The National Security Administration has recently made waves in the European community with the exposure of its far-reaching network of electronic surveillance, prompting a stream of indignant backlash from leaders the world over. Chief among these have been France and Germany, both of whom stand as two of the United States’ most loyal allies.

Evidence of the surveillance program emerged in June 2013 at the release of a series of documents from Edward Snowden, a former analyst for the NSA and CIA. According to the documents, the NSA has been spying on world powers from the European Union to Central America for information on everything from terrorist activity to economic strength.

According to Jacques Follorou and Glenn Greenwald for the French newspaper Le Monde, “70.3 million recordings of French citizens’ telephone data were made by the NSA” between December 2012 and January 2013. These numbers pale in comparison to the recordings made from Germany and the UK, where even members of the political elite such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel have been tapped. Similarly, Mexico’s former and current presidents, Felipe Calderon and Enrique Pena Nieto, were subject to telephone and email tapping at the hands of the NSA.

However, foreign hands are far from clean in light of the NSA’s spying. Alissa J. Rubin wrote in The New York Times that Mexico had previously partnered with American intelligence to fight crime domestically, while France’s General Directorate for External Security had been spying on French citizens under similar levels of illegality. In post-9/11 America, similar levels of disregard for privacy and personal liberty have been taken under the Patriot Act, which provides for the seizure of private documents and wiretaps by singular order from a judge and for these acts to be kept quiet via a non-disclosure clause.

It would seem that the United States intelligence agencies have shamelessly taken this plan abroad without heed for international law. In light of the United States’ threatened military action during the Syrian crisis, this disrespect carries airs of a country without power checks from any source. Images of the Cold War are called to mind, as though America continues to stand on the brink of World War III, distrusting even itself, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Putin’s post-communist Russia would seem like an ideal party for infringements on privacy such as these, but apparently the US is no better in the era of a highly-prioritized war on terrorism. Obama’s apparent lack of knowledge of the affair raises more red flags as it points to an intelligence sector acting autonomously. Peter T. Gunn, veteran Williston history teacher and Easthampton School Committee member, states that “we deserve criticism for allowing a concentration of power in the NSA.  Power corrupts, and this is another case in point.  The popular response by ordinary Americans will remind the rest of the world why the US is likely to reassert democratic reforms.”

1984 has come and gone, but Orwell’s prophetic vision of complete individual transparency now seems far more exemplified than ever before. No longer can an individual living in a world-power country expect to live in the era of information while retaining aspects of life private from all outsiders.