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The depth and breadth of the Obama campaign’s 2012 digital operation — from data mining to online organizing — reaches so far beyond anything politics has ever seen, experts maintain, that it could impact the outcome of a close presidential election. It makes the president’s much-heralded 2008 social media juggernaut — which raised half billion dollars and revolutionized politics — look like cavemen with stone tablets.

With such a statement in mind, it is important to consider the campaign's tactics within the context of a much broader process of information gathering on the part of multiple agencies within the federal government.

In February this reporter published a series of news articles at Examiner which indicated that the Obama White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had contracted with General Dynamics to gather information on citizens.

Further, it was discovered in the course of the investigation that DHS had lied to Congressconcerning the information it had gathered on Americans through covert spying techniques.

Given that DHS has nothing to do with a political campaign, it would be a stretch to claim that spying on Americans by the agency is part of a reelection bid.

But the process of trolling for information does not stop there. Another news report indicated that the Obama White House had used Facebook to spy on citizens, which resulted in the social networking site's admission that it had used its platform to snoop on its phone users' text messages.

The investigation further uncovered the stunning fact that Facebook funneled the information it had gathered on citizens directly to the Obama White House.

These issues raise serious questions that go to the very heart of the nature of a free society. How many small violations of Constitutional rights does it take to qualify as a major attack on personal freedom? Is it acceptable for a political campaign to gather private information on citizens by spying on them? And if so, what is to prevent that political campaign from using such information in a malevolent manner if it is successful in being elected to positions of significant power in the government?