Your tax money at work: U.S., British spies in cahoots to collect and store

The latest revelation from the Snowden Files.  Man, when he said "Truth is coming," nobody had any idea at the time how much and what kind of truth he was talking about. Imagine the tax money that's been sunk into just this one project to secretly violate privacy of individual citizens and with no justification.
 
Think of what it means.  Hundreds of millions of hardworking people are making it possible for bottom feeders in government to earn a good living -- with good health benefits, vacation pay, and generous pension -- courtesy of the tax collection system.

I've linked to the Salon report on the situation even though it leans heavily on a Guardian report for the source document. But I like the phrase in the Salon report, "totalized surveillance."  First time I've come across it:

Civil liberties defenders have also stressed that the Optic Nerve program constitutes a profound violation of privacy and reflects the troubling state of totalized surveillance constitutive of our time.

“This is a truly shocking revelation that underscores the importance of the debate on privacy now taking place and the reforms being considered,” said Alex Abdo, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “In a world in which there is no technological barrier to pervasive surveillance, the scope of the government’s surveillance activities must be decided by the public, not secretive spy agencies interpreting secret legal authorities. This report also raises troubling questions about the NSA’s complicity in what is a massive and unprecedented violation of privacy. We need to know more about what the NSA knew, and what role it played.”