Nerve Endings Firing Away

Back to 24 blogging. Last night’s episode of the Fox drama series, 24 had an interesting conundrum. The counter-terrorism unit (CTU) captures a US citizen in accompaniment of a known terrorist and wants to interrogate him as soon as possible to know Habib Marwan’s (the head honcho of terrorists) sinister climax. In order to delay CTU, Marwan sends a Amnesty Global lawyer to protect the right of the suspect. Now, in the rapid pace of this drama where everything happens in 24 hours, a loss of few hours spent in judicial wrangling over due process can be the difference between stopping the terrorists and loss of few million lives.

Of course, the individual liberty and rights of an individual must be protected. But as the Patriot act suggests, in times of national security crises, due process rights can and should be subverted. An otherwise libertarian me, I am undecided on this one (that doesn’t make me a libertarian, does it? Sorry, Cartel). The issue can be at best ambiguous and unclear on who decides whether the crisis is serious enough to warrantee overruling individual rights in lieu of national security. The greater good argument can be cited here but we are fully aware that this provision is likely to be abused most of the times; similarly to the manner in which TADA or Patriot Act is implemented to harass obviously innocent citizens.

Back to 24, overruling the alleged terrorist’s individual rights were almost too obvious since it involved a nuclear strike in next few hours. Eventually, Jack Bauer, the guy who can hold his pee for 24 hours, managed to work his way around procedural law and interrogate the suspect (successfully) after “releasing” him. Doesn’t he remind you of Nana Patekar’s Krantiveer? These things are always hailed on the screen, not in real life.