Government Security

The purpose of this research is to examine the issues concerning government security. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which the subject of governmentrelated security measures of various kinds has achieved importance, and then to discuss the variety of views, some of them controversial, surrounding such subsidiary topics as document control and destruction, security predicated of the government's view of one's so-called need to know, legal and ethical issues in regard to mailing and reproduction of documents, and such issues of access control as personnel identification, whether by badges or other means.

There appears to be an inherent tension between the idea of democracy and the idea of government security in the modern period, for the boundaries between what democratic values a government has to give up in order to maintain the security of democracy seem blurred. Indeed, there is evidence of a progressive blurring on one hand and a progressive preoccupation with security on the part of democratic and nondemocratic societies alike on the other. In the 1830s, de Tocqueville's observations on America included the remark that the successful conduct of foreign relations demands scarcely any qualities that democracy is noted for, but almost all that it is deficient in (de Tocqueville, 1983, p. 42).

Elements of American security in the 19th and early 20th centuries included its isolated geographic position relative to other international powers.

ver, the advantages to be derived from its use outweigh the risks. . . D. Surreptitious Entry. RECOMMENDATION: Present restrictions should be modified to permit procurement of vitally needed foreign cryptographic material. Also, present restrictions should be modified to permit selective use of this technique against other urgent security targets. RATIONALE: Use of this technique is clearly illegal: it amounts to burglary. It is also highly risky and could result in great embarrassment if exposed. However, it is also the most fruitful tool and can produce the type of intelligence which cannot be obtained in any other fashion ("The Houston Plan," 1974, pp. 321-2). Huston's top-secret memorandum was approved, then rescinded by Nixon in 1970 ("The Houston Plan," 1974, pp. 51-2). However, the Nixon White House subsequently approved piecemeal domestic-intelligence gathering in the name of national security, including illegal surveillance of American citizens and groups that were deemed unfriendly to the administration. This was the period of the unauthorized disclosure by Daniel Ellsberg of the so-called Pentagon Papers, a "top-secret history of the Vietnam war [that] became a defense of [CIA] Agency analysts who had war

Category: Government - G