In an interviewwith Charlie Rose that aired last night, President Obama said that despite his defense of the NSA’s recently revealed surveillance programs, he continues to believe “we don’t have to sacrifice our freedom in order to achieve security,” which he called “a false choice.” Still, he said, “that doesn’t mean that there are not tradeoffs involved in any given program or any given action that we take.” The first example he gave was telling:

All of us make a decision that we go through a whole bunch of security at airports….When we were growing up, that wasn’t the case, right? You ran up to the gate five minutes [before your flight]. It’s been a while since I went through commercial flying, but I gather the experience is not the same. That’s a tradeoff we make….

To say there’s a tradeoff doesn’t mean somehow that we’ve abandoned freedom. I don’t think anyone says we’re no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports.

I don’t know about you, but I never made a decision to “go through a whole bunch of security at airports.” I do not arrive early, wait in line, repeatedly display my government-issued ID, empty my pockets, take my computer out, cram my toiletries into a Ziploc bag, remove my shoes and belt, and stand with my arms held up in a gesture of surrender while a scanner looks under my clothing becase I like doing those things, or even because I see them as a reasonable price to pay for the extra protection these rituals of obeisance allegedly provide. I do these things because the government makes me do them. I would welcome the option of flying without all the security theater, despite the extra risk that supposedly would entail, and I suspect I am not alone. Maybe if Obama flew commercial once in a while he would understand that travelers do not necessarily comply with the TSA’s arbitrary edicts because they view them as sensible precautions well worth the inconvenience and humiliation.

While I would not say “we’re no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports,” we certainly are less free than we were before. Otherwise it would make no sense to describe this change as a “tradeoff.” The government took some of our freedom, and in return it gave us the illusion of security. Many of us doubt the value of this deal. Are we not allowed to complain about a loss of freedom as long as we have some left? Is that what Obama has in mind when he says “we don’t have to sacrifice our freedom in order to achieve security”?

Obama’s other example of a tradeoff between freedom and security is equally troubling:

We make a tradeoff about drunk driving. We say occasionally there are going to be checkpoints. They may be intrusive.

Again, you and I did not invent DUI checkpoints. Cops did, and the Supreme Court upheld these suspicionless seizures based on the premise that they aim mainly to protect public safety rather than catch criminals (even though they do result in arrests, frequently on charges that have nothing to do with drunk driving). Since I wish the Court had not carved out this exception to the Fourth Amendment and continue to find such roadblocks objectionable, Obama’s analogy does not reassure me.

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The Liberty Report Take: The George W. Obama administration continues……..

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http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/18/obama-spilling-secrets-is-bad-when-it-sc

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has warned that the internet is facing a major threat from governments and companies who are seeking to “control it on the sly”.

Berners-Lee said the internet’s founding principles of openness and freedom of speech were at risk of being lost due to laws such as the US Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa), government surveillance and attempts by internet giants to profit from individuals’ private data.

“Unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society,” said Berners-Lee.

“I call on all web users to demand better legal protection and due process safeguards for the privacy of their online communications, including their right to be informed when someone requests or stores their data.

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http://reason.com/24-7/2013/06/08/governments-attempting-to-control-the-in

Today, a bipartisan coalition of 86 civil liberties organizations and Internet companies – including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks, and the American Civil Liberties Union – are demanding swift action from Congress in light of the recent revelations about unchecked domestic surveillance.

In an open letter to lawmakers sent today, the groups call for a congressional investigatory committee, similar to the Church Committee of the 1970s. The letter also demands legal reforms to rein in domestic spying and demands that public officials responsible for this illegal surveillance are held accountable for their actions.

The letter denounces the NSA’s spying program as illegal, noting:

This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously and guard against unreasonable searches and seizures…

The letter was accompanied by the launch of StopWatching.us, a global petition calling on Congress to provide a public accounting of the United States’ domestic spying capabilites and to bring an end to illegal surveillance.

The groups call for a number of specific legal reforms, including reform to the controversial Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the “business records” section which, through secret court orders, was misused to force Verizon to provide the NSA with detailed phone records of millions of customers. The groups also call on Congress to reform the FISA Amendment Act, the unconstitutional law that allows, nearly without restriction, the government to conduct mass surveillance on American and international communications. The letter and petition also demand that Congress amend the state secrets privilege, the legal tool that has expanded over the last 10 years to prevent the government from being held accountable for domestic surveillance.

As Mark Rumold, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who focuses on government transparency and national security, says, “Now is the time for Congress to act. We don’t need a narrow fix to one part of the PATRIOT Act; we need a full public accounting of how the United States is turning sophisticated spying technology on its own citizens, we need accountability from public officials, and we need an overhaul of the laws to ensure these abuses can never happen again.”

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https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/86-civil-liberties-groups-and-internet-companies-demand-end-nsa-spying