Revelations of the U.S. National Security Agency's large-scale interception of Internet and telephone connections (PRISM) should not have come as any surprise. Estimates of NSA's secret budget of at least $10 billion should have told us long ago it was involved in some sophisticated spying activities.
We knew some time ago about ECHELON — the global network linking the Anglo-Saxon nations in a decoding operation aimed at the secret diplomatic and other communications of other nations, including friends. That has been going on for more than 40 years now and many of those targeted — Japan included — have yet to realize how their codes can be penetrated.
But that is only one side of the information war. Efforts to find out what we are thinking are matched by efforts to tell us what we should be thinking. Programs to disseminate black or gray information have been around for a long time. Bogus news agencies (for much of the Vietnam War the British were running one called Forum Features), planted stories, biased or bought correspondents, academics and other pundits have combined to spread distorted information about imagined enemies.