It can be argued that the more freedom everyone has, the higher such risks and the more is needed to minimize such risks. Thus, the need to "safe guard".
Bollocks. Thinking that through would result in the need to lock everyone up, because anyone at any time could do something bad.
Mass surveillance of people is not a solution to anything. In fact, i would argue that in reality it hinders the process of gaining useful intel about suspects. The more data you collect, the worse your signal/noise ratio gets. The more crap you collect, the more people you need to finally sift through it. The more people are on it, the more false positives will come out of it, slowing the whole thing down even more. Not to mention that the risk of abuse of the whole system raises dramatically. LOVEINT anyone?
And again, all things considered the threat from terrorists is rather low, compared to many other things we are exposed to in our daily lives. It's just that "oh, look, a possible terrorist" ist just a nice way to induce panic and fear in people, and a rather stupid excuse to expand mass surveillance. It's pretty much the same as with the idiots here in Germany crying for extended data rentention on a regular basis. It's always the excuses why they want, nay, _need_ it. And for the time actually had it (until it was shut down by the EU), the stats show that it did virtually nothing to fight the crimes they wanted to have that data against.
Not to mention that huge collections of data will awake the appetite to use for other things. I can see that here in Germany. First they said that data retention was needed to fight terrorism. Then they added heavy crimes to the list. And of course, they then added child pornography. Now we have demands for that silly data retention because of crimes done on the internet, regular crimes, etc.
There is a simple solution to stop all that madness: don't allow it in the first place. And if it is already in place, get rid of it. Instead watch over suspect people, but do that thoroughly. Put all the manpower behind evaluating that limited data. Whenever something more suspicious arises out of that, request further data retention and surveillance. If that leads to nothing during a limited time period, then chances are you are on the wrong way, just stop it and look elsewhere. Putting out mass surveillance programs may sound like an easy way, claiming to have the data "just in case" something pops up. But in reality it is the hunt for a needle in a haystack, with far too much potential for abuse, and with far too heavy intrusion into everyone elses privacy.
After 9/11 they ramped up surveillance. And continue ramping it up to this day. All that surveillance, all the agencies involved, and still they couldn't stop something like the Boston Bombers. They are lost in the woods of all that data. They can't use it that well, they are unable to protect it, but still they want more. That's just insane.
Greetings,
Chris