Lew has not lied, his depression has been real enough. However, it has been trumped and to some extent precipitated by an out-of-control, Orwellian government. Long before Snowden, technology had progressed to the point where the government not only tapped our phones but also opened and read our first-class mail and monitored traffic through the internet routers. The gleanings were recorded, scooped up, and transmitted to Fort Meade where they could be recorded and analyzed.
Similarly, traffic cams, supermarket cams, street cams, and cell phones all over the country monitor citizen's comings and goings and transmit the results to local law enforcement agencies, which in turn transmit the data to Fort Meade. It goes without saying that these recordings are kept forever.
All this is right out in plain sight! Techno publications (especially hacker mags) have been reporting the facts for years. Indeed, in March 2008 Eric Schmidt (CEO of Googlegave a televised presentation outlining it all (though without mentioning either the government or Google by name).
I suppose the surprise has to be not the fact that this all was going on, but rather that the citizens were the only ones who did not realize it.
It took Mr. Snowden's June 2013 publication of "secret" government documents to get the public's (including legislators') attention. Yet there was nothing new in what those documents reported - merely that they were authored and signed by government employees.
What then, is the present state of affairs? So far as I can tell, despite the constitution and everything Mr. Snowden and others have reported, neither the government nor
Google and its peers have retreated so much as one inch. Once-sacred first class mail continues to be opened and scanned every day. Despite wiretap laws on the books since the the days of Al Capone, electronic communications continue to be recorded by both government and private corporations without judicial approval. Eyes-in-the-skys or Google's street view cars still watch over most of us in the cities, day and night.
Whatever other technologies may be involved, it is the internet which is central to and enabling of this illegal snooping. Its inventors never intended for it to be either private and/secure - on the contrary. After DARPA it was intended specifically to make information freely and universally available. As a result, now there is no possible way to make it private and/or "secure". Even the best encryption - encryption that this morning may be sufficient - this afternoon will be cracked, leaving only the one-time key as a very inadequate guard for "security". Of course both of these techniques are too onerous for casual use. Furthermore, new "Zero-day" exploits are uncovered every day.
(Whether by government or by private individuals, the hacking itself is not difficult; good old-fashioned capitalism always trumps moral scruples: surely no one is surprised that hacking tools are a commodity on the internet black market. One need only know where to look.)
What is appropriate response for a responsible citizen? Clearly, that citizen will avoid connecting any data-bearing equipment to the internet (unless there literally is no other alternative). Similarly, he/she also will avoid the postal system. And an interesting little bit of relevant trivia: Western Union has been coopted since 28 April 1917.
Carrier pigeon, anyone?
Of course, as always, we plan to do our moral duty.
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