Why are Americans alarmed by something like this?

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley. Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

It's like showing alarm upon learning that there is a war in Afghanistan, a war that's claiming the lives of Americans. But when did Obama end the war in Afghanistan? Or expressing alarm upon learning that people are being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp without being charged for anything. But when did Obama fulfill his promise to close Gitmo? The real surprise would be to learn that there are thousands of US soldiers fighting right now in Iraq. Why? Because the gate to that war was closed on 18 December 2011. Now where was it reported that Obama dismantled any of the surveillance projects or goals instigated in the early post-9/11 years? Where? You will not find that report because such a thing never happened.

So why the sudden alarm and concern over the obvious? My guess is it has more to do with the inculcated deep distrust Americans have of the government, and this distrust is, at the end of the day, more useful to the right than it is to the left. And, by the way, this is the same information that's gathered by marketing firms all the time with little or no worry or fear from the public. Of the many disappointments that Obama's presidency has generated, this NSA one will prove to be of a second order. Watching Americans is really nothing new in the post-9/11 world...