Life is a dynamic process, not a steady state, so things are always in motion, including ourselves. Maybe that’s why Aristotle said the Golden Mean is something we see only when we look back over our shoulders as we tack past it, trying to sail closer to the wind. And maybe that’s why, when we try to respond to urgent events, we often overcorrect.If we have been overly cautious, for example, we correct by taking greater risks and that can lead to recklessness. Then we correct for recklessness by becoming more prudent which can lead to becoming overly cautious. So then we correct by taking greater risks … and on it goes, an endless process resembling an infinity loop or two poles at either end of a horizontal line along which we move back and forth in search of the elusive middle.
The middle is hard to define. Once we find it, the middle is even harder to hold. But the middle must be our plumb line, lest we forget ourselves in the passion of battle.
Computer security is a good metaphor for societal security because computer networks are holographic images of societies, a piece of the whole that contains the whole in symbolic form. Perimeter defense of electronic networks, we have learned, only goes so far. It’s the nature of networks to subvert boundaries because networks interpenetrate one another in indeterminate ways. Nodes can belong to any of several networks the way a subway station can be a stop on any of several lines. One consequence of this is that insiders cause the great majority of security incidents, which is also a way of saying that “insiders” and “outsiders” are difficult to distinguish in a networked world. Through the use of keystroke loggers, telephone recorders, and surveillance cameras, “insiders” in electronic networks are constantly watched. Now that the United States has been attacked from the inside with its own infrastructure, there is pressure to do the same on a societal level.
When I wrote several years ago that the level of security required in computer networks would become the level of security demanded by governments, I was only stating the obvious, that electronic networks are rings linked in concentric circles to the human networks that give them meaning. Securing the network at one level means securing it at all levels.
For a society to secure itself, however, different compacts are called into questions. Corporations can observe employees because employees are “owned” by corporations; everything they say or do on the job belongs to the boss. Citizens are not “owned” by governments in the same way. When a government ramps up to the level of security common in electronic networks, we are being asked to accept a level of surveillance unprecedented in free societies.
When I suggested the Homeland Defense Network (homelanddef.net – coming soon) as a kind of global “neighborhood watch,” some asked if I wanted to turn people into spies or cops. The answer, of course, is no, but such an effort – not neighbors watching neighbors so much as neighbors watching out for neighbors – presumes that we are capable of experiencing ourselves as a single neighborhood with a collective sense of responsibility based on mutual self-interest. It presumes that we the people, nodes in a network, know we are a network worth preserving.
So where do we find ourselves in the ceaseless loop cycling between security and freedom?
Some think we’re approaching the center, others think we’re well past it.
The relevant question is not whether we can trust governments to use such power wisely but whether we can trust ourselves as human beings. Unfortunately, the historical evidence is not optimistic. That’s why the United States built in checks and balances to compensate for the flaws in our all-too-human nature, flaws that would lead over time to unacceptable excesses. The question now is whether or not those checks and balances can be ported to the networked world of the 21st century on a global rather than national scale.
I have been as passionate as any in response to September 11 and as clear as most about the nature of the shift initiated by the attack. The advantage of asymmetric attackers who only have to succeed once to wreak havoc can be matched by a relatively open society only if it closes itself some. But – and it’s a big “but” – in order for a society to be relatively free as well as relatively secure, those who do the surveillance must be kept under surveillance. The lights must always be on or else the deeds done in the darkness will fester and grow.
In the aftermath of the shock of attack, an absolute level of trust was projected onto our leaders. As time goes on, however, that trust must be earned and demonstrably so.
If we possess a moral imagination or any sense of history, we know what human beings are capable of doing. The moment at which those who fight monsters become monsters is usually seen only in retrospect as we look back over our shoulders at the receding point of no return. It can happen to any of us. The struggle for freedom must be waged on all fronts simultaneously, inside as well as outside, because the boundaries that distinguish an enemy from an ally are as porous as our borders.
Extremes are easier to defend on any battlefield because they simplify options. Yet the essence of civil society is found in that elusive middle where contradictions are held in precarious tension. Free people, in order to remain free, must learn to endure a level of complexity and ambiguity that would drive a conspiracy theorist nuts.
It is not disloyal to remember the truth of the human condition. That truth says that the price of freedom is a searchlight vigilance that scans all of our networks, including our own.
Lest we forget what we fight for. Lest we forget who we are.
