[Washington Current Affairs] On the 11th, American society will mark the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 that left approximately 3,000 people dead. Immediately after the terrorist attacks, the U.S. government took steps to significantly strengthen security measures and related organizations in order to prevent new attacks, and the system introduced at that time has become established as the ``new normal'' 25 years later. On the other hand, there is constant criticism that the country has created a ``surveillance state,'' especially regarding its activities to collect electronic information.
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◇Newly established huge organization
"Too many people's rights have been violated under successive administrations." On June 11 of this year, Sen. Wyden of the opposition Democratic Party questioned the activities of intelligence agencies during a debate on extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the collection of communications information of foreigners without a warrant.
Section 702 is a provision that was enacted in the 2008 FISA amendments to cover the activities of the National Security Agency (NSA) to secretly monitor foreign nationals on the Internet after the September 11 attacks, and Congress has decided whether to extend it at regular intervals. The system has been viewed as problematic from the perspective of privacy protection, as it allows authorities to collect even the personal information of citizens who have contacted targeted foreigners via e-mail or other means.
Section 702 ultimately expired on June 12th. However, the expiration was due to conflicts over "reform" of the surveillance system, and there was wide support among lawmakers for the necessity of extending it. The framework of the investigation and surveillance system established after the terrorist attacks is still in place.
A typical example of visible change in response to terrorism is the Department of Homeland Security, which was established in 2003 by merging and reorganizing 22 government agencies. The department includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is responsible for cracking down on illegal immigration, and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The TSA, which oversees security inspections at airports that had previously been left to the private sector, is a huge organization with 60,000 people that was established after the terrorist attack.
◇“Poor track record in preventing terrorism”
In American society, careful screening at airports and strict identification checks at financial institutions have become commonplace, and last year a system began to be implemented in which passengers are required to carry an ID that meets certain safety standards when boarding an aircraft. Online information surveillance has become part of everyday life, and research shows that the younger the generation, the less aware of what happened before 9/11, the less likely they are to realize that government surveillance has increased over the past 25 years.
However, controversy continues as to whether the measures taken by the government are serving the purpose of deterring terrorism. One of the major factors that allowed the terrorist attacks to occur was a lack of coordination between authorities, even though they had obtained fragmentary information about the group responsible in advance.
Patrick Eddington, a senior research fellow at the Cato Institute think tank, said the attacks created "the most extensive and intrusive surveillance system in American history" and that it has "never been reliably proven to be effective in preventing terrorists from entering this country." At the same time, he said, ``Many people have accepted and adapted to change,'' and argued that we should once again be wary of the growing surveillance network.
