>I think it's important to keep some perspective, and I feel like people on HN aren't doing that here when they direct all their blame to the government over th

>I think it's important to keep some perspective, and I feel like people on HN aren't doing that here when they direct all their blame to the government over this issue and hold Google, Facebook, etc, who created this surveillance apparatus, blameless. Yes. The only reason the NSA/etc/all has this data is that people (probably a lot like you, dear reader) built these popular systems that make their money from tracking users. Worse still, they will always beat out a paid service because of friction and network effects. We didn't just stand by and watch the creation of this situation, we actively participated.