I’m sure a lot of you have already watched it by now, but for those of you who haven’t, Frontline’s two part series on the U.S. Government’s secret program of spying on American citizens is absolutely essential viewing. Featuring extensive interviews with top-level government officials and the journalists who helped to crack the NSA, this series tells the story in painstaking, gripping, and horrifying detail.

Here’s a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2hqLPqJAa0

Much more, including full episodes and lots of extras at the show’s website.

Like most of you, I’ve followed this story off an on in the news. But it’s one thing to hear it in bits in pieces, to have it fade in to the background of one’s consciousness and become, in a way, normalized. It’s quite another to see it all unfold in one sitting.

“Command is a mountaintop. The air breathed there is different, and the perspectives seen there are different, from those of the valley of obedience. The passion for order and the genius for construction, which are part of man’s natural endowment, get full play there. The man who has grown great sees from the top of his tower what he can make, if he so wills, of the swarming masses below him.” – Bertrand de Jouvenal, On Power