> It is the state of current affairs that it hardly raises more than a yawn. Do you mean here (roughly US, given posting time and time zones), internationally

> It is the state of current affairs that it hardly raises more than a yawn. Do you mean here (roughly US, given posting time and time zones), internationally or domestically? Certainly, internationally, I would think it should not be a great revelation. We all know / should have known, long before Snowden, that all countries with a decent GDP are doing international spying. Those with a poor GDP still spend great sums to do domestic spying. I don't think the [non]-novelty of it is a fair criticism. Because, like you say, it is an interesting article. Kudos to The Intercept for a good piece. They could have taken a trivial approach but they didn't. My criticism is, I wonder how the Japanese feel about it. It's too bad The Intercept didn't gauge that for us. Certainly the Japanese have a different standard for privacy than we (US) do, and different consideration of government.