Basically this article is saying that given the comprehensive access that the NSA has to the communications of the powerful and the weak alike, no-one can stand up to them for fear of blackmail. J Edgar Hoover of the FBI used to employ similar tactics. I have read a couple of reports from a fund-raising dinner in which Obama was asked why he had not done much of what he promised to do before his election? His answer was "Remember what happened to Dr King". NSA Whistleblower: NSA Spying On – and Blackmailing – Top Government Officials and Military Officers | Zero Hedge http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-06-20/nsa-whistleblower-nsa-spying... I retroespect it is obvious that computers would enable this kind of thing, even though in the early days there was a lot of hope that by bypassing gatekeepers using the Internet we would have a lot more freedom. Tim