Hugo Rifkind: I spy complete indifference towards being spied

Oh, but life’s easier if you’re American. Each and every last way the state meddles with your life is an outrage. Whether it’s forcing you to have health care, or denying you the right to own the gun that Al Pacino has in Scarface, or making you wear a seat belt, or taxing you, or threatening to silence your long-held and proudly defended right to put a pillowcase on your head and be a racist, Big Government is a villain. There are people, the American thinks, and then there is power, and the latter shafts the little guy every chance he gets.

It’s not like that in Britain. And, if you’ve been wondering, which you probably haven’t, why four months on, this country still doesn’t give much of a monkey’s toss about the revelations of Edward Snowden, this is probably the reason. Every few weeks the Guardian releases another blare, and nobody cares at all.