Wholesale spying on ordinary people

Spying is a fact of life in politics. When the stakes are high, any information is an advantage. It would be naive to think that governments do not spy on each other. The reason the leaks from NSA whistle blower Ed. Snowden are interesting is not intelligence are being gathered. It is about gathering intelligence of *everyone*. Of course, before the advent of information technology, it was physically impossible to tap into everyone's private life. The irony is that a government who proud itself as law-obeying is actually breaking its own constitution to spy on everyone including their own citizens. A bigger irony is that the US public seems to be interested in the drama of Snowden rather than talk about the implications of such whole sale spying.