Is Safety More Important Than Freedom ?

That may seem like a silly question to many of you, but it's not. It turns out that quite a few people in the United States have been so scared by all the talk of terrorism that they are now willing to give up their constitutional freedoms to be safe from the possibility of terrorist activity. That is what a new report from the Pew Research Center shows. It was bad enough back in 2006, right after the Patriot Act was approved. At that time, a slim majority (51%) of Americans approved of NSA surveillance of telephone activity in the U.S. And that support has only grown -- with 56% of Americans approving of that activity in 2013.

Those attitudes are backed up by another question asked in the Pew survey. Is it more important to investigate terrorist threats, or to not intrude on privacy rights? Back in 2006, 65% of the public said it was more important to investigate terrorism, while only 32% opted for protecting privacy rights. Those numbers are very similar in 2013 -- with 62% saying it is more important to investigate terrorism, while 35% say protecting privacy rights is more important.

Obviously, the government (under both Bush and Obama) has been very successful in making the public frightened of terrorism -- in spite of the fact that the possibility of an American dying from terrorism is extremely remote. Americans have a bigger chance of dying from almost any other cause than they have of being killed by a terrorist. But that hasn't stopped the government from creating and maintaining a huge network to spy on its own citizens -- and it has done so with the blessing of far too many Americans (who evidently don't value their freedoms as much as they claim they do).

There was a very strange thing the survey showed. It seems that Americans value their privacy rights more when it comes to computer e-mails, than when it regards their phone calls and conversations. While 56% in 2013 say its OK for the government to conduct phone surveillance, only 45% say that it is Ok for the government to eavesdrop on their e-mails (and that 45% was the same in 2006). I must admit that I don't understand the difference. Isn't snooping still snooping, whether it is done of phones or e-mails? How can one be worse than the other, when both entail the invasion of a private citizen's privacy?

But there is something that bothered me even more than a slight majority of Americans supporting the government spying -- and it is shown in the chart below:

It seems to be a fact that Americans only oppose the government invading their privacy when the government is controlled by the other party -- and not when their own party is in power. In 2006, when Bush was in the White House, 75% of Republicans favored government snooping on phone calls and 53% approved of the same with e-mails. But only 37% of the Democrats approved of the phone snooping and 41% approved of the e-mail snooping.

Now that President Obama is in the White House, those numbers have now flipped. Now 64% of Democrats approve of the phone spying and 53% approve of e-mail spying -- while the numbers for Republicans have dropped by a huge margin (from 75% to 52% regarding phones and from 53% to 45% regarding e-mails). I guess that members of both parties think their own party would spy for the right purpose, while the other party would abuse the right to spy.

This makes me think both parties have a lot of fairly stupid people in them. Spying is spying, regardless of which party is doing it -- and abuse of constitutional rights is abuse of constitutional rights, regardless of why it is being done or which political party is doing it. And it is just a sad fact of life that government will always abuse any power it is given, regardless of which party is controlling the government. Those who wrote the Constitution knew this -- and that is why they included a Bill of Rights (to limit the powers given to government, thus limiting the opportunity of government to abuse its power).

We did not need the Patriot Act when it was passed, and we still do not need it. Our government did a good job of controlling terrorist activity before it was passed, and could still do so without it. Some will point to 9/11 and Oklahoma City as showing a need for the Patriot Act, but the sad fact is that nothing (not even the Patriot Act) can prevent 100% of terrorist activity (and someone willing to die can penetrate even the best security sometimes). It is sheer folly to give up our hard-won constitutional rights for the illusion of safety.

The Patriot Act should be repealed -- regardless of which political party is in power. It has a far greater danger of abusing citizen rights than it does insuring citizen safety.