I am taking issue with this. This was not conspiracy wing nut theory. As far back as 2004 cybersecurity (for lack of a better term) experts were reporting repea

I am taking issue with this. This was not conspiracy wing nut theory. As far back as 2004 cybersecurity (for lack of a better term) experts were reporting repeatedly that governments (not just the USA) were exponentially using exploits, as were other unknown or non-govt actors, and other techniques for malicious reasons, from spying on citizens to hacking infrastructure. Here's just a nice litmus of that: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04321.pdf http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04321.pdf http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-027.pdf http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-027.pdf https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/0920/070.html https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/0920/070.html here is even a hertiage foundation report talking about sharing privacy keeping technologies with the government in the name of 'fighting terrorism' http://www.heritage.org/homeland-security/report/technologies-can-protect-privacy-information-shared-combat-terrorism http://www.heritage.org/homeland-security/report/technologie... http://www.heritage.org/defense/report/information-oversight-practical-lessons-foreign-intelligence http://www.heritage.org/defense/report/information-oversight... and here is the ACLU sounding the alarm in August of 2004: https://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/surveillance_report.pdf https://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/surveillance_report.pdf Ironically, its around the same time the NSA purported to have their own 'rules' in how they gather, which were obtained here: https://epic.org/privacy/nsa/foia/EPIC-NSA-USSID-18-and-Domestic-Procedures.pdf https://epic.org/privacy/nsa/foia/EPIC-NSA-USSID-18-and-Dome... and of course, not more than a few years later we have these reports: https://www.eff.org/pages/calea-faq https://www.eff.org/pages/calea-faq https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/12/behind-the-legal-fight-over-nsas-stellar-wind-surveillance/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/12/behind-the-legal... It was never a wing nut conspiracy theory. Its just nobody was looking close enough to care.