The Washington Post has reported that the NSA is tracking location data for millions of mobile devices.

"Brad Smith, Microsoft legal counsel, said government snooping was now as much of a security problem as computer viruses and other cyber-attacks."

 It seems rather obvious that NSA tracking goals have gone way beyond hunting for terrorists. I believe there's a larger operation at play to understand social attitudes, personal behaviors, and to organize data into demographics as such, including belief-systems of families and communities. This would serve any political power extremely well when devising platforms and propaganda.

 I'm combining some of the methodologies being used, with speculative assertions about the true political motivations, and also with the possibilities for population-simulations being run using vast amounts of real information over large spans of time. In some ways, Jaron Lanier points to these possibilities in his book Who Owns the Future.

 What do you think? Far out? I don't think so, not in today's information-economy. And certainly thinking ahead, 10 years from now the amount of data collected combined with increased computing power, combined with public apathy, could lead to what Snowden (and others past) warned of "turnkey tyranny".