Much has been said about the presidential candidates’ views on social issues, if you limit that category to civil rights, equality and religious concerns. But what about the more basic civil liberties of privacy, due process, assembly and freedom from unwarranted detention?

Barack Obama:

When he first took office, President Barack Obama seemed like a dream come true for those concerned with civil liberties. He decried his predecessor’s record of torture, overreaching presidential power and secrecy, and he ran on promises of an open government.

He did fulfill some of those promises. He banned torture (including waterboarding), promised to close our prison at Guantanamo Bay and closed the CIA’s secret prisons. But it quickly became apparent that Obama was not the white knight civil libertarians had been hoping for: His record of abuses matches, if not outdoes, that of any president who came before him.

• He gave in to a stubborn Congress and ceased efforts to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

• Obama has continued indefinite detentions at Guantanamo Bay and brought the policy home by signing the National Defense Authorization Act this year. The act gives the military the power to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, citizens included, who is suspected of terrorist connections.

• He has continued the warrantless surveillance of American citizens started by his predecessor.

• Obama has demonstrated an enthusiasm for targeted killings and drone warfare, which not only cause large numbers of civilian deaths but also raise troubling questions about the bounds of executive power.

• Perhaps worst of all, he has proven he can and will order the assassination of U.S. citizens abroad based on suspected terrorist connections. Obama bragged about the CIA-orchestrated death of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric who had not been charged for a crime or tried before a court when a U.S. drone strike ended his life.

• His administration has refused to prosecute CIA operatives or other officials responsible for the program of torture under former President George W. Bush. In not investigating and prosecuting those responsible for war crimes, Obama violated international law, and his actions justify the refusal of other states to investigate their own alleged war crimes.

• Domestic dissent also has seen its share of attacks in the form of police harassment and harsh repression.

The White House counsel has tried to explain this radical departure from the views Obama campaigned on in 2008, telling the Wall Street Journal, “Until one experiences [the presidency] first hand, it is difficult to appreciate fully how you need flexibility in a lot of circumstances.”

It’s clear that no one but former presidents truly can understand the pressures and necessities of the job, but no pressure is great enough to justify the violation of the basic individual rights that underlie our society and protect us from federal power.

No, it’s more likely that Obama simply is continuing a long presidential tradition. Since the 1930s, presidents have chosen national security over civil liberties — whether it was the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, the Loyalty Program that paved the way for McCarthyism or the embracing of CIA covert actions and “management” of the press.

Between the president’s duty to protect the nation, the daily briefs on a steady flow of threats and the opposing party’s readiness to strike at any perceived weakness, presidents are pressured to favor security over vital civil liberties.

Obama is not excepted from these pressures. And in response, he has sold out the American people in order to vastly expand the reach of executive power. Obama has eroded citizens’ most vital protections against state abuses in the name of supposedly protecting them from outside threats.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, declared himself “disgusted” with Obama’s record. We have to agree.

Mitt Romney:

Without four years as president, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has no national security record to scrutinize. But his campaign statements say enough.

• Romney has no plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. In 2007, he said, “I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. … My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.”

• In 2012, Romney said in a debate he, too, would have signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which gave the president the power to indefinitely detain citizens suspected of terrorist ties. Obama signed the act on Dec. 31.

• He has vocally supported the same warrantless surveillance used by Obama and condoned by the PATRIOT Act. In a November 2011 debate on National Security, he said, “We need tools when war is waged domestically … We’ll use the Constitution and criminal law for those people who commit crimes, but those who commit war and attack the United States and pursue treason of various kinds, we will use instead a very different form of law.”

• In the same debate, he shrugged off concerns about individual rights being eroded by government power: “And I hear from time to time people say, ‘Hey, wait a second, we have civil liberties we have to worry about.’ But don’t forget the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive …”

• He also agreed with Obama’s assassination of an American citizen in Yemen without due process.

• His campaign spokeswoman said last year Romney does not believe waterboarding is torture and would not promise to ban the technique. She said he would not specify the “enhanced interrogation techniques” a Romney administration would use against terrorists.

• In 2009, he decried the possibility of investigations into CIA torture allegations. He worried that such investigations might cause other nations to refuse future partnerships in which prisoners are shipped to those countries for interrogations that violate international law (known as extraordinary rendition).

Unlike Obama, Romney has every reason to stick to these stances. His base would expect nothing less, and the appearance of being tough on national security has won him major points.

But for those in the Republican Party who lean more toward Libertarian views — or anyone concerned about government overreach and human rights — there seems to be no good choice come November.