How can anyone believe that a record of all communications will be swept into a fully-privatized Utah based Matrix Node, but the content of said communications will not be read?
And isn't Utah one of the places those drones are flown from?
Or is the node in Maryland? Or is it Georgia?
Wherever the base, it's full spectrum dominance, and it's here to stay. Wasn't it Bush The Elder who, when POTUS two decades ago and following the first Iraq War, first used the term New World Order?
Well, welcome to our New World Order, underpinned by a privatized full spectrum dominance. Let's go catch some baddies (and keep an eye out for any tasty Wall St tips while we're at it).
Some years ago when the privatization movement began to be implemented in earnest, I remember joking that the military would someday go down that road. "Too late!" she cried, waving her wooden leg in the air.

Those who have the intelligence to read and understand the novel '1984' will recall the placing of a cage on Winston's face, a cage that had a starved rat in it. It broke him.

How prescient Orwell was. He saw where the U.S. would end up, how it would end freedom, how it would manipulate the proletariat, how it would use fear and suspicion and torture and division to rule the masses.

The U.S. is rapidly imposing 1984 on our world of 2013 and PRISM is just the start. The military bases are another clear sign as is endless war and rendition and the cages at GITMO.

What more does the U.S. have to do to awaken the world to its clear, present danger?

People who see the U.S. as benign and a force for good are deranged!

Dear David,

<<The U.S. is rapidly imposing 1984 on our world of 2013>>

Surely Americans can create hell for their own people and surely if you visit there then you are fair game - but we live in Australia!

The only way America can have control over your life is if you require their products an services, so are you trying to perfect the art of eating the cake and having it too?

Who said that you must use their internet as it stands, whose back-bone routers and standards are based in the US? Who said that you must use their satellites for your GPS and other gadgets? Why didn't Australia launch its own satellites to space and created its own digital-communication standards and equipment? Then why do you use and even open accounts on the American-based Shmoogle, etc.? Why would you run an American-based operating-system on your computers, allowing Obama plenty of back-doors to spy and control them?

Then comes the defence issue: why didn't Australia create its own war-planes and nukes, in case the Chinese say "why pay for our iron, copper and gas if instead we can land and take it all for free, forcing all Australians to dig for us till they drop, then use their land to relieve our overcrowded and polluted cities?"? Why ask the Americans to do this dirty job for us? Aren't you ashamed to beg for their favours, then complain about the price-tag?

The author suggests that the US citizenry can take comfort from the fact they do not live in a police state. A reality check is overdue. In 2007 Naomi Wolf wrote an article in the UK Guardian on the 10 steps to fascism. If the author were to read that article he would see that a tick would be placed alongside each and every one of those ten steps.

I would add at least one further indicator. In 2012 the President singed into law the National Defence Authorisation Act. It contained a provision effectively abolishing habeas corpus which has been the cornerstone of individual liberty since 1215.

Anyone who argues that the US is still a democracy is living in a fool's paradise. One of the alarming features of our society is its apparent willingness to go down the same path, marked by the same supine media, public indifference (at best) and politicians who equate self-interest with the national interest.

@ Yuyutsu:

"in case the Chinese say "why pay for our iron, copper and gas if instead we can land and take it all for free, forcing all Australians to dig for us till they drop, then use their land to relieve our overcrowded and polluted cities?"

Talked like a true prophet.
I always wonder which side our so-called allies would be on in this eventuality...

I'm interested in a couple of things about this.

What is "privacy"? What does it mean? Is it the withdrawal to an exclusive personal space to perform ablutions that is a pretty common aspect of societies worldwide? If so, how does the lack of such privacy that is a standard part of military service and even sporting endeavour cause harm?

Is it a capacity to hold in secret pieces of information that we wish to remain unknown to those we associate with? If so, then the obvious thing would be to hold them secret and not transmit them via the internet or phone, but even if that isn't done, how does their becoming known to someone we don't know, who doesn't know us or our friends and has no interest in any of our lives breach that?

Is it a capacity to act privately in ways that are contradictory to our public persona, or to have interests that others might find in some way unacceptable? If so, refer to the paragraph above. It is only if those we know find out about our private foibles that we have any privacy breach.

So what is the problem?

It seems to me that the real issue is that a lot of people hold views and express opinions that are poorly examined but that they base their entire sense of individuality and of being a self-determined agent on. I have a feeling that one of the big unspoken concerns about data mining and data collection generally is that people are well aware that they are largely simply following the crowd and that someone looking at their communications and other data will have more knowledge of them than they themselves do. It's a primitive fear akin to the natives in some parts of PNG who wouldn't allow a photo to be taken because of a fear of sympathetic magic.

It's not so much because people have a lot to hide, it's more that they worry they don't have anything that can be hidden or is even worth the bother to try.