"As a civil libertarian, my own view is that preventing terrorist attacks is actually quite important. I was surprised that we got something as extreme as the PATRIOT Act after 9/11. The alternative to technological approaches to preventing terrorism will not be the sort of perfect world of the ACLU. I think civil liberties always lose after you have an attack. They always get replaced by things that are, as a default, very intrusive and very low tech."

Source: http://www.vox.com/2014/11/14/7213833/peter-thiel-palantir-p...