NATIONAL SECURITY

Security measures taken to protect the Houses of Parliament in London, England. These heavy blocks of concrete are designed to prevent a car bomb or other device being rammed into the building.

National security refers to the public policy of maintaining the integrity and survival of the nation-state through the use of economic, military and political power and the exercise of diplomacy, in times of peace and war.

Measures taken to ensure national security include:

• using diplomacy to rally allies and isolate threats
• marshalling economic power to facilitate or compel cooperation
• maintaining effective armed forces
• implementing civil defense and emergency preparedness measures (including anti-terrorism legislation)
• ensuring the resilience and redundancy of critical infrastructure
• using intelligence services to detect and defeat or avoid threats and espionage, and to protect classified information
• using counterintelligence services or secret police to protect the nation from internal threats
• curbing pollution to ensure edible food and clean water supply and to decrease the potential for abrupt climate change

National security and rights & freedoms

Following the terrorist September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, and subsequent terrorist incidents around the world, national security has become a paramount concern for many governments and societies. The measures adopted to maintain national security in the face of threats to society has in turn led to ongoing dialectic, particularly in liberal democracies, on the appropriate scale and role of authority in matters of civil and human rights.

Public discourse on these issues has highlighted the tension that exists between the preservation of the state (by maintaining self-determination and sovereignty) and the rights and freedoms of individuals.

Although national security measures are imposed to protect society as a whole, such measures will necessarily tend to restrict the rights and freedoms of all individuals in society. The concern is that where the exercise of national security laws and powers is not subject to good governance, the rule of law, and strict checks and balances, there is a risk that "national security" may simply serve as a pretext for suppressing unfavorable political and social views. Taken to its logical conclusion, this view contends that measures which may ostensibly serve a national security purpose (such as mass surveillance, and censorship of mass media), could ultimately lead to an Orwellian dystopia.

The debate also raises questions about whether national security is ultimately weakened by the diversion of public sector funds away from basic services such as education, the health care system and disaster relief and emergency preparedness, and into national security measures and programs.

In the United States, the politically controversial USA Patriot Act and other government action has brought some of these issues to the attention of even the average citizen. The debate raises the question, "To what extent, for the sake of national security, should individual rights and freedoms be restricted?", or "can the restriction of civil rights for the sake of national security be justified?".

See also

• Anti-terrorism legislation
• Computer insecurity
• Good governance
• Homeland security
• International security
• National defense
• National Security Adviser (U.S.)
• National Security Agency (U.S.)
• Nuclear deterrence
• Police state
• Rule of law
• Security
• Terrorism