"In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are
doing, the United States government has perfected a technological
capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the
air. (...) Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as
we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the
same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the
American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is
the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams,
it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took
charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence
community has given the government could enable it to impose total
tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most
careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no
matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government
to know. Such is the capability of this technology. (...)
I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know
the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must
see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this
technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that
we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no
return"...
On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church on NBC's Meet the Press.
Now we see that the FBI and Justice Department both apparently knowingly provided false information to the FISA court, a court that was apparently setup to protect Americans...
