"I always think of the danger of surveillance being it could eventually fall into the wrong hands."

It IS in the wrong hands.

I doubt that the intrusions on our 'thoughts' are reversible at this late stage.

Exposure will probably just force the 'powers to be' to 'go dark', and we will never know to what extent we are being monitored.

This was why I personally found Snowden to be a patriot...and why I hope that more follow in his footsteps.

Homer almost “gave up” Lisa’s dental plan for a keg party, while the article was good I don’t like the title.
How about “Guess what you don’t have anymore? Privacy!” It’s not Snowden
it’s the information he disseminated; that’s the focus.
Publication of internal NSA documents, by the Washington Post, comes a week after a press conference in which President Obama sought to reassure Americans that the NSA is doing its job lawfully and with oversight. The documents show that the agency regularly scooped up e-mails and phone-call metadata on Americans and US residents without first obtaining federal warrants or other authorization.
During the year spanning from the second quarter of 2011 to the first quarter of 2012, NSA auditors detected 2,776 “incidents” involving “unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications,” the Post reported late Thursday.
The Post obtained the top-secret documents from fugitive Edward Snowden.

"and we will never know to what extent we are being monitored. "

We will know when we get the the 2:00AM knock on the door, or, when we wake up and our neighbor has gone missing. It will then be too late.

good article

I liked this article. I always think of the danger of surveillance being it could eventually fall into the wrong hands. Some politician will be tempted to try to get access to it and use it to stay in power, reward his friends, push his agenda, etc. Once people in power have access to unlimited info that's not available to other people, democratic rule falls apart.

This article points out that even if the politicians never abuse the data, excess surveillance is still bad for democratic gov't.

Thanks for posting this LS. The terrorists are winning because of this assault on our Constitution. They only have to 'threaten' and another freedom bites the dust. I'm not afraid of the terrorist, but my government, that's becoming a much different story.