The security versus privacy scale.

Benjamin Franklin once wrote: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." That was his opinion. I doubt that mothers that has lost their children to rebels or terrorists would agree. For some, freedom is the most important thing in the entire world, whilst others might feel that freedom isn’t worth squat if you don’t feel safe. I find myself wedged in the middle, as usual. Total freedom isn’t good in my opinion. A society needs laws to control the population. But the most important question remains: where will the population draw the line?

There will always be crazy maniacs threatening the common man in civilised societies. They might be locals who recently passed the line to insanity, or they might be foreigner whose objective is to destroy the government. The big danger is when these crackpots are organised, well led and have a clear mission. With this line of thought it is the governments duty to disrupt the privacy of people suspected of crime.

However, I am not particularly convinced by the rants of certain activists that claim that this kind of laws directs governments towards a totalitarian rule. This is always a risk in democracy: if an extraordinary charismatic person takes advantage of the system in the right time and place, he may legally seize power by himself. This happened in Germany when Hitler became dictator. But as long as there is political parties in opposition highlighting this danger, and it takes at least two elections before the government can change the constitution, we can cast aside parties with dangerous ambitions. In the same way, the people in democracies may get rid of governments who crosses the line and sacrifices too much freedom for security.

I believe that the government should always try to find this line. That means, in effect, that they should try to improve people’s safety, even if the means slightly reduces the freedom of the population. If they go to far, there will not be a second term. But if they find a good balance, they might get reelected and may continue to try improving the safety of the population.

In the end, it is a question of how you value freedom compared to security. Simply by living in a society, we have lost a good deal of freedom. No serious society will ever make it legal to shout "FIRE" in a crowded cinema when there is no fire, even if freedom of speech is one of the fundamental principles of democracy. Personally, I value safety very close to freedom, which means that I can tolerate plenty more surveillance of the population than there is in Sweden today.