This June 6 photo, shows an aerial view of the NSA's Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah. The nation's new billion-dollar epicenter for fighting global cyberthreats sits just south of Salt Lake City, tucked away on a National Guard base at the foot of snow-capped mountains. The long, squat buildings span 1.5 million square feet, and are filled with super-powered computers designed to store massive amounts of information gathered secretly from phone calls and emails. / AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Our government, your rights
This is the first in a three-day series of editorials about government surveillance and secrecy.
If you ever read George Orwellís novel ď1984Ē (and if you havenít, run to the library and check it out), then the headlines during the past week might seem eerily familiar.
Those headlines tell of a powerful government mounting a monumentally large surveillance program of its own citizens, all in the name of a never-ending defense of the country against broad, nonspecific threats.
Specifically, we learned because of a 29-year-old National Security Agency contractor employee that the government tracks all domestic telephone calls and that it works with major online sites to mine Internet data including email.
Frankly, this is frightening. It is exactly the type of Big Brother government that Orwell was warning us about nearly 70 years ago during the height of the Soviet Union.
The Bush and now Obama administrations have created such an extensive regime of surveillance because of the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001. Some vigilance is of course necessary.
But where does it end? Are you comfortable that a government database has a record of every phone call youíve made for years now?
Even if the government assures us itís not listening in, many of us have made phone calls that might prove embarrassing or hard to explain if exposed. Even if you trust a Bush or an Obama, imagine if a Nixon became president in the future. Even if you fear a terrorist attack, ask yourself whether itís worth violating the Fourth Amendment to protect us.
And remember this: The one successful act of homeland terrorism since 9/11 was perpetrated by two brothers, and the massive surveillance net failed to catch it. So what is it catching?