The US tried that for a very short time under Nixon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... A massive movement of staff to secure the border was in place and worked very well.
The flow of drugs, drug money laundering in US banks and illegal labor was at risk. Over time the US returned to a policy that can be seen today.
A free flow of people, goods and the need for expensive financial instruments ensures wonderful regional profit.
The UK was a great example too with its visa "expires" database. The UK forgot how/why to count visa in and visa out (was International Passenger Survey).
The main reason seems to be a super cheap flow of workers and the UK will try and bring back "exit checks" in a year or so :)
As for US policy - cheap workers with no on site wage or health laws was always the big win to keep wide open boarders for decades.

Seems Switzerland was first in 1977 (common law nation and a civil law nation). Seem about more than 60? countries have some form of judicial assistance treaties with the USA. ie direct communication between Justice Departments.
It will be interesting to see what the Freedom of information requests turn up. The "the company's choice whether or not to respond" .. "And they often will" and the lack of interest to place the numbers on "transparency reports" is chilling.
Seems the option is slow but "requests specifically for computer records increasing ten-fold" would point to some long term interest in this method.

How many more wars?
As for 'if the Germans knew about it." is the classic understanding of ww2 crypto. Germany trusted the machine, upgraded it a bit and had all its spies turned.
Lets take Normandy. Army Group B has some idea, Pz Lehr Division was moved, Germany had a spy near the British ambassador to Turkey, the Royal Navy had lost aspects to its low level codes, British railroads codes had been lost by late 1943, the German airforce saw changes in US and UK practice traffic, US Transport Command lost its codes, US M-209 and M-138 strip traffic was not totally secure, the A-3 A-3 speech scrambler was not so great, the Polish government in exile had code issues, a few German spies still existed in Sweden and Portugal, SIS-SOE agents where under watch in France
ie Germans moved units to Normandy.
As for "Enigma type machine encrypted messages" post ww2, the Soviet Union had a good understanding of the UK via humans. The Soviet Union was also moving to much tighter one time pad use as it fully understood its code reuse was a huge fault. But they had so much intel to send, they had few options but to risk it.
If govs cant get to one main code, they go for the weak ones, they go for people, they go for the weak codes that get used all day in sloppy ways.
For all the Enigma faith, Germany seemed to understand something was not perfect and worked hard to try and stay ahead.
New rotors, wheel permutations, random indicators, protections to counter cribbing, CY procedure, Uhr device, the UKW-D reflector but it all failed as cryptologic security was so split up. But people keep the old WW2 stories about Germany, Russia, Finland, Australia, Japan code work as just been all safe or all broken.
Post ww2 is filled with new advances and attempts by the UK and US. All very interesting, great in the new history books as more papers are released.
So for that Enigma vision we all give up our rights via an oath to authority for generations?
The talks did cover the authority and rights, press aspect in the last 30 mins.

Thats what the talks mentioned too, a set of small steps. Encryption but the wisdom to understand the networks as they are now.

1+ for 'So forget crypto as a privacy device, unless you're prepared to make it yourself, test in yourself, and be responsible for it yourself. The only unbreakable crypto is the (TRULY F'ING RANDOM) one-time pad, and only if it's used correctly."
Thats really the only way, one time pad used once, number stations. The key to all the free quality crypto was that all the press where been watched anyway so you get to encode all you want. The moment you send, attempt contact, its just tracked back. No need for a gov to waste time on the decrypt, just watch for encryption been used and all the press. Then get the hardware, software and the plain text before its encoded.

Thats all the need. If the contact is the press and the sender works/worked for a gov they are both targeted.
The "An observer could work out who your contacts are" gets even better if you try and meet in person. A member of the press turns their phone off and walks in a direction. Any other person in the area who turns their phone off and then on later like the member of the press is tracked.
IP, the internet, mobile phones its all great for tracking back the moment a person in gov tries reach out.
Thats what a good section of the talk was about. Discovering that journalist to whistleblower association, then turning press and byline journalist into criminals for accepting the material and daring to publish. Then its all secret laws, secret courts for the gov worker and soon the press too.
More Vietnam, Iraq like entanglements as gov staff do not speak out. As they sit back and let more wars to start. That total oath only to authority.
You can encrypt all you like, the metadata of an unbreakable code to the press will be tracked back. So unattributable internet access was mentioned as a good skill to consider teaching via people with the skills to work on such tasks.

Small steps. Move away from the brands that helped ie the PRISM list of willing brands and tame staff building junk systems.
Understand how "open source" telco layers over tame telco software and hardware can save any data on entry.
ie once your targeted all is privacy lost no matter the fancy open source app. The security services will be in every hop of any network into and out of your computer/device until they get full plain text.
Encryption seems to be the key until your use of it shows up at an endpoint under constant surveillance. Then the individual targeting starts on the new person.
The most easy step is to make encryption more gui, web 2.0 friendly. Then a lot more people will be flooding the net with random heavy code 24/7.
Use once hardware would be interesting. It would stop any longterm profile, any unique hardware numbers been sent. If you then work on really good crypto to hide voice, pic, file sent, text you could kind of have a one session. Snowden hinted a bit about association (you to the press), mixed routing, the need for unattributable internet access in the 1h+ talk.
A lot of steps to fix an internet that is now really like Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and what that can do to your message and a person in the press been watched.
The other aspect was education. A civic duty to teach, educate the wider public and press. The classic Sysadmins of the world, unite! also mentioned.

Daniel Ellsberg, the hope of massive disclosure per generation showing on going policy after Chelsea Manning.
The ability to shut the public out of a document release vs modern technology.
One person into a movement, going via US courts. New on the 1981 "Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans" (July 18 2014)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Thomas Drake as an example to keep staff inline if they use internal channels, secret policy vs democracy.
Secret or less with Chelsea Manning, Top Secret with Daniel Ellsberg, evidence of gov criminality and access to bring real documents to press.
Nixon's Vietnam nuclear weapons options, Mordechai Vanunu photos. The role of the press to select documents, congress briefing (gang of 8), political donations from mil private sector to same gang of 8.
False statements to congress. 4th and 5th Amendment violation reports never made, section 215 of patriot act.
Loss of rights but did not know about it. After STELLARWIND, building better networking, freedom of speech, rights.
Encryption as a first step to ensure only association. TOR use, US spy in Germany using gmail. Discovering journalist association. Find holes and fix networks, encryption, mixed routing. Unattributable internet access to link to press, role of Congress. Govs going after press and byline journalist as criminals. Expressing and defending freedom on the same networks the public is tracked on.
Sysadmins of the world, unite! Educate public over system functions, device trust. Civic duty to teach about networks. Level of inhumanity gets so great, time to tell all. Lower risks to speak out. Civil courage is back. Not treason to tell the truth. Operational inertia by gov staff. Public will find out over time. Secret laws, secret courts. Exploit chain by gov for US legal system. More Vietnam, Iraq like entanglements as staff do not talk out. Dont wait for the wars to start. Oath to authority.

Yes a lot of funding has gone into "Containment control".
Air Force research: How to use social media to control people like drones (July 17 2014)
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
"...researchers could be used to sway the opinion of social networks toward a desired set of behaviors—perhaps in concert with some of the social media “effects” cyber-weaponry developed by the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ"
A push by sock puppets in posting AC stories eg the "IP addresses".
Someone has new war PR to sell.

The files and paper work to sort on a massive scale. Per city in German–occupied Europe the Gestapo staff count was not big considering the tasks.
Most work was done with informants and tips, letters. A vast network of local people wanting to settle grudges and grievance via denunciation.
A vast happy to help collaborative staff in different nations also worked very hard to clear out their cities..
Very few nations bothered to look into the huge numbers of collaborative staff after ww2. Most just returned to gov work with a few cover stories.
After the war some just reinvented their pasts and went back to basic police work and retirement.
ie its not so much the politics - its the badge, uniform, suit, car, the power and prestige. Reinventing a workplace change from post ww1 Germany, into ww2 Germany and then helping in the four occupation zones after ww2.
The difference is now the computers really work good. The difference is now the global telco sector really helps so much more. Todays staff work hard at sites to create double agents. Terms like ghost detainees, black sites and the roles of medical doctors listed as 'medical technicians' also point to complex tasks.
So with the data seen by the press, what was sorted on cards via complex rented sorting equipment during ww2 is now pre sorted as entered.

The main thrust of relaxing is for Japan.
Then you have the sites in the USA that have got new paper work to run for decades more.
The "unusual event" reports on early warning alarm shuts downs at sites makes the US news over the past few years.
Then you have the US storage site clean ups.
Best to change national standards, stop funding quality US epidemiology, stop the tiny gov grants for books and books chapters on cancer clusters.
Then over time the next generations of top medical staff will be very tame :) Great in the ER but none of that messy long term pathology study work that finds 'facts' over decades.
Another trick is to only talk of basic external exposure issues. Never ever mention ingestion, lungs. Thats a great talking point and can really fool the wider public.
i.e. that filter has to work 100% of the time as a worker goes about their daily tasks over a life of the site, plant every year :)
So there is huge effort to get the talking points out about safe new numbers and lessen the mention of what is in the air.

The GCHQ has just the kind of legal history with this kind of project.
The bulk data interest could always be seen as with the first Intelsat (international satellite telephone calls) efforts at Goonhilly Downs -CSO Morwenstow,/GCHQ Bude got every keyword of interest in the late 1960's. Staff asked why domestic calls and numbers where also been tracked after they where only tasked to international calls. The retaining domestic metadata idea went on with little internal legal comment.
When the GCHQ/Intelsat news got into print in the early 1990's nothing was done. There was no legal protection decades ago. There was no protection once domestic collection tasks made it into the UK press. On into the 1990's the UK had new laws around the SIGMod funding initiative (sigint modernisation programme) to further clear up any domestic legal issues over domestic data sorting. The other legal magic is to pass telco work to SIS or other "agencies'". Then you have the vast US shared sites that can capture all but have even less to do with UK laws. More legal cover can flow form "ministerial level" support. If the political class is questioned they will never comment on past or ongoing security issues.
ie law reform cannot get past secrecy laws or get political comment reducing all domestic legal protections to chilling living document status.
One person might risk 20 years and another might have all changes dropped to get the story out of the media.
The fun legal part for the UK is now to make US "parallel construction" very legal. They want to use what they intercept or decode in closed courts so the structures have to have a legal expert evidence trail. The UK is back to the days of National Criminal Intelligence Service, Government Telecommunications Advisory Centre, Government Technical Assistance Centre (GTAC ~ GCHQ Technical Assistance Centre) to try and help courts with decryption, domestic and global tracking.
Will it work? Anyone with the cash can buy ex gov staff to sell them the super expensive advice: stay away from all electronic telco products.