Can Security Countermeasures Be Overdone - Essay Example

Can Security Running head: CAN SECURITY MEASURES BE OVERDONE? Can Security Countermeasures be Overdone? (Your Affiliation) Can Security 1 Can Security Countermeasures be Overdone? Introduction The 9/11event left indelible scars on the psyche of people, not just in the USA, but also across the world. The audacity, the colossal destruction of life and property, and the fact that it was perpetrated against the most powerful and vigilant of nations with ease, stunned the world and prompted nations world over to a rash of unprecedented actions to put in place countermeasures against threats, real and potential. When a nation gets paranoid, reason takes back seat. Response of the governments ranged from full scale war in Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq sans UN approval, to choking off funds-flow to terrorist elements, compulsory screening, finger printing, strip & search of all non-nationals or even suspect nationals at all points of entry and exit, installation of electronic eavesdropping devices / phone tapping / mail interception, passing of draconian laws in the face of strong opposition from Human Rights activists, etc. and a myriad of other methods. Orwellian ‘Big brother is watching you’ (Orwell, 1949) has become a fact of life. All these signify the hard line, no nonsense approach, led especially by the governments in the USA and UK. They were primarily intended to assuage the injured American pride in the name of ‘war on terror’. Institutions, businesses and citizens did not lag far behind in this era of panic and paranoia. No thought is spared for common sense approach for restraint in applying the measures. Times, they have changed, yes. But changing times can again change, if only one learns the right Can Security 2 lessons from history. Overdoing ‘hardware intensive’ and ‘legislative’ countermeasures seem to be only partly effective in containing terrorism. Afghanistan and Iraq, in déjà vu, will testify this premise. The sweeping actions of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice (DOJ) and other investigation agencies on the one hand, and the poor record of conviction secured by them, point to the limited effectiveness of the countermeasures. That is not to say that there has been no success at all. On the contrary, some of the administrative countermeasures like enactment of The USA Patriot Act or the creation of the DHS certainly enabled putting a check on terrorist activities. DOJ Report of July 2004 In its report, “The USA Patriot Act at Work, July 2004”, DOJ brings out the benefits that were gained as a result of the act. In its own words: “The USA PATRIOT Act equips federal law enforcement and intelligence officials with the tools they need to mount an effective, coordinated campaign against our nation’s terrorist enemies. The Act revised counterproductive legal restraints that impaired law enforcement’s ability to gather, analyze, and share critical terrorism-related intelligence information. The Act also updated decades-old federal laws to account for the technological breakthroughs seen in recent years. For example, terrorists routinely use cell phones to plot their atrocities; under the Act, law enforcement and intelligence officials are no longer hindered by statutes written in the era of rotary telephones. …coordination and information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement Can Security 3 officers, …have yielded extraordinary dividends by enabling the Department to open numerous criminal investigations…” The report then goes on to cite a number of successful thwarting of potential terrorist action like: prosecution in San Diego of several persons involved in an al Qaeda drugs-for-weapons plot, which culminated in several guilty pleas. facilitated the indictment of Enaam Arnaout, the Executive Director of the Illinois-based Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), who conspired to obtain charitable donations fraudulently in order to provide financial assistance to Chechen rebels and organizations engaged in violence and terrorism. investigation of two Yemeni citizens, Mohammed Ali Hasan Al-Moayad and Mohshen Yahya Zayed, who were charged …with conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda and HAMAS. And so on .. Not so effective countermeasures? In this background it is pertinent to ask questions like – How effective have been the countermeasures, which were in place at least since 9/11? Did the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq bring the desired results or is the situation worse than before? Do we allow our precious privacy and ordinariness to be violated and invaded in the name of vigilance? Where do we draw a line and say enough is enough? Or do we acquiesce to the notion that countermeasures can never be overdone? Much can be said on both sides. Occasionally one hears of cases of foiled terrorist plans, the most recent one being the infamous ‘liquid bombs’, famously foiled by the intelligence agencies on the two sides of the Atlantic. For every one such success, there have Can Security 4 been dozens of terrorist attacks carried out in right under our noses in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bombing of metro rail services in London could not be stopped either. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of the USA, provides interesting and informative data and analysis concerning the effectiveness of the prosecution by the federal agencies in the two years after 9/11. In essence, it talks of the very large number of prosecutions, and insignificant convictions except in very few cases. Hence the fears of ‘excesses’ in the name of countermeasures appear to be at least, partly justified. DHS and DOJ Record of conviction Its special report entitled: Criminal Terrorism Enforcement Since the 9/11 Attacks dated December 8, 2003, TRAC brings out the fact that of the 6400 or more cases of prosecution of individuals, who according to the federal investigators (DHS and DOJ) had either committed terrorist acts or were being prosecuted with a view to "prevent or disrupt potential or actual terrorist threats", so far only 5 were sentenced to a prison term of 20 or more years and as to the rest, the average sentence was a pitiable 14 days! The report goes on to conclude: “Presumably we have prevented these particular (5) individuals from attacking America again. But combined with the extremely low typical sentences so far imposed in all terrorism cases and the declining number sentenced to even five years in prison, the data would seem to raise certain pertinent questions about current strategies: Are the right people being targeted? Or have the FBI and other agencies adapted a general round up policy? Does the current approach of prosecuting a large number of individuals for crimes which frequently result in little or no prison — apparent Can Security 5 in the data — reduce the chance of terrorism? Are other more effective strategies possible?” If conviction in a case of prosecution is to be seen as effectiveness, the above data points the ineffectiveness of the countermeasures, the report points out. It goes on to add that the reasons for not securing convictions were the decision of the prosecutors that they had lacked evidence (!) or the evidence was weak and insufficient. “…the fact that federal prosecutors have deemed just under half of these referrals (49.8%) unsuitable is disturbing”, according to the report. Some may argue, however, that in the matter of national security, one should not go by the record of convictions to measure the effectiveness and that prevention is better than cure. Popular clichés The fundamentalist Muslim terrorist fascinates America. In his recent novel, ‘Terrorist’ (Updike 2006), John Updike portrays Ahmad, as prototype terrorist wages a war, in his own words, on “Christianity that committed genocide on the Native Americans, undermined Asia and Africa and is now coming after Islam, with everything in Washington run by the Jews to keep themselves in Palestine.” Such notions keep the myth of terrorism as war between Islam and Christianity alive. Nothing is farther from the truth. The oft-repeated quote, ‘All Muslims may not be terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims’ is another misconception. In the historical examples of terrorism, the perpetrators belonged to all major faiths – Christians, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, to name a few. Security countermeasures, unfortunately, include a very biased and jaundiced treatment of non-whites, especially the Asians, Arabs and the Africans. Even the general public is tending to behave in a similar fashion, Can Security 6 taking its cue from the official approach. Needless to say, such procedures and attitudes hardly contribute to the cause of fighting against terrorism. Pause and take a holistic view Even while relying on technology and systems in the medium term to outwit terrorists or criminal elements, in the longer run one should attempt to bring back such societies for which, in our own history, terrorism was not an issue at all. In other words, instead of resorting to full scale wars with colossal civilian casualties or over-reliance on ineffective security countermeasures as is happening now, a different political, social and ideological agenda is needed to eliminate the scourge of terrorism from our midst. There is no denying the fact that ‘violence breeds violence’ and terrorism flourishes in all situations of violent suppressions. Terrorism is not precisely defined till date. However, the term is generally understood to mean killing of civilians for political reasons, in acts of revenge. Destruction of property is a bonus, generally an unintended consequence. That brings us to the question of - revenge against whom or what? It is fair to state that irrespective of their background, terrorists the world over nurse some grudge, a perceived injustice or something similar, against the state, and since they can not fight the power of a state directly, they take revenge against the state by resorting to terrorist acts targeting the civilians of that state, with the ultimate objective of forcing the state to redress the injustice. Certainly, this has been the character of terrorism in the past five decades or so. Yet, one is still to come across genuine socio-political attempts to address the major sore points. Warplanes or CCTV cameras can hardly be expected to provide answers to awkward questions. An interesting phenomenon in the recent past has been the return to electoral politics and sharing of political power by Maoist extremists in Nepal. What led to this happy turn of events, where Maoist terrorism has all but Can Security 7 vanished overnight, without the aid of any countermeasures? Crime and treatment of criminals It is informative to compare crime and terrorism in this context. All societies face crime as de facto human nature and deal with it adequately through laws and law enforcing agencies. We do not simply wish away crime but we seek to control criminal behavior with a range of punishments including capital punishment. But, there were no recorded instances of wholesale ‘war on crime’; only political wars for geographical control and domination. A point to note here that in spite of applying only ordinary laws, evolved with a great deal of commonsense and restraint, the world has not converted ‘crime & criminals as a major problem, in stark contrast to its treatment of terrorism. Is there a lesson to be learnt here? Security and security countermeasure Community institutions like schools, colleges, hospitals, sports and recreational facilities, etc., and industry and businesses have also become targets for terrorist strikes in view of sensational news value or the economic impact of such acts. A policy of ‘prevention is better than cure’ seems to be in place and suspicion lurks around everywhere. Devices such as Access Control, Alarm Systems, ID Cards, Fire & Smoke Detectors, Intercoms, Metal Detectors, Security Cameras, Key Cards, etc. are being extensively used both by institutions and individuals. These devices provide a sense of security around homes and offices and are quite in order. On the other hand, discrimination, bias and keeping tabs on individuals are some of the other countermeasures in institutions and they are certainly being overdone. A government representing a nation has as its prime responsibility the safety, security and well being of its Can Security 8 threat perception for a nation has been from rival nations due to ideological, citizens and their property. Everything else revolves around this concept. Conventionally, the political, economical or even personal reasons. From the highest echelons of national defense to the local police stations, internal and external secret service organizations and a plethora of other agencies are involved in security operations round the clock. While the UNO, the Security Council and its other establishments act as the nodal inter-national set up to resolve disputes among member nations, no individual nation has abdicated its primary responsibility of national defense. To this extent, all nations including the USA, in their wisdom, are taking and ought to take security countermeasures. Sharing of intelligence news, extradition treaties, collective action for freezing of assets of terrorist outfits, and joint military actions are some of the coordinated efforts between various countries. Here the collective national wisdom prevails and there is no question of ‘overdoing’ security countermeasures. In addition, each country has developed its own standards of surveillance and in this respect there are differing opinions about such measures as they are impinging upon individual constitutional rights like freedom of speech, movement, work and livelihood. Mark Clayton of the Christian Science Monitor (Mark 2006) writes: “What can the US government really glean from the phone-call histories …of millions of Americans? After all, its the same information that has long been available to authorities armed with a subpoena, though not sought en masse until after the 9/11 terror attacks. Its value…..is that it can be used to identify a social network of interconnected people - including, perhaps, would-be terrorists… .You should presume that phone numbers are being collated with Internet records, credit-card records, everything, …..….As the effort Can Security 9 gains momentum, it may collide with law, invade Americans privacy, undermine civil liberties, or grow to such an enormous size that it may actually make finding terrorists harder by producing too many false positives…. Data mining as a counter-terrorism tool has grown enormously in recent years, according to the Government Accountability Office…Without oversight and accountability, critics say, even well-intentioned counter terrorism programs could experience mission creep, having their purview expanded to include non- terrorists - or even political opponents or groups.” Mark also reports the view of Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists says that, “The development of this type of data-mining technology has serious implications for the future of personal privacy." Quite clearly, opinions do differ on the issue of countermeasures. Most question the invasion of privacy. Some acquiesce in the sense that the government anyway has access to all the data due to digital identity of individuals in the form of birth records and social security numbers. Still others say, "I personally would rather have a false-positive come at me than be sitting here and having a building come down on me because of a terrorist." Conclusion Terrorism has been with us in some form or the other for well over 100 years. It has changed its character from acts of individuals for personal aggrandizement, to localized conflicts and now to a dangerously large scale happening in many parts of the world simultaneously. Worse still, a nexus seems to be developing between various terrorist outfits even as they carryout their own independent agenda. Hiring of poor, unemployed and fringe elements of the society, indoctrinating them in the name of religion and training them for terrorist acts is now a Can Security 10 fact of life. Even as governments are going after such organizations aggressively, there is no visible reduction in the phenomenon of terrorism; rather, the aggressive actions, especially the military actions are used as proof of suppression to recruit more and more would-be terrorists. At the same time, new technologies like ‘data mining’ which are being extensively used to invade privacy of each and every individual, are making ordinary people restless since there is very little discrimination in this approach and even an innocuous event like writing of this article can be tapped, termed as having terrorist links and the individual harassed. Security countermeasures can to an extent provide the answer to the problem of terrorism, especially at the individual level of protection to life and property through the use of technological gadgets. At the national and international level, the countermeasures as are being practiced now do not provide a solution to the problem in an effective way. It is time for introspection and course correction with emphasis on inclusive politics and social arrangements. References Mark, C, (2006/08/02), US Plans massive data sweep, The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved on August 2, 2006 from http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.html?s=widep Mark, C, (2006/05/15), Mining data to nab terrorists: fair?, The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved on August 2, 2006 from http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0515/p01s04-usju.html Orwell, G, (1949), Nineteen Eighty-Four, Secker and Warburg. TRAC Special Report, December 8, 2003, Criminal Terrorism Enforcement Since the 9/11/01 Attacks. Retrieved on August 18, 2006 from http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/terrorism/ report031208.html Updike, J, (2006), Terrorist, Alfred A. Knopf. US DOJ’s Report from the field (2004), The USA Patriot Act at Work, July 2004. Read More