When a government office, knowingly breaks the law, lies to a court and shits on the constitution it can be pretty tiring.
Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
Ben Franklin
Oh cut the libertarian bullshit, 44lilMike.
"This was a situation where there was technological problem that could not be avoided, rather than any overreach"
Aside from the fact that this was started under Bush and stopped under Obama in 2011...
Allow me to invoke the Godwin Law here. Not since the McCarthy Era has this nation taken on the paranoia of the Hitler regime in the 1930's. Intelligence gathering has entered the 21st century. We either keep up or get blown up.
And cut the silly Franklin quotes. I deal with this every day on another forum...some "patriot" quoting one of the founding fathers. Most people have no idea what that founding father meant.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/09/21-platform-security-wittesIn short, Franklin was not describing a tension between government power and individual liberty. He was describing, rather, effective self-government in the service of security as the very liberty it would be contemptible to trade.[1] Notwithstanding the way the quotation has come down to us, Franklin saw the liberty and security interests of Pennsylvanians as aligned. The difference between what he meant and what we remember him as saying perfectly encapsulates our tendency to mangle intellectually the true relationship between liberty and security.
