PRIVACY IS JUST COVER FOR EVIL-DOING:

That the NSA and GCHQ should share such information ought to be a cause of comfort rather than concern. They don't gather information for the sake of it - they do it to keep us safer. The heart of the Anglo-US intelligence relationship is this Sigint (signals intelligence) and cyber co-operation, dating from Bletchley Park and the Second World War. The two systems are intimately wedded, but both have layers of legal and political oversight to ensure that neither uses the other to undermine its own country's laws. All their reports will be legally grounded.

That said, the electronic information that a serious data-miner can glean about any of us is awesome. Before you close your front door behind you, they can know where you're going, how you're travelling, whom you're seeing, what you earn and what you've done over the past few years. Microsoft could doubtless read what I'm typing now if they chose. The Russians and Chinese do it - to us as well as to their own - on an industrial scale, without our checks and balances.

The truth is, if we want to be in this market, we must accept exposure. Does it matter? For the overwhelming majority of us, no. If we're unlucky we may be the victims of crime or malign intent, but in the West we have nothing to fear from government snooping. In the Nineties, Big Brother went mad and died of a surfeit of information - there was too much for him to keep tabs on.

Rather, we should worry that our governments are prevented from snooping enough on the right people. Or doing anything else about them. Twenty years ago, an ardent supporter of terrorism came here on a false passport. He's still here.

Follow @brothersjudd