When I discussed the loss of American liberties with people here in Europe few
years ago, my position was simple - we get the same draconian regulations without
any opposition or fanfare here in Europe. Remember export controls of cryptography?
We should have been fighting against this barrier because it was primarily against our interests
and privacy. The people in the U.S. got the benefits of cryptography anyway
(short of some patent issues). They fought the battle anyway - on principle.

Do you remember Communication Decency Act of 1996? The Americans fought against
it. There were blogs and strong opposition.

Do you remember data retention? Massive campaign against it in the U.S.,
a press release that said that a new law passed here in Slovakia. A press
release, no discussion, no opposition. “We are just implementing European
regulation”.

I always regarded Americans as liberty-minded and people who speak up when
their liberties are about to be taken away from them.

That is until recently. While information about massive surveillance programs
of NSA are nothing new. I wrote about Echelon (and ways to protect
yourselves) in my book in 2002. Thomas Drake and William Binney are both
ex-NSA employees and they both mentioned these programs before. There are
several videos of them talking about the program on YouTube. It was easy
to mistake all these report for conspiracy theories and not act upon this
information.

With the information release by Edward Snowden, we now positively know that
communication on the Internet is surveilled in real-time and recorded for
unknown time by the NSA. We know that e-mail, telephone conversations,
Facebook chat, Google communication tools, HTTP requests, SWIFT and
credit card payments are all included. This huge world-wide privacy breach
was revealed. And what happened? Nothing.

I mean it’s great that Mr. Snowden could at least walk out of the Moscow
airport and have a life. What should have happened? People out in the streets
demanding their privacy back. The state should have apologized to Snowden
and to the public for their crimes. Something should have changed.

It seems that the American public does not care anymore. It’s exhausted
from the financial crisis, sceptical about the issues around us. The
failure of Occupy movement to bring any real change to the world, the
gloom caused by the financial crisis, the reality of doing more of what
caused the crash. The wars, the drones, the kill list.

Americans are tired; they no longer care about their freedoms. And that’s
too sad. It means the the Illuminati can do whatever they want now. And
they will use this opportunity.