The salient point in the Adam Curtis piece is that regardless of their _technical_ capabilities, the organizations are themselves incapable of making use of what signals they may capture. A similar case can easily be made about the US intelligence establishment, for what it's worth.
The assertion the author makes about the revelations of Snowden is incorrect. The author hasn't done their homework. Further, if you'd like to know about the history of the technical ability of spies, and how the information gathered was processed check out the book referenced, written by an actual historian.
| if you'd like to know about the history of the technical ability of spies ...
again, just not the point. This _essay's_ argument would be completely valid in the main, regardless of what technical ability exists _or is falsely claimed to exist_, because the problem is one of power politics, emergent properties of _homo_sapiens_ in 20th century-style bureaucracies, and the cultural history of western intelligence services.
And come on, maybe reconsider the assumption that your interlocutors haven't got the requisite historical background. If we're comparing bibliography size, you may find you come up short, given the number of FOIA-request documents from FBI and CIA I've been through in the past 15 years, not to mention secondary sources on intelligence outfits from around the world.
Here's a fun example of the organizational madness of the US's chief counterterrorism bureaucracy, the FBI. During the late 40's and 50's there was a fear that the Ruskies would target homosexuals in the State Department for blackmail. This lead to all sorts of purges and ugliness, but crucially, the only case of a homosexual's being suborned in
this manner was one in which the FBI itself blackmailed a State Department employee to prove that it was a threat.
