'National security' vs personal security

A German citizen who says he was kidnapped and abused by the Central Intelligence Agency cannot seek redress in court because his lawsuit would expose state secrets, a United States Court of Appeals ruled yesterday in Richmond, Va.

Source: New York Times.

Such decisions raise important questions. To what extent must an individual's right to protection from mistreatment be abrogated by 'national security' considerations? It's a difficult question to answer, but I think there is a fundamental flaw in the debate. National security is about an individual's right to protection from mistreatment, and a State's obligation to prevent such mistreatment. It is a non sequitur to argue that the public must not be allowed to know about the activities of the security apparatus, because to do so would lead to public harm, when the activities themself are a source of harm.

In recent times, particularly in developed nations, the law of security has focused on military security - securing a nation's borders, for example, from foreign threats or investigating individuals inside one's territory who might be planning terrorist attacks. What has been lost is the substantial corpus of discussion surrounding the law of human security. That is, security from hunger, disease, poverty, and so on.* It is a sad irony that the vast majority of deaths on this planet are due to poor living standards, rather than military threats such as terrorism or 'rogue states'. There is an argument against this to the effect that the potential threat of terrorism or rogue states is so great that they warrant special attention, and lots of money, lest, say, a 'dirty bomb' is exploded in a population centre. I think there is some merit to this argument, but only some, and only if such statements are applied to the most powerful states - the US, Russia, China, etc - which routinely either use the most powerful of weaponry on civilians or sell such weaponry to people who do.

Of course, none of this is earth shattering news. So why does it persist? Well, that is a whole other, equally complex question. But here are some suggestions:

'The curse of axiomatic deduction' - this is the belief that all decisions and outcomes fundamentally rest on uncontestable, unchangeable properties in the human condition. Humans are selfish, or shortsighted, or are inherently of variable quality necessitating that a few govern the many.

"Learned helplessness" - is a psychology term used to describe the situation when a human or animal learns to think that it has no control over his or her situation and that whatever is done to mitigate the situation will be futile.

What do you think?

* For more information on this check out the Center for Economic and Social Rights.