(from the article) US government should have turned surveillance into a huge, privatised business, offering data-mining contracts to private contractors such as

(from the article) US government should have turned surveillance into a huge, privatised business, offering data-mining contracts to private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and, in the process, high-level security clearance to thousands of people who shouldn't have it That part there really illustrates the corporate fascism which has permeated the US government. Who's to say that some analyst working for a private corporation isn't selling our stolen information to some nefarious third-party for whatever reasons? The idea that any "oversight" would preclude the above scenario is about as believable as the insistence by "high level" government appointees claiming that the NSA doesn't "wittingly" collect data from American's communications.