Is the world a better place for knowing any of this stuff "officially"? Do you feel any more or less secure for knowing what you do now? Has your life materially changed since the great revelation? Does knowing what Hilary Clinton might think of Nicolas Sarkozy affect your personal view of either of them?
Most of it is hardly a revelation anyway and reading any vaguely literate and researched spy novel or techno thriller of the last 20 years or so will have revealed the power of electronic intelligence means and methods (and that doesn't mean watching a season of 24). Surprise surprise, governments spy on their population and nations spy on other nations and sometimes they even co-operate by spying on each others populations. Wow. Who'd a thunk it? Blimey, it even turns out some people don't like or think much of their opposite numbers in a different government and sometimes even have some vague idea of each others negotiating positions ahead of time. Strewth, that's truly shocking. Damn, it even turns out governments pass on certain snippets of competitive information to their favoured home based corporations to give them a leg up. Amazeballs.
The only thing I've read that I didn't know (for sure) was the NSA having a crafty poke around in Cisco kit before it got shipped to non-friendly countries.
Frankly, a much scarier breach of privacy was the not wholly surprising discovery that Apple tracked your movements via your mobile phone as a matter of course (and Google likewise) even though you knew your airtime provider did or could. Government spy agencies being able to do the same is of much less surprise and even less interest given there's not much danger of me trying to re-enact the gunpowder plot (and I certainly wouldn't be advertising it electronically, if I were), given they can pretty much follow you till their heart's content via CCTV networks, ANPR, congestion cameras, wifi hotspots and Oyster cards etc if they so desire. Personally, I find the concept of personalised targeted commercial adverts and content appearing on bill boards and devices in my vicinity much more insidious and much more a breach of my privacy.
Snowden, may or may not have had good intentions at the start (personally, I don't think he ever did) but now he's just turned into a self aggrandising twat and rent a mouthpiece for any privacy issue anywhere in the world. He signed away his rights to reveal any of the "secrets" he became a party to when he accepted his role at the NSA. His role didn't even permit him access to the information he's revealed, he went snooping around and digging for it and may have revealed it in revenge for some perceived wrong against him or his partner.
Hopefully, those nasty men in black from the CIA will grab him one day and he'll get a proper fisting at Guantanamo or some other deniable extraordinary rendition "black" site somewhere in the world. Fcuk him.
I'm not anti-privacy by any means and have personally told a representative of an un-named government department to take a running jump if they thought they could access customer data we hold without a a valid and very specific court order. I'm just anti-hysteria and most definitely anti-Gurniad inspired hysteria.
Or browsing odd stuff on Amazon to see what they email through as a must have.
