At a town hall meeting in Montpelier Vermont visitors unbuttoned their jackets, removed their hats and scarves and tried to shake off the New England cold as they filed upwards into the second floor to hear U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders speak to the crisis of NSA surveillance.

Sanders openly challenged the notion that there is much in the way of public, partisan or ideological support for domestic spying. He stated that standing against secretive mass data collection represented the height of opposition to “big government” – and that the fight to protect privacy was against not only big government, but “big brother government.”