No it isn't. By and large there is actually a trade off.
>we simply need to do an analysis of the costs and benefits to figure out if a particular liberty is worth giving up to give us a particular level of safety.
The fact that there may be some worth in trading some liberty for some security, doesn't negate the fact that a trade did indeed happen. Apart from that, this is an incredibly naive statement. Humans aren't perfectly rational beings. Political decisions are emotional and driven by pressures from wide variety of stakeholders (who themselves are driven by self-interest, ideology, bias, religion etc.)
No it isn't. By and large there is actually a trade off.
>we simply need to do an analysis of the costs and benefits to figure out if a particular liberty is worth giving up to give us a particular level of safety.
The fact that there may be some worth in trading some liberty for some security, doesn't negate the fact that a trade did indeed happen. Apart from that, this is an incredibly naive statement. Humans aren't perfectly rational beings. Political decisions are emotional and driven by pressures from wide variety of stakeholders (who themselves are driven by self-interest, ideology, bias, religion etc.)