How Much Privacy Would You Give Up in Order to Stay Healthy?

The coronavirus has reignited the post-9/11 debate about security and civil liberties. The U.S. response to that tragedy has lessons for how to manage the trade-offs this time around.

As general counsel of the NSA in the 1990s, Stewart Baker advocated for limiting the government’s intelligence-gathering powers in the name of civil liberties. Then the 9/11 attacks happened, and Baker concluded that the limits he’d supported contributed to the security lapse. So he began pushing the case for surveillance—first while serving as a member of the George W. Bush administration,...