A question I like to ask my friends late at night at game conferences going back 10 years:

A question I like to ask my friends late at night at game conferences going back 10 years:

When you think of the remarkable power available to the US government if it had internal access to the operating systems of Windows, iOS and Android. And to the data from facebook, Skype, Twitter, and so on.

1) How many employees working at Apple, MS, Google, facebook etc are NSA or CIA employees or contractors?

A) Zero

B) A few

C) Many

2) If the CIA and NSA had employees at these companies, would the companies themselves be fully briefed on all of the activities of the US government?

3) What do you wish the number of CIA and NSA employees would be at these companies?

A) Zero

B) A few

C) Many

4) Repeat these questions again from above but substitute [China, Israel, Rusia, Europe, etc] in place of the USA's CIA & NSA

The obvious first answer is that you hope that there are zero CIA and NSA employees feels good. But then if you think about it for a while, I would be pretty disappointed actually if they neglected the world's communications and computer infrastructure and stuck with spies and cameras.

What do you think?

Originally posted on Facebook on June 10, 2013.