It’s time for Silicon Valley to ask: Is it worth it?

Utter contempt for 'little people' isn't viable long term. The 'little people' eventually realise what is going on. Then the politicians have to change their approach.

No, they actually confirm them, or have up until this time. For example, take a look at this screenshot, part of the XKeyscore leaks:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9AyutDLLujY/UfnKBu83TfI/AAAAAAAAAe...

Now to you or me, this is a combo box that anyone could fill out falsely to pull data for Americans, possibly without being caught. To an NSA employee, this is an important safeguard of American privacy that ensures anyone using this system is either doing it for a legitimate intelligence purpose, or, committing perjury and/or treason. Exact same set of facts, just a more favorable interpretation.

Second example. According to Snowden's leak, XKeyScore led to the successful capture of 300 terrorists [1]. So that leak would confirm the prior belief that we are in an infowar and these programs contribute to American defense.

It will be interesting to follow this new leak, as it seems quite clear to me that the NSA is deliberately and specifically spying on American companies even if they are retaining data only on non-American persons. But I expect this fact to be overlooked by NSA employees because they will only run queries about foreign persons.

Finally, I have very much gotten a "take it up with the legislative/judicial branches" vibe from the NSA. The Supreme Court has consistently ruled [2] that a foreign alien outside the U.S. has no fourth amendment protection against search and seizure. Further, SCOTUS has ruled "That searches made at the border [e.g. of US persons], pursuant to the longstanding right of the sovereign to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into this country, are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border, should, by now, require no extended demonstration." In other words, the US government has the legal right to search anything at the border, full-stop. The fact that the NSA has procedures that minimize searching the network traffic of US persons goes well above and beyond the constitutional requirement, which allows anyone's data data to be searched as it leaves the US, US person or not. So, if you don't like the law, take it up with SCOTUS, or start a constitution convention, or pass an act of congress, or something. But the NSA does not view themselves as the bad guy for doing much less than what the legislative and judicial branches have authorized them to do. It's like getting mad at a cop for making weed arrests; you don't go after the cop, you go after the state law, or the DEA, or federal drug law, or something. Border searches have been authorized by the very highest authorities in American government, the NSA is just the cop that executes the search according to the principles established by the higher authorities.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Verdugo-Urquid...

[3] http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6107136132398268...

I think there has been a very pernicious, detrimental focus in recent history on ensuring "happiness." Life is not about being happy. Communities do not exist to make people happy.

A thriving community is one that provides needed support to its members, "needed" and "support" being variables defined by those members.

> The evidence seems to be that the bigger the government, the wider the gap between the rich and the poor. This might sound counter-intuitive, but that's the date we have.

Define "bigger". Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, all have governments that are significantly more activist in the daily lives of their citizens, and the wealth gap does not exist in those countries like it does the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA...

I don't know many that would say, per capita, these governments are "smaller". But they do actively redistribute wealth, a large part through social health care, higher education and retirement systems.