Technology and Tomorrow: A Challenge to Liberty‪.‬

It's tempting to wonder if Thomas Jefferson, writing from France to James Madison in support of a Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, ever imagined the possibility of spy satellites. With the Industrial Revolution still in its infancy he would only have the past as his compass when thinking of the days ahead. In fact, the fledgling democracy he endorsed was itself lifted in part from the ancient Greeks. It reasonable to assume, then, that when Jefferson later sparred with Alexander Hamilton about their new country's future, neither visionary foresaw cameras the size of pinheads or rifle microphones that could detect the conversation of resident redcoats in a building across the street. Jefferson would have had little to inspire the thought that one day the kilns of human ingenuity would produce devices that directly threaten individual privacy--and test the viability of our most cherished freedoms.