Musket:   "Finding out that governments spy on each other and being shocked is similar to finding out Santa Claus was your dad after all."

Right!

This whole thing is a tempest in a chamber pot. Where in blazes have you people been during—at LEAST—the past sixty years? The United States had an organization during World War II called the "Office of Strategic Services" (OSS). Great Britain, and for that matter, Germany and Japan had their equivalent organizations, the purpose of which was to find out what the other guys were up to.

The U. S. and Great Britain were allies of the Soviet Union during the latter part of World War II, but when that relationship went pear-shaped and the "Cold War" began, the OSS morphed into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Britain had its equivalent spook organization, as did the Soviet Union, again, to poke around and try to find out what the other guys were up to.

And at the same time, there was plenty of domestic spying going on. Following a concert here in 1954 by Pete Seeger, the recently formed Pacific Northwest Folklore Society folded up because it suddenly became a focus of interest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and many people on the organization's mailing list panicked and had their names withdrawn. I, myself, was visited by a couple of men in grey suits and red neckties, wanting to know who was where and when.

The Pacific Northwest Folklore Society was reorganized a few years ago and so far, no one has accused the organization of any kind of political taint.

But for those who are shocked and surprised by the idea that governments spy on each other, novelists like John Le Carré (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Smiley's People; many others), Ian Fleming (Casino Royal, From Russia with Love, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, many others), (Len Deighton (The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin), many novels by Graham Greene, Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsythe. . . .

Not to mention the huge number of very popular movies based on these novels.

These novels and movies might have been fictional, but the kind of activity that they were based on was actually going on!!

AND IT STILL IS!

Get real, folks!!

Ed Snowden's big crime is that he upped and blabbed about something that everybody knows is going on, but nobody wants to talk about!

Don Firth