Although the Cold War has long ended, we need to remember that our friends in the CIA and NSA have specific mandates to protect the USA from foreign and domestic enemies. This means that the CIA (supposed to be) looking everywhere but the USA for badguys and the NSA is supposed to be doing the same thing in the USA.
Now imagine that you, you methed out bartards, are mid level managers at the NSA. You know there are people who would like to conduct terror attacks against us and it is your primary job to prevent them from doing that. That is a huge amount of pressure. Can you imagine if you are getting up in the morning and getting your cup of coffee when you see on the news that an ISIS person has done some bad shit here? He was using code in gmail, he flew out of Kenya to the US. You were assigned to break email codes in gmail, you were the guy assigned to monitor ISIS activity in Kenya. You must be a little nervous walking in knowing that you are probably the ideal target to fucking crucify in order to atone to the public.
Now imagine how much worse it would be if you were the guy who said, "Hey guys, I know that our budget is literally all used up for a fucking decade in advance but there is this asshat PartySquadNL who is shipping MDMA and ecstasy pilled into the USA from the Netherlands. The shit is bomb but he has some fucky deal where he says he will send you free shit to write Reddit reviews but I'm pretty sure they are mostly shill bots. I'm not sure I think he is fucking legit but the whole deal just pisses me off. Why don't we take $675 million dollars to start an op where we try to crack PGP and x-ray all packages coming from NL?"
These guys are psyched to be going after killers. They want to be the next guy to kill Bin Laden (free beer for life for that one), not the guy to arrest some goofy sounding dutch hippies. I mean come on.
On the other hand...
When Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA data collection years ago (and we can only assume it has expanded) it quickly became apparent that they were literally collecting and storing every fucking thing. It also became apparent that they were storing more info than they could go through. Their information gathering ability outpaced their information processing ability.
This meant that the NSA had an almost infinite sized sand box to play in but they just needed a little bit of sand since they only had little buckets available to make sand castles with. Although they had all the data, they weren't using it all because their resources were limited and also the bad guys they were after represented only a tiny drop in the bucked of total data collected.
But we have some guy from the 60's who told us that "computing power of a microchip with roughly double every two years" and it roughly has. Sure the amount of information that the NSA can collect will continue to grow as new social media platforms open up, but basically every year the NSA and other agencies will be able to analyze a higher and higher percentage of the information that they collect.
Today that may only be 1%, maybe 2%. With that capacity they are just looking at terrorists. Soon though they will be able to analyze 25%, 75% or more. That will be when we as a nation need to make a real decision about where to draw the line on our Constitution.
We are OK with violating the constitutional rights of bad guys as long as they are basically bin Laden. We have already accepted that. But what if they are environmental hippie terrorists? What if they are heroin king pins? What about dope boys? College pot dealers?
We will soon have the capability to catch every fucking person who breaks the law. That is just a fact. It might take another ten years but it won't be long until we can literally flag any text, phone conversation, email, DNM comment, or whatever else for any illegal activity. If we as a nation have decided "well it's a crime and we aren't going after people who aren't doing a crime (besides reading their shit)," then we will jump into a post apocalyptic dystopia where all crime is stopped if it involves any electronic devices.
IN CONCLUSION
Usually it is impossible for people to see that they are living through a golden age. The people of the Renaissance did not know they were living through the Renaissance. Only in hind sight do you see that stuff. We are in a unique position where I believe it is clear we are living through a golden era on the cusp of major upheaval. The world in 20 years will not be recognizable and I highly doubt you will be able to get drugs on the internet in 10 years. We are living through the best possible era; the height of a golden era that positions us in the best possible setup to witness some wild fucking 1984 shit.
If we don't make it out of this alive, I want everyone to know I'm honored to have served with you all.
By the way Mr president, I heard they raised the chocolate ration to 20 grams this week.