[jimwise]

Yes. A central idea of the American experiment is that there are exchanges of liberty for security which it is not acceptable to make even if the people collectively decide to make them.

That is why certain liberties are enshrined in the Constitution, which is intentionally made hard to amend, rather than merely in law, which is relatively easy to change.

Looking at the number of totalitarian systems which started out as expressions of the collective will of their societies in the two-plus centuries since, I'd say the founders got this one right...

[Tloewald]

Collectively we can pass laws and change the constitution.

The supreme court has ruled, in Smith vs Maryland, that the government can capture message metadata from a third party when a message is conveyed by that third party without warrant. So the constitution doesn't help much here -- either we need to collectively change the constitution or collectively pass a lot of laws or collectively get different supreme court judges appointed and have the ruling overturned.

[vidarh]

> Looking at the number of totalitarian societies which started out as expressions of the collective will of their societies in the two-plus centuries since

Which ones are you talking about? I can't think of many. I can think of quite a few where authoritarian movements got substantial support, but I can't for sure name many where such regimes were anywhere near a majority, and I'd think a majority at least would be required before it becomes reasonable to talk about "expressions of the collective will of their societies".

[seren]

Ok, from that point of view, it can make some sense. Even if it seems in the current debate, the issue was the trade-off was more or less made unilaterally by the executive branch, without much consultation, which is actually worse that a "collective" decision, whatever that means.