I hate to be that guy, but this is surely a textbook example of:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." — Benjamin Franklin

Government analysis of all communications can obviously help find terrorists. But it can and will also be used against others – protest groups, environmentalists, other non-desirables.

Think what McCarthy (the communist witch hunter, not the inventor of Lisp) could have done with this, and what the Syria or Iran or China is doing with similar systems in their own countries – which America just lost the moral high ground to oppose.

Countries that aren't or don't want to become totalitarian don't spy on their own people, no matter how tempting.

A one click information dashboard for every person in the world that uses a computer. I don't live in the US and I feel invaded by this.

Is anybody going to vote Pro or Fence on Hacker News? I'm not sure if we need a poll to understand what this site's opinion on PRISM is.

Insufficient data for a meaningful answer. So far, all the discussion I've seen on this has been at a mainstream Reddit level (everywhere, not just at Reddit). Someday HN will return to HN level on this, and I'll be able to perhaps then understand this thing enough to have a meaningful opinion.

Holy Karma grab batman!!

Next up do you support nazi concentration camps and Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.

"I can imagine that opinion between pro/against varies depending on nationality"

While I agree that that is true, as a non-US-citizen I also find that slightly offensive (not your saying it, but the fact that it's true). It's unambiguously wrong to invade your citizens' privacy, but it's ok if it's one of us?

And furthering ancarda's point, maybe it's a more interesting questions when it's more abstract:

Would it be ok for an intelligence agency to monitor all communication for criminal activity, so long as they only act on the information they gather when criminal activity is indeed taking place (and let's assume they always act, there's no discrimination. And they do not use the information for any other purpose).

If an intelligence agency has the technical capacity to monitor all communications then there'd have to be a pretty compelling reason (assuming their raison d'etre is the prevention and detection of crime) not to. They'd just be doing their job to the best of their ability, it'd be negligent not to.

While I would of course not be comfortable with that, I've never actually heard a convincing philosophical argument for personal privacy.

Too much Power in one Hand. Today it's against terrorism. And in ten years?

I support PRISM. Not for what it is trying to do, but about what it is. Outing a system like that could force the privacy debate before the last possible moment while the government is not prepared for it. And while the people that are for digital freedom and freedom from surveillance still hold some cards.

I hope that PRISM will be a catalyst/Rubicon of a sort - that there won't be turning back and fast forgetting. This is clearly overreach and lets hope that the scaremongering hawks have finally crossed the line behind which there will finally be pushback.

if Govt arm twisted these companies, then silicon valley is basically doomed, no more any sharing/communication/SAAS apps/ startup.

technically or morally?