, there were concerns; hijackings and various other threats had instilled in the administration and the public a greater awareness of external dangers.   No dramatic changes, however, were set in place until 9/11, because the circumstances were unprecedented; this was not an intrusion to cause death and damage by means of infiltration, but a blatant and fatal assault.   Intense security began to be conducted, particularly in airports, and Americans very quickly adapted to the practices of removing shoes and belts, offering everything in their possession to be scanned, and even surrendering cosmetic products at checkpoints.

However, as time passed and the national mood eased in regard to fear of attack, resentment took the place of support.  More and more Americans, and with every passing year that did not bring about a new terrorist assault, began protesting the security efforts viewed by them as unnecessary.   This national attitude is understandable, to an extent, but it also ignores the documented cases wherein potential terrorists have been detained through these same procedures.  Privacy is certainly a right, but the global situation today demands that it be balanced by safety considerations.   As privacy is a right, so too is the public entitled to be secure from attack, and today’s security measures remain vital tools in protecting the safety of all.

Argument

There is a very substantial irony lying at the heart of the debate regarding security and privacy.  That is to say, it is continued protection that generates the anger and the resistance to security, and this is in place despite documented cases of terrorist attempts to at least enter the U.S.   For example, on Christmas day of 2010, a Nigerian man named Umar Farouk  Abdulmutallab boarded a flight to the U.S. in Amsterdam.  It was later discovered that he had plastic explosives sewn into his underwear.   Because of trouble in spelling his name, security was unable to follow up on the warnings provided by the man’s own father: “Abdulmutallab –  a 23-year-old Nigerian with no coat, no luggage and cash for his ticket –  ambled right through the metal detector in Amsterdam and onto Northwest Airlines Flight 253” (Schulz).   It is extraordinarily ironic, that so nearly averted a disaster has little impact on the public consciousness precisely because it was averted.

It also seems that the public’s resistance to continued and/or enhanced security measures is never entirely about privacy, but more about inconvenience.  The reality is that most travelers probably do not object to the intimate aspect of scanners, certainly insofar as they involve walking through detectors.  Even the controversial, new scanning devices, which reveal passengers unclothed, do not appear to profoundly disturb them: “A recent USA Today poll found that 78 percent of respondents approved of their use at airports” (Rosen).  For one thing, even the casual passenger understands that there is no gratuitous element to this security; it is, in a sense, not unlike a cursory medical examination, which rarely creates feelings of being “violated” in people.  Then, the approval rating indicates something interesting, which is that, when polled and presumably able to rationally consider the issue, people are inclined to place security first.   It is the actual process of security that tends to create dismay.  A great deal of additional time is needed to go through the process, depending upon the lines at the checkpoints.  Then, it is simply disagreeable to have to remove shoes, jewelry, and other personal items.  It definitely appears that inconvenience is the greatest concern, when it comes to objections about intense airport security.

There is also the difficult question of assessing a circumstance that is, again, unprecedented in U.S. history.   Privacy, simply, has been an unquestioned right because there has never been a reason important enough to question it.  It has never before been placed in so unusual and potentially dangerous a context, and this leads to a kind of reflex of objection which overlooks the greater reality.  The argument against enhanced airport security usually runs along these lines:

“We…need the secluded intimacy of privacy, and the latter is threatened by surveillance” (Griffiths).   The problem with this basic reasoning, however, is that it neither defines privacy itself, and does not fully take into account why security is in place.   Regarding the first point, privacy may mean different things to different people, although it is generally held to be the right to not reveal that which the individual chooses to keep private.   This is only a “right” when the individual is willing to forgo other rights typically seen as equally fundamental, such as the right to live safely.   In terms of basic logic, rights within a society are not mutually exclusive things; they rely on one another, even as they define one another.  Rights are agreed-upon aspects of a society, and underlying all of them is what that society is in place to provide.   This goes to the second point, which is answered by the fact that societies are formed, on a fundamental level, to be secure arenas in which people may live out their lives.   Consequently, the right of privacy, viewed in the wider perspective, must adapt to the more urgent need.  It is not necessarily a pleasant thing to accept, but the right of privacy can exist only when the right to live safely is established.

Those who vehemently resist security measures ignore basic and irrefutable conditions of living in the world today, and often in a way that describes privacy rights in idealistic, if not outright poetic, terms:  “When the state crosses the borders into my private self, it is an ugly act. But border crossing the other way…is an act of beauty and transcendence”  (Griffiths).   These arguments against excess security are deeply personal.  They are also flawed, as in the above assertion.  The “state” assessing the private self is only as “ugly” an act as the motivations behind it.  If the state does so to harm, illegally confine or interrogate, or in some other way subjugate and debase the individual, it is ugly.  By this same reasoning, however, the state’s same actions done to protect the life of the individual may be presented as caring and responsible.  In cases of security, it must always be remembered that it is motive, and not act, that matters.   People know that there is no bizarre or improper impulse behind body scanning; these attributes are attached as a reflex mechanism, and are allowed to eclipse the true motivation for the activity.   To allow them to become so resistant as to threaten security networks would be disastrous, and would, ironically, probably generate outrage over a negligent government from the same people so hostile to that government’s precautions.

Conclusion

It is likely that no one would assert that privacy is unimportant.  It matters to everyone, and everyone enjoys and expects the ability to give out personal information of any kind as they themselves deem appropriate.  This is a mode of living to which people have become accustomed, and that in itself speaks well for society.  At the same time, it must be remembered, and reinforced even more when no actual threats materialize, that this is a right that can only be present when the essential structure of the society is protected.   Global conflicts in recent years have moved in directions never before known, and been manifested in ways also unusual and not in keeping with traditional conflicts.   Ideologies clash, and extremists operate in a singled-minded manner unheard of in years past, which prompts a responsible government to take whatever steps are necessary to protect the lives of the people.  If privacy is a right, so too must the public be safeguarded from attack, and security measures in place today  remain vital tools in ensuring the safety of all.

Works Cited

Griffiths, J.  “The Tips of Your Fingers: Individualism, Identity, and the State’s Assault on Public Life ”  Orion Magazine, January/February, 2010.  Retrieved  from http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5239/

Rosen, J.  “Nude Awakening: The Dangerous Naked Machines”  The New Republic, January 29, Retrieved from http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/nude-awakening

Schulz, C.  “New Airport Policy: Grin and Bare It”  Creators.com.  Retrieved from http://www.creators.com/liberal/connie-schultz/new-airport-policy-grin-and-bare-it.html