Here’s an article that brings together a good deal of material on the surveillance state. A book would be required to go into all of this. This kind of article is going to keep appearing with more and more revelations, more and more history, and more and more perspective on a gigantic government sweep of personal information, unparalleled by any previous police or totalitarian state. Whether or not the government got information on 5 or 10 or 20 plots is actually beside the point because (a) we do not know if the same information could have been or was obtained by mundane and legally conventional means such as tips, (b) the illegality and secrecy of what was done is so huge, and (c) there cannot possibly be maintained any kind of decent society with such collection of private information on everyone going on.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff