But now that public figures – especially those deemed to be “of interest” to intelligence agencies – are susceptible to being watched three-dimensionally, the chances of being compromised are far higher than they were in the days of the UK’s Profumo affair, which brought down a British defense secretary in the early 1960’s. And there is no end to this crash-and-burn surveillance strategy, owing to the nature of the information that is caught in the net.