Matt Salmon: Not willing to trade freedom for ‘false security’

With cybersecurity and privacy issues resurfacing this week, Rep. Matt Salmon, Arizona Republican, cautioned against “big government types” trying to use events like the recent Sony breach as an excuse to “usurp” more authority.

“While I do want security just as much as the next person, I want to make sure that we do it within the confines of our constitution,” he said.

Mr. Salmon was part of an effort in the House to get the post-9/11 Patriot Act redrafted and is pushing legislation that, among other things, would require a warrant for entities to get access to electronic communications.

Mr. Salmon, speaking at the 2015 Heritage Action Conservative Policy Summit, claimed that the Patriot Act legislation ended up getting changed into something that he couldn’t support after it advanced out of committee.

“I think we can have our cake and eat it, too — that’s what our Founding Fathers envisioned — they envisioned a free society and, after all, if we give away our freedom to protect our freedom to protect our freedom, what’s it worth?” he said.

“We have got to, I think, fight the fight and do everything we can with vigilance — we all want for bad guys to be apprehended; by the same token, we’re not willing to trade away our freedom for a security, but a false security,” he said.

President Obama said Tuesday that the Sony hack and the Monday hacking of the Twitter and YouTube accounts of U.S. Central Command shows how much more work needs to be done to strengthen U.S. cybersecurity. The president is also pushing new cybersecurity legislation after laying out proposals Monday to protect Americans from data breaches.