Surveillance in America

"Government surveillance as an issue exploded into modern consciousness with the revelations that Edward Snowden made about the activities of the National Security Agency in 2013. But government surveillance is actually an old issue with a long and tangled history reaching back through generations. The competing interests involved in government surveillance create deeply opposing tensions that never seem to get fully resolved or go away. Government wants to surveil in secrecy to protect home and country, and those being governed for their part want to be safe and protected. But individuals also want to have autonomy, privacy, and freedom from unfair intrusions or other abuses of government power. The nuanced and long-term interaction of this push and pull between the government's legitimate desire for surveillance and legitimate desire expressed by individuals and society as a whole for civil liberties and autonomy run deeply though America's history, laws, actions, and policies of government surveillance"--