Whether consciously or not, however, the officials of the U.S. Intelligence Community did imagine one giant exception: themselves. No one outside the loop was supposed to know what they were doing. They alone on the planet were supposed to be unheard, unspied upon, and unsurveilled.
Now, seven years later, in a day where a large number of Americans check-in online at every location, upload a photo most every meal they consume, and update their statuses for their every thought, I'm exceedingly confident nothing is off-limits.
Every few years the National Intelligence Council has produced a document it calls serially Global Trends [fill in the future year]. The latest edition, out just in time for Barack Obama's second term, is Global Trends 2030.
Why am I so obsessed with American politics in the first place? Does it really matter, or does interest in politics merely occupy the same part of the brain that used to handle starting line-ups, batting averages and RBI's?