> And people looked at you like you were an absolute raving loon if you tried to explain the architecture of the ECHELON program, 15 years ago. Now who's laughing...

I would imagine Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, & the US.

You get it, but it's sad you get down votes instead of good discussion. Let's also not forget: John Kiriakou, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, William Binney, Daniel Elsberg, James Risen, Ray McGovern, Sibel Edmonds, Michael Scheuer, and many more.

Collectively, they point to a much more insidious state of affairs than I think most people want to admit.

But why make the government pay for it, when users will go on Amazon.com and pay to install their very own personal cloud home listening devices all by themselves?!

They're insignificant in all of this compared to smartphones.

This is what I was thinking as well. Slowly creep until they have to power to turn on a persons phone at will to look and listen.

I once drew the ire of a large private security company and could have sworn they had the ability to listen to my cell phone microphone