When you’re a professional spy hierarch, there are few things more annoying than these conscience-stricken Winston Smith characters, moodily scribbling in their notebooks, all about how there might be hope found in the proles somehow. They’re a drag.
See, dissidence is like Andrei Sakharov. Such a useful guy, modest, soft-spoken, brainy, built you a hydrogen bomb. This eerie device straight from hell even works, so it’s all good. Then all of a sudden he’s like: you know what? The noble science of physics shouldn’t harm mankind!
What kind of self-indulgent, fatuous gesture is that? Look here, Dr Labcoat: why was the public’s money given to you, if not to “harm mankind”? If physics was harmless, you wouldn’t have a damn salary!
That’s what life feels like for the NSA right now. That is the shoe Snowden laced on their foot. If you’re NSA, as so many thousands are, you’ve known from the get-go that the planet’s wires and cables are a weapon of mass surveillance. Because that is their inherent purpose! You can’t get all conflicted, and start whining that Internet users are citizens of some place or other! That is not the point at all!