Sarah Huckabee Sanders once said, "Let's talk about national security. That's what's keeping most Americans up at night." After the traumatic terrorist attacks of 9/11, which impacted a whole nation physically, socially, and economically, all Americans could think about was their safety. The United States of America never saw this attack coming as nothing like this had ever happened in American soil before. The government of the United States acted as quickly as possible to ensure the safety of their citizens by creating stronger national security. Though the intentions of the United States are to ensure the safety of their citizens, by doing so they are also violating several human rights in their attempt to prevent future terrorist attacks.
September 11, 2001, changed the history of the United States' approach on national security forever. The 9/11 attacks were the most well-planned act of terrorism in history to be carried out on American soil. The attack led to the realization that America could not protect their citizens against terrorism. This terrorist attack consisted of the planes flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. The plane who hit the Pentagon caused a devastating inferno that destroyed the structural collapse of a portion of the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense. This attack caused the death of 125 military personnel and civilians who thought it was just going to be another normal day at work, among those who died were the 65 passengers in the hijacked plane. Fifteen minutes after, the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed due to the tremendous heat generated by the burning jet fuel. The collapse injured almost 10,000 people and lead to the death of 2,763 people. The plane that crashed into the field located in Pennsylvania was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark Liberty International Airport. The passengers resisted the four hijackers to the best of their abilities but no amount of effort was able to save the plane from flipping over and crashing into a field in Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people were killed during the 9/11 attacks, and to blame were 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group, al-Qaeda. 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda were responsible for the hijacking of these 4 planes. The 19 terrorists were able to easily smuggle knives through three East coast airports to board four chosen planes bound for California (History.com Editors, 2010). The United States as a fairly new country had never faced an attack on their own soil, therefore, making them vulnerable. However, 9/11 triggered major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism and defined the presidency of George W. Bush. The initiatives to combat terrorism accidentally may have also given the United States an excuse to overuse their power over citizens own rights.
George W. Bush was currently serving as the 43rd President of the United States of America when the attacks took place. Job and health security were the top two major issues of the Bush Administration overall. Right after 9/11, Bush made it clear he thought the only way to fight against terrorism was with foreign intervention. He thought it was necessary to "prevent attacks by terrorist networks, deny weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to rogue states and terrorists who seek to use them, deny terrorists the support and sanctuary of rogue states, and deny terrorists control of any nation they would use as a base and launching pad for terror (dAppollonia, 2012, p. 89)." This event gave Bush a reason to execute a long-planned military strike against Iran. Bush issued Military Order Number One "dealing with the detention, treatment, and trial of certain non-citizens in the war against terrorism allowing the treating a suspected terrorist to indefinite military detention (dAppollonia, 2012, p. 89)." The suspected terrorist has the right to be innocent until proven guilty as any other human being. Even though, a suspected terrorist may have a certain background which causes them to become a suspect it doesn't take away their right of defending themselves. The 14th amendment gives U.S. citizens the right to "equal protection under the law." The suspected terrorist should be able to have the same right as a U.S. citizen as they are as equally a human as them, it is a human right. The United States then sent out troops out to Iraq to attempt to disrupt al- Qaeda and the Taliban's growth. They justified their invasion of a whole country due to their right of self-defense against weapons of mass destruction, however, the regimes lacked those weapons (dAppollonia, 2012, p. 89). The invasion of a whole country without any proven accusation is not right especially when unnecessary violence broke out because of it. Many people lost their right to live due to this war, both American and Iraqi. The United States had selfish intentions which led to broken human rights all humans deserve whether they are American citizens or not.
9/11 led to the creation of Homeland Security by the U.S government. "The National Strategy for Homeland Security states: Five principles will guide our country's approach to developing information systems for homeland security. First, we will balance our homeland security requirements with citizens' privacy. Second, the homeland security community will view the federal, state, and local governments as one entity. Third information will be captured once at the source and used many times to support multiple requirements. Fourth, we will create databases of record, which will be trusted sources of information. Finally, the homeland security information architecture will be a dynamic tool, recognizing that the use of information technology to combat terrorism will continually evolve to stay ahead of the ability of terrorists to exploit our systems (Pasley, 2003, p. 306-307)." Basically, the U.S government developed a security framework to protect our country from large-scale attacks directed from abroad, and recover from threats and disasters at home. Twenty different Federal departments and agencies became one unified front against terrorism. Agencies, such as secret service, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service were given federal authority to take it upon themselves to ensure the safety and security of the United States borders. The Homeland Security Department works closely with the FBI, CIA, and other Federal agencies and departments to keep each other informed on any type of useful alarming information. The power the agencies gained through the creation of the Homeland Security Department stripped some of freedoms Americans once enjoyed. American is known to be," the land of the free" however; these rights were taken away the moment the twin towers fell. While the government's intentions were strictly for the protection of the United States citizens, it started to slowly strip away the founding values the country had given to their citizens since the birth of America (How has "National Security Changed Since 9/11/2001?", 2017).
The privacy of U.S. citizens was no longer respected by the government anymore, as surveillance of common American citizens' daily activities became government information. , Conversations were no longer considered to ever be private as all was being watched by the government to prevent another terrorist attack. "Library records, college applications, ethnic origin data, and even a person's favorite color could all be considered by surveillance personnel and analyzed for risk possibilities, responsible for deterring any further attacks on American soil ("How has "National Security Changed Since 9/11/2001?", 2017). " All of these government rights were protected under The USA Patriot Act which was signed by President George W. Bush on October 26. The USA PATRIOT is actually an acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism ("The USA PATRIOT Act: Preserving Life and Liberty", n.d.)." President George W. Bush thought of it as, "new tools to fight the present danger . . . a threat like no other our Nation has ever faced." Bush claimed that the act upheld the civil liberties given to citizens by the Constitution of the United States. However, parts of The Patriot Act greatly contradicted the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures (Costly, n.d.)…" The Patriot Act allowed for law enforcement to use surveillance, such as wiretaps to investigate all of the crimes that are related to terrorism in any way. Since the agencies are not investigating domestic crime, they are not required to have a warrant as long as they certify it is for the purpose to track a foreign subject. Section 213 of the Patriot Act authorizes preliminary searches for all federal criminal investigations if approved by the judge. The FBI is given the right to notify the citizen about the search later after the search has been done in this citizens home or business. The FBI justifies these types of searches to prevent the jeopardizing of evidence. This goes back to breaking the same human-right of equality as humans deserve the right to privacy. A person has the right to know when they are being recorded, searched, or anything that could be used against them. No one has the right to search, contain, and record another person's personal information without any valuable reason to do so or consent. The act allows for the FBI to issue search orders to any citizen who they believed are involved in terrorist activities. "Terrorist activities" include activities such as participating in public protests without violence. Withal, citizens have the right to participate in such protests with the protection of the First Amendment but this right is overridden by the FBI as they consider this a terrorist activity. This is clearly a violation of not only a human right but civil right given to the citizens by the Constitution of the United States of America (Costly, n.d.).
The detention of unlawful enemy combatants gives military and intelligence personnel the right to interrogate an individual with the intention of learning more about terrorist organizations, operations, and targets. An effective interrogation will produce valuable information which can lead to the seizure of a potential terrorist plan. Before 9/11, interrogation guidelines were followed through the Army Field Manual. Nonetheless, after 9/11 attacks, there were no more guidelines to follow as al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees were not considered prisoners of war as defined in the Third Geneva Convention. The Third Geneva Convention defined the humanitarian protections for prisoners of war. As these unlawful enemy combatants were not classified as prisoners of war, the U.S. Department of Justice opinions created a legal basis for a so-called "alternative" interrogation procedures which were basically torture. The "alternative" interrogation procedures included the use of stress positions, sensory deprivation of light and sound, removal of clothing, forced grooming, and the use of dogs to intimidate and induce stress in the subject. The three U.S. Department of Justice opinions included waterboarding as well but was not approved by the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Waterboarding is a practice in which detainees go through a simulated drowning by the pouring of water over their nose and mouth, covered by a wet towel. Even though it was not officially approved, it could potentially be legally available meaning if enough evidence was presented in order to "justify" such torture, it would be considered legal (Prieto & Sridharan, 2009). President George Bush argued that without these alternatives " tough….safe and lawful and necessary" interrogation methods, "al-Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. By giving us information about terrorist plans we could not get anywhere else, this program has saved innocent lives (Prieto & Sridharan, 2009, p. 23)." Although detainees should be held responsible for their actions, the United States has no right to torture the information out of a person. All humans should be protected from being treated inhumanely, including terrorists. The government should do things right by interrogating detainees without resorting to these "alternative" interrogations. A prisoner of war is protected from such alternative interrogations, as to proof unlawful enemy combatant should be as well. The protection of human rights has greatly decreased as information for National Security has evidently become more important than the dignity of another human being.
The line between national security and human rights has been significantly crossed by U.S. Federal agencies after 9/11 multitudinous times. Just months after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to spy on Americans and others inside the United States. The purpose was to search for evidence of terrorist activity but, without court-approved warrants required for domestic spying. For three years after 2002, the agency had been monitoring international emails and phone calls of possibly millions of people inside the United States. Millions of people in the United States were deprived their right to privacy as they were unaware their international emails and phone calls were under surveillance. The purpose was to track any possible links to al- Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for 9/11. The administration officials would eventually seek a warrant if it wanted to expand the "eavesdropping" warrants if it wants to expand the spying to collect more information. Even some officials realized that such surveillance has breadth, if not traversed, civil liberties and human rights in which are protected under the Constitution (Lichtblau, 2005). Bush as the President of the United States should have known better as to not authorize such invasion of privacy on citizens. There has to be a fine line between national security and the privacy of a citizen which is granted to them by the base of the country, the Constitution. There is no reason as to why the government should be able to track personal information especially if no prior conduct has flagged an individual. When efforts by the Department of Homeland Security "to gain greater access to Passenger Name Record information from European airlines" was noticed by Sophie in't Veld, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, she became concerned on the excessive need for personal data by the United States government. She thought it was unacceptable how the immoderate craving for personal data was allowed "without any kind of protection against mistakes and abuse by public authorities (Prieto & Sridharan, 2009, p.26)" Even through an outside source, it is seen how the United States is becoming a monster craving the personal information of not only their citizens but as many people as they can. The tracking of personal information can be abused by public authorities as a person's privacy should always be respected. If a person has never given any prior signs of terrorist activities, the government should not be able to keep track of such information as it is an individual's privacy. The protection of human rights has to come to mean less to the government than a piece of information.
Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the U.S Department of Transportation tightened airport security tremendously. A few months after the attacks, President George Bush signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA). "This act established a new Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which consolidated security efforts inside the Department of Transportation (DOT). In addition, the ATSA mandated several important changes in civil aviation security procedures. The two primary changes in airport security visible to passengers were the federalization of passenger security screening at all U.S. commercial airports by November 19, 2002, and the requirement to begin screening all checked baggage by December 31, 2002. The ATSA charged the TSA with overseeing security operations and implementing the mandates at all 429 commercial airports in the United States (Blalock et al., 2007, p.2)." Air travelers were to experience a whole new airport security procedure to ensure their safety. Airlines started to advise their passengers to arrive two hours prior to their departure. Passengers have to go through security checkpoints, and in the boarding area, passengers may be selected for additional screening, including hand-searching of their own personal carry-on bags. Since December 2001, where a passenger attempted but failed to light a bomb in his shoe while a flight, passengers are now asked to remove shoes prior to the checkpoint. " TSA has configured the baggage screening process but the exact processes varies within airports resources. Majority of airports require baggage to be screened before the passenger is able to check in which is very inconvenient for the passengers. If the electronic screening indicates a presence of prohibited items, a manual screening needs to be done adding time and inconvenience to the passenger. At times there have been complaints of theft and destruction of property due to the screening (Blalock et al., 2007,). Before boarding an airplane was simple, one walked through an exterior door and took a short hike across the ramp before clambering up a mobile stairway. Even if it makes us feel safer traveling the "friendly" skies, it is a major inconvenience to have to arrive at the airport two hours prior to your flight knowing you are about to be screened head to toe. These policies can make an individual feel overwhelmed as a passenger because there is no sense of privacy when traveling. Airport security is capable of making a person feel like a criminal due to the bountiful amount of times the individual is checked from the moment one arrives at the airport to when the plane stops touching the ground. It is necessary for our safety to one extent but what about when it comes to our privacy. Is it okay to break the privacy of an individual who means no harm to the country for the safety of a flight? A stricter and bolder line should be drawn with airport security and passenger privacy as it is clearly overstepped.
Invasive screenings, including a physical examination on a person's entire body, are a major part of airport security measures. A "Pat-down" procedure is required after a screening technology alarm goes off to make sure prohibited items are not being hidden. Recently TSA established a new universal pat-down procedure with the aim to strengthen airport security. The new procedure involves more touching and physical contact than the previous approach which was rigorous enough already. The screenings are conducted by the same-sex officer as the passenger, who also has the choice to request a private room and bring along a witness. "The new protocol enables officers to use the front of their hands, rather than the backs of their hands, to screen passengers if the technology indicates a possible high-security threat. With the new pat-down procedure, officers may also inspect areas such as the buttocks, groin, and breasts. "Part of it requires TSA agents, unfortunately, to reach down farther into sensitive areas, waistbands for example, which can make some travelers very uncomfortable," says George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog (Weiss, n.d.). No one is exempt from these extensive screening as even small children can undergo such screenings. At a Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, a mother recorded her own 13-year old son going through this invasive and extensive screening for 45 minutes long. After seeing this video, concern parents started speaking up against these screenings which are clearly an invasion of security and privacy rights. Adults, seniors, and children should not be going through such invasive screening. While it should be checked on why an alarm went off, the screenings have crossed the line. It has been reported that screenings may even start to feel as "legal groping" by how invasive they are. It is truly ironic how such "security" screenings are making passengers feel unsafe as it is meant to do completely the opposite. The government's intentions for more security measures are purely to make citizens feel safer but sadly it is not realized the more extensive security measures get the least safe an individual will feel about their own rights.
The treatment of Middle Easterners changed completely after the 9/11 attack due to the group of terrorist originating from middle eastern countries. The 19 terrorists originated from Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Even in 2018, Middle Easterners continue to be affected by discrimination, stigma, and hatred emerged by an event that happened seventeen years ago. Americans became so traumatized by the event that many found their fellow citizens with Middle Eastern heritage as both "physically threatening and culturally inferior (Selod, n.d.)." Daily, Americans with a Middle Eastern background suffer hostility in their work and public spaces. The government targets this group of people as well with policies "aimed" at preventing another terrorist attack from occurring ever again. Nonetheless, research data has shown that a majority of Arab Muslim Americans feel unsafe in the United States. In a two-year period, 2003 to 2004, the Arab Muslim Americans said they were "not confident about their personal safety, that they felt vulnerable, and that they were uncertain about their ability to live freely in the United States, fearing that they might face expulsion from the country or incarceration en masse in camps (Cainkar, 2011, p.1)." Society has always constructed Middle Easterners as "others" and as people not like "us" which has been widely accepted by all except those affected by it. There is no reason for Middle Easterners citizens to lose their rights of national belonging. During the first months after 9/11, angered neighbors and citizens were violently hostile towards these citizens as they intensely yelled "I want to kill you" and "Osama!" at them. "Egg-throwing, spitting, hijab-pulling, garbage-dumping, "bomb in your briefcase" jokes, ethnic slurs, religious affronts, hate graffiti, hand signals, removal from planes, and, in some cases, assault and murder", are some examples of what Middle Easterners have to deal with daily (Cainkar, 2011, p.1). In some cases, Arab and Muslims are asked to explain why the 9/11 attacks happened or to apologize for them as if they were related to them just for having the same origins as them. Even Arab and Muslim men and women have come to understand that they are all associated with terrorism. They fear to talk about politics and religion as they might have different opinions and will automatically be flagged to the authorities simply for practicing their freedom of speech right. Even though America practices democracy where all citizens have rights, American Muslims and Arabs live in fear to practice such rights due to stereotypical presumptions, which is a threat to both national security and American cultural values.
In the first twelve months after 9/11, twenty policies and initiatives were implemented by the government with the purpose to combat terrorism. Fifteen of the twenty policies were explicitly targeted towards Arabs and Muslims. Shortly after 9/11, the State Department sent out a message " imposing a twenty-day mandatory hold on all non-immigrant visa applications submitted by men aged eighteen to forty-five from twenty- six countries, most of them Arab or Muslim. All such applicants were to be subjected to special security clearances (Cainkar, 2004 p.1)." Stricter procedures for non-immigrant visa applications were put in order mostly for Arab and Muslim countries. In Jordan, visa applications were no longer approved at the Consulate in Amman they now needed to be approved in Washington D.C. with no time limit imposed. Many Arabs and Muslim thought of the procedures to affect thousands of students who were unable to continue studies in the U. S, professors who could not return to teach, and end jobs and fellowships, and the termination of medical treatment and chemotherapy in the U. S. In January 2002, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was going to track down and deport 6,000 males from Middle Eastern countries that had been deported but failed to leave the country. Approximately, there are about 314,00 absconders in the United States, predominantly from Latin America. Nevertheless, the government decided to target Middle Easterners who are less than two percent from those 314,000 absconders. The government went on to deny the accusations of racial profiling as they claimed other communities were going to be managed too, however, they never were (Cainkar, 2004). It is completely unfair how the government targets Muslim and Arabs due to their heritage as not all want to harm the country. Daily, U.S. airport security takes extra precautions when a Muslim or Arab passenger is going through security check. Muslim and Arabs are immediately flagged as danger the moment they step into an airport. Arab and Muslim men have been told that they form part of the "No-Fly list" when attempting to check in for their flights. Transportation and Security Administration agents will often stop and perform extra inspections on women who wear a hijab or any person who portrays to have an Arab and Muslim heritage as they automatically believe all are dangerous. (Selod, n.d.) These actions transmit that Muslims and Arabs are automatically a threat to national security and are to be carefully monitored without even knowing a person. There is no excuse for targeting a specific community due to a specific event which was led by 19 men, not a whole entire community. A government should strive for peace and justice not only for their citizens but for everyone as it is for the betterment of humanity. How is it expected for people to respect and treat all with equality if their own government does not do so themselves? People should be given the right to prove themselves for who they truly without people accusations and speculations beforehand.
On January 27, 2017, Executive Order 13769, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, otherwise known as the Muslim ban or travel ban was put in order. It indefinitely suspends the allocation of immigrant and nonimmigrant visas to applicants from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen — plus North Korea and Venezuela. The preponderance of these countries has a Muslim-majority population, which is why they named this executive order the Muslim Ban. The number of people affected by such ban estimates to about 135 million, according to immigrant advocacy groups (Gladstone & Sugiyama, 2018). President Trump justified the ban saying, "This is not about religion—this is about terror and keeping our country safe (Higgins, 2018)." However, it must not be a coincidence that the majority of the countries banned are majority-Muslim populations. While it is understood that these bans are done in the name of National Security the government needs to recognize that while doing so it is also violating human rights. Humans have the right to live wherever they want, speak freely, live safely, and those rights can not be taken away just because originate from the same heritage as those 19 men who hurt the United States deeply. However, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Bush said that the,"face of terror is not the true faith of Islam," and said that the United States is "a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth. (Gladstone, 2018)" This ban is an obvious attack towards Muslim people stereotyping them all as terrorists. The title of the executive order literally call people from these countries terrorists. This is clearly a violation of human rights as it prohibits another human from the opportunity to have a better life. Not everyone from these countries is trying to harm the United States, as they just want the opportunity to live a better, stable, and safe place.
The attacks of 9/11 changed the way immigrants and migrants were approached by the U.S government. The nineteen 9/11 terrorist had entered the country with temporary visas allowing them to be in the United States. This instantly connected national security and immigration. If the United States was going to be focusing on enforcing national security to prevent terrorism to ever happen again, immigration laws needed to be stricter. The three main bodies relating to immigration under the Department of Homeland Security are Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). They are responsible for collecting data, interview people of certain nationalities, and screening international travelers. "The immigration debate in the U.S. has shifted to some degree in the last several years as the country considers whether it has a moral duty to welcome refugees ― and if so, how to ensure that they don't pose a national security threat (Frej, 2016)." 800,000 refugees have come to the U.S. looking for asylum since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Out of those 800,000 people only three have been charged with terrorism and no terrorist plots since 9/11 involved refugees. The United States does have an active refugee screening allowing for the legal entrance of refugees. Nonetheless, the screening can take up to two years and has very high hurdles for security clearance. The screening really does not work for refugees as they escaping their native country due to the dangerous circumstance which mean they need asylum right away not 2 years later. In two years many things can happen to someone living in a threatening place (Frej, 2016). The United States has the resources available to help many people, maybe not all due to security issues but it should not jeopardize the safety of an innocent person. Security measures should not be stopping America from helping a person save their own life. It is a human right to live without fear and insecurity, and the United States should keep that in mind every single time they deprive a human to have those rights they "offer". Refugees are people who are simply looking for asylum and mean no harm to a country that will offer them that.
All humans have the right to safety. Nonetheless, sometimes safety measures are capable of making humans fearful for their own rights and liberties. The moment 9/11 attacks were being plotted was the moment America had to decide whether they preferred to keep their citizens safe or protect the principles in which it was founded upon such as freedom and tolerance. The protection of human rights by the United States keeps decreasing as they keep adding safety measures that violate rights such as privacy. The government's sole intention of protection from another terrorist attack has no clear line as to when it has become too much. As a free and democratic society, America needs to start a conversation about this issue. Civilians have the right to speak up against any safety policy or regulation that they feel is a violation of their own rights. The United States needs to start to embrace human rights principles consistent with both the U.S. Constitution and international law to their National Security measures.