Apoplexy, anyone?

It was bound to be controversial, giving the guest editorship of the BBC 4 'Today Show' on this day to P.J. Harvey. The three-hour news magazine must have taken many habitual listeners to the brink of apoplexy. A final 'Thought for the Day' slot was given to the founder of WikiLeaks.

As The Guardian reports...
Assange likened contemporary mass surveillance to the way the Catholic church operated during the reformation. He said: "Through the confessional system the Catholic church spied upon the lives of its congregants. While Latin mass excluded most people who could not speak Latin from an understanding of the very system of thought that bound them. Knowledge has always flowed upwards, to bishops and kings not down to serfs and slaves. The principle remains the same in the present era. Documents disclosed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that governments dare to aspire, through their intelligence agencies, to a god-like knowledge of each and every one of us."

The old contrarian in me found little to disagree with there.