Much of What We Think about Privacy, Liberty, Security and Threat Is Wrong

In this inaugural edition of the Brookings Cafeteria podcast, Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow in Governance Studies, talks with host Fred Dews about a range of issues at the junction of liberty and security, privacy and government surveillance. Wittes explains how liberty and security are not always in tension; how we might think about the government’s surveillance activities; and why technology makes this moment in the history of the world both exciting and terrifying.

Wittes is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of hard national security choices, and where you can read his detailed piece on what Ben Franklin really meant when he wrote, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

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The Brookings Cafeteria is part of the Brookings Podcast Network.