The above quotation comes from the dissenting opinion of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in the Laird v. Tatum case of 1972. What was at issue in this case was whether the US Army intelligence was legally permitted to gather information on civilians and their activities, in this case, conscientious objectors, protesting military policies of America. The court ruled in favor of Army intelligence, however, within their opinion, they stated that there was "… no evidence of illegal or unlawful surveillance activities," in the gathering of such information, further, that it wasn't clandestine, and that "…the information gathered is nothing more than a good newspaper reporter would be able to gather…" If, in fact, this was true, their majority decision was, perhaps reasonable.
Fast forward to today's world, today's technology, today's massive intelligence complex, and, honestly, for a certainty, not even the FBI director, not even the CIA director, not even any director of any type, and certainly not even the President, can tell the American people what is or what isn't being specifically gathered on their citizens, what is or isn't being acted upon, how much and how intrusive such surveillance is, because they don’t really know, except that they appear to gather everything from everywhere. Never has this government rested so heavily on the backs of the people, while simply stating in their defense of their activity such trite things such as all this is for the protection and safety of the people, rather than what it's real purpose is, which is to stifle civil dissent, to intimidate the population, to criminalize public protests, to harm innocent civilians, and to control and to mold the masses in their actions and in their thoughts.
Government at its highest level, scoffs at the words of Lincoln, that this is a: "... government of the people, by the people, for the people," signifying by their governmental actions and by their laws that the people of this great land are not free and are not independent, but rather in many cases dependent upon the government to sustain them, and if they will not follow the dictates of the government, than they will be punished and humbled for it. It is unfortunate, that through executive orders, through poor legislation, through poor legislatures, through poor justice, but rather on behalf of those elite people and institutions that effectively rule this country, that this government has more and more aggrandized unto itself powers that were not intended to be part of this federal government in the first place, and thereby vast masses of the people are left susceptible to being assaulted, arrested, and effectively destroyed by government operators at any given moment.
If, civilians have no private sphere, and if the government, has no outside, independent authority on behalf of the people, monitoring what this government is performing domestically in regards to intelligence and information, than the people, have no future and no hope, because information truly is power, especially when the government knows everything about you, such as: where you are, how much you earn, who you owe debts to, your bank accounts, your email and text messages, your cell phone conversations, your travel, your family, your social connections, your health, and mirrors every click of your computer mouse; one man against the power and reach of this government has no choice but to submit, or suffer dire consequences for his dissent.