Surveillance

Post-9/11 Fear Grew the Surveillance State. 25 Years Later, It's Still Growing.

The U.S. government responded in ways that are so integrated into daily life that we no longer recognize them.

Abigail R. Hall | From the August/September 2026 issue

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(Illustration: Midjourney)

"Mom, why did he take your picture?" my preschooler asked. We were making our way through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint for a family trip.

"It's to compare my face with the picture in the computer," I said. "They want to make sure I am who I say I am."

As we put our bags on the conveyor belt to be X-rayed, I received another question. "Mom—what's that big machine?"

"A body scanner. It's supposed to find things under people's clothes."

"Can it see my privates?!"

"No," I hesitated. Contemporary scanners do not capture such details, but TSA agents may use them to inappropriately fondle people. Older backscatter X-ray machines could, and did, provide the TSA with images of naked bodies.

After passing through the metal detector, we waited for our bags. A man in front of us was pulled aside to have his hands swabbed for explosives. I received yet another inquiry.

"Mom—what is that thing?"

"What thing?"

"The thing they're rubbing on his hands."

"That—that is to see if there are things on his hands that shouldn't be."

To my preschooler, these surveillance measures will undoubtedly be routine. Scan your ID, pose for the biometric screening, step into the scanner, be "randomly selected" for additional screening. My children won't know that air travel wasn't always this way. Facial scans, physical searches of your person and property, and so on are not part of some organic evolution. They are a direct response to the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent war on terror. But my children won't have memories of that either.

Just as every baby boomer knows exactly where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, people my age can tell you precisely what they were doing just after 9 a.m. on 9/11. I was in seventh grade music class. In other classrooms, my friends watched people jump out of buildings. My mom picked me up early from school, and I distinctly remember that every television channel had been overtaken by news coverage. I watched the twin towers collapse over and over again for what felt like days. President George W. Bush gave multiple primetime addresses, and soon American flags were all over the neighborhood and my school.

Some parts of 9/11's legacy are clear. Twenty-five years later, the United States government remains embroiled in a global war on terror. Members of the military bear both physical and mental wounds. The formal conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to inform the opinions of citizens and policymakers alike. Other reminders of the attack and subsequent responses abound—from the memorial at the World Trade Center site and annual memorial stair climbs to an absolute explosion of academic work related to terrorism and counterterrorism.

Other parts of 9/11's legacy are more difficult to observe, especially for Americans too young to remember life before the attacks. The U.S. government responded in many ways that either were largely kept secret from the public or are so integrated into daily life that we no longer recognize them as what they are: marked expansions of government that have weakened constraints on government and eroded our liberties.

Scale, Size, and Scope

In addition to launching the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other interventions abroad, the U.S. government underwent its largest restructuring since 1947. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began operations........

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