Quote:
Originally Posted by crockett
I think Benjamin Franklin summed it up perfectly..
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Nothing the NSA is doing is stopping terrorist attacks.. They haven't been able to provide proof of a single attack stopped by their spying, meanwhile several attacks have happened under the watch of their spying.
The simple fact is they are collecting far too much data to be able to do anything with it in real time. The data they are collecting isn't meant to stop anything but rather to be used against someone after the fact.
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i don't agree/disagree.
that said, that quote is taken out of context.
Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security.
What Ben Franklin Really Said