Ron Wyden Battles On For Civil Rights

I don;t think I can come up with any commentary other than to quote excerpts from Wyden's speech to the TechFestNW event in Portland on Friday, August 15, 2014.  He is a wise thinker on government power to do good or evil in the digital age.  Read the full speech.

For centuries, individual privacy was protected to a large extent by the limited resources of governments. It simply wasn’t possible for governments to secretly collect huge amounts of personal information about every single citizen without building massive networks of spies and informants. ...  

Our luck has run out. Here in the 21st century, this dynamic has already shifted in a profound and fundamental way. Advances in technology have made it possible for governments around the world to vacuum up and rifle through the personal information of huge numbers of law-abiding citizens. If you would defend a society built on the principle of individual liberty you need to recognize that you can no longer rely on the fact that mass surveillance is hard – in the 21st century, it’s easy. The only protections that we can count on now are those that are written into law, upheld by a responsible judiciary, and enforced by a public willing to stand up for their own freedoms.  Fortunately, our Founding Fathers left us with some pretty darn good legal principles that can guide us when it comes to privacy. The Fourth Amendment guarantees the fundamental right of the people to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. Justice Louis Brandeis called this the right to be left alone.