Escalating Internet Surveillance

Brad Templeton believes that we're living in a surveillance society far more intense than anything George Orwell could have ever conceived.

Templeton argues that the government and corporate America have transformed the Internet into a surveillance apparatus without our knowledge or consent. It is only thanks to Edward Snowden, who divulged the practices of the NSA and similar agencies around the globe, that we know the extent of this surveillance. These agencies put everyone under inspection and scrutiny in order to catch the guilty few. This is unconstitutional, for as Templeton rightly says, "a free society makes a decision for itself. It makes a decision to limit the power of its police and its intelligence agents."

Templeton argues that our biggest challenge lies in establishing that privacy and security not mutually exclusive, and that we do not have to trade one (in this case, our rights) for the other (protection).