It isn't just Internet and phone companies that are giving your personal information to the U.S. government. According to an astounding report by Bloomberg, "four people familiar with the process" say that "makers of hardware and software, banks, Internet security providers, satellite telecommunications companies" and a whole host of other sources are handing over your personal data to federal agencies. The truth is that there is so much more to this NSA snooping scandal than the American people know so far. When U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez said that what Edward Snowden had revealed was "just the tip of the iceberg", she wasn't kidding. The U.S. government is trying to collect as much information about everyone on the planet as it possibly can. And this incredibly powerful intelligence machine is not going to go away just because a few activists get upset about it. The United States government spends more than 80 billion dollars a year on intelligence programs. Those that have spent their careers constructing this monolithic intelligence apparatus are doing to defend it to the bitter end, as will the corporate partners in the private sector that rake in enormous profits thanks to big fat government contracts. But if the American people don't stand up and demand change now, it is going to be a signal to those doing the snooping that they can push the envelope even more because nobody is going to stop them.
We have become a "surveillance society", and this is exactly the sort of thing that the Fourth Amendment was supposed to protect us against. The government is only supposed to invade our privacy and investigate us when there is probable cause to do so.
