A lot of people— sometimes the most technically competent ones— were busily telling them that wholesale surveillance was infeasible... greatly underestimating the available funding and ingenuity.
So it was easy to imagine that only a few things were being intercepted: Communications be an amorphous "bad people". A distant problem for someone else.
In the mean time digital communications devices, cloud services, social media, etc. have become increasingly central to our lives— mediating more and more of our most private communications and storing our most trusted data. Most of it has built on an architectural house of cards which provides little systemic security beyond "hasn't screwed you yet".
The fact that this is happening to _everyone_, that the data is being correlated and stored— perhaps forever— that the argued legal basis of the program itself is cloaked in secrecy, that the public has been denied the ability to question something that potentially impacts the entire world, that the leaders of technology companies that we trust with our most personal data are either clueless or lying— as they make claims that appear to contradict the whitehouse.
And now it's becoming clear enough that its harder to say "well, maybe it isn't really happening" (even as you say "which may ver well be fake!)or "the black box rooms are for someone else" and so instead of ignoring it people are being forced to process the information. Some of them feel violated and upset. "Hasn't screwed you yet" is starting to look a little too weak once considered in the sunshine.
So it was easy to imagine that only a few things were being intercepted: Communications be an amorphous "bad people". A distant problem for someone else.
In the mean time digital communications devices, cloud services, social media, etc. have become increasingly central to our lives— mediating more and more of our most private communications and storing our most trusted data. Most of it has built on an architectural house of cards which provides little systemic security beyond "hasn't screwed you yet".
The fact that this is happening to _everyone_, that the data is being correlated and stored— perhaps forever— that the argued legal basis of the program itself is cloaked in secrecy, that the public has been denied the ability to question something that potentially impacts the entire world, that the leaders of technology companies that we trust with our most personal data are either clueless or lying— as they make claims that appear to contradict the whitehouse.
And now it's becoming clear enough that its harder to say "well, maybe it isn't really happening" (even as you say "which may ver well be fake!)or "the black box rooms are for someone else" and so instead of ignoring it people are being forced to process the information. Some of them feel violated and upset. "Hasn't screwed you yet" is starting to look a little too weak once considered in the sunshine.