Did I get this right?

Are my ears deceiving me?  Is my memory bad?

The head of Yahoo before a government committee is asked why she didn't tell her customers (citizens, nay, fellow citizens of a democratic country)

that they were being spied on?

And she used the word "treason"?  If she, as an individual, were to reveal bad behavior by a government, that would be "treason"?  What the hell is treason?  You mean it's not treasonous if the government betrays the most basic principles of democracy?  Errr, no matter what the government does, the government is right----what do you call that?  Well, it's not democracy. It sounds like the esteemed boss of Yahoo is motivated by blind obedience and self-interest....... and, of course, fear..... Is that how you get to be head of a huge corporation?  Is that creativity and enterpreurship in action?  Is that innovation?

And she said (in effect) she didn't want to go to prison?

But, err, those people who are being illegally spied upon....  I suppose they don't matter.  We can sacrifice them, right?

In Snowden's first interview, he described the possibility that a person who had committed no crime, and had zero evil intent, could, given the lack of safeguards and non-transparencey, be framed.  He did not actually say this has happened---but, I wonder, has it?  And might S. know of a case where it had?  This is speculation, but, it's not unfounded.

So, return to an individual who has been deemed "suspicious"----though surely the bureaurcats will find some fancier expression----and who doesn't know it.  Errr, that's robbing them of the right to face their accusers.....Something, I recall that was supposed to be somewhere at the foundation of American democracy...

And, so at the most basic level, what the Yahoo boss was protecting was, one might say, un-American.......and what the government itself was doing was, uhhhh, un-American----and that's not "treason"?? 

What about the people (us!) who have been secretly spied upon?  Do they want to be spied upon?  What about the fact that once a government feels the need to spy upon its citizens---especially in an indiscriminate and universal fashion---- it shows itself not to be a democracy?

But then the expert who was commenting upon all this clarified things for me when he remarked that public knowledge (especially abroad) of all this spying was bad for Yahoo's business overseas.  Oh dear, we can't have that.  An American corporation whose prospects overseas are damaged......Gee, that might hurt me, right?  (No, I think not.......The behavior by Yahoo's boss shows how much companies really care about me.....  or you....)