Gabbard Reaffirms America’s Commitment To ‘Individual Liberty’

Ensuring citizens’ “privacy is essential to individual liberty,” Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard said while speaking at an international conference on Tuesday.

“It’s why America’s founders enshrined this God-given right in the Constitution nearly 250 years ago. They understood that a government with unchecked power to control what we say, control what we do, and to search and surveil its citizens is not a government of the free,” Gabbard said.

The remarks were part of a virtual speech the DNI gave at the 2025 Privacy Symposium Conference in Venice, Italy. According to its website, the event “aims at promoting international dialogue, cooperation, and knowledge sharing on data governance, regulatory compliance, and innovative technologies.”

In her remarks, Gabbard noted the oath she took upon taking her job to “upholding the principles of freedom that define us as a nation and that serve as the foundation for our democracy.” She further underscored America’s “commitment to protecting people from unwarranted search and surveillance by the government,” arguing that faithfulness to such an ideal “reflects a deep belief that a country that does not truly respect privacy is a country that does not respect its people and truly is not free.”

“Now, as Director of National Intelligence, it’s my duty and responsibility to support our president’s mission, to ensure the safety and security and freedom of the American people by providing him with the best, most relevant, accurate intelligence possible,” Gabbard said. “It is also my duty to ensure that American civil liberties are free from government overreach and abuse of power.”

The director of National Intelligence went on to detail how, “for far too long,” citizens have repeatedly been told by government officials that they “must sacrifice liberty sometimes in the name of more security,” and that oftentimes, “once we give up some of our freedoms to the government, it’s extremely difficult and therefore very, very rare that we ever see those freedoms restored.”

“As a result, we’ve seen the national security state grow stronger and stronger. Their capabilities to conduct mass surveillance and warrantless searches of our own people continue. And the result has been a withering away of public trust, and therefore, the ability to effectively carry out our nation’s security mission,” Gabbard said.

As indicated by the former congresswoman, the U.S. government is no stranger to weaponizing state spy tools to surveil unsuspecting Americans.

One of the most notable programs is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which intel agencies have abused to spy on unsuspecting Americans. The tool was also weaponized to surveil then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Gabbard warned Symposium attendees of the dangers associated with governments that fail to ensure their citizens’ privacy rights are protected, saying, “The more our freedoms are eroded, the more the foundations of our democracy are eroded.” She additionally emphasized the need for state actors to balance “national security needs” with ensuring the protection of individuals’ “personal privacy and liberty.”

“By embedding and respecting privacy norms internationally, we make it harder for any government, including our own, to deviate from them, to undermine those liberties and privacies,” Gabbard said. “We have to work with each other, communicate to each other about … what steps we can collectively take to defend liberty and individual freedom and ensure privacy. By doing so, together we can forge a path forward that truly upholds our ideals as free nations and our basic rights as individuals.”

Gabbard’s Tuesday remarks signify another instance in which high-ranking Trump administration officials have spoken to international audiences about the importance of Western powers protecting their people’s natural rights.

While speaking at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vice President J.D. Vance stressed the necessity of governments to defend free speech and even criticized America’s European allies for deploying authoritarian tactics to silence their own citizens.

“… [T]he threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe … is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America,” Vance said. “In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.”

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood