This crowd is already aware that the public is more willing to entrust broad, deeply personal datasets to profit-seeking corporations than to a government which ostensibly serves them. But the people running the surveillance state seem to always live in a parallel unreality, where their work is presented as unimpeachably noble and necessary. To me, the silver lining in this story is the indication that the people operating the surveillance machine <i>understand</i> that we find their work strictly more creepy than the data collection conducted by non-transparent, unaccountable, explicitly self-serving corporations.