In his lecture Aryeh Neier [President Emeritus of the Open Society Foundations and a Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy at CEU] will give an overview of the history of surveillance in the United States and discuss challenges posed to the right to privacy by a state claiming to need vast quantities of data to protect public safety. In light of recent NSA revelations, Neier asks if the surveillance programs disclosed by Edward Snowden have been successful in mitigating the threat of terrorism and examines whether or not those programs intrude excessively on individual privacy. How was the programs’ effectiveness compromised by public revelations? Could they have been disclosed in another way? Was Edward Snowden justified in unveiling them unilaterally? Neier considers these questions and describes the credibility issue the US now faces when promoting rights elsewhere.