

If George Washington Were Alive, He'd be Reading Your Email - bradleysmith
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/29/if_george_washington_were_alive_he_d_be_reading_your_email_founding_fathers_nsa

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bediger4000
Doubt it. Writs of Assitance
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writ_of_assistance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writ_of_assistance))
were widely abused by the Crown in Colonial North America, no?

This is the worst kind of "Originalism".

How about we get away from what Madison may or may not have thought about a
technology 200 years in the future, and look at what mass surveilance
inevitably does, namely become an instrument of repression. At the very best,
mass surveillance is going to become an instrument of stasis, maintaing the
status quo in a war on the unexpected, but that's really the best we can hope
for. Thank your lucky stars if you don't have _anything_ to hide (like a
dissident religion or Arab ancestors or you didn't make it into CxO level
position) because the rest of us are going to be in trouble.

