It&#x27;s not frightening at all. This is the standard nation-state insouciance.<p>To see how out of touch governments can be, I think there are two stories, both unfortunately of a military nature.<p>One is Eisenhower&#x27;s trek across the US in the interwar period, the thing ( along with the Autobahn ) that inspired the Interstate, and the story of the squad-level light machine gun in WWI, especially related to the Lewis gun.<p>Machine guns were not embraced until the Germans showed how effective they were in WWI. This really happened. Commanders were optimizing for damage per bullet long after they should not have been.<p>Be <i>wary</i>, but don&#x27;t be frightened. I at least find it relatively easy to conduct my affairs such that I don&#x27;t have to live in fear. So it can be done.<p>At least consider the possibility that the Snowden and Manning stories are stories about people who really didn&#x27;t think it all the way through, if they didn&#x27;t want to be hunted. There&#x27;s an element of martyrdom and hubris to those stories.<p>In a way, much of the Nixon cases were about interpretations of telephone technology and wiretapping roughly 100 years after the advent of those technologies. The timescales here are glacial.