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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 11/03
A Year of Loss: Reexamining Civil Liberties since September 11
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights
August 2002
Abstract
On the morning of September 11, men now believed to be members of the al Qaeda network forcibly took control of four commercial jetliners to attack the United States. Within minutes, 19 hijackers crashed two of those planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people.
In the days and weeks that followed, a wide range of new security measures were put in place in public and private venues throughout the country. Many of these changes were grounded in common sense. But other measures taken by the government violated traditional notions of liberty with no clear connection to increased safety. For example, as the search began for accomplices in the attacks, the Department of Justice swept up more than 1,000 immigrants from Middle Eastern and other Islamic countries, many of whom were subsequently held for months without formal charge or trial.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Americans began to question the country’s readiness to confront dangers until then associated only with other countries. Deliberate lethal attacks against civilians the subject of frequent news reports from abroad assumed a new and devastating reality in America. The attacks prompted a widespread call for a reassessment of U.S. security needs at home and abroad. The threat of future attacks was, and continues to be, very real. In the face of these attacks, it quickly became clear that heightened security interests required a reassessment and recalibration of the balance between individual liberty and national security.
