In the 1998 suspense thriller “Enemy of the State,” Gene Hackman, who plays a disgruntled former employee of the National Security Agency, says of the increasingly surveillance-happy U.S. government:

They get into your bank statements, computer files, email, listen to your phone calls…Every wire, every airwave. The more technology used, the easier it is for them to, keep tabs on you. It’s a brave new world out there. At least it better be.

When the movie first came out, it came off as a well-produced if slightly paranoid Hollywood thriller, more the product of someone’s imagination than a reflection of reality. Yet today, some eight years later, the central theme of the movie — a government more and more obsessed with surveilling its own citizens in the name of security — is an absolute and public reality.