Most of what I have to say about this is that you're perfectly illustrating the fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives - the liberal philosophy is that the law tells people what they *are* allowed to do, and the conservative philosophy states that the law tells people what they are *not* allowed to do.

The only other thing I have to say is that Sam is correct in stating that most of the governments in history that have turned bad started by restricting the freedom of the citizens in favour of security - the rest started by giving more and more power to the executive until he became nigh-omnipotent.