what do Americans think about the NSA scandal

[Lissa]

My only surprise is that people are surprised! This isn't about the Obama administration. I firmly believe this crap was happening before Obama, to whatever degree then current technology allowed, and will go on long after. What's in front of you folks? You're online! You're on the grid! Make whatever peace you can with it.

It has been. I know of atleast two instances from the mid-90s that show this was happening.

First, someone I knew in Tucson went to a symposium by Vinton Cerf in Tucson and Vinton nonchelantly noted that all internet email, at that time, was going through a central server at Crystal Palace (AFB in Nebraska) and said that he could search any emails sent that day and then said something to the effect, "let's see who's sent emails about me today," then performed a quick search on his laptop and pulled up 35 emails that had gone through the server that day.

Second, someone I worked with at Intuit in Tucson knew a sys admin at a university in Sweden and had gotten an account on one of the university's system. He sent two emails from the account in Sweden to his email account in the US. The emails, really the same email, had the subject of "Russian Paratrooper movement along Finish border" and then a bunch of random garbage in the main body. The first email was sent unencrypted and arrived less than a minute later in his mailbox in the US. The second email was encrypted with PGP and sent. It took 7 hours for the encrypted email to arrive.

So, this has been going on for almost 20 years in some way or another, it's just got more sophisticated.