Whistleblower and former NSA contracter Edward Snowden just told the New Yorker's Jane Mayer that he believes the Supreme Court will review and eventually strike down the US Government's mass surveillance programs.

“It will go to the Supreme Court, and I’m confident that the Supreme Court will agree that these programs went too far,” Snowden said during a video conversation on Saturday. 

The U.S government has vastly expanded its powers since 9/11. According to the ACLU, "the government is regularly tracking the calls of hundreds of millions of Americans and spying on a vast but unknown number of Americans' international calls, text messages, and emails. They are largely enabled by two problematic laws passed by Congress under a national security premise: the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act (FAA)."

The Patriot Act, which was signed into law in 2001, allows the U.S. government to search international telephone and email communications without notification as well as indefinitely detain people suspected of terrorism.

The FISA Amendments Act expands the scope of the government's surveillance powers, granting power to a secret court to oversee requests for search warrants against suspected foreign enemies. 

Celebrated writer and political commentator, Gore Vidal, once called these laws the tipping point of America becoming a "totalitarian government."

In the video below, Vidal, who passed away in 2012, speaks scathingly of our media, accusing them of abdicating a responsibility to stand up for American civil liberties. 

"We are totally policed," he says, "this is contrary to everything in our constitution."