Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations. One of the leaked presentation slides described the agency’s “collection philosophy” as “Order one of everything off the menu.”
It’s an interesting thing to imagine that we are being watched even more intently than we could have ever imagined in fiction.
Source: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished