Does Spying Keep Us Safe?

Open to Debate

News, Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2013

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The NSA collects data on billions of phone calls and internet communications per day. Are these surveillance programs legal? Do they keep us safe? If not for the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, most Americans would be unaware of the vast amounts of information their government is secretly collecting, all in the name of national security. But whether you believe leakers are heroes or traitors, an important public conversation has finally begun, and we should ask ourselves: What tradeoffs are we willing to make between security and privacy? As Benjamin Franklin might have asked, "Are we giving up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, and thus deserving of neither?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm John Donvan, moderator of Intelligent Squared U.S. Join us online at iq2us.org
0:08.6	to vote on the motion and keep the debate going.
0:12.0	I've met a four, the U.S. government sucking in all of that data about the phone calls that
0:18.0	we make when we're talking, who we're talking to, how long we're talking, is a fishing
0:23.1	trawler dragging a net across the high seas.
0:26.3	The government and its crew at the National Security Agency wants to catch bad guys, terrorists.
0:31.9	The crew on the fishing boat wants to catch, let's make it tuna fish.
0:36.6	But the fisherman's net also drags along with it, all those good guys who are swimming out
0:40.8	there, those cute little dolphins.
0:43.5	And the dolphins die, which is a clear harm to them.
0:47.4	But is there a harm to us in the data that is collected by the NSA and its net?
0:54.3	In fact, the argument is that the NSA's big net is saving lives, keeping all of us little
0:58.5	dolphins out there safe.
1:00.8	Yes?
1:01.8	No?
1:02.8	Well, it sounds like there's a debate in that, so let's have it.
1:05.6	Yes or no to this statement.
1:07.8	Spy on me, I would rather be safe.
1:11.2	A debate from Intelligent Squared U.S. in partnership with the McCain Institute for International
1:15.9	Leadership.
1:16.9	I'm John Donvan.
1:18.1	We have four superbly qualified debaters, Americans all, but two against two in this debate
	...

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