"Those ties which bind the representative to his constituents are strengthened by motives of a more selfish nature," Federalist 57 goes on. "His pride and vanity attach him to a form of government which favors his pretensions and gives him a share in its honors and distinctions. Whatever hopes or projects might be entertained by a few aspiring characters, it must generally happen that a great proportion of the men deriving their advancement from their influence with the people, would have more to hope from a preservation of the favor, than from innovations in the government subversive of the authority of the people."

But legislators who advance classified policies obscured from the people need no longer worry about preserving their favor, or avoiding a popular backlash against their approach.

The public is never meant to know about their actions.

As Federalist 57 concludes, "All these securities ... would be found very insufficient without the restraint of frequent elections. Hence, in the fourth place, the House of Representatives is so constituted as to support in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people. Before the sentiments impressed on their minds by the mode of their elevation can be effaced by the exercise of power, they will be compelled to anticipate the moment when their power is to cease, when their exercise of it is to be reviewed, and when they must descend to the level from which they were raised."

Absent Edward Snowden's revelations, how meaningfully could Representative James Sensenbrenner's constituents review his exercise of power? Is it not reasonable to suppose that the change in perspective his constituents have been given informed his own change in position on the Patriot Act?

Federalist 62 concerns the Senate, but contains a passage relevant to secrecy, implying it "poisons the blessing of liberty itself." Musing on "the effects of a mutable policy," it states, "it will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?"

Surveillance law could not be read or understood by the people. It changed in such a way that few could anticipate what it would be tomorrow. It was revised without being promulgated, and was little known and less fixed.

It was, in this way, un-American.