Is the US turning into a security state?
Matthew Brzezinski, a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, takes us for an interesting and timely look at "Fortress America." the rise of the surveillance state and how the concern about homeland security is changing the country. The book grew out of a series of articles that the New York Times Magazine commissioned Brzezinski to write in the wake of 9/11. With its first person point of view, conversational style, and poignant subject matter, Fortress America is a page-turner brimming with fascinating anecdotes. It's also a disturbing look at what it may take to secure our homeland and what it will be like to live in the emerging security state.
The book begins with a vivid description of the environment in the US after the 9/11 attacks. As Brzezinski writes: "Our imagination was truly running wild: security risks were now everywhere, threatening the very foundations of an open society." He describes how security has become so much "the order of the day" at the White House that even the proceedings of academic conferences were being classified. The media didn't help the situation either. It fueled the new climate of fear, leading some Americans to experience some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Adding to what Brezezinski describes as the "hysteria" was the realisation of how woefully unprepared we were to combat terrorism on our soil. We didn't have enough counter terrorism experts. The 4,000 miles of border were porous. Bridges, highways, airports, metro systems had to be protected. And now there was the sobering realization that fighting terrorism would cost us dearly. As Brzezinski explained, "Combating terror is likely going to rank among the biggest, costliest and most daunting domestic challenges in US history, up there with the New Deal and the war effort that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor."
Brzezinski takes an inside look at security in Israelthe poster nation for the "Maximum Security State." Israel has become a country where "counter terrorist considerations factor into just about every corporate, civic, military and even personal decision." What's remarkable is how Israelis accepts their security state and one is left wondering if the Israel experience will become that of the US and with what cost to liberty and the American way of life.
In terms of adopted security measures, Brzezinski believes the gap between America and Israel appears is narrowing, and he provides plenty of technological examples to show how Americans are being bugged and monitored.
They include:
= The use of software programs that can scan facial features, break them down into three-dimensional plots and compare them to a vast database of student IDs.
= Cameras at airport ticket counters so sensitive they can tell if someone is stressed.
=Satellites and ease dropping equipment so sophisticated they can see through walls of a home.
= Electronic monitors installed in major American urban areas that can pinpoint just about any vehicle, so long as it has been equipped with a microchip encoded with registration data.
= The development of so called smart cards encoded with personal, financial and medial information, which can serve as a national ID and be used by police for spot checks.
"Enemy of the State," the most chilling chapter of the book, makes it personal by profiling Hady Hassan Omar, an Egyptian who was one of the 762 people detained on immigration charges during the post 9/11 investigations. Omar, like the other 761 detainees, did not have any links to terrorism, but he had to endure a 73-day nightmare in which he ended up in a maximum-security cell before being finally released.
Brzezinski doesn't blame the Justice Department for its actions though, given what he said was, "the context of what was at stake in September 2001." But he does acknowledge that "a dangerous legal precedent has been set."
The author doesn't provide any real conclusions about where this move toward more and more security and surveillance is leading the US. He does, however, show that in the first years of the War on Terrorism the US has learned a disturbing lesson. The country has been willing to give up some of its precious and hard-earned freedoms for the sake of security.
After reading Fortress America, I was left wondering: how much more freedom will we lose when terrorists strike once again on our soil, a move, the experts are predicting, will surely come.
Ron Chepesiuk is a Visiting Professor of Journalism at Chittagong University and a Research Associate with the National Defence College in Dhaka.