Information is power and power is money. They can use it to protect themselves and control high-ranking officials to ensure, for instance, that they will always be well-founded to be able to continue unfettered in their mission to acquire even more information and power.

The scary thing is that they would not have any leverage on people who have no skeletons in the cupboard. A morally "clean" president may shut them down. In a twisted way it would be in their interest to see bad people in power.

Not at all. Lies are proliferated as truth as a matter of official policy -- misinformation campaigns. The truth doesn't matter when you can drown it out.

I doubt they worry about that much. Everybody has something they'd rather the world not know about.

In my experience with government and the legal field; it might not be as strict as 'silver or lead', but its 'dollars or the door.'

The primary agenda of any bureaucracy is to perpetuate that bureaucracy. The targets mentioned fit very well with that goal.

Rule number 1: It's ALWAYS about the money.

The agenda is the protection of excessive money/wealth.

Which tells you where to look for "who's behind it": Rich people, very rich people. Also: The military-industrial complex.

And I honestly don't know how one can take down such a power structure that's in such an advanced stage.

I think it's like terminal cancer: it will only die when the host dies.

> And I honestly don't know how one can take down such a power structure that's in such an advanced stage.

Revolution would work. Except, most Americans are living rather comfortable lives, despite all the surveillance uproar. As you keenly noted - it's always about the money (including the American Revolution). So as long as common folk gets their bone from the elite - they will happily wag their tails.

The military industrial complex is the biggest pile of assignable loot in world history.

$5+ trillion over the last decade alone. Far more if you count everything connected to it.

They knew the wars couldn't go on perpetually forever, and they'll be damned if they're going to give up all that money. One way to dictate that is through control of the political process.

"They knew the wars couldn't go on perpetually forever" is very optimistic. Europe hadn't had a large scale war for decades before WW1.

The first thing people in power do, is make sure they stay in power. They can't have anyone changing anything that would cause waves and disruptions.

Information has become the most valueable thing. Whoever controls it, they surely do have much more power than any elected leader.

Being elected means being public. In the information security state, that's a huge weakness.

When pervasive monitoring is the normal, the powerful are those not being monitored.