“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.“

An important distinction is security for whom? When a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie passes some piece of security legislation, their sole concern is security for the rich elite, not the commoners. In that case, oppression of the people is not an unintended consequence of the legislation going wrong like this image suggests, we're collateral damage at best and the intended victims of the legislation at worst.

Eh, one can't really make a decent analysis using vague abstract ideals like 'liberty' and 'security'.

In some ways, security is liberating! For example, some religions have anonymous (private) confessionals and electoralism has anonymous private ballot booths to encourage freedom in voting. I don't know if I'd be as honest online if I knew people with too much time and money could track my posts back to my real identity and harass me. And without security, these privacies would be merely illusions (see: deanonymization)

And obviously, on the other hand, state security understandably sees certain personal liberties (like downloading bomb-making guides and then buying fertilizer) as a risk beyond the liberty they're willing to permit. Corporate security might see user anonymity techniques as a legitimate fraud/bot risk. I've picked diverse and good-faith examples to demonstrate, there's plenty of midground and abusive examples of both, don't worry, I know. (I left reddit many years ago partly for privacy reasons, no need to preach to the choir).

I guess my point is, security and liberties don't necessarily contradict. But if you have governments and corporations run by the owning class, they have a material interest in suppressing your liberties for their own security. To make that appealing and tolerable, they have an incentive to rebrand this as being about your security. I've been in protests that obviously wouldn't harm a fly and the police presence is consistently absurd. It's clearly not actually about any of our security, or even the security of property owners, but rather the security of the bourgeois owning class and their way of life.

Too much security and the general public loses their human rights.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/21/police-tesla-attacks/

We reached out to Chicago Police Department to confirm whether the officers in the picture were deployed to protect the dealership on March 8 and whether any arrests were made. We await the department's reply.

Trump and Musk both commented on the attacks. Posting on X, Musk called (archived) the attacks, "insane and deeply wrong."

Trump said on Truth Social on March 20 that: "People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders. WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!"

More accurately labeled Liberalism and Fascism

Okay, but what if I depict security as a pug?

What I'm saying is I'm having trouble with the initial premise, not necessarily the conclusion.

What's the hat pattern?

Anyone know the source of this version? I've seen several similar versions over the years. And what is the hat representing, since that's new to me.

Delegating the task of protection of our rights to someone, thereby allowing the gap, in the ability to apply force, between you and those who are supposed to protect your rights, to widen, always carries the risk of your delegates one day refusing to fulfill their end of the bargain by using their power to violate your rights instead.

But is it really the case that most of us are willing and able to protect our rights by ourselves?

Idk why this made me remember the early L'Echo de Savanes

While this is essentially true, IMO it's become a bit of a distraction. The immediate problem we face today is technology.

In the 90s, people believed technology (i.e. the internet) would protect liberty against power (or "security"). We thought that removing the barriers to information would put our rulers in a goldfish bowl where we could keep an eye on them. It was a reasonable expectation. But it turns out to be us in the goldfish bowl.

It seems those with power simply have more time and resources available for surveillance. And now the technology is reaching a point where rulers will soon have awesome tools at their disposal, and they're sure gonna be tempted to use them.

Our problem is technology. Not sure how to put a positive spin on this. Technology itself will provide some solutions. But IMO it's more important than ever to get involved in politics. In any appropriate way.