«Spying on everyone's internet histories and email, text and phone records
with no suspicion of serious criminal activity and no basic protections for our rights undermines everything that's central to our
democracy and freedom — our privacy,
free press,
free speech, protest rights, protections for journalists» sources and whistleblowers, and legal and patient confidentiality.
Concomitant
with the utopian possibility of creating virtual communities, enabling aspects of identity to be explored, and heralding a new and global age of
free speech and
democracy, the Internet is also potentially a medium of virtually limitless international defamation.