Permanent Record

by Edward Snowden

America’s fundamental laws exist to make the job of law enforcement not easier but harder. This isn’t a bug, it’s a core feature of democracy. In the American system, law enforcement is expected to protect citizens from one another. In turn, the courts are expected to restrain that power when it’s abused, and to provide redress against the only members of society with the domestic authority to detain, arrest, and use force—including lethal force. Among the most important of these restraints are the prohibitions against law enforcement surveilling private citizens on their property and taking possession of their private recordings without a warrant. There are few laws, however, that restrain the surveillance of public property, which includes the vast majority of America’s streets and sidewalks.