RE BBC SNOWDEN

It has been a long time coming. Say 30 years.

If everyone were willing to more or less give up their privacy anyway, for internet working identity,

they may have reasoned,

what does privacy really mean, anyway?

The West and the East converge, from different directions, so to speak,
the one from totalitarian authority,
the other monopoly laissez faire convergence.

Either way, ultimately, they end up at the same point, so to speak.

Large (unfortunately global) private telecom and internet companies have been developing government-like powers, and information, for a long time now.

Why not harvest them, they may have reasoned, now, while the harvesting is still relatively good,

and the access is, ostensibly, not yet for sale,

so to speak, to the highest bidder?

The dark secret, the endgame, so to speak,  of monopoly laissez faire, is a managed totalitarian economy and society,
where the newer, M & A, entities (financial and otherwise) are, now, ' too big to fail '. 

The government siren servers, so to speak,  felt, right or wrong, they needed to step in now, in the West. 

A pivotal moment shall we say.