How should democracies respond to security threats? How can governments respond to heightened forms of violence, such as terrorism, internal uprising, or external aggression, while remaining true to the rule of law, human rights, and democratic values? Commentators and courts in democratic countries, while divided on important issues, seem reluctantly to converge on the view that some adjustment on our individual freedoms is justified to face these threats. But when, if ever, is such a curtailment defensible? And isn't curtailment of human rights self-defeating – as the cliché goes, aren't governments who curtail freedom destroying democracy under the guise of defending it?

I tackle this subject with great trepidation. I am Argentine, and lived through the horrors of the military régime that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1984. The government then argued that unless civil liberties were restricted, Argentine society would succumb to the terrorist threat (posed then by violent radical left-wing groups). The result is well known: the government unleashed abominable forms of state terror, torturing and murdering between 10,000 and 30,000 persons (see Nunca Más 1984). What is worse, the government, vile as it was, could not be accused of manufacturing the terrorist threat: there was one. When the smoke cleared, I joined most Argentines of my generation in the view that human rights should never be violated, regardless of the magnitude of the threat.