Being Safe Is More Important Than Being Free

An example of this type of protection, or where protection has not been maintained is the Leveson inquiry. On the 13th July 2011, David Cameron announced that he would, with the help of the courts, be launching a two-part investigation into the role of the press and police in the phone-hacking scandal. The main victims of the phone-hacking were celebrities; the HRA applies to all citizens not just regular citizens. Because of the fact that these people are celebrities, doesn’t give journalists the right to invade their privacy. This is one of the main reasons as to why the government seems to, more often than not be infringing on peoples’ privacy. Taking on board that this is an accurate statement; it is more often than not, organisations that have a link with the government, or certain politicians, rather than the actual government themselves. Therefore, it is clear that, to some extent the government does try to protect the privacy of the citizens of the UK as best it can, however people can sometimes get past this barrier and can therefore infringe on a person’s privacy.

Why is America taking such drastic moves like putting full body scanners in airports? The truth of the matter is that America is willing to do what ever it takes to protect the lives of American people and their families.

There are moments when civil liberties should be curtailed in democratic countries like the US and Canada, in order to maintain national security. While this is true, there are also moments that an individual’s civil liberty should be maintained whereas it is not. Consequently, governments should make clear boundaries as to which occasions civil liberties should be restricted. For instance, both the Patriotic Act and the Anti-terrorist Act allowed rover wiretapping which are needed to deal with terrorists who have a sophisticated knowledge of how technology works.

Safety and freedom are both essential components of society and many argue over which component holds the most desirability in modern civilization. Many, like H.L. Mencken, believe that humanity’s desire to be safe trumps the want to be free. This view may hold true for some but there are varying interpretations of what is means to be safe and have freedoms.

Yet in the meantime, she says, "In case you 're inside your tenth floor condominium and an automaton flies outside your window and takes pictures into your private abiding, your sensible desire of security is completely abused." In Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms says "you have the right to be secure against outlandish pursuit and seizure," Bracken-Roche says, noting that legitimate decisions around a "sensible desire of protection" come up a lot.

Our world today is filled with unnecessary oppression. Slavery is one common form of human oppression, but there are numerous other forms as well. War, death, hunger, and sadness caused the elders in the society of The Giver to force each citizen to live extremely structured, controlled lives. That structure and control effected each person’s ability to live unique, private, and free lives. The elders in The Giver wanted all the citizens in the community to be undifferentiated for their own safety, so they greatly censored all citizens. Lack of freedom to pursue individual happiness is, indeed, a form of oppression not only faced by fictional book characters, but also by twenty-first century Americans. American society is changing so rapidly that we as independent Americans must decide whether safety, or freedom, is more important.

The power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. A word created by man to escape the bonds of tyranny to express the idea of what it means to persist one's own ambitions. Freedom. Freedom is not the absence of confinement but the will to achieve freedom when imprisoned. After carefully concluding the reading done over this semester one is able to clearly understand the confinement these early Americans felt and their decision to achieve a form of freedom. Freedom has always existed but it is the history of this nation that will define what actions freedom takes.

Safety has always been a necessary goal but it was never as serious as it is now. Since September 11, 2001 safety is a more observed factor in America. On that day, two airplanes struck the Twin Towers in New York. That terrorist attack has had a permanent effect on the way America functions daily. “Our Connected World and the Unseen Legacies” by Emily Dreyruss, Andy Greenberg, and other various authors discuss these effects and how much privacy people give up to be safe now. They believe that the loss of privacy in exchange for increased safety is acceptable. They have a good point. Privacy in exchange for safety is a justifiable tradeoff. Some of the changes that give up privacy for safety after 9/11 are more accepted than people before 9/11 would think.

America. The land of the Free and Brave. Our ancestors have fought hard to keep our land Free from those that would want to take away our freedom and our spirits. But, we have persevered through the years keeping this land of ours Free and Brave.

In 1784, Benjamin Franklin stated, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." It is hard to say whether or not Benjamin Franklin is right due to the fact that we face different struggles in this day and age that people in Napoleon Bonaparte’s and Franklin’s era did not have to worry about. Our situations regarding security and freedom, especially after September 11, 2001, dramatically changed as citizens realized how often their everyday lives were jeopardized with each new discovery and invention concerning weapons or violence.

Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither liberty nor security

H.L. Mencken, a prominent American essayist and social critic, said that people are better off being safe than being free. People do not want to have their freedom if they are not safe. The validity of this quote is one of great debate between people of our time. It is clear that it is a fair tradeoff to live in a safe society with little freedom, and it is more fair than having to live in a society with no safety and many freedom.

Although we live in a nation that places a premium value on personal freedom, it is also a nation whose population considers its own safety and welfare as paramount rights. This creates a need for some measure of public order. Such public order mechanisms are typically expressed in the form of laws. The laws of the United States are an attempt to balance the desire for individual freedoms with the desire for universal safety. (D'Augostino, 2008)

Security can be defined as the “freedom from danger, risk, etc. with the absence of threats to assimilated principles” or a “low chance of damage to assimilated principles.” However, the word security originates from the Latin Securus, which means “carefree”. Notice that the very definition of the word clues to the term “freedom”. The aforementioned definition of security is very general. It does not stipulate the individual whose security is at issue or the types of values pliable to being secured. The security of people (“human security”) is understood to extend beyond national security, also comprising of economic welfare, the health of the environment, cultural identity, and political rights. Security began to take on a diverse set of restrictions with the Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790s. We would see a drastic change after September 11, 2011.

It is the opinion of this essay that this could be an effective method in combating the breaching of any Health and Safety rules; strict liability may allow enforcement agencies to ‘Strengthen their position’ (Roe, p.211.1) as potential offenders are aware that if any prosecution is brought against them, there is a good chance of conviction, due to the nature of strict liability. Elliot and Quinn (p.33.1) tell us that ‘strict liability makes enforcing offences easier.’ In Gammon (Hong Kong) Ltd v A-G (1985), the defendants were involved in building