Are We Safer in the Dark?
Nice little op-ed in USA Today putting forward the idea that a tendency towards transparency isn’t anathema to security, but may in fact be vital to it:
A good first step is to get beyond the simplistic choice between security and freedom, as if one comes only at the expense of the other. After the 9/11 attacks, our leaders told us we need more secrecy to be secure — the familiar refrain that “loose lips sink ships.” But a closer look at 9/11 reveals that government secrecy was part of the problem, not the solution. The CIA and FBI hoarded information from each other, and the 9/11 Commission found only one possibility that the attacks could have been prevented: If there had been “publicity” about the arrest of one of the conspirators at a Minnesota flight school, the planners might have called off the hijackings.
Remember the Unabomber? He sent letter bombs that killed and wounded scientists while the FBI chased him for years. He wasn’t caught until newspapers published his screed and his brother recognized the crazy language and turned him in. Same with the snipers in the Washington, D.C., area: Within hours after a county official leaked the description of the suspects’ car, a trucker spotted it at a rest area and the SWAT team moved in. We need to learn these lessons: Sunlight is not only the best disinfectant (in Justice Louis Brandeis’ famous words), but also, in an open society, openness is our security.
Of course, in the age of war hero Republicans, the belief that the best government is the one that goes off and does “what needs to be done” without having to worry about transparency, legality, morality, is rampant, and corrosive at all levels. But maybe the push for transparency is beginning to make a quiet comeback. Certainly, we have reason enough to be sick about its opposite, given the scandals of the last few years.