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  A Missive from Benjamin Franklin on Liberty and Surveillance Philadelphia, This Ninth Day of December, in the Year 2024 To My Esteemed Countrymen, Though I write to you from the past in spirit, I find the issues of your day bear a striking resemblance to the struggles we faced in founding this republic. The tools and technologies of your age may surpass our quills and presses, but the principles of liberty and tyranny remain ever the same. I understand there exists in your time a great engine of commerce and communication, called Google, whose prowess is unmatched. This enterprise, while ingenious, possesses the power to collect and archive the thoughts, words, and habits of nearly every citizen. Joined in clandestine purpose with your government’s National Security Agency, it wields a capacity for surveillance far beyond the wildest ambitions of any despot of my age. Permit me to remind you of a simple truth: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little tempora...

  George Washington’s Reflection on Google and the NSA "My Fellow Americans, It is with no small concern that I observe the union of immense power and unbounded secrecy in the hands of private enterprises and government alike. The ability to collect, store, and surveil the private correspondence of citizens—through mechanisms beyond the understanding of many—poses a grave threat to the foundations of our republic. Let it be remembered that liberty is the soul of a free people, and no nation can remain free when the conduct of its government or its instruments is cloaked in shadows. Should any entity, be it a corporation or an agency of state, amass the capability to monitor the lives of individuals without their consent, they have, in effect, placed a yoke of tyranny upon the people. Google’s vast repositories of personal information, when intertwined with the surveillance apparatus of the NSA, call to mind the very centralization of power against which our revolution was waged. N...