George Orwell wrote 1984, a fictitious story about a future in which the government knows and sees all and privacy became non-existent.   Orwell wrote is eerily predictive tale in 1949.  64 years later we still wrestle with balance between our right to privacy vs the crime fighting power of surveillance.  

Most understand and support the role of surveillance (umm spying) when it comes military and intelligence targets abroad, but now, as often it has in the past, the argument turns our governments desire to spy on its own citizens.  Phone taps, street cameras, GPS tracking, drones, and now the monitoring of our Internet activity -- it's the gathering of large amount of information-data on us. Data that wasn't intended to be read by anyone other than its intended recipient.  Or in many cases data that wasn't intended to be read by anyone at all.  Or worse, data we don't even know we produce -- search histories, buying patterns, dating preferences just to name a few.  

We call it Dataveillance and its future is now being debated in the wake of whistleblower or double agent, edward snowden's scandal unfolds.  Whether dataveillance is legal, what extent it should be "allowed" and how we can protect ourselves from our government's prying eyes will continue to evolve and dominate discussions. Is dataveillance by the government ethical or constitutional? What defines reasonable suspicion and who are the foreign terrorist organizations? Does mass surveillance violate the right to privacy and human dignity or does it protect the individual and society against inhumane and senseless acts of violence?

There are many sides to the story and no doubt each argument is slanted and influenced by individual agendas.  Whatever side you take, whatever questions you raise one can only be sure of a few things -- the concept of spying is as old as government itself and as we produce more data someone is going to be interested in getting their hands on it. And lastly the government is reading this..