[I_am_neo]

“Some argue that, to achieve at best a slight incremental improvement in security, it is worth imposing a massive cost on society in the form of degraded safety,” he (U.S. attorney general William Barr) said

Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

[tzs]

The context when Franklin said that is interesting. Pennsylvania was having trouble on the western frontier due to the French and Indian War, and the legislature wanted to put a tax on land to raise money for arms for defense.

The governor was blocking this, because the Penn family, which owned a lot of Pennsylvania land, objected. The Penn family did recognize the need for defense (although they were largely absentee landlords so not in personal danger), and offered to donate a lump sum for the arms if the legislator would agree that it did not have the power to tax Penn land.

Franklin's quote was in a letter he wrote to the governor arguing for rejection of this offer.

The "essential Liberty" he was referring to was the liberty of the legislature to legislate how it saw fit, including taxing Penn land to pay for security, and the "purchase a little temporary Safety" was the one time lump sum for arms.

That was in 1755. He did re-use the phrase 20 years later in 1775 in a more general context, closer to what people quote it for nowadays.

[cmroanirgo]

Thanks. A little context goes a long way!

[pavel_lishin]

I was confused by your quotation, because I thought surely Barr wouldn't be arguing against his own point.

But it turns out that his opinion of what constitutes security and safety is completely opposite my own.

[mehrdadn]

Same exact reaction here. Had to re-read it several times. For anyone else confused: I think by "security" he's referring to infosec and by "safety" he's referring to physical safety. (As opposed to my initial reading, where I thought "security" meant physical security and "safety" meant online safety.)

[anbop]

That’s not a logical argument by Franklin, it’s his opinion. There’s no axiomatic reason why Ben Franklin’s opinion is more correct than anyone else’s, even William Barr’s.

[salawat]

Says the rhetoritician; cleverly trying to blur the issue. Opinion or no, the principle is consistent through much of the intellectual environ's of the time. If both statememt's are read as opinion's neither wins. If both are construed as statements of fact, Franklin's still holds the more portentous conclusion. Namely that the being willing to sacrifice his capacity to guide himself to live longer , will inevitably result in neither goal being attained. Everyone dies.

So that's really a bit of a non-starter. I would say that Franklin has more credibility however; if only because of the man's legendary common sense.

I'll also point out, Franklin's sentiment can be traced back to the principle that "Vigilia aeterna est pretium libertatis". A consequence of which is, sorry Mr. Barr. Tell your police to do some actual investigative work. It is not the job of the populace to relinquish essential liberty to make tyranny in the making that much further realized.

It is what we do with our Liberty that elevates us as angels, or drops us to the level of daemonic debasement.

Law enforcement needs to understand their job should never be made trivial as their very existence in and of itself is as the sole means to rescension of that which culturally we value most; hich should absolutely be as burdensome a process as possible in the light of what is being taken.

Never mind that making unbackdoored encryption illegal just adds a token charge to a long list of other charges, which to me is an absolute anti-pattern, of the same level as most firearm regulation in light of the second amendment; which I'll admit to being a bit of a hard-liner on.

My 2 cents.

[ratmice]

Your comparison to the second amendment is not just "on the same level", but entirely accurate.

To this day the United States Munitions List, classifies cryptographic devices under Category XIII Materials and Miscellaneous Articles.

All the way back to the pre-constitution 1784 Virgina General Assembly, to some extent recognizes the need for secure communications channels in a militia. "There shall be a private muster of every company once in every three months", and setting forth those in charge of initiating and communicating the time and place of the muster.

People often focus on the first amendment right to encryption. But I at least feel that the second amendment right is equally strong, with the governments own position on arms control behind it, legal interpretation should if anything not tolerate it's own inconsistency.

[tbirrell]

Benjamin Franklin is a Founding Father and has been generally accepted as an authority for more than 200 years, especially on the subject of freedoms and rights. He was a renown political theorist, politician, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat in his own day, not to mention the fact his reputation has stood the test of time.

William Barr is none of these thing.

[EpicEng]

So... Appeal to authority then?

[noja]

Can you call it that though?

One is a person with a well-earned a reputation, the other.. well you get the point.

[EpicEng]

>Can you call it that though? >One is a person with a well-earned a reputation, the other.. well you get the point.

Yes

>An argument from authority, also called an appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam, is a form of defeasible argument in which a claimed authority's support is used as evidence for an argument's conclusion

You're not defending the point logically; you're only supporting argument is that someone with a good reputation supports it as well.

[kryogen1c]

> You're not defending the point logically;

He absolutely is

The annoying thing about "logical fallacies" is that if anyone season argument they disagree with that resembles a "fallacy", that quote it and act like theyve won.

He is not saying that everything Benjamin Franklin has ever said is true. Obviously. However, if a well renowned and respected Authority has an opinion that some evil schmuck disagrees with, it provides evidence as to who is more likely to be correct. That's not what an appeal to Authority is

[zknz]

And yet he owned slaves.

[onetimemanytime]

and...? For example, you can be a Nazi and a great mathematician or be a pedophile and a great philosopher....etc etc

[raverbashing]

Correct, I just roll my eyes whenever this is quoted

But if people disagree they can go ride a bike without a helmet, people in the transplant list will thank you.

[dang]

If you keep posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait here we are going to ban you. I don't want to do that, because you've also posted good comments. Would you please fix this?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[raverbashing]

Agreed, I could have expressed my concerns with that quote differently.

[Tomte]

Benjamin Franklin did say (or rather write) this, but it meant something else than you think: https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-ben-franklin-really-said#.U...

[yongjik]

But, "Only the Sith deal in absolutes." - Obi-Wan Kenobi

I don't think opinions of people who were born before telegraphs matter much in today's political discourse. Basically, it boils down to, "I found a quote I agree with, and when I attach $(some famous dead person)'s name on to it, it sounds really great and authoritative."

[vermilingua]

If you really think that we aren’t facing the same problems today, that didn’t exist 300 years ago; you need to take a far harder look at the problems.

[yongjik]

I kinda agree with you, but quoting Benjamin Franklin as a solution is not exactly "taking a harder look" at the problem. How is it any better than "because the Bible says so!"?

[mulmen]

Well Benjamin Franklin was a founder so his thinking is more relevant in a secular nation than the stories in a religious text.

[mrguyorama]

As much as I disagree with Barr and I've repeated that quote countless times, I can't help but think it's utterly stupid. Did Ben Franklin really think we should throw out things like the rule of law and the police? They are an explicit trade of Liberty for Safety. Was he some sort of fundamentalist anarchist?

[coderzach]

"All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."

He also didn't think much of private property.

[1] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12....

[shsh]

You are intentionally misinterpreting his quote. He doesn't think much of excessive property. Yes, you probably don't need a 3rd home while other people have no homes...

[ska]

His bar for "excessive" is pretty low though. We aren't talking 3rd home, plausibly we aren't even talking 1 home.

[1000units]

Indeed it isn't even one. He says right there, "temporary Cabin".

[nybble41]

Yes, and the distinction is completely artificial. Worse, he gets the relationship between property and law exactly backwards. Property rights, even for what some here are calling "excessive" property, were not created "by the public" (meaning by legislators) through the passage of laws. Rather, property rights existed first and laws were passed to rationalize the abridgement of those rights when they proved inconvenient to those in power.

If you take someone else's property for your own use by force without their permission, they are perfectly justified in using force to take your property without your permission. That is the fundamental natural law which underlies property rights, as well as all other natural rights: reciprocation. It doesn't matter who the property belongs to, how much other property they have, or who is doing the taking.

[ska]

The "fundamental natural law" you appeal to is none of those things, so it would be disingenuous to hold him to it. I'm not sure how I feel about the quote and don't have enough context on his thinking to really judge it, but your rejection sounds dogmatic, not reasoned.

[liability]

The point should be obvious from the context, that Franklin was very far from any sort of anarcho-capitalist/libertarian extremist.

> Was he some sort of fundamentalist anarchist?

The quote plainly refutes that idea.

[mikestew]

Keywords being "essential" and "temporary" in the original quote. Granted, that leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but Franklin was not advocating doing away with, for example, law enforcement.

Though I would agree it's a quote of triteness and "just so" convenience that gets massively abused.

[mrguyorama]

I wonder how Benjamin Franklin would feel about its common usage nowadays. For specific context I used to use this quote in relation to my dislike of the PATRIOT act and similar, and I never really took any introspection as to whether I was truly defending my position through the use/abuse of the quote. Granted I was literally in middle school at the time, so maybe my lack of a more nuanced position could be forgiven, but a quote is not an argument.