******** From: "Greg Nojeim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Declan McCullagh'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Cohen Again Threatens Privacy and Freedom for Security Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 10:33:25 -0500 In response to a question by Senator Sessions about weapons of mass destruction and domestic terrorism, Secretary Cohen at a hearing on 2/3/99 before the Senate Armed Services Committee again signaled that Americans may have to sacrifice privacy and freedom for security: He said, [snip] With respect to how do we deal with that, I talked about this before. We need greater intelligence and that means not only foreign gathered intelligence but here at home. That is going to put us on a collision course with rights of privacy. And it's something that democracies have got to come to grips with -- how much are we going to demand of our intelligence agencies and how much are we willing to give up in the way of intrusion into our lives? That is a trade off that is going to have to come and we have to yet really seriously debate the constitutional issues and whether or not we're willing to give up more freedom in order to have more security. That's a matter for another time. [snip] And at another time, it was Ben Franklin who said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "He who would sacrifice essential liberties for a temporary increase in security deserves neither." --Greg Nojeim -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------