[smokeyj]

> The prevailing sentiment on HN is that NSA is more or less spying on behalf of Disney's copyright enforcement corps and the Moral Majority.

I'd leave out the moral part. It's too easy to spy on foreign execs, act on insider knowledge and fund political agendas. That's what I would do which is why I'm sure it happens. Accountability determines how rational people act. When we give total secrecy and no accountability to a portion of the population they tend to act.. a certain way.

> But I'm not in the (very large) faction that believes surveillance to be intrinsically evil

No one here would ever accuse you of such. But the phrasing lacks specificity. This isn't surveillance by the 7-11 Inc. where daily slurpies are purchased but rather surveillance by a multi trillion-dollar agency with a mandate outside of the public's knowledge or approval. There isn't anything a bit.. spooky about that?