(This article was originally published in October 2000)

A magazine I recently subscribed to, Mother Jones, just brought something to my attention that I think is very interesting. MJ points out that the US defense budget for terrorist threats has grown each year while terrorist threats worldwide have been on a steady decline since the end of the Cold War. Many of these agencies are using terrorism as an excuse to maintain and even increase their budgets, while the only place you'd get an idea of terrorist threatening mass destruction is in fictional novels and media hype. In fact, even the FBI admits that the threat of a "mass destruction" attack is near zero.

Last year, FBI Director Louis Freeh testified to Congress, "The United States hold little credible intelligence indicating that international or domestic terrorists are planning to attack United States interests domestically through the use of weapons of mass destruction." So why is the US now spending $11 billion a year to defend against a threat that doesn't exist?

Beyond the over-inflated budgets, organizations such as the FBI have expanded their jurisdiction to the point that many civil liberties could be threatened. Civilian surveillance has dramatically increased inversely to the actual threat to the state. Sigh…

The implications of all this should be pretty obvious. Aside from the realization of one more unnecessary (or grossly over-funded) government program, what concerns me more is the increased government surveillance and loss of privacy. Our government is getting paranoid, and the media is selling it to the public. But why? What is the motivation behind these things?

Obviously the media is constantly looking for sensationalism for their precious "ratings." This is the cause for most public misconceptions, and is fed by the fact that fiction often makes for a better story than fact. Because most everyone is a product of the same public education system, which teaches from books, most people are trained to believe everything they read—printed words must be credible. This now carries over to other mediums such as radio (read: War of the Worlds), television, and even (fw: ) email. All of these factors contribute to a mislead public—people hear what is most interesting and automatically believe everything they hear.

The Government's motivation isn't quite so obvious. I think the main source of the problem is people who don't want to lose their jobs. If you are the head of a government department who is losing funding and purpose it's understandable that you will start looking for things to do. Terrorism seems to be the latest hip trend. And of course, media attention will support their budget proposals—and who would be against anti-terrorist action? After all, everyone would be for defending against anything that could threaten his or her children. The problem comes when budgets and spending are approved for problems that don't really exist; this is frivolous. Keeping people employed is certainly noble, but our government's resources could be used to address more pressing problems.

This motivation behind government agencies to maintain funding goes beyond just excess spending; as I mentioned before, there are now privacy issues involved. A paranoid government is a dangerous thing. I have always thought that the government would eventually come to something of an Orwellian state, and that terrorist threats were a realistic justification. I'm starting to see confirmation of this theory. Coupled with new technologies and digital environments such as the Internet people are more susceptible to monitoring than ever. The media hype surrounding terrorist threats really don't help the situation at all. In fact, even if the public was made generally aware of its decreasing privacy, people may accept it because of the illusion that they are being threatened. The government will justify itself by flashing pictures of Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center, both of which were caused by traditional bombs. The threat from weapons of mass destruction will be used to increase the fear and foment the paranoia.

The whole situation reeks of the Cold War Civil Defense program, in which the government spent billions of dollars to protect citizens from nuclear attack, when in reality a shelter won't provide much protection in such an event and only puts the public into a state of unnecessary fear. People need to decide if it's worth maintaining an artificial state of anxiety and being watched by the government to be protected from something that may not exist at all.

Copyright © 2000 Brian Scates. All Rights Reserved

Brian (brian@exitanalog.org) is an Art major at Stephen F. Austin State University.