I'm reminded of a speech Barack Obama gave many years ago about the difficulty and necessity of finding a "happy medium" between protecting individual liberties and providing law enforcement with the abilities to provide security in a digital world.

I think the topic itself is difficult for everyone involved - there will likely be a lot of uproar for many years as we get closer to finding this happy medium.

There is no happy medium. Government will continuously push for the greatest surveillance power possible, because surveillance is in the government's own interest and personal liberties are not. Obama oversaw the NSA, which blatantly violated the US constitution and showed exactly where his idea of a "happy medium" lies (ie. complete and total surveillance of all Americans' prviate information), so anything he said on the subject is nothing more than lipservice utilising his charisma to prime people to accept more surveillance. He certainly wasn't suggesting a "happy medium" to convince people that less surveillance was needed to reach the target equilibrium.

> I'm reminded of a speech Barack Obama gave many years ago about the difficulty and necessity of finding a "happy medium" between protecting individual liberties and providing law enforcement with the abilities to provide security in a digital world.

Yeah the problem is you'll never get a politician to say "OK, _this_ is what we've determined the 'happy medium' is and we're going to codify in law that it will never go beyond this point." It'll just keep inching further and further and anytime someone complains, just go back to step one and dish out some more "elder statesman" wisdom about having to find a "happy medium." Rinse and repeat. Worked on you, didn't it?

Don't we all inherently know that government surveillance will constantly increase over time if we give in? In theory, we could achieve a "happy medium," but the same access used by a thoughtful law enforcement agency are the same tools that a fascist government would use to suppress dissent or other "wrong" thinking.