The surveillance state is alive and well in the U.S.A.

During a visit to Richmond, Virginia on Monday, his third day as FBI director, Jim Comey welcomed the current debate over the reach of government surveillance. “The pendulum swings back and forth” between liberty and security, he said. America benefits when those with differing views on the issue “bang it out.” Comey, whose modesty is proportional to his height (six foot eight), did not remind those present of his own role in pushing the pendulum back toward the civil-liberties end of its arc during a now-famous showdown at the hospital bedside of former Attorney General John Ashcroft.
But Comey added that he didn’t always find the liberty-versus-security dichotomy helpful. Sometimes security and liberty move in tandem, he said. He offered the illustration of a police officer on a playground whose presence makes everyone in the vicinity feel both more secure and more free.
It’s a fair point. Yet if that were all there were to the matter then the current debate would seem wildly overblown. Is it? Clearly not: Many serious, intelligent people find the recent revelations about domestic spying highly unsettling. Why is that?

http://reason.com/archives/2013/09/11/yes-america-you-are-being-watched