Safety and security

Security Safety Liberty

People talk about a trade-off between security and liberty. But what do they mean by security? We know what’s at stake in the definition of liberty – the difference between positive liberty and negative liberty, and the old distinction between liberty and license. We know something of the distinction between liberty as a generic category and particular liberties that may be regarded as basic or described politically under the category ‘civil liberties.’ We try to be clear about ‘liberty’, because it may make a difference to the trade-off. But we almost never address the question of what ‘security’ means.