On the Fourth of July, 2001, the United States national security apparatus operated in a state of high alarm. For months, intelligence agencies had detected a looming threat to American interests. Sunni Muslim terrorist groups, particularly Al Qaeda, were thought to be planning an attack. Security advisers, fearing truck bombs, told the White House not to re-open Pennsylvania Avenue to traffic. The FBI told its field offices to be on high alert. Every ambassador was briefed on suicide bomb threats. A hostage plot was feared. When the president visited Italy, he did so under the protection of anti-aircraft guns. As the Independence Day holiday rolled around, the Central Intelligence Agency warned federal officials that a "spectacular" attack was coming, but it couldn't say where or when.

Sixty-eight days later, the answer became tragically clear, especially to New Yorkers. They were victims and witnesses of the deadliest terrorist attack in history. And, as the latest issue of City Limits Investigates reports in Freedom/Fear: Civil Liberties in Today's New York, city residents now occupy a place where freedom and liberty are starkly different from seven summers ago.

For some, the security measures that New Yorkers live with now are reasonable reactions to the threat detected in the summer of 2001 – which the city and country still face – of terrorist attack. “I think for the most part, Americans have gone about their lives since September 11. Sometimes you have some inconvenience like being searched at Yankee Stadium or at the airport. And frankly, how inconvenient is that?” asks Timothy Connors, director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Policing Terrorism. After all, New Yorkers are still free to do many things. And the city has not been hit again, meaning the right to live free from terrorist attack—a fairly basic liberty itself—has survived intact in the five boroughs, thanks to some combination of good security and good luck.

But others believe that, as in that summer before the World Trade Center attack, a dangerous threat is rising. This time it's the risk that New Yorkers' essential freedoms and liberties are being eroded. In the New York of 2008:

•        The NYPD has infiltrated protest groups.
•        Mosques have been targeted by informants working for the police.
•        An appeals court is ruling whether a judge can issue orders in secret.
•        The federal government has wiretapped without warrants.
•        Heavily armed police patrol sensitive locations.
•        Libraries are being asked to hand over users' records – and can be gagged from talking about it.
•        The FBI has asked for Internet subscriber records.
•        Immigration authorities are raiding homes.
•        Photography is banned at many bridges and tunnels.
•        A Bronx street murderer is in prison for "crimes of terrorism."
•        Up to 40,000 cameras monitor New Yorkers on the street.
•        The city has passed tougher rules on protesting without a permit.
•        Tens of thousands of city workers must use biometric hand scanners to clock in.
•        Sidewalk fortifications to stop vehicle bombs have proliferated.
•        Police can search New Yorkers' bags on the subway.
•        Downtown streets are closed for security reasons.
•        Bags aren’t allowed in sports arenas.

And while most New Yorkers might escape its direct effects, the nation's "war on terror" has involved detentions without trial, renditions to foreign countries where torture is practiced, the use of secret evidence in terrorism prosecutions, and the application of the "state secrets" privilege to block lawsuits against the Bush administration.

September 11 is only part of the story. Advances in technology like behavioral-recognition cameras, data-mining software and biometric scanners coupled with the desire for more aggressive security measures mean “there are more and more opportunities for government to intrude into your life, and fewer and fewer protections,” says NYCLU advocacy director Udi Ofer. Some of the trends—like security cameras and harsher immigration enforcement—date back to before the terrorist attacks. And a few of the new measures, such as a plan to collect DNA from people arrested but not yet convicted of crimes, have little to do with terrorism, per se. But these efforts have all accelerated in the post-September 11 atmosphere.

"After September 11, legal experts quickly concluded that we needed to strengthen the government's intelligence gathering authority, that we needed to shift the balance, as the saying goes, shift the balance between liberty and security," NYU law professor Stephen Schulhofer said in late 2003 to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. That the balance has been shifted since the 2001 attacks is not in doubt. The question, as Commission member Richard Ben Veniste told the commission's first meeting, is whether the proper equilibrium has been struck.

"This balancing will be no easy task, but it is imperative that we get it right," Ben Veniste said. "In 1989, Justice Thurgood Marshall warned, 'History teaches us that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.' … If the acts of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations who mean us harm result in a response that disproportionately curtails the personal freedoms and civil liberties that define our American way of life, then our enemies will have won a great victory without taking another life."

By collecting in one place, and taking a clear look at, these responses in New York City, "Freedom/Fear" hopes to stimulate further examination of whether this "victory" has been won.

- Jarrett Murphy