Leaving aside the meat of the article, I found this quote interesting: """ Andreessen said he was not surprised that the National Security Agency was spying. "The biggest surprise for me was that people were so shocked, because I thought we've been funding this agency for 50 years that has tens of thousands of employees and spends tens of billions of dollars a year." """ Does anyone else find this to be the case too?…
Without corroboration, you couldn't really talk about this too much in a public setting, because you'll sound like a conspiracy nut. There were enough hints out there to realize that there is mass surveillance, but if you suggested the size and scope of what is actually happening in say 2008, people would think that you are a nut.
> you'll sound like a conspiracy nut
Yea I agree, for periods before 2002 it's a lot harder to explain "this assumption seems entirely consistent with the way they've always acted over decades of history" than it is to say "of course they'd do this, here's proof of the last time they did it".