I make the same observations, but I actually think that it's a brilliant move by Snowden et. al. The way they are releasing the information so far has been from less to more troublesome. It's hard to say yet, but I would imagine that the first leak is on the lower spectrum of importance. But it was a great starter because it appealed to a larger audience given that it had powerpoint with big name companies on it, rather than the technical details that would be required to demonstrate the two points you mention.

As the leaks have moved on, the information has become progressively more concerning. Anyone who has followed this issue should have at least a vague idea of the caliber of information that could be coming (your post as an example). So, rather than releasing the big ticket items first, and having the rest of the issues make no impact in comparison, they're allowing as much information as possible to have it's greatest individual impact before moving on (not to mention the now well-discussed benefit of authorities lying themselves into corners trying to cover up the smaller issues).

In this way, they're priming the public so that we've spent months digesting the impact, and understanding the issue so that when we get (say) screenshots proving everything going over telecommunications is recorded, the public is prepared to understand and digest that fact quickly, and can move to action quicker--or even at all.

The more I think about it, the more I earnestly believe that this technique is the most effective methodology available to them and may be our one and only shot to stop it (keep in mind that once a subgroup of society reaches enough power and intelligence over the rest, there is literally nothing the rest of humanity could do to overthrow them; we can't dump tea in the ocean and fire guns at them anymore if they have drones and know everything about everyone).

He doesn't have to convince HN readers that this is worth stopping our daily lives for to stand against, he has to convince the general public.

With that in mind, the best thing we can do right now, is help them to prime the pump. Bring it up to everyone that will listen. Make the electorate informed. Because when the news comes--the one that we will need to act on--the public needs to be ready to hear it and move on it.

> He doesn't have to convince HN readers that this is worth stopping our daily lives for to stand against, he has to convince the general public.

The opinion of the general public doesn't matter. It's been being effectively managed for years, and that won't change now. The proles will never revolt.

The fact is, these programs existing and being public knowledge to "foreign entities" (Obama's words), pose an existential threat to Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and any other US-based company that intends to make money handling the private data of those filthy foreigners (whom outnumber US citizens on the internet something like a dozen to one).

Sure, tell everyone who will listen. But you'll find that most people don't give a fuck, and wouldn't know what to do with the information even if they did.

This change, if it comes, will come from industry, as all major internal policy changes in US government have for decades.

What you say may be true. But history has shown that people can give a fuck and policy change can come from the people--even recently with ballot initiatives. Corporations didn't overturn Ohio's SB5. Corporations didn't legalize and regulate cannabis in Colorado and Washington. Corporations didn't pass the Dream Act in Maryland. Corporations didn't pass multi-state initiatives to legalize gay marriage. People did.

So independent of my opinion, there's demonstronably a non-trivial chance that you're wrong. And from chances like that, movements are born.

> Corporations didn't legalize and regulate cannabis in Colorado and Washington.

You're right: cannabis is still illegal in Colorado and Washington.

good points.

although I'm not sure I'm confident that there is a 'big one' coming 'the one that we will need to act on' (if what we've already gotten isn't it) -- we will see. I am curious to hear more about the RAT stuff.

We've known about your point A since the 641A information was leaked in 2006. Worse, both major party 2008 presidential candidates (Obama and McCain) voted in 2007 (as then Senators) for effective immunity for the telcoms for their participation in the helping of the government to spy on everyone. Snowden was wise to reveal new information to get people interested again.

Did we really know then that they were tapping into backbones and recording all the bits?

It's possible 'we' did, but I just didn't notice it because I wasn't paying attention and the media didn't make too much of it.

I did hear about the immunity thing, but figured that was for individual requests for particular information for particular investigations; it honestly didn't occur to me that they'd record the entire internet, I naively thought that would obviously be unconstitutional and thus not done.

If "we" did know that before, then I guess the Snowden leak has been great PR, because I didn't know about it until now!

For future references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepting_v._AT%26T is the lawsuit - it was pretty clear that they were wholesale tapping the backbones and recording everything. Even worse, The Supreme Court declined to review the case. All three branches of the federal government tried to sweep the gross abuse of power under the rug. They succeeded, at least for a while.

I wouldn't worry about it. Greenwald claims that the currently-released information is but a fraction of the total disclosures to come. I'm sure he and his editors meticulously played out every scenario of the different release order options.

I think the everyday average person (non engineer, non tech industry) would take interest in the subject much more with PRISM, which names companies and services that they interact with every day and they depend upon.

If you take the body of people who use Google/Yahoo!/Facebook and get the % of people who are aware of the existence and importance of internet infrastructure, you will find that the % is nowhere near 100%.

I think the order is okay, but the issue is that the media is making it a personality focus to make the story more sensationalist (do we sense a pattern here!?) and said average Joe is surely distracted.

I would be very curious to see how they might remotely deploy malware to US residential internet subscribers. It's probably unlikely that they would use client-side zerodays for such a task, since it would only take one of the targets to realize something happened and then analyze a packet capture to bust the whole thing.

If I were to guess, they probably only stick to ISP-level monitoring in most cases, and in other cases maybe they'll physically install malware on a system when they have to.

> * They are recording everything that goes over the internet, by tapping in at major backbones, undersea cables, etc.

This bit worries me less than PRISM or malware. We've already designed our networks to resist MITM where we believe security matters and there is a general push towards TLS for everything.

> Have we been given evidence by Snowden that they do this inside the US and/or to US citizens?

Im amazed why do you US citizens always derail the debate towards this question "us citizens or not"?

Are you guys more important than us? Dont you think US citizens are spied upon by UK, New Zeeland, Canada, Sweden, Germany etc and then exchange of information happens with those countries?

Does it matter that much how many laws NSA broke and how many lies they told you? Would you be fine with all of this if NSA had lobbied for a law, like FRA did in Sweden, to make all their activities, spying on US citizens included, perfectly legal? Just suck it up and accept "democracy" then?

Is this legal, who broke what law. What theyre doing is immoral no matter how they twist the law and how much they talk about what direct means in direct access.

Please, avoid discussing legality of minor details and focus on the implications for democracy, power and inequality. How do we fight back?

It is very self-centered, but there's a reason for it. It's easier to make a stink about something immoral if it is also illegal. And some Americans are pretty touchy about the Constitution so the more clearly an action violates the Constitution, the more likely it is to provoke a reaction.

It's certainly not the only debate worth having regarding the whole affair, but as far as things go in the US, it's significant.

How many times does the NSA or some other institution need to break laws to be held accountable? For some few people to do something other than talk about it?