Liberty and Security in an Era of Terrorism

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Not only did the events of September 11, 2001 (henceforth 9/11) have a profound effect on our national and international psyches, but they also prompted a radical reconsideration and even revision of seemingly well-established moral responses. The racial profiling by police that had been recently condemned by public opinion and official inquiry was often revived with a different attitude and outcome when the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were identified. Governmental surveillance that would have been considered incompatible with a free society was suddenly and overwhelmingly enshrined in what, without a trace of irony, was called the USA PATRIOT Act. Even the revulsion against torture that seemingly required no further justification has been reviewed and reconstructed in official memoranda and public debate. This was not, of course, the first time that some of these issues had been broached. National security has a long history of debate associated with it. The Korematsu (1944) decision of World War II, sanctioning the internment of large numbers of Japanese Americans, was only one of the more notorious occasions on which such debate occurred. Other incidents during the Vietnam War (e.g., the publication of the Pentagon Papers and violation of Daniel Ellsberg's privacy rights) excited similar concerns. Secret CIA manuals prepared for Latin American military use crossed the public radar screen in the late 1980s and early 1990s.