Was Hobbes right in prioritising security above liberty?

In order to be able to break down the question, we must understand the individual concepts; the role of national security and the meaning of liberty. National security maintains the survival of the states through the use of economics, diplomacy, political and military power to isolate threats internal and external and the protection of classified information. Liberty is the freedom within a state, and is considered to be a factor which should work side by side with security in a social contract. The idea of liberty is the individual rights to self and the understanding of individual roles and responsibilities in to society in relation to concepts of free will. Security for the people is protection from individual man, and the protection of the state. Hobbes idea that security should supersede liberty is easily understandable and justifiable as life is one of the few natural and fundamentally concepts we fight to preserve and protect. In times of instability and frequent wars, life should always be prioritised. The quality of life i.e. liberty should by in large be subservient to the existence of it. However, there should be a proportion and limit to the extent of security above liberty.

It is clear in the 21^st century that the war on terror is at its peak, and relatively the security measures within a state. When people’s liberty and existence is threatened by a very real and present danger security oversteps people’s liberties and rights. The Americans backlashed and sought to find the intended targets putting other people’s lives at risk as well as increasing security levels. The security that America then imposed meant that checks were more frequent at airports and the government casted an even more concentrated eye on the general public. These attempts to protect people, in the case of duality, are also inhibiting and hindering the freedom of the same people.

However, the concern growing in Britain is the idea of mass surveillance and the idea of an Orwellian state. The similarities between an Orwellian state and our current include, the invasion of personal privacy, state control of its citizens’ daily life and euphemism to describe an agency i.e.” ministry of Defence”. At the end of 2006, UK was described as the most “surveilled” country with approximately 4.2m CCTV Cameras in operation becoming a serious threat to freedoms and constitutional rights. It has even come to a point where even certain CCTV cameras and now fitted with microphones.  In 2002, the UK government announced plans to extend the RIPA, granting power to at least 28 governments’ states to browse citizens’ web, email, telephone and fax records without a warrant and without acknowledgement.  Actions like these monitor the daily movement of individuals lives, which is not only morally wrong but creates a sense of a prisoned state where the subjects live and keep themselves in line due to fear of the omniscient government. 

Corporate Companies also provide security in their appearance by placing background checks on individual employees. Modern social networking sites i.e. Facebook and twitter are browsed, giving a sense that individual’s liberties to post pictures and comments on how they feel are being restricted.

Abstractly, people themselves are taking away their own liberties. In order to provide financial security for themselves, their family and the state, individuals enslave themselves in work and become nothing more but numbers and statistics to determine house incomes. Movements like this are what give the public the idea that we are under a “surveillanced society”, the idea of a “big brother”, losing our privacy, freedom and humanity.

Hobbes is right in placing security above liberty, and the individual person should be able to relate to this as they also do this in a smaller scale.  We must look at the size of the nation and only then compare them to the actions. We complain about passport control, but yet an individual would not let a stranger into their own homes. We complain about the rights to speak freely, but yet our children are forbidden from certain vocabulary. We complain about being restricted from information, yet current media’s have age limits as we feel that there are a few who are not ready to be exposed to specific context. Also we cannot only look at military security, but other factors of survival i.e. social security. The education system though takes away our liberties of freedom, and imposes us to be in school till the age of 16 enables the UK to have a brighter generation and aid them in securing future jobs. Monitoring individuals can also be a benefit in terms of health care, the NHS and its databases allows authorized personals to produce medical enhancements for the future. People complain about liberties being taking away, in retrospect to security but this is something that every individual should understand. 

I personally do not care much about the monitoring or the restrictions as I personally have nothing to hide from the government. I feel that, the government for one would not even bother looking at any of my records of monitor me individually as I am no threat to the security of the nation, but yet some people argue that still, it’s the principle of it. 

 “It's not so much staying alive, it's staying human that's important”