Gov. Christie: This Is A Dangerous World, We Need To Find A Balance Between Safety And Privacy

Statement

Governor Christie: Well it's a terribly dangerous world. And I have a 13 year old daughter who's an Ariana Grande fan and so you sit there as a parent and think about the way that works if I let my daughter go to a concert like that, I would have been doing the same those parents were doing, probably either been with her myself or arranged to be meeting her outside the arena, whether it was Madison Square Garden or the Rock or wherever. It's incredibly disquieting to parents all over the world. And so our thoughts and our prayers are with the victims, both those who perished and those who are injured and their families. In terms of New Jersey, you know Colonel Fuentes and the State Police are working with our private operators as they always do to provide safety. But let's remember, it appears this explosion happened outside of the arena and so the ability of law enforcement to be able to deal with folks with backpacks or suitcases or those types of things going into an arena is one thing. If they stay outside the arena and wait as they did last night until the crowd was departing, to cause the maximum amount of carnage, it becomes even more difficult and again the country is going to have to make some decisions about the balance between privacy and safety. You know we can have more and more cameras everywhere if we want to but people also have to understand what the risk on privacy is then as well and what balance do we want to strike. That has been the perpetual debate and discussion since September 11, 2001 and I think this incident just raises the stakes on that even higher. But you know, on the human side of things, you- it's very, very difficult to imagine being a parent in that situation and sending your young teenage daughter or son into what you think will be a safe environment for a fun evening and then having to deal with those results. It's tragic for folks. And it just reinforces again for me what I said at the beginning is that people need to come to grips with the facts that this is a very, very dangerous world and we're going to have to continue to respond in a way that is consistent with our peoples desires regarding safety and privacy and the balance of the two.

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