Plain old espionage and corporate spying

Did you know the NSA (National Security Agency) has built a map of the entire world via the communication links of all email, chat, and  financial transactions? This map tells a story to them about all of us.  It knows who we know. It knows who our activist allies and relationships  are.

And, as if that wasn’t crappy enough, the NSA is trying to undermine the  security of the internet as a whole by putting in back-doors and  weakening encryption standards so that they can spy better. They spend  $250,000,000 USD per year on this. This makes the entire internet less  secure, and makes it easier for people, governments, and corporations to  exploit, scam, and spy on each other.

While the NSA claims they are targeting terrorism, they have been  targeting foreign politicians and companies, with evidence that this is  happening particularly in Brazil and Mexico. This is plain old espionage  and corporate spying. Terrorism is merely the justification for  astounding encroachments on our civil liberties.

Last, we have to assume this is all the tip of an iceberg. We have to  assume there are other spy agencies across the globe doing similar spy  work that we don’t know about (yet).