I think that the big difference today is that they can analyze all data that they can grab. Back in the Good Old Days, you had to devote considerable manpower to this analysis; if you wanted to read letters, you had to be specific because you simply didn't have the resources to look at everyone's mail. This is why most people (including me) have no problem with the idea of monitoring POTS lines; it ties up a considerable amount of resources, so the police are much more likely only to tap the phones they think will get results.

Now, we've gotten to the point where the challenges facing mass surveillance are political rather than physical. I think that this is a lot more dangerous than 1800s police looking at telegraph printouts line by line.

>some hope that the rule of law as being followed

Wasn't it already ruled illegal prior to Snowden and the phone companies had to be retroactively indemnified by congress?

> but it wasn't until the Snowden documents that we understood what this closet really meant.

> We had no idea the government was recording every phone conversation in the u.s.

> We still had some hope that the rule of law as being followed

All lies. This was well covered on slashdot when it happened. We all knew exactly what it meant.

Snowden's release was iron clad and incontrovertible, which was refreshing, but it also detailed the extent to which private tech companies outside of AT&T were aiding the federal government in their illegal activities.

Even the most paranoid nutbag commenting on those old slashdot threads couldn't imagine how bad it was going to get. Reality outpaced the conspiracy theorists.