They are attempting to normalize the step-by-step elimination of the Constitution.

[haele]

43. This is what happens when you run "government like a business" -

And can make a profit off it.
It becomes the best government money and lobbyists can buy - and this sort of spying on the citizenry is totally in line with all the other data mining corporations and for-profit social organizations have been doing over the last couple decades. This sort of surveillance just the next step if you're part of a large, profitable investment organization that has a vested interest in keeping the political status quo and protecting one's operational capabilities in any nation state. Minimize the possibility of competitors and pacify the population one is feeding on.

Doesn't surprise me that we came to this point in the least - too many private corporations have taken over the responsibility for running the people's government, and the collective "we" was willing to do it because we wanted to make money - including hundreds of thousands of those who were willing to work on government project but weren't willing to "put up" with the lesser pay government workers tend to get in comparison to their private-sector compatriots.

Our elected officials are basically businessmen, partners to investment groups and think tanks, and getting more "private" hands in the public pots of money benefits them far more than doing actual governing for the citizens that elected them. I think the last real actual hope for a citizen-based government that followed constitutional ethics we've had was during the Carter presidency, but he was out-spent and was pummeled enough by moneyed interests that no one would be willing to take them on for the citizenry.

So now, we pretty much just have factions working against each other on a level above most of us in the US.
Most of the "leaks" I've seen int the past 10 years (post 9-11) appear to have been planted by political opponents where previously unlikely "whistle-blowers" could stumble upon all this evidence they would not normally have access to and be able to play the victim to the press.
Again - it's not that what is being done in the shadows is acceptable, it's that the manner in which most of it is coming out is suspicious, and should equally concerning.

Get the profit out of government - even though it's probably too late now with the entrenchment of private contractors (and yes, I'm one, too...). That's the only thing that will stop the erosion of rights and citizenry.


If we don't do that, all we end up with is being robbed blind while we're letting ourselves be mollified by the spectacles of Bread and Circuses, rah, rah, rah.

Haele