security

   an excuse for aggression, espionage, or repression

   For Hitler, the invasion of neighbouring states:

    The old cry of 'Security', so shamelessly employed to cover the aggressions of the thirties. (A. Clark, 1995)

   For Senator Joseph McCarthy, a security risk was anyone he disagreed with. For despots, a security service concerns itself with the survival of the rulers and not the safety of the ruled.

   The system was exported by Soviet Russia to client states through security advisers:

    Shehu made the way easy for the rapid growth at the end of 1945 of a Soviet military mission [to Albania] to which 'security advisers' — dull euphemism for torturers... — were already attached. (H. Thomas, 1986)

   A security service, even in a democracy, is likely to act illegally:

    There was no sign of a smoking pistol pointing to ministerial knowledge of past illegal acts by the RCMP Security Service. (Maclean's Toronto, 9 April 1979)

   During the Second World War, the Nazis made much use of security battalions, which were recruited from those they had conquered, to enforce their rule. These often acted with more ruthlessness and sadism than soldiers from the Wehrmacht:

    You can't tell by the uniform, you know. They recruited in Poland, the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania. You name it. You don't know it, but on the mainland [of Greece] they've got Greeks they call 'Security Battalions', (de Bernières, 1994)