The Walter Benjamin Shadow. Charlie Bertsch, in Tuesday's Souciant.
As a US citizen, this is the feeling that I've been carrying since Snowden's revelations. When you return to the US from international travel, the customs officer always says "Welcome home." It's a sign of respect: "This is your country. This is your government. Welcome home." The awareness of surveillance dispels this feeling. It changes the meaning: "Welcome home. We are watching you." Snowden saw an ugly truth, and now we see it too. Snowden used to be a citizen of one country, and we another. Now we are all citizens of the same country.Following through on this logic, we might conclude that the only sane response to a world in which the government treats everyone like terrorists is for everyone to treat the government like Edward Snowden did.