National Security is more important than privacy.

You incredibly misunderstand my argument about your quote. I'm saying that because our constitution has failed, we should try to make it succeed. The way to make it to succeed is evident. Ron Paul has a very intelligent solution. Ron Paul's solution to our failed constitution is to actually follow it (1). If we follow our constitution, our privacy rights would not be infringed. If we discard our constitution, we will lose our rights and the purpose of our country. What I am saying about our "evil government" is something I do not take back. Government collection of data is something that will always be devastating to our privacy regardless of whether is helps us defend ourselves or not. Look at Europe (2). They're probably ten years ahead of us on the extremity of data collection, and it's only going to get worse if we do not do anything. Eventually, we may get to the point where government uses massive amounts of cameras. They may watch our every move, and we do not know what they would do with that information. Government has the power to use force against us. They can hide things from us, and they can force us to pay taxes to fund imperialistic and immoral expeditions of violence against other countries, torture, abortions, and death penalties. The government does these evil things without refunding my taxes, and therefore, I do not trust the government. Why should anyone trust the government? Politicians lie by making promises they do not keep, and they promise to follow the constitution, but they do anything but follow the constitution. When my opponent asks me what the government has done wrong, I can only respond by saying that I do not know. Government that expands will eventually use its power with corruption, and that is dangerous. The famous phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is true, and it will eventually be evident to our government if our privacy isn't protected (3). Once again, you misunderstood my argument about being taken over. I'm going to state it as simply as possible. We are America. We are supposed to be the defenders of privacy and liberty. Our enemies are usually corrupt governments that do not stand for privacy and liberty. If we sacrifice our core values to defend ourselves, we have lost before a single battle has begun. We become the corrupt government, and there is nothing to fight for. We must defend ourselves without moving away from the Bill of Rights. By the way, the fourth amendment is being broken when bulk data collection is happening because the purpose of the fourth amendment is to stop the government from invading private property without a warrant (4). Therefore, we are denying our core values. If we deny our core values so blatantly now, how do we know that the government will not eventually reject amendments like the first amendments? They already deny the second and tenth amendments quite frequently, and they deny us the fourth amendment as well. How can we trust such a government? People in the government must be insane, or they are corrupt. It is in the congressional oath of office to honor the constitution (5), and in many instances, they do not. It's also in the Presidential oath of office to protect the constitution, and it's evident that neither Obama nor Bush have done so (6). It's safe to say that Obama has violated all ten of the amendments in the Bill of Rights (7). Bush did the same. Why would you trust an executive branch that violates their oath of office frequently with bulk data collection? If they do not have the honesty to follow the promises they directly make to the American people, then they don't deserve to be trusted with our data. One thing I have yet to mention is how wrong you are when you assume that rejecting privacy actually helps our security in the first place. When the government has used data mining to try and find terrorists, they have failed miserably every single time. The NSA has tipped off the NSA thousands of times since 9/11, and they were all false alarms (8). Trying to find terrorists by using illegal and unconstitutional data collection of innocent Americans is simply a waste of time. It's a needle in a haystack situation. Every terrorist attack is different, and stopping one before hand is nearly impossible. Data mining has never helped, and it never will help. The government knows this, or they are insane. If they know this and continue, then they are corrupt. When government is corrupt like this, we should not give up our privacy rights for false security. Privacy is an essential portion of liberty (9), and Ben Franklin said it best when he said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (10). That is exactly what we are doing, and it's incredibly dangerous. There is economic problems to rejecting our privacy, as well. I have proven that rejecting our privacy for security does no good, but it dangers our economy. First off, foreign countries are less likely to buy from American internet countries because of fear that the United States will spy on them. This is our government denying us our privacy rights and hurting our businesses. Secondly, our lack of civil liberties causes a lack of trust in America. The denial of our constitution and the denial of trust usually leads to a lack of economic prosperity. The United States has plummeted to 18th in an economic freedom poll after being a consistent top tier country. CATO institute said this about the decline: "Actually, the decline began under President George W. Bush. For 20 years the U.S. had consistently ranked as one of the world"s three freest economies, along with Hong Kong and Singapore. By the end of the Bush presidency, we were barely in the top ten." (11) Bush was the one who started the data collection that is currently destroying our privacy. The third reason this data collection is devastating to the United States economy is the fact that it alters free flow of information. Capitalism and economic growth is reliant on not only free flowing money, but it also relies on free flowing information. Privacy is necessary for this, and if government is interfering, information and ideas will not be spread as easily online. The fourth reason this government intrusion on privacy hurts the economy is the fact that the government has to create back doors into a company's information, but these back doors allow viruses and other devastating items in. Therefore, our government's snooping around forces companies to spend more time worrying about viruses! Finally, privacy is necessary for creativity to take place. A human mind needs to be left alone without government interference in order to think. Capitalism thrives on creativity and innovation. The new tech age should be an expansion of creativity, but because of privacy rights being violated by corrupt governments, our world is losing its creativity (12). Privacy rights are necessary for a stable society, but as you see, they are also necessary for a prosperous economy. My opponent states that I did not use facts, but he is incorrect. I quoted and sourced my links properly, and I used proper grammar throughout this debate. My opponent did not do those two things. Who knows where each of his links were used, and who knows if they were really used at all? Anyways, thanks for the debate. Vote con! (1) http://www.thenewamerican.com... (2) http://www.theguardian.com... (3) http://www.phrases.org.uk... (4) http://criminal.findlaw.com... (5) http://history.house.gov... (6) http://www.infoplease.com... (7) http://rare.us... (8) http://digg.com... (9) http://fee.org... (10) http://www.whatourforefathersthought.com... (11) http://www.cato.org... (12) http://www.globalresearch.ca...