It is certainly an appropriate question--anytime; but especially now: Is efficiency in government a higher value than civil liberties; or should it be viewed the other way around? For reference, the Chinese form of government is certainly more efficient than ours; but civil liberties are practically nonexistent there. So would we wish to trade our form of government for that of the Chinese? Think about it...
There is certainly some trade-off between pragmatics/efficiency versus upholding individual rights/liberties and what the moral/ethical thing to do is. It's an issue for political theory.
All civil liberties not protected by the constitution are up for debate and possible restriction to promote efficiency. Those that are protected by the constitution are not up for debate.
Even a lot of those listed in the constitution are pretty vague, and there are numerous ways that are not too difficult to circumvent them. I might have to get into much more details and several examples for you to understand that, but that would be a topic for another thread.
