A federal contractor performs a routine stop to listen to your voicemails.
Let us say, just for a second, that someone invented technology that allowed everyone on Earth to communicate with one another almost instantaneously. People could use this marvelous machine to say anything they wanted, and they could say it to just one person or broadcast their ideas all over the world. You couldn’t use it to exert force or shoot lasers or anything; the machine could only convey speech and the written word, plus pictures. Approximately 20 years after this machine is invented, a government announces it has the right to record and read, at its leisure, everything everyone uses the machine to say. It must do so to protect freedom. Does this government sound democratic to you? Today is Friday, and the wolves have come out. Won’t you shiver in the vast field of prey with me?