This crowd is already aware that the public is more willing to entrust broad, deeply personal datasets to profit-seeking corporations than to a government which ostensibly serves them. But the people running the surveillance state seem to always live in a parallel unreality, where their work is presented as unimpeachably noble and necessary. To me, the silver lining in this story is the indication that the people operating the surveillance machine understand that we find their work strictly more creepy than the data collection conducted by non-transparent, unaccountable, explicitly self-serving corporations.