"We have a reliable computerized network devoted to counterterrorist activities"
About this Quote
A phrase like "reliable computerized network" is politics doing what it does best: turning a messy, fear-soaked problem into an object that sounds engineered, contained, and therefore governable. Pataki isn’t selling a gadget. He’s selling reassurance. The sentence moves with bureaucratic calm, a tonal sedative meant for an audience primed by the post-9/11 atmosphere to want proof that someone, somewhere, is watching the wires.
The intent is twofold. First, it signals competence through technocratic vocabulary: "reliable", "computerized", "network". These words carry the aura of inevitability and precision, suggesting counterterrorism can be upgraded like infrastructure. Second, it performs vigilance without describing anything verifiable. "Devoted to counterterrorist activities" is deliberately elastic - broad enough to cover intelligence sharing, surveillance, data mining, and interagency coordination, while never naming the trade-offs those systems usually entail.
The subtext is a wager that the public will equate digitization with safety. In that era, "computerized" doubled as a cultural shorthand for modernity and control. The line also quietly reassigns agency: safety is no longer primarily a matter of policy choices or human judgment, but of systems. If something goes wrong, the implied culprit becomes failure to connect the network, not failure to debate its mandate.
Context matters: Pataki, as New York’s governor during a period when terrorism felt local and immediate, needed language that projected strength without sounding militaristic. The sentence is antiseptic by design - an attempt to make exceptional measures feel routine.
The intent is twofold. First, it signals competence through technocratic vocabulary: "reliable", "computerized", "network". These words carry the aura of inevitability and precision, suggesting counterterrorism can be upgraded like infrastructure. Second, it performs vigilance without describing anything verifiable. "Devoted to counterterrorist activities" is deliberately elastic - broad enough to cover intelligence sharing, surveillance, data mining, and interagency coordination, while never naming the trade-offs those systems usually entail.
The subtext is a wager that the public will equate digitization with safety. In that era, "computerized" doubled as a cultural shorthand for modernity and control. The line also quietly reassigns agency: safety is no longer primarily a matter of policy choices or human judgment, but of systems. If something goes wrong, the implied culprit becomes failure to connect the network, not failure to debate its mandate.
Context matters: Pataki, as New York’s governor during a period when terrorism felt local and immediate, needed language that projected strength without sounding militaristic. The sentence is antiseptic by design - an attempt to make exceptional measures feel routine.
Quote Details
| Topic | Police & Firefighter |
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