'The Watchers' Have Had Their Eyes On Us For Years  Shane
Harris, an author and journalist who covers intelligence,
surveillance and cybersecurity for a number of publications,
says that the revelations about the NSA from Edward Snowden are
nothing new and that such programs have a significant recent
history in the United States.  As shocked as you may have been
to learn about the secret National Security Agency programs
leaked by Ed Snowden earlier this month, this type of
surveillance is not entirely new or unheard of. In his 2010
book, The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State,
journalist Shane Harris traced the evolution of these
surveillance programs in the U.S. Harris says that as the
digital age advanced, the NSA reached a crossroads at which they
realized that analog tactics like phone tapping were quickly
becoming obsolete: there was a whole new world of digital
information to be accessed.  "[T]hey're realizing," says Harris,
"if we can get into this 'Digital Network' ... [that] they wou