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I think the same thing is true and I have a very strong suspicion that the reason people are not more outraged is because they've been conditioned by film and television to believe that the government has those powers and uses them routinely.

I don't know whether to point the finger at writers of fiction for our lowered expectations or not, but I'm sure it contributes.

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> they've been conditioned by film and television to believe that the government has those powers and uses them routinely.

My unscientific observation (I don't watch these but my SO used to) is that major (USA) network "crime drama" TV shows (fictional) such as NCIS* depict, in every episode, a fully omniscient surveillance state in action [edit: and as a perfectly normal state of affairs]. My suspicion is that the underlying purpose of same is to condition the viewing citizenry of the fact that such exists and is a normal state of affairs, so there will be no problem with the preconditioned citizenry when such becomes real (if it hasn't already).

I'm tempted to believe that also.

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