In God we trust. All other we monitor.

That is the unofficial motto of the USA National Security Agency. It watches everyone in America and by far the greatest source of information is the Internet through its massive surveillance program PRISM.

Anyone following the news over the last few days will be aware of PRISM but what is not so well known in Australia that nearly all of worlds internet traffic (possibly excluding China and North Korea) is routed via America.

Officially Internet traffic will take the easiest route because that is the way the Internet is designed, but somehow the easiest route seems to invariable include the USA.

Once your email passes the USA border it can be logged and read by the NSA.

The Internet has no territorial borders. The NSA can operate anywhere without leaving home like the geeks in Seattle who go to work and play computer games on an Air force computer, with the result that people in Afghanistan are being assassinated via drone. Then the geeks go home for tea.

That is the real problem with surveillance as it exists in the Internet age. Like the military it is at arms length. Nobody gets his/her hands dirty. It is just a computer game.

It is easy to do anything from a distance with no emotional involvement. No moral questions, no ethical demands no humanity. The Internet and technology are great tools and are without judgement.

They can be used by anyone for any purpose, sacred or satanic, and all point between. By putting everything at arms length via technology we are losing our humanity. We see numbers and images but do not make the connection we are dealing with real people.

You are now a number, coded and cataloged on the computers of the NSA without the slightest trace of humanity being attached. You naked with nowhere to hide.

The excuse is that the NSA is protecting us from terrorists. Who protects us from the NSA?