Give me liberty and give me surveillance: a case study of the US Government's discourse of surveillance

Abstract

This article reports the critical discourse analysis of www.lifeandliberty.gov, a website constructed by the US Department of Justice, with the expressed intention to explain provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. The analysis reveals a four-part deductive argument that asserts the Act's ability to preserve liberty while enhancing security. Discursive themes appealing to governmental responsibility and authority, national security, individual liberty, historical consistency and legislative efficiency and efficacy support the argument's claims. Despite claims of ‘educating citizens’, the site's discourse is more similar to propaganda than education, relying on one-sided emotional appeals and fallacious logical propositions. The discourse constructs subjectivities of the government as protector, the American citizen as innocent and terrorists as a foreign menace, in an attempt to preclude dissent of the USA PATRIOT Act specifically, and the US Government's terrorism efforts generally. As such, this discourse functions hegemonically to produce what Foucault has termed ‘docile bodies’.