I can't have been the only person to notice that if you hack into the private communications of the government, you face jail; whereas if the government hacks into your private communications that's perfectly OK.
I don't generally have much time for attention seekers like Bradley Manning, but it does seem curious that getting unauthorised access to, for example, the US National Security Agency's records, is punishable with a long prison sentence (or in Edward Snowden's case, years of exile; or in the case of one British hacker a long struggle against extradition); whereas if the US National Security Agency hacks into your emails or phone calls, be you a private individual or a friendly foreign leader like Angela Merkel, that's just the kind of routine stuff the state does every day.
There are arguments which go some way to explain this strange disparity of outcome, but nevertheless it's striking that the state can do whatever it likes, whereas we can't.
Orwell's vision of a telescreen in every room, watching us while we watch it, is becoming truer by the day.
If I were a terrorist of any kind, I'd be doing my plotting by Royal Mail. It's easy and cheap to set up computer systems which monitor email and search for keywords - "terrorist" and "plotter" for example (and it's a big hi to all the good people at GCHQ!) - but it's time consuming and expensive to steam open envelopes in a back room of a sorting office.
