Comparing National and Personal Security

 

Why national security is more important than personal security.

What if national security was gone tomorrow? Some people would automatically assume the worst.Although we wouldn’t be invaded by another country  in a month or be any more likely to be attacked as a country,the people of America would be in a great deal of danger.

When a natural disaster strikes a populated area,the first people to respond are firefighters,paramedics,and police officers.Even in the event of the area being completely leveled,they still have to keep order and keep the civilians safe.Without them,most people who are stranded or in need would never be found or die,although many times civilians help in search and rescue.It’s obvious that American emergency services plays the defining role of how many people survive a natural disaster,and are employes of the government,even if their pay comes from taxpayers.Besides wanting to help its people,the only reason the United States  government would have to send help to civilians after a disaster is national security,which is the belief that the government and parliaments should protect its people through various means and powers.

Of all the powers Congress has,the most they have has to do is with national security,like investigations and declaring war,so it’s apparent that national security is important to the United States government.But with great power comes great responsibility.A natural reaction to the United States government protecting its people from crisis is going too far. Luckily,there are limitations to what they can do.For example,the 4th amendment stops the government or government workers from searching your body,belongings,home or other possessions without reasonable cause or a warrant from a judge and the 5th allows the right to remain silent.Even in cases like executive order 9066 (japanese american civilians  locked up after Pearl Harbor) or Guantanamo Bay (prisoners tortured after and for information on 9/11) where personal rights were crushed under a boot of national security,it was all in an attempt to keep the people safe.Yes,the 2 two events above were horrible and should have never happened,but the intents were still good.

In 1915,german submarines sunk a United States ship,leading Congress to declare war on Germany,showing a successful national security response as Germany had killed Americans and were a threat to the nation.Similarly,after the attack on Pearl Harbor Congress once again declared war in a response to a threat to national security.When 9/11 occurred many inactive veterans would step back on the battlefield since the attack on the Trade Towers was a national crisis,falling under a national security matter.If the government had not reacted in the way they did,there would have been many more attacks like the ones above.

Not every occasion where national security overtakes personal rights is bad. When a shooter and his wife were killed after killing 14 people in San Bernardino, the FBI recovered an Iphone from one of the bodies.When they demanded Apple, the famous company that makes the phones, to help them crack the phone by making a back door,they said no. If they did help,they could have potentially saved lives, but there personal right to say no prevented that, stopping the FBI from doing their jobs because the phone could have helped they find more shooters/information.

Many people are also skeptical of national security because of how secret and over powered they think it is. But this isn’t necessarily the case. No matter if everyone in the world saw and recorded someone blowing up a building,the terrorist would still have to right to a trial in the United States and someone would have to prove, without a reasonable doubt, that he did in fact blow up the building, according to the 5th amendment of the United States constitution. And to make it even harder for national security,due to the same amendment, the terrorist won’t have to testify against himself/herself, so all the evidence must come from someone/something else.Much criticism of national security comes from the secrecy and the reluctance of the United States government to release information to the public.Although it is only right for a country’s people to fully  know of the problems plaguing national security,many times the secrecy is absolutely necessary.It is to ensure that Unied States methods and analysis of receiving and decoding information are not revealed to other nations.For example,on July 17 1950, at the peak of United States fear Julius Rosenberg was arrested for allegedly passing Russian secrets to Russia.About a month later his wife was arrested as well.They He worked for the United States Army Signal Corps and was an engineer, making him seem ordinary.During their trial however, a majority of the evidence presented was weak and didn’t seem to be nearly enough to send them to the electric chair for the crimes they seemed to not have done.But nearly forty years after the trial,evidence that was classified at the time was released to the public,revealing that the United States had been listening in on Russian transmissions and Julius Rosenberg (wife’s role still unknown) had indeed been giving Atomic secrets to Russia.If  the United States government had released the information during the trial to the public to appeal to their personal right to know if the Rosenbergs were actually guilty or not,the Russians would have known that they were being listened in to and the United States would have lost any future oppertunities to gather any infromation.It is also important to note that the Rosenbergs have avoided death by admitting to their espionage.

Even with some of the necessary secrecy, National security still isn’t as secret as most people think it to be.In the United States,about one point four million people have access to top secret information.Although this sounds scary, contradictory to public assumption, top secret is not the highest level of secret information.There are multiple levels of sensitive information clearance higher than top secret including sensitive compartment information and special access programs.

In the end, national security is more important than personal rights because without it, the government would have little reason to help its people and would most likely end up working for itself instead of their people.

“Constitute.” Constitute, Constitute Project, www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States_of_America_1992.

“Executive Order 9066.” Britannica School, Encyclopædia Britannica, 9 Feb. 2009. . Accessed 15 Feb. 2017.

Okita, Dwight. “In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers.” Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian-American Poets, edited by Joseph Bruchac, Greenfield Review Press, 1983, p. 211. LitFinder, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LITF&sw=w&u=j020902&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CLTF0000508187WK&it=r&asid=0c318a462d4449dbc9f55f57ba1a9a13. Accessed 15 Feb. 2017

“The Powers of Congress.” Ushistory.org, Independence Hall Association, .