"Presidential actions to ensure the security of the country do have implications in both directions for people's liberty," Wittes says. "Most things that make you more secure, make you more free. And most things that make you less secure, also make you less free."
During 1798 and following the French Revolution, John Adams, the second president, signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts. That move gave him powers to restrict speech critical of the government and, without a hearing, detain or deport immigrants considered dangerous to the U.S.
In 1862, as the Civil War raged, Abraham Lincoln wanted to deter people from helping the Confederacy. So he suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus, which ensures prisoners their rights to appear before a judge. He also said Southern sympathizers disrupting Union activities would be subject to martial law.
Just weeks after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a censoring operation and allowed the government to use private census information to round up Japanese-Americans in internment camps — authority granted by Congress' passage of the first and second War Powers Acts.
And in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush — with overwhelmingly bipartisan support — signed into law the USA Patriot Act. It loosened restrictions on wiretapping, searches and seizures.
It also quickly became controversial. Backers argued that the government needed sweeping powers to root out terrorists; critics claimed civil liberties were needlessly restricted.
Obama inherited the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and many of Bush's policies. Some, like torture and secret prisons, Obama rejected. But he largely kept intact the Patriot Act, signing a four-year extension in 2011.
Both the Bush and Obama administrations have said America is in a war with no foreseeable end. What does that mean for the tension between safety and rights?
Outlining the next phase of America's posture against terrorism, Obama last week said some of the policies "compromised our basic values" while others "raised difficult questions about the balance that we strike between our interests in security and our values of privacy."
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