Poll: Trading Freedom for Security
By Dyre42 | Related entries in Polls(AP) Four in five Americans would give up some freedoms to gain security and four in 10 worry terrorists will harm them or their family, a new Gallup poll shows.
About one-third of those polled favor making it easier for authorities to access private e-mail and telephone conversations. More than 70 percent are in favor of requiring U.S. citizens to carry identification cards with fingerprints, and 77 percent believe all Americans should have smallpox vaccinations.
“It was amazing the percentage of people who are willing to give up freedom to get back some sense of personal security,â€Â? said Elaine Christiansen, senior research director for The Gallup Organization. “These aren’t people who were necessarily near the twin towers, near the Pentagon, near the Murrah building. These are average people.â€Â?
The telephone survey, conducted in March, included 934 people across the country. Researchers also polled about 500 people in each of three cities where terrorist attacks occurred � New York City, Washington, D.C., and Oklahoma City � to compare results with the general population survey.
The poll showed 8 percent of Americans are very worried and 31 percent are somewhat worried that they or someone in their family will become victims of a terrorist attack in the United States. In New York City, the level of worry is higher � 19 percent said they are very worried and 34 percent said they are somewhat worried.
Washington, D.C, and Oklahoma City reported levels of fear close to the national average. more
Looks like the climate of fear approach to governing is working pretty well doesn’t it?
None of the 41 reccomendations of the 9/11 Commission required us to give up any of our freedoms and most of them have yet to be adopted. Are Americans so blind and fearful that rather than protect the freedoms that so many have given their lives to protect that we would instead choose to dishonor their memory by surrendering those hard fought for freedoms for an illusion of security?
If so then maybe Benjamin Franklin was right and we deserve neither safety or liberty.
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August 17th, 2006 at 4:38 am
What essential liberty is lost by having a national ID card or a small pox vaccination? I recently moved to NY and had to give a lot of information to the state to get my car title changed over. How is it worse if the federal government simply makes the format consistent?
To go to school my daughter needs a large number of vaccinations, how is adding one more a loss of an essential liberty?
By the way, these are the recommendations of the 9-11 commission report. Here is one example:
“Recommendation: Secure identification should begin in the United States. The federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as drivers licenses. Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft. At many entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding aircraft, sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists”
You should actually read the report; it actually is an interesting read. It is available online at http://www.9-11commission.gov/
August 17th, 2006 at 6:08 am
Bernie…first of all, thanks for the link. I will read that. I think you are missing the spirit of the post however. The specific measures that may or may not be put in place are not so much the issue as is the fact that Americans are so cavalier about abandoning freedoms simply because we are afraid to die. These freedoms aren’t for us to either give away or take away. Lots of people suffered, sacrificed and died so that we may enjoy freedom and we have an absolute duty to them and to future generations to preserve it.
August 17th, 2006 at 6:34 am
You know, I had higher hopes for this blog than feeble partisan squeaks like this post.
34% of people in New York are worried about terrorism … because George Bush is scaring them? I have more respect for people who believe Bush blew up the World Trade Center – at least they believe in something.
This is another bowl of cold gruel from the people who don’t understand either freedom or security, and who would trade both for a shot at the White House.
Benjamin Franklin would slap you in the face.
August 17th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Because Islamic fascist terrorists are just a myth, and if we don’t do anything about it in 20 years it will all go away. Its all a bushitlerburton plot to justify controlling the worlds oil supply and giving it to the jews.
Hear, Hear to Glen Wishard’s comment above.
August 17th, 2006 at 8:16 am
72% of all statistics are lies.
August 17th, 2006 at 8:30 am
I flew to La Guardia on Sept. 18, 2001. I was one of the very first back on the plane after 9/11 becuase I believe we cannot surrender to terror. We cannot let terroists win by giving in to fear and scraping our own freedoms to try to alleviate that fear. We are getting the APPPEARANCE of security, not security, in exchange for ignoring our Bill of Rights and Constitutional freedoms. I fail to see how we “protect” our freedom by destroying it. We are simply de-sensitizing people to unreasonable search and seizure while creating a false sense of security. If maniacs or fanatics are really committed, there will always be danger. There always has been. Remember, the first major modern terrorist event on US soil was committed by domestic fanatics in Oklahoma City. We must show we will NOT be intimidated or afraid to live our lives. Also, terrorists don’t have to even do anything-just threaten it in “chatter”; we react just like people who aren’t speeding when they see a police care at the side of the road-we hit the brakes in fear even though we aren’t doing anything wrong. Another thing to note-it’s always interesting how political leaders or intelligence forces announce they have foiled BIG plots and it just coincidentally just happens when the political parties in power are in trouble such as Blair’s party in Great Britain with elections near or the Republican in the US elections. Let’s spend the time and money to really FIND Bin Laden, not disrupt our our economy do their damage to ourselves out of fear of them. What happened to the “land of the free and the home of the brave”?
August 17th, 2006 at 9:34 am
I recall reading (several years before 9/11/2001) about a poll suggesting that seven out of the ten constitutional amendments in the Bill of Rights would have been rejected by a majority of Americans at the time of the poll. With that in mind, is it just possible that these security-over-freedom attitudes may have been in place for a long time and merely stayed beneath the surface before terrorism became a real threat to the country? If so, then it seems to me that the fault lies not in our presidents but in ourselves.
August 17th, 2006 at 9:39 am
People don’t want to give up their freedoms. What they want is to not let the terrorists hide behind our freedoms. I imagine if you sat down and spoke with every individual polled, you’d find their opinions to be much more nuanced than what is revealed in a simple poll.
It’s a testament to the stability of our nation and the pervasiveness of our freedoms that so many Americas are so incredibly unafraid of their own government. A lot of people who may say it’s fine if the government scans our emails for suspicious keywords, say so because they cannot imagine their government ever abusing such a power.
I personally believe that there cannot be full freedom without robust privacy, but I’ve found that such an idea can seem rather abstract in the face of the very real threat of terrorism.
Those of use who wish we’d fight this war with very little erosion of our freedoms should not fall into the trap of thinking everyone would naturally agree with us if not for the fear-mongering of the right wing. There has been some fear mongering, yes, but the real reason for poll results such as these is that there is real fear based on real threats.
The key is to find useful ways to persuade people that they need not give up their freedoms to be secure. Trying to minimize their fear and paint it as a partial illusion will not work.
August 17th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Good post, Alan.
There will always be some trade-off of freedom and security. The question that should confront us is “does this make us more secure? And is it worth the cost?”
9/11 was horrible. But the average American’s chance of dying in a terrorist attack in any given year is vanishingly small — on the order of 0.00008% or so.
Even if we had one 9/11 a year it would add up to a 1 in 100,000 risk. That’s lower than your chances of being stabbed to death.
Terrorism isn’t a random accident, of course. And it has a wider impact than the simple death toll. I’m willing to commit an outsized amount of resources to prevent terror attacks and catch and punish those who plan them.
But when it comes to civil liberties, I’m not willing to give up that much given the risk involved.
August 17th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
So that’s how the moral calculus works?
Your chances of getting tortured are vastly less than your chances of being injured by a lawnmower. So what are all these complaints we’ve been hearing about people being tortured?
Your chances of being scary enough to get wire-tapped by the government – with or without a warrant – are also vanishingly small. Utterly insignificant, compared to your chances of getting audited by the IRS or having your car stolen. I trust that settles all of your civil rights concerns permanently.
Of course, it depends on who you identify with. I felt very bad for Jon Benet Ramsey, even though I’m an adult and my chances of being killed by a child molester are EXACTLY ZERO. I guess if I were a good Democrat, I would be smart enough to realize that it is totally impossible for that to ever happen to me, so it’s silly for me to care about it.
I also cared when 3000 New Yorkers were savagely murdered, even though I haven’t spent enough time in New York to even have a decent statistical chance of getting hit by a taxi cab.
And yet, my compassion is not infinite. I admit that I am less moved when an unpleasant fate befalls some terrorist butcher who thinks that God will reward him for cutting off people’s heads with a dull knife. I am also somewhat insensitive to the civil liberty woes of terrorist sympathizers who finance Hamas and Hisballah by selling meth amphetamine to Native American children. Do that make me a bad person?
August 17th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
It wasn’t a moral calculus; it was a practical one. It makes no sense to significantly curtail civil liberties in order to combat what is in the end a minor risk.
I have no problem with reasonable accomodations — streamlining the process for getting surveillance on terror suspects, for instance. I support a vigorous campaign against terrorism. It doesn’t bother me when a CIA drone takes out a cell in Yemen, whatever sovereignty questions that may raise.
But I’m not going to sell my civil liberties quite as cheaply as you are prepared to.
August 17th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
I haven’t sold any civil liberties. I still got a full set. But then, I don’t have financial ties to the Hisballah-run Lebanese drug trade, and I’m not currently involved in any plots to blow up the Golden Gate bridge.
But let’s suppose I was concerned about losing my civil rights. Let’s suppose I was worried that some federal wire-tapper might hear me talking to a marijuana dealer. (Why don’t we just honestly confess the exact nature of our “civil rights” concerns?) How much is that civil right worth compared to the lives of the people that will die in a successful terrorist attack?
Before you make the deal, remember this: Your chances of having a single civil hair on your head disturbed are tiny. (Frankly, Big Brother really doesn’t care about you very much, even if you are the biggest pot connection in Littleville, NC.) But the chances of someone else getting killed by a successful terrorist attack are effectively 100%.
Yes, of course, there is only an infinitesimal chance that one of those people will be YOU. The chances that it will be someone else’s mother, brother, or loved one is 99.999999999999999999%!
So how cheaply are you willing to sell the lives of your fellow human beings, Sean, to protect yourself from whatever highly improbable thing is threatening you?
August 18th, 2006 at 1:59 am
Glen, just because someone has a viewpoint other than your own doesn’t make them a partisan. I have voted for as many GOP presidential candidates (including Reagan and Bush Sr.) as I have DNC presidential candidates. Additionally the only party I have ever donated to is the Libertarian party. And I have never been nor am I likely to ever be a member of either the two major political parties that are currently screwing up this nation.
August 18th, 2006 at 6:11 am
Dyre42 -
I apologize for the tenor of my objection to your post. It annoyed me because talk about “climate of fear” and “governing through fear” sounds to me like something a DNC spokesman would read off a cue-card.
“Partisan” was a poor choice of words, because I don’t really object to people being partisan. I think this blog is, in fact, of interest to partisans of all types – Reps, Dems, and even Libertarians – who are interested in hearing what other partisan people are saying and looking for points of common agreement.
I can’t find any point of agreement with you on this issue, because claiming that concerns about terrorism are the result of fear-mongering is a non-starter for dialogue. It shows a profound lack of empathy for the tragedy that befell this country, and a frivolous attitude towards security issues that both conservative and liberals (and even Libertarians) take very seriously.
August 18th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
[...] Eventually, though, it’ll all sort itself out, and America will be able to step right back up to the forefront — the very model of liberty. [...]
August 18th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Much free-speech and warrant law has come about in the context of government using someone’s *noncriminal* actions against them. The FBI spent 38 years investigating the Socialist Party without ever filing a charge; that investigation came to be viewed as abuse and harassment, and was shut down. Nixon and the FBI almost never brought charges based on their CoIntelPro surveillance — instead they used what they found to harass, undermine and blackmail antiwar activists. People lost their homes and their jobs because of it. FBI agents would send anonymous letters to the wives of activists saying their husband was having affairs, for instance.
Joe McCarthy and the HUAC was all about embarassing and silencing people, not about bringing provable charges of wrongdoing.
Warrantless surveillance is not okay just because the information is never used in court. If the government has no business listening in on a conversation, then it has no business listening — even if it never acts on what it learns.
Your argument about there being a 100% chance of someone dying in a successful terrorist attack is specious, IMO. Obviously, if there is a successful terrorist attack, people will die. But you are arguing that “unless the NSA is allowed to conduct warrantless wiretapping, there will be a successful attack.” Which is totally unprovable, and doesn’t address either the expected frequency and scope of terror attempts or whether the security/rights tradeoff is worthwhile.
Living in a free society entails more risks than living in a society dedicated entirely to security. Noting that any given freedom potentially increases our risks is a tautology, not a serious argument.
To make it a serious argument, you have to quantify the value of the liberty vs. the risk of an attack, and demonstrate why this particular intrusion is a reasonable and necessary step that will make us significantly safer.
Frankly, I have little problem with what we know about the fundamental workings of the program. Monitoring 500 people who are linked to known or suspected terrorists? Fine; sounds like a good idea, driven by reasonable suspicions.
But we’re taking the administration’s word for it that that’s all they’re doing, and how they’re doing it. I think that’s stupid because of the history outlined above, not to mention constitutionally suspect.
So monitor the 500 people; but GET A WARRANT TO DO IT!
I happen to think that *warrantless* wiretapping is unnecessary to fighting terror. We have plenty of weapons at our disposal already, and there’s no need to give the government powers that it is almost guaranteed to abuse. I think the near-certainty of such abuse outweighs whatever minor increased risk of a terror attack it may bring.
Finally, even if you disagree with my weighting of the various factors, I think it is entirely improper for such a program to be established by executive fiat. If we’re going to allow warrantless wiretapping, it should be a Congressional decision subject to meaningful judicial oversight — not an executive decision subject to little more than internal review by the same executive that established it in the first place.
August 18th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
“When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom.”
–Eric Hoffer
September 26th, 2006 at 1:24 am
The wiretapping law placed into effect and followed by every President after 1978 but before Bush was as follows:
1. They thought they needed a wiretap
2. They initiated the wiretap
3. Within 72 hours after initiating the wire-tap, they had to notify the FISA court about the wiretap. The info was reviewed, and the court decided whether to let the wiretapping continue.
In the history of the court, only a handfull of wiretaps were ever stopped. No one but Bush had ever thought this procedure was too onerous to follow.
My phone conversations are really boring, as I don’t do drugs or break laws. I would still consider it a violation of my privacy if the line was tapped.
I have enough problems with targeted marketing.
July 28th, 2007 at 12:01 am
[...] In the past, wars and other national security threats led to far worse assaults on American liberties than anything being contemplated now. Already, the majority of Americans seem willing to accept at least some curtailment of civil liberties in order to reduce the threat of terrorism. Even one more major attack, let alone three a year, could usher in some very dark days for freedom. If champions of civil liberties want to prevent that, they need to take a different approach: to show that the compromises we are being asked to accept will not make us safer, or that there are ways to make us more secure without sacrificing our bedrock principles. If they want to be heard when they warn about loss of liberty, they cannot afford to sound cavalier when they talk about loss of life. [...]