Especially in light of the facts that the US' visa waiver arrangement with Europeans is undoubtedly now the largest chink in US Homeland Security and Al Qaeda wishes for a Transatlantic breakdown (the airline plot of 2007 demonstrates this), American Law Enforcers are getting increasingly vocal with European counterparts about this particular security philosophy.

"Perfect Security" is as it sounds. The epithet "perfect" in relation to security can refer to physical identification and the use of DNA along with other detection analyses. Or it can refer to, for example, IT security - quantum cryptography uses traits of individual photons to distribute random mathematical keys that can be used to encrypt and decrypt communications, providing theoretically "perfect security". There are other ideas of "perfect security" just as there are myriad theories on historical inevitability.

That is not to say that Britain is not currently home to thousands of extreme Islamists who (in theory) would rather die than be caught as they go about their daily treason, breaking kuffar laws left right and centre in spite of billboards and publicity everywhere telling them that if they are caught they must prepare for many years behind bars. These warped romantics hear "do not" every five minutes and one would hope that eventually the message will sink in that their activities are futile and meaningless; their goals absurd and unfeasible.

Having spent a considerable number of months in the US, I know what it is like to be pulled over by cops for traffic infringements, how crossing a street in the wrong place and getting caught (depends on the state) will see you fined, how heavy-handed law enforcement can be, right from the now-infamous, jumped-up, untravelled immigration officials at US airports through to the liquor-selling cashiers in supermarkets who only pass over your brown-paper-bag-wrapped bottle of booze if you show them some valid ID, whether you're eighty years old on a Zimmer frame or twenty one yesterday and still wearing the birthday badge.

History plays a great part here. Brown paper bags on bottles are more to do with prohibition and its history than over-zealous law enforcers. US immigration officials, after Richard Reid and the Transatlantic airline plot, have good reason to be jumpy (though I still feel most of them are just failed cops with huge chips on their shoulders with suppressed Zawahiriesque inferiority complexes).

Britain has a tradition of letting its inhabitants get away with the odd thing here or there and tends to look back fondly on the likes of Drake and Raleigh and other swashbuckling pirates who turned the country from relative pauper to superpower with robbed Spanish gold. Even with their existences blighted by targets and paperwork, most British policemen will have a quiet word with you rather than arrest you for peeing in a park bush on the way home in the cold from a warm public house. Mainland Europe (save Austria) is the same (I speak from experience as a veteran of manifold rugby tours - surely the ultimate litmus test of police reaction) and few law enforcers, even at airports, will handcuff you when you're debagged in the airport concourse or hand over a defaced passport at check-in.

It's a well-established fact that one of the key Islamist enemy's goals in manifesting 911's and 7/7's has been to disrupt the way of life of Americans and their European allies. Duct tape and bunker-building were exactly how the enemy (not just Walmart & Home Depot) wanted us to react - show fear and change our way of life, curtail our own freedoms without realising it, put pressure on our governments for their failure to protect us and generally crumple ourselves into a state of self-defeatist whimpering. In many ways, perfect security plays into the enemy's hands - that extra two hours instead of one at the airport, 42 days' detention instead of relying on old norms, scanners that can make out the Daffy duck design on your boxer shorts - all contribute to a feeling that in some way the enemy has won a few small victories along the way.

The argument between those who insist upon perfect security and those who prefer to adopt less obvious strategies (often in relation to a more limited security resource) reflects the security argument between those who wish to zap all jihadi forums off the Internet and those who prefer to zap a few and eavesdrop on others - in many ways both camps are correct but neither provides a perfect solution. The Perfect security theorists in America should get their way and see European visa waiver abolished overnight, whilst the Europeans should get their American partners to think about reallocating their partly unnecessary and enormous (reactive) Homeland Security budget to some (proactive) security schemes, which will benefit US Homeland Security more in both the shorter and longer term, such as an international ISP agreement, investment in Islamic reformation bodies (eg Quilliam) and binding a network of its former intelligence professionals now retired across most countries on the planet.

Philosophical arguments are healthy for the security community.  They show a common passion, depth of thought and strategy and - heartily debated - a common purpose and unity. The Perfect Security debate is at heart a cultural debate and a celebration of the common freedoms that America and Europe enjoy - highlighting once again how freedom to co-operate, openly debate and share advances progress at such a speed as no civilisation on the planet has ever been able to get close to. Just as perfection is unachievable, progress relies on a series of imperfect achievements to keep itself forever moving forwards.

Dominic Whiteman is spokesperson for the London-based VIGIL anti-terrorist organization - an international network of terror trackers, including former intelligence officers, military personnel and experts ranging from linguistic to banking experts.  He edits the Westminster Journal.

---

Bookmark with: