'..no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny..'<blockquote>'In 1975 .. [Senator Frank] Church issued a stark warning:
<blockquote>That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology…. I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.</blockquote>
Church sounds as if he had absorbed the lessons of 1984. From the recent evidence, they are still to be learned.'
- James Bamford,
They Know Much More Than You Think, August 15, 2013</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
Magna Carta - MI5 feared GCHQ went 'too far' - '..[the American media] .. subservient to corporate and state power..''..a total surveillance of [global] citizens.''One sees authoritarianism v. individualism, fealty to The National Security State v. a belief in the need to constrain and check it, insider Washington loyalty v. outsider independence.'[/url</blockquote>