Liberal Pundit: U.S. Has Become an 'Authoritarian Surveillance State

Paul Krugman, an outspoken liberal economist known for his support of the Obama administration, today said the United States has become an "authoritarian surveillance state."

Paul Krugman (Credit: YouTube) 

Part of a panel on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Krugman offered his take on the bombshell NSA spying revelations:

"...there are different kinds of surveillance states. You can have a democratic surveillance state which collects as little data as possible and tells you as much as possible about what it’s doing. Or you could have an authoritarian surveillance state which collects as much as possible and tells the public as little as possible. And we are kind of on the authoritarian side."

Krugman's statement followed fellow panelist George Will's observation that "we're using technologies of information gathering that didn't exist 20 years ago, that are terribly important but terribly invasive, and they require reposing extraordinary trust in the executive branch of government which some of us think it has recently forfeited."

(H/T: Newsbusters)

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