Jeh Johnson and avoiding security overreach

Last month, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson spoke to students at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., regarding issues such as border control and cyber surveillance and how these issues are affected by guaranteed liberties and American ideology. Johnson gave the 56th Green Lecture (the most famous lecture in this series is the “Iron Curtain” speech delivered by then-former-and-future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1946).

Johnson’s speech channeled previous Green Lectures, including Churchill’s and former President Harry Truman’s “What Hysteria Does to Us,” which was given in the early years of the Cold War.

{mosads}In introducing the heart of his speech, “Achieving our Homeland Security while Preserving our Values and our Liberty,” Johnson suggested that officeholders have an obligation to give citizens “calm, responsible dialogue and decision-making.” Johnson believes, like Truman did before him, that the United States overreacted during the Red Scare — and, Johnson believes, America has overreacted again, this time with regard to those who practice Islam.

Thus, Johnson argued, the United States government must act to both provide and sustain security while also protecting the American civil liberties and traditional values. Johnson noted, for example, that his initial thought during last year’s Ebola virus scare was to limit travel to the United States from Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa. However, doing so would have had a domino effect in which the countries that most needed aid were isolated by the U.S. and its allies, leading to further loss of life. The cornerstone of Johnson’s lecture came when he argued that “[w]e can erect more walls, install more screening devices, and make everybody suspicious of each other, but we should not do so at the cost of who we are as a Nation of people who cherish our privacy, our religions, our freedom to speak, travel and associate, and who celebrate diversity and our immigration heritage.”

While the Obama administration has had its critics, it has largely striven to strike a balance between securing the nation and securing the civil liberties of her citizens. To be sure, issues such as targeted killing of American citizens and continued gun control debates need to be in the forefront of public debate. However, despite a long, public fight to the contrary, Obama announced last week that the U.S. government would not require Apple or Google to allow access to encrypted digital data of their customers. Obama made the decision — despite a fervent effort on the part of FBI Director James Comey to convince him otherwise — to ensure that Americans could not “go dark.”

In short, Secretary Johnson’s comments suggest that several of the nation’s security fears have been and continue to be misplaced. While many threats are real, and security processes and procedures are without doubt necessary, the United States needs to focus on security while ensuring the liberty upon which this nation was founded. Whether the reasons behind the shift in the administration’s policy position is based on moral, legal or political reasons, it is clear that that, as Johnson argued in his Green Lecture, the administration has reconsidered the balance of security and liberty, and for the moment, at least, American civil liberties have won out.

Gibson is an associate professor of political science at Westminster College in Missouri and a National Security Network (NSN) fellow. Albrecht is a junior political science and security studies major at Westminster College. The views expressed here are not necessarily the views of NSN.