Resolved: a nation's citizens' rights ought to take precedence over its security.

I will now respond to my opponent's opening arguments. Rebuttals: Opponent's Contention I: "Surveying and compiling data on people violates their liberty." I disagree. Realistically, the observation of the citizens by the government makes virtually no difference in the citizens' daily lives. Did you change your behavior when you found out that the NSA monitors your every text, email and Google search? Of course not, because it simply does not affect us in our daily lives. While I agree that there is a risk of the data being abused, my opponent has provided no real evidence to support this as a plausible scenario. Opponent's Contention II: "As a result, however, the living condition of people went down, and the corruption in the new Soviet Union went up." I request a source for both of these claims. In fact, I'd like to directly contest your first point by saying that under Stalin's centralized government, women were given equal rights in terms of employment and education. Advancement in the field of healthcare increased the average lifespan of Russians, and most of the Russians had universal access to hospitals and medicines. The prevalence of some dreaded diseases of those times, like cholera and malaria, dropped to record low numbers. This does not sound like a decrease in living standards. http://www.buzzle.com... "The state [North Korea] has tried to cut itself off from the outside world, but has only managed to all but destroy its population." I would like a source for this claim as well. "Therefore, when countries value security over rights, the eventually slip into corruption and abuse of those rights." I would like to note that in this contention, my opponent failed to establish a link between SECURITY and abuse of human rights. He has only attempted establish a link between authoritarian governments and the abuse of human rights. My opponent states that " Many countries over the years have tried to make themselves as secure as possible. Unfortunately, these countries turn into authoritarian powers..." as a link between authoritarianism, military strength and the abuse of human rights, but this is not necessarily true. Take the US for example, which has an enormous military spending, yet is usually considered the opposite of authoritarian and/or abusive of human rights. Opponent's Contention III: My opponent first lists several incidents of terrorist attacks and then concludes "These facts show that the surveillance of citizens is not working." This is completely false logic. That's like saying that because we still get sick, that medicine/vaccines don't work. Security measures such as surveillance are by no means guaranteed to obliterate every trace of crime, but they do indeed decrease it. Surveillance cameras, for example, can be found in many public areas, but crime still occurs. Does this mean that surveillance cameras don't work? No, and studies have shown that surveillance cameras can decrease crime rate by up to 50%. http://journalistsresource.org... My opponent here also fails to take into account additional factors that could affect the rate of terrorist attacks, such as the rise of organizations like ISIS or general sympathy towards particularly aggressive sects of a religion. Also, the overall mental health/access to weapons of a nation's individuals has not been considered. My opponent's third contention is faulty in several important ways, that results in it being invalid. I would like to note that my opponent's first two contentions are...sort of irrelevant. He is trying to prove that personal rights should take precedence over national security, and his first two contentions are essentially that "security often decreases personal rights". It merely tries to show that increased security can often mean decreased personal rights, which is irrelevant to this debate because it doesn't show WHY that's bad or WHY it shouldn't be that way. He should be arguing that "a nation's citizens' rights OUGHT to take precedence over its security", not: when security DOES take precedence, it decreases citizens' rights. I hope this makes sense and I hope all participants understand why my opponent's first two points are in the wrong direction, and why the third is simply faulty.