Topsy Turvy WorldRedmond Weissenberger The Snowden leaks have proven a few things. First, the United States government like all monopoly states cant be trusted with uninhibited power. Second, Washingtons political class only considers whistleblowers innocent if they dont embarrass the guys in charge. And third, there is a panopticon spying program, enforced by the American government, operating worldwide. Prior to the Snowden disclosure, it was only a crank rumor (one constantly stated at TDV) that bureaucrats were keeping tabs on everyone. Now we know for sure and the mainstream media can no longer deny it. The latest revelation, via the intrepid Glenn Greenwald, is that the National Security Agency is capturing every Americans private phone and email records, regardless if they are corresponding with someone outside the country. The current law requires analysts to obtain a warrant from a secret court if they plan to snoop through the domestic files of an American citizen. But the NSAs XKeyscore program allows users easy access to data whether a warrant has been obtained or not. We are supposed to believe that the cherubic and harmless NSA agents check with their conscience when they decide to look up phone records. The vast metadata collection was one thing. But the new XKeyscore program makes it incredibly easy for government officials to look up the correspondences of everyone residing in the US and its puppet states. This is a terrifying new development in the era of the rising police state. For now, assume everything you post or write on the internet is being collected. We have no reason to believe the government will do the right thing. [Excerpted from this weeks TDV Dispatch. To read the Dispatch and other TDV subscriber-only publications, please subscribe here.] Redmond is the Managing Editor of the Dollar vigilante and the Founding Director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada, the centre for the study of the Austrian School of Economics within Canada Redmond founded the LvMIC in 2010 to address the lack of knowledge about the true cause of our booms and busts of the last 100 years and the need for sound money and sound economics to be applied to the Canadian and global economy. linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 