Liberty Vs. Security

Liberty vs Security had been a major issue throughout history. In recent years there has been an increase of insecurity regarding the safety of the country. Government has stated several new laws of enforcement to attack terrorism and preserve security to the country. The United States is a nation based on their fundamental sense of freedom, also known for many as the land of the free. However, questions are meant to be drawn to ask between being secure or maintain our liberty as US citizen? Can government maintain the new laws made in wartime and increase their power? Do government go against the US constitution? And does it present a false security to the citizens?

The founding fathers fought for independence from Great Britain. In the
Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, wrote that American rights are inalienable and they cannot be separated “among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” (Declaration of Independence). The constitution define civil liberties, with each amendment, as citizen rights. The constitution was created also to define and limit government, for it to defend our freedom but not to threaten it. In instances like terrorism attacks it seems that liberty has to be sacrifices in order to assure safety. In times of war the laws are silent. (Beaker, 23) This indicates that in times of war, security is more important than civil liberties. The problem with it; this laws are not adequate to civil liberties.

In the movie Captain America: Civil War, security vs liberty are the main concerns of Captain America and Iron Man.
The private organization of Avengers is present by the government with limitation of how they operate. They all have to sign the Sokovia Accords approved by 117 countries of the world. It stated that Avengers could no longer be a private organization and instead they would only operate under the supervision of the nations when they deem it necessary. Iron man is for the limitation of government. He sacrifices liberty in order to assure safety and security. He did not see a problem for the government to step in to balance one against the other. On the opposite Captain America was not in favor of this limitations. He did see a problem of government involvement. His civil rights will be lost. For him the concerns of security and liberty could not mix. It’s in the person rights to choose freely over one or the other. He did not want to give government the power to choose for
them.

First, let’s explain the issues separately. Liberty is defined as a political right, state of people who are able to act and speak freely and have the power to choose what they want. (Merrian-Webster) On the other hand, security, is the quality or state of being secure, a secure measure of guarding from espionage, crime or attack, and an organization or department whose task is security. (Merrian-Webster) Security vs liberty is a difficult subject it always has been, but with the rise of terrorist groups like ISIS it has become more complicated. It is also not recent that the United State has been fighting over this issues. There are lists of terrorist attack that have happened in US history. To recall few of this attacks is Sept 9, 2011, four airplanes were hijacked to crashed in New York twin towers, one in the Pentagon located in Virginia, and the last one a fail attempt to hit the white house in Washington . This terrorist attack was claimed by the Al Qaeda terrorist group. April 15, 2013 Boston marathon bombing another terrorist attack claimed by the most recent terrorist group ISIS. This attacks have been meditated and plan not only by this groups but individuals that are Islamic extremist. As examples in November 5, 2009 a shooting attack at soldiers at US military installation in Fort Hood, Texas. (History, n.d.) Most recently the Orlando, Florida shooting at a nightclub happened on June of this year. This are only few of many attacks the country has suffer over history.

In moments of war or terrorist attacks it is easy to say everyone would be in favor of security over liberty.
This attacks always generate panic and increase anxiety. After the attack of 9/11 the government exercise some acts to give security to the citizens. Congress enacted the USA Patriot Act by overwhelming, bipartisan margins, arming law enforcement with new tools to detect and prevent terrorism. (USA Patriot Act, n.d.) Indeed the law was enacted to fight terrorism, intercept any information and punished the terrorist. Nonetheless, it raised some concerns about the civil liberties. Guantanamo Bay is an example of denied liberty of some is less important than the security of others. For the detentions in Guantanamo bay officials had to make arrest of suspected terrorist and later rely on charges. President Bush's passage of the Military Commissions Act in 2006 authorized the use of military tribunals in place of federal courts to try the detainees, and justified the use of some forms of physical coercion (or, as critics call it, torture) during interrogations (Fetini, 2008). Many of these prisoners lost their civil liberties and later it was found that many of them were wrongfully apprehended. In Captain America: Civil War another example is when Captain America team are taken in to a maximum security prison because they were supposed to be criminals. It’s a wrong thing to do to put someone in detention without giving reasons to put the innocent behind bars, to be shoddy
with your procedures in doing so (Gregory, 2013). It is not right for any government to use power to assault personal freedom. Higgs mention how the government expanded its power in these emergencies but there was a kind of promise that the government would exercise extraordinary powers in order to deal with the crisis at hand, but that once the crisis had passed, once it had been dealt with adequately, then the government would relinquish those powers and revert to something like the status quo antebellum (Higgs, 2013). Baker says the lasting problem is that, when the crisis is over and things get back to normal, we tend to hold onto the crisis constitution instead of returning to the normal constitution (Baker, 23).

Another measure that was taken in the early 2002 with the USA Patriot Act was to gather of bulk information of data by wiretap phone calls and internet searches. In a most recent article it mention how the law dramatically expanded the government's ability to gather surveillance, broadened the definition of terrorism and sought to strengthen border security (Ali & Abdullah, 2016). The main goal of the law was to prevent future terrorist attacks by keeping an eye on them. In recent years Edward Snowden former employee of NSA leaked classified information about how the government collected data. The NSA denied this accusations and said it was impossible for them to collect that amount of information, they did not have the people, money or time to do this. Ali & Abdullah write that section 215 of the law is the most controversial. This section allowed the collection of phone metadata and gave government the power to collect tangible things to encounter terrorism. (Ali & Abdullah, 2016) American citizen were furious because they believe their individual liberties have been compromised. To understand metadata is data that describe more data. The information that could be obtain by this is the location originated from, telephone identifier, time, IP address and length of message of calls. This is just a few of the information that could be collected by it. Companies and governments that collect and store your metadata don't admit that this information can reveal a lot about you (Metadata, n.d.) All this information can be used to profile someone by religion, medical condition, credit card information, viewpoints etc. And with modern technology most people are in line to be watched with a degree of scrutiny (Higgs, 2013). This is clearly a violation of the 4th amendment of the US constitution. The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated (US Constitution, n.d.)

In my opinion liberty and security cannot be equal. If for any circumstance they get intertwine it should be on the people’s ability to choose freely one over the other, not letting the government choose for them. In that instance I will have to agree with Captain America point of view. Government has failed to protect our freedom and uphold the constitution. They are to protect the citizens and safeguard their individual civil rights not to use national emergencies to grow their power.