Kirill Reztsov responds to my post arguing that those against government snooping of our online activity have only themselves to blame:
Until Edward Snowden leaked the information about NSA's activities the public had no idea about the program because it was secret.They could not have assented to it even implicitly because they did not know about it. I don't think even the elected representatives in Congress knew about the extent of surveillance. how can someone have agreed to something they did not know about?
Sure, but my post argued that the public had assented to and even encouraged the post-9/11 atmosphere of panic about terrorism which was out of all proportion to the threat itself. It's worth adding, however, that I sense this period of threat inflation and the singular focus on terrorism is slowly coming to an end in both the US and Australia, at least rhetorically.