It would be interesting to hear what a post 9/11 Ben Franklin would have said. We will never know, but we live in a completely different time with threats that Franklin could never have forseen or imagined.
There is nothing that the NSA can gather that isn’t on a data base already. From the IRS, to Medical Records, banking records, every credit card purchase, Google search and phone call is stored. I think hackers are much more of a threat than government agencies who are tasked with our security.
Didn’t Thomas Jefferson deal with the mooslims in a Naval way?