US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Peter Lemkin]

Revelations of an alleged programme to tap into servers of nine internet firms were "reprehensible", he said.
....
The director of US national intelligence issued a strong-worded statement late on Thursday, after the UK's Guardian newspaper said a secret court order had required phone company Verizon to hand over its records to the National Security Agency (NSA) on an "ongoing daily basis".

Oh, so it is the revelation of the massive government spy programme that Orwell could only dream of that is reprehensible not the daily and ongoing massive Orwellian spying programme itself.

Would be funny, were it not some of the last nails in America's coffin as a Democratic State under Rule of Law with Rights and Freedoms. Stalin or Hitler and their ilk would have given anything for a system like this....and would have also punished only the disclosure of it. If this doesn't start riots, I give up on my countrypersons and they get what they didn't fight against. While most of us here on this Forum have long known that exactly this was going on, now the government admits it and the reaction......underwhelming IMHO.