The argument over new security technologies in America seem to always center around the proverbial "Big Brother Police State." However, this is not the paramount issue. The real issue is how our overly complicated and often "liquid" set of laws interacts with this new need for much more precise and flawless law enforcement technologies. And that is where a lot of our anti-terrorism efforts will break down.
Every week, it seems, a new form of technology for enforcing laws and improving security in America is debated- national ID cards, cameras on street corners, computer-assisted profiling, and so on. And every week the same arguments, laden with Orwell references, are thrown back and forth. Are we becoming a police state? Is it worth giving up such-and-such freedoms for such-and-such security increases?
In reality, however, it's a lot more complicated than that. True security in these times does require sweeping increases in technology, but it will only help if we rethink the way in which we create and enforce our laws. Technology is never the greatest threat to personal freedom.
Classifying myself as a social libertarian (small "l" intended), it may surprise you that I am completely on board with most every increase in technology and consolidation of personal data by law enforcement. Why? Because almost always- even though science fiction movies would generally differ- better technology ensures greater personal freedom.
- THE POLICE STATE FALLACY -
The first argument that everyone always has against the expansion of technology within government is that it brings us closer to a "police state." It makes sense as every half-baked movie and television show on the subject- well, they just tell us so. I suppose that's good enough for most people. Unfortunately, while it makes for exciting fiction, it is a completely flawed vision of sociological cause and effect.
Police states have nothing to do with underlying level of technology its society affords. Police are human. Lawmakers are human. Put simply, if America- or any of its states, counties, or what have you- wants to become a police state, it will do so regardless of technology or lack of technology. While the actual reasons that police states arise- and they certainly can in any nation- are outside the boundaries of this article, let's put it simply: the reasons are based in sociology and economics, not technology.
Most people, however, don't actually believe America will become a police state. Even those that use the term "police state" are merely over-extrapolating a common and well-founded fear that our investigative and law enforcement agencies are rife with human error. (Caveat: this, at least to me, is not an indictment on law enforcement. Humans are imperfect. We're supposed to be. Our real strength is building tools to do the hard work and intricate analysis for us.)
Where people often get it wrong is the assumption that increasing the use and scope of technology within a government filled with human error will somehow give said human error more disastrous consequences. However, this never seems to happen. Take DNA technologies used in murder cases. We've found that overwhelmingly human error has caused a lot more wrongful convictions than personal vendettas and planted evidence ever have. Technology, blind to sociological flaws, begins to solve the human irregularities. If the government was really "out to get" people, murder convictions would be increasingly less reliable as the use of technology grew.
