While I share the sentiment, misquoting people who were saying almost the opposite of what you meant is not going to go very far. Franklin wasn't talking at all about what you were thinking he was talking. It was about an argument on taxation.

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous...

I agree that this quote may have been misappropriated.

However, I think it has taken on new life and new meaning and is cautionary in terms of "be careful what you are giving up...". 9/11 attacks were successful in their goals based on exploiting the FAA guidelines for hijackers, not because we didn't spy on these people. No one imagined them turning a plane into a bomb. I think non one believes that if hijackers tried to take over a plane with box cutters today that they wouldn't be subdued or killed within minutes.

If it were saying simply "be careful" it would be more apt. Franklin's simplistic condemnation allows for no middle ground, no exceptions, no room for complex policy to deal with a complex world.

It's also old-fashioned. It reminds me of something Trump would say.

In a modern democracy everyone deserves safety and security, even people who believe the government ought to be granted additional power to constrain "essential liberty" in certain situations or within certain more expansive limits. They may eventually be proven unwise or evil policy choices, but the people advocating them still deserve safety and security -- precisely because they live in a democracy.

Granted. However, in the US I saw multiple times people getting at each other throats in arguing what a founding father really meant with this or this other sentence. So in an argument with a less charitable person, you might find yourself in facing somebody telling you that Franklin meant the exact opposite. That's why arguments from authority are usually bad. In any case, this is getting off-topic pretty quickly, so I'll end it here :-)

"No one imagined them turning a plane into a bomb." easily falsifiable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot , I know what you mean as in "not the first weapon expected in a terrorist attack"

From your own link: "So I don't really have a problem with people misusing the quotation, but I also think it's worth remembering what it was really about."

Here's a list of unsuccessful attacks post-9/11. Not much info on how they were thwarted or if the surveillance played a role: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrori...

Is Franklin criticizing immigrants who consent to give up some "essential liberty" in order to gain the "safety" of US residence?

Exactly - this is the same reasoning I use as a counter argument to gun-control propositions.