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Comment by kobayashi | Hacker News Reader

To be clear, that quote regarding liberty and safety has been taken completely out of context. Benjamin Franklin was not saying what you think he was saying.

Please read the articles listed below.

For the record: I'm am a privacy advocate, but I really dislike people using and abusing history for personal political ends.

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous...

https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said

Edit: Looks like rayneir beat me to the punch

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I completely disagree with Wittes' take that there is any misappropriation of this quote or that it's meaning as commonly used in this discussion today differs greatly from it's original meaning. And please see comments above wherein Wittes' potential bias is highlighted, given his stated positions on these matters.

In the historical case, Franklin was making a simple argument: don't take the Penn's offer of a short-term increase in security at the cost of long-term liberty.

This reconciles perfectly well with the usage in this debate today: don't take the FBI's offer of a (supposed) increase in security (by weakening strong encryption) in exchange for a decrease in long-term liberty.

I'm very familiar with Wittes' position on encryption and national security issues, but I don't believe he is a biased party.

I find the quote most problematic in this situation because it frames liberty and security as a dichotomy, which any even rudimentary analysis would make clear that they are not opposing forces.

I agree they aren't opposing forces. And I also don't take Franklin's quote that way. Indeed, in the historical context, another way to put what he is saying is "don't trade short-term security for long-term security."

I think that is where the quote applies in this debate. Is accepting curtailing of encryption really an increase in security. If so, is it only short-term? What are the trade-offs to liberty and freedom further out? We should indeed be very cautious about any trade-off between short-term security vs long-term security and liberty.

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