The Problem With the 'Privacy Moderates'

[Douglas Carpenter]

35. an excellent article for a reality based assessment of the situation

It is hyperbolic, and even hysterical, to say, as Glenn Greenwald has, that the United States has a secret plan "to destroy privacy and anonymity not just in the United States but around the world."

In fact, the U.S. government is, right this second, pouring untold billions into what is ultimately an effort to monitor all digital communications; scan all mail; amass a fleet of surveillance drones that can hover in the sky for days on end; develop technology to scan all faces in crowds; assemble gigantic databases of biometric data; break all encryption efforts; indiscriminately spy on millions of citizens in friendly countries like Germany and Brazil; and share spy technologies with allies. None of that is in dispute. What's hyperbolic is calling people hysterical because they see the endgame of various plans to impose ever broader surveillance on whole societies. There isn't a government document somewhere titled, "The Plan to Destroy Global Privacy," but that is exactly what Western intelligence agencies will do if adequately funded and left, unopposed, to their own devices. Anyone who can't see that hasn't adequately grappled with the implications of Snowden's revelations, the history of spy agencies allowed to operate in secret, or the radical new capabilities that advances in data analysis and retention have given states (and are likely to give them in the near future if they aren't stopped).

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/the-problem-with-the-privacy-moderates/277561/