Have you thought through the implications of this? To me capturing and storing all the information we generate is really dangerous, and there's no way I'd want a log of everything in my life to be accessible to my secret service, my government, police, and the secret services of anyone they might wish to share it with (in particular the NSA) in secret and without my permission.

You've carefully avoided stating an opinion on these actions of our security services, but presented it as a fait accompli that we may as well just live with. I disagree. They've lied to us about what they were collecting (everything) and lied to us about what it is for (terror). I see no reason to trust any assurances or controls which are introduced on access, and the only way to stop abuse is to stop collection.

It appears they're not yet at the point where they can store all information indefinitely, but that point will arrive soon, and I think we should stop them before it does. I don't even trust the current politicians and police with this information on every citizen, let alone any conceivable politician who might come to power in the next few centuries.

IMHO we should have strong protections banning outright the collection and collation of this sort of material except where there are reasons to be believe someone is a serious criminal (violence, fraud, terror), with judicial oversight, for a limited time, with the data deleted after the trial. Just as the police are not allowed to demand DNA samples from entire populations in order to solve a crime, security services should not be allowed to store our every move and thought in the name of defending liberty, it makes a mockery of the concepts they claim to be protecting, and is extremely dangerous in the long term.

But you've got an interesting point in that the desire has always been to capture everything -- while the technical means to do it have been available for a couple of years. Along with a further shift in how people communicate towards easily moniterable technology, that is the crux of the matter.

It was one thing to have secret societies intent on capturing everything in the 60s, when technology limited the scope of the operation. It's another thing when that intention is not readjusted to the societal and technical realities of 50 years later.

That's why it seems like such a sudden, surprising change in policy to some who haven't kept up with the technical possibilities for surveillance, while others realize it's been a slow change going on for decades now.

And of course, for the past decades some of us have been trying to point out the technical possibilities to everyone who would listen, only to get told that just because it's possible doesn't mean it's being done -- we're not surprised by Snowden's leaks, but certainly vindicated.

either it's ineffective or they're overselling the capabilities or they're more interested in dissidents, and judging by the way activists and whistle blowers are being treated, i suspect this is the real reason these systems exist.

EDIT: Or there's some other threat none of us know about and these systems are working perfectly at keeping us all safe... but that's a long shot.

USA, UK and France are not any contry the're all at the top of this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...

It doesn't say much about other contries.

if i were journalist i would compile a list of all of those agencies and then release a "story" each week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies

enough to milk this topic for years.

i am austrian, so our HNA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heeresnachrichtenamt would be my "scandal". they run a sigint station smack in the center of vienna, located in a WW2 flaktower. public knowledge, but just add Snowden, Morales, some other bullshit and voila, another great feat of journalism.

In seriousness though, you're absolutely right and I feel the same way. I think the important thing here is that it's the first time the general public (and much of the tech community) has been presented this information in a straight-forward way. Also, people who had long ago deduced everything being revealed now (like me) will hopefully see the full extent of everything that's been happening. I have additional things I figure have been going on but which I loathe to discuss for fear of sounding paranoid. However, I used to feel that way when talking about the gov't reading email and tracking your FB activities, so it's nice to finally be able to discuss that with people and not seem like a lunatic or have the issue immediately dismissed.

edit:

But let me make a tinfoil hat prediction now, and I can point back to this post one day to maybe win a bet:

The private data collected on everyone is being shared with government workers (and private contractors) on all levels in some form. I think that many, many depts and orgs across federal, state, and local levels are privy to our personal/private data at least in aggregate/anonymized form whether they realize it or not. For instance, I think at least a small portion of police and fire responses are triggered by our private data, perhaps in a way that those responders don't even realize. It's a crazy idea and perhaps I'll head over to the TwoPlusTwo forums to begin taking bets :)

That's why I've felt the focus on the NSA and GCHQ (i.e. the US and and UK) was misplaced. The focus should be on better privacy protections and rolling back state surveillance in all countries, not just the two whose programs are the best-known. In fact the understanding of how widespread this is may reignite the push for better client-side privacy and anonymity protection tools.

To someone used to an abusive relationship, no abuse is surprising.

"Oh, now he hit me with a metal club. Big fucking deal"

That doesn't make it acceptable or non dangerous.

So I wouldn't be waiting, like a mere spectator on something that doesn't affect me, for him to "reveal something actually surprising".

Yes, some of us understood the spying is broad, but I don't think most of us expected the cables to be tapped directly, and take all the data like from a firehose and store it all. How can you say even that doesn't surprise you? And even if it doesn't you think 99% of the people out there understood this?

Does your mom or dad think it's okay their phone calls are stored and analyzed by the government?

Anyway, just because you (probably) knew this was going on, doesn't mean there shouldn't be a time to get outraged about it.

Maybe we'll see some German politicians talking about how bad French companies are for being complicit with their intelligence services and they need to make sure their citizens don't use any French services. But, I'm not holding my breathe - because, I'm sure that attacking France will do little for most politician's re-election chances over there.

[Edit: Down-votes? If you're going to disagree with me regarding the political opportunism and lack of criticism of France, then come out and say it.]

That, plus the fact that we've had numerous previous experiences of terrorists bombing our country, makes me think that we really have far bigger issues than the secret service spying everyone at the moment.

This isn't the first exposé of the French government's communication surveillance either. There have been quite a few articles on this over the past few years.

Well, sooner or later, this "somebody" would use it for things that for them are no-brainers: For example fighting terrorism in case of "somebody" = law enforcement. But then what?

Unfortunately, a situation in which somebody has all the data and is allowed to use it for a limited number of purposes is not stable. There is just too much that you can do with it, making the temptation irresistible. It then really doesn't matter if the scope of usage is extended in a million small steps or a few giant leaps, because the end state of a system with humans and data is that the humans will use the data.

But obviously, not everybody will have access to the data. We start (now) from a situation in which there is an information access asymmetry between the intelligence community and the general public and there is no indication that the intelligence community will ever be willing to give up this privileged position.

So in the end, all the data is available and it is used for many purposes, but the number of those that have access to it is limited, and their access gives them certain advantages over everybody else. This is how, over the course of a few dozen decades, you arrive at a security-clearance based caste system.