>Took the names for Project Wide Awake and other internet surveillance programs from the X-Men comic book series, in which illegal government programs hunt human “mutants.”

This sort of "geeky but psychopathic" type of humor seems to be not uncommon in surveillance agencies. I suppose it makes sense that amoral intelligent people would be drawn towards intelligence agencies, as I suppose sadists were probably drawn towards organizations like the Gestapo, KGB, and Stasi. There's something I find galling about it - not only is one's privacy violated, but what's more is that the violators go about their business with corporate bureaucratic banality and "joking around the office" sort of humor.