For those of have never looked at the declaration of independence, it is a masterpiece (even if, like me, you are not American); the same goes for the original US Constitution document.
Benjamin Franklin who has lived through the war against the British Crown, a war on the US soil, had a great quote that is now more than ever appropriate
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
– Benjamin Franklin
Adding to the recent event of global scale and systematic spying on their citizen not just by the US government but also by many other democratic countries it would appear, there is another fourth that is worth remembering in this day: the fourth amendment, and more precisely Restore the Fourth movement.
P.S.: If you are interested to taste of how much information you can gather just by collecting metadata from your e-mails (imagine if you collect from even more sources…), have a look at this MIT website called Immersion (NOTE: work only with Gmail) as presented in this Popular Science article.
Ruminating... 