It seems to me that if China and Russia, at a minimum, are sucking up every text and email people write around the world, and recording every phone call, and snapping an infra-red picture on everyone’s phone every thirty seconds, then America is pretty much forced to do the same. It would be a bad move strategically to allow China and Russia access to view and store all of that information while we sit around twiddling our thumbs because of privacy issues.

I’m not saying it’s a good thing. It’s twisted. But how do you allow your enemy such an advantage in an Information war?

I believe this is why they maintain the spying (both parties) while dancing around it. They don’t want to come out and tell the truth: yes we are spying on you, and yes, we have to, because so is China, so instead it’s either “we’re not doing it” or “we gotta stop this (but not really)”.