That is such a false-dichotomy. You can have freedom and safety at the same time, and need-not sacrifice one for the other.
The reason people say that one has to lose at the expense of the other is because of weird "freedom losses" such as privacy. Lack of privacy is not a loss of "freedom". Surveillance, again does not mean a loss of "freedom". That is, unless you're doing something wrong, in which case the system is behaving exactly as it should (identifying someone that is doing something wrong). Tech-people constantly talk about old laws having to "change" for the new technological landscape we live in. But we rarely talk about changing how crime and justice gets handled in the new landscape. And it is a discussion we need to have, because we're moving into territory where automated systems can very easily detect and identify the occurrence of crime. Magically moving into "surveillance reduces our freedom" because it catches all of the commiters of that crime, which never used to be the case until technology enabled it, is a disingenuous path to take. Just look at red-light or speed-trap cameras to see how it's already been playing out.
Sure, once we start going into territory such as mandatory curfews and what-not in order to combat crime then you can start saying that we're losing freedom. We're not even close to that, as much as that pains me because I think that a government that permits the existence of easy-to-stop violent crime in 2017 is a morally bankrupt one that is complicit to those crimes on some level.
The reason people say that one has to lose at the expense of the other is because of weird "freedom losses" such as privacy. Lack of privacy is not a loss of "freedom". Surveillance, again does not mean a loss of "freedom". That is, unless you're doing something wrong, in which case the system is behaving exactly as it should (identifying someone that is doing something wrong). Tech-people constantly talk about old laws having to "change" for the new technological landscape we live in. But we rarely talk about changing how crime and justice gets handled in the new landscape. And it is a discussion we need to have, because we're moving into territory where automated systems can very easily detect and identify the occurrence of crime. Magically moving into "surveillance reduces our freedom" because it catches all of the commiters of that crime, which never used to be the case until technology enabled it, is a disingenuous path to take. Just look at red-light or speed-trap cameras to see how it's already been playing out.
Sure, once we start going into territory such as mandatory curfews and what-not in order to combat crime then you can start saying that we're losing freedom. We're not even close to that, as much as that pains me because I think that a government that permits the existence of easy-to-stop violent crime in 2017 is a morally bankrupt one that is complicit to those crimes on some level.