World Trade Center attack and civil liberties
Posted: 9/13/2001 2:31:10 PM
By: Comfortably Anonymous
Times Read: 2,078
0 Dislikes: 0
Topic: News: Politics
Why does everyone keep on saying that maintaining security requires loss of civil liberties?! That's only true when the mechanism for maintaining security is a highly centralized entity which hasn't been well-integrated into society - in other words, when the law enforcement community perceives itself as an entity separate from the society that it is supposed to be protecting, and that the society should just let them do their job & not get in the way.

If you want to maintain civil liberties, then your "law enforcement" needs the _ACTIVE_ support of the society. At the very least, if almost everyone in society trusted their law enforcement agents, then those agencies would find that people would tend to come forward to help those agents do their jobs. The agents would have the equivalent of a stakeout from every person's window, and willing witnesses in every location - but all with the goodwill of the populace, thus limiting the erosion of civil liberties.

I don't see this happening with the current law enforcement policies, especially with regard to the drug war (and pedophiles, and now probably terrorism). The law enforcement agencies regard themselves as autonomous from the general population, specializing in law enforcement, who have lost the trust of large chunks of the population they're supposed to be protecting, and who therefore perceive that the only way they can "do their job" (in a short-term way) is to reduce the effectiveness of those "civil liberties" which get in their way.

Of course, this kind of attitude only reinforces the distrust of the populace: a vicious cycle.
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World Trade Center attack and civil liberties
Posted: 9/13/2001 2:31:10 PM
By: Comfortably Anonymous
Times Read: 2,078
0 Dislikes: 0
Topic: News: Politics
Strange perspective! I agree with the problem regarding law enforcement considering itself separate from the rest of the population - that seems to be the most insightful comment regarding the behavior of the police I have ever seen.

But I'm not sure what you mean by the rest of the comment as to how it relates to the World Trade Center. We are now in a declared state of war; things are completely different for now. They can make whatever rules they want right now, and most will go long with them, as long as they keep their promise that they are only for wartime. Scary, and I am the first to freak out about overreaching government - in times of peace. But now, we are fighting deception itself - the people who did this won't even claim their actions. We think it is Bin Laden, and we are probably right - if so, it gets even more deceptive as Bin Laden issued a statement today that he had nothing to do with it.

Sure, he may have done it, and so far it looks pretty definite. But what if he DIDN'T? Talk about way scary - someone else could be playing us off each other and feeding the frenzy.

Who else could it be? I've heard nothing else, no other suggestions. Yipes, just yipes...
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