Twitter Jokes, Deportation, and National Security

You may have recently heard about two British tourists who were deported from America for posting some questionable jokes on Twitter.  A few weeks ago Leigh Van Bryan and Emily Bunting were flagged at the airport by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  DHS stated that their Twitter jokes referenced plans to “destroy America”, and “digging up Marilyn Monroe’s grave”.

The two friends were detained and questioned by agents for 12 hours regarding the suspicious tweets.  Bryan and Bunting argued that the phrase “destroy America” is simply British slang for partying in the U.S.A., and the Marilyn Monroe reference was a joke from the T.V. show Family Guy.  After further questioning yielded no evidence, the two were ordered to return to the U.K. and were told that they must re-apply for a visa before they could return to the U.S.

Now, this might seem like a comical incident, but a lot of folks are up in arms over the DHS’ harsh treatment and seemingly unnecessary overreaction.  A lot of people reacted by asking questions like, “Why deport these people?  They can’t single-handedly destroy America!!!”

And indeed, this incident raises a lot of questions for me.  I mean, how far does this national security business go anyway?  Can’t we tweet in peace?  What exactly is a “threat to national security” that will subject a person to removal / deportation?  We all know that people can obviously be deported for conduct like acts of terrorism or egregious crimes.  But posting on Twitter?  I mean, come on!

Recently I read a very well-written (and somewhat lengthy) article on the question of “What is Homeland Security?”  In this article, Christopher Bellavita discussed the origins of ideas like “homeland security” and “national security”.  I found this article to be pretty helpful for understanding puzzling incidents like this deportation case.  These ideas are important to consider, especially because they have definite impacts on our current legal standards in areas like immigration law and privacy law.

Bellavita explains that our nation only started really seriously speaking of national security in 2001 after 9/11.  Prior to this, we spoke of “defense” as in “Department of Defense” or “national defense”.  Now the notion of national defense is a pretty narrow one.  Defense speaks of external threats- specifically, foreign military invasions where the enemy can be clearly identified.  This is your classic capture-the-flag, Cold-war missile mentality where the threats belong to identifiable camps.

In contrast, “Homeland Security” is a broad umbrella term encompassing both internal and external threats to American safety.  It involves the collective efforts of the military, the FBI, law enforcement departments, immigration enforcement, and many other agencies.  It even covers threats like natural disasters and catastrophes.  With a “security” mindset, it may not be so clear as to what the threat is.  The overall aim is not to identify any specific military enemy, but rather to maintain an atmosphere of safety and order inside our borders.

So we can say that people who react by saying, “they couldn’t possibly destroy America by themselves” are probably operating from an older “defense” standpoint (or, they have very high expectations for single-man armies from watching too many Rambo movies).  That is, it makes no sense to deport persons who don’t pose a threat in the traditional, militaristic way- they didn’t belong to any military force, they didn’t pack any weapons, and they weren’t wearing uniforms or badges.

But from a “national security” standpoint, Bryan and Bunting’s deportation might be just a tad more understandable.  If the effect of a tweet is to create an overall panic in the American public, then that might be considered a threat to national security, even if it’s not as overt as say, a missile attack.

The Department of Defense has been around since the 1940’s, whereas our government only recently implemented an Office of Homeland Security in 2001 after 9/11.  But many folks still haven’t caught on to the switch from defense to security.  I think our situation here with the Twitter jokes clearly illustrates this.

Don’t get me wrong- in my own opinion I think that either way you look at it, defense or security, this is pretty much an overreaction by the DHS.  It probably shouldn’t have taken all of 12 hours to find out whether these were some truly bad guys.  Maybe we all need to watch more Family Guy, or brush up on our British slang.

And one thing is clear- I spy about a million definitions of “terrorism” floating around in all the laws and acts out there.  As “national security” interests expand, the definition of terrorism needs to be more clear, not less.  For now, here’s a list of “sensitive words” to avoid while tweeting, since they’re apparently being monitored by the guys over at DHS.