So they charge Snowden with espionage in pretty short order, but the banksters wrecked . . . . .

[JDPriestly]

15. Obama says he wants a national conversation about the surveillance.

I don't think so.

Obama should have been honest and forthright about some of the parameters of this program long, long ago. It's sneaky and underhanded.

Our communications are transparent to the NSA, but the government, the government of Obama who promised transparency, is not open or honest or transparent with us.

Keeping us safe? Who is kidding whom? I can't even talk to family overseas without being undersurveillance.

And what do you want to bet that while the US is not legally allowed to intercept domestic communications, some other country (Great Britain perhaps) is?

Who can we trust? Where do we go?

And, yes. I am law abiding and have "nothing to hide." Nevertheless, I still have curtains on my windows. Shades on some of them. Feeling that I have privacy in my communications as in my home is what makes me feel secure. The Obama and Bush and who knows how many other administrations have violated my privacy and made me feel less secure. I feel less free in what I can say and do.

And this surveillance will lead to worse. This kind of pathological interest on the part of a supposedly freely elected government in what citizens in a country are saying and doing and who they are saying and doing it to is very ominous. This kind of surveillance usually supports totalitarian systems. It is incompatible with even a crude imitation of a democracy.