An article by The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald on XKEYSCORE actually gathered the browsing habits of everyone who clicked and wasn't protected (by private, encrypted, and/or proxy browsing), reports Bob Cesca of the Daily Banter.

Using a free web application called Ghostery — which tells the user about embedded trackers — Cesca found that The Guardian embedded 27 tracking bugs inside Greenwald's article.

The bugs track browsing metadata, a lot like what Greenwald exposed on June 6 with his article on the National Security Agency and Verizon.

Ostensibly, private companies track browsing metadata on the web in order to help advertise and market products to users online.

(Though Nokia showed last year that there's a thin, spooky line between advertising and surveillance — something alumni of Israel's Unit 8200 also know all too well.)

Which begs the question: Why is it OK for private companies to snoop in the name of capitalism, but not for the government to do so in the name of security?