What state surveillance actually is is best understood by the NSA's own documents and own words, which I think as you know I happen to have a lot of.

Americans love to mock the idea of monarchy, and yet we have our own de facto monarchy. I think what these leaks did is, they demonstrated that there really is this government that just is the kind of permanent government that doesn’t get affected by election choices and that isn’t in any way accountable to any sort of democratic transparency and just creates its own world off on its own.

The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.

Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power, . . . its enabling force. Transparency is the only real antidote.

He's the President—it's the responsibility of every citizen to criticize aggressively when they think it's warranted.

Having the career of the beloved CIA Director and the commanding general in Afghanistan instantly destroyed due to highly invasive and unwarranted electronic surveillance is almost enough to make one believe not only that there is a god, but that he is an ardent civil libertarian.

The key question: will the NSA continue to monitor hundreds of millions of people without any suspicion? Under Obama's proposals: Yes.