Remembering "Echelon"

Vox prods the memory cells with this post.

...The US government sees fit to eavesdrop on everyone inside and outside the United States with its Echelon system, but unlike a parent trying to raise a child, that level of oversight is necessary. Terrorists, don't you know. Why, without it, we wouldn't have caught bin Laden and prevented the 9/11 attacks...[December 2004]

Now we know that the CIA can be Russki-flavored, can take your car for a ride at the CIA's direction, and lives in your TV set (IIRC, pre-visioned in Orwell's 1984.)

Yet gun sales are declining.