You could not hide slavery, a woman's inability to vote, internment camps, segregation, or any of these other things. Spying on your own people, however, is so

You could not hide slavery, a woman's inability to vote, internment camps, segregation, or any of these other things. Spying on your own people, however, is something that has always been hidden in this country except the times it has arisen to the public eye (think of the communism-witch-hunts of American citizens by the government and fellow citizens). ... only to retreat and be hidden again and forgotten again. At best, these people believe it is an obligated imperative to spy on our own citizens in order to keep them safe after the sickening mandate congress and the American public gave them weeks after 9/11 and ever since. "They are scared and they demand their government protect them, so we are going to protect them, even if it means violating everything we stand for". At worst, they believe they need to control the public for their own benefit. Be that to accommodate lazy police work and law-enforcement work or to facilitate further abuse of the public at large by politicians and aristocrats. My vote is for a little bit of "at best" for the more naive and less involved politicians and "at worst" for those further to the inside. After all, there is nothing about spying on lovers, potential love interests, collecting dirt and blackmailing and threatening journalists, activists, and fellow politicians that is anything but vile and self-serving. Oh, and don't forget its primary use - not as a terror-prevention, but as a tool to protect American "economic interests" (if you recall the speech a few months ago, he listed "terrorism" as the last concern, after protecting our energy supply and then economic interest). So I lean toward the more malevolent intent. Either way, they will continue with this mindset and the only thing anyone will accomplish is some public dressing-down of certain scape-goats while the whole spying machine retreats back into the dark and continues to operate in silence. Quite simply, none of us will ever know if they have actually stopped or not. Even if they do. Which they won't. They are above the law. Our only possible recourse is the widespread utilization of security measures that we must find a way to turn into common-practice. To the point that your great-grandmother wouldn't even think of sending a birthday card to little Billy without encrypting it. Even that requires some degree of faith that the unlimited spending machine of the US Government (or the combined governments of Five Eyes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement), etc) haven't compromised its security. And assuming that utilization of such measures aren't simply outlawed (not an irrational concern, given that such security measures are -- or were a decade ago -- disallowed from inclusion in software for international distribution due to classification as a munition).