2025 Theses Bachelor's

The Shadow of Surveillance: Post-9/11 Approaches and the Potential for Erosion of Liberal Democracy

Smyth, Declan

This thesis argues that post 9/11 means of surveillance employed by US government intelligence agencies have interfered with foundational norms of liberal democracies. Coercion, identified as the most problematic aspect of surveillance, is found to be applied unwarrantedly in post 9/11 approaches to surveillance due to lack of consent. Citizens cannot consent to coercion from surveillance because they are not informed enough to consent. Based on foundational works of liberal theory, this paper creates frameworks for understanding principles of consent and publicity normatively, and then applies these definitions to instances of post 9/11 surveillance. This application finds that surveillance methods have departed significantly from the norms that sustain liberal democracies. Based on this application, this paper will examine the implications of these instances for the sustainability of democratic regimes. In assessing this potential sustainability, this paper discusses the feasibility and limitations of a “democratic surveillance” in the US. Ultimately, this paper concludes that, because of the increased value placed on information collection for security purposes, intelligence operations are unlikely to scale back surveillance, meaning that incremental efforts to publicize surveillance provide the most promising route towards a more justified surveillance that better sustains democracy.

Keywords: Surveillance, Post-9/11 surveillance, Liberal democracy, Coercion, Consent, Publicity, Intelligence agencies, Democratic theory, National security, Democratic sustainability, Government transparency, Justified surveillance, US intelligence operations, Normative political theory, Democratic surveillance