This is an excerpt from the letter Snowden sent to the government of Brazil:
American Senators tell us that Brazil should not worry, because this is not “surveillance,” it’s “data collection.” They say it is done to keep you safe. They’re wrong. There is a huge difference between legal programs, legitimate spying, legitimate law enforcement — where individuals are targeted based on a reasonable, individualized suspicion — and these programs of dragnet mass surveillance that put entire populations under an all-seeing eye and save copies forever. These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.
Republican Mike Rogers is an unrepentant fascist. There is nothing that the NSA could do that Rogers, or Democrat Dianne Feinstein for that matter, would find to be unconstitutional. Not a single thing. That’s because Rogers would find a way to twist the language of the Constitution in any way that he needed to to say what he wanted it to say. Just like the Evangelicals do with the language of the Bible. That makes Rogers, and all of those who think like him, extremely dangerous to our freedoms.