Saying no one in their right mind ought to think this isn't a logical consequence of the existence of Facebook is not the same thing as saying anyone who hasn't

Saying no one in their right mind ought to think this isn't a logical consequence of the existence of Facebook is not the same thing as saying anyone who hasn't yet come to that conclusion is out if their mind. Telling people you shouldn't be surprised is telling them it is an expected consequence, not something exceptional that can be prevented. It's telling them that if after actually thinking through the implications of Facebook existence , they shouldn't be surprised. They should have seen it coming. Conversely, telling people that this is surprising make it seem like the government did something monumentally evil that we did't expect them to be capable of and if we merely make the government not evil, it goes away. It doesn't. Facebook can and still will do those things and sell it to advertisers. The government can and will do it with public profiles. As a side note, most of the article isn't about "social networks" like Facebook. It's about actual people's networks of social interactions as extracted from phone, email, and other metadata. The fact that the government is doing analysis on a huge scale should both be surprising and deeply distressing.