Publisher's note: We have worked for more than 20 years to deserve our SNS tagline description: "Next year's news this week." Sometimes, as in the case of the Internet Assistant or the CarryAlong PC, we've been a decade or so ahead. More often, as with the '97 currency crisis or the Global Financial Collapse, we've been 6-12 months ahead.

In general, we have a rule to rush each Global Report into print so that we don't get "scooped" by real-world events in real time.

And then there's the nightmare scenario.

This week's discussion was chosen and about half-written when WikiLeaks yesterday released a data dump showing that the CIA, and perhaps others, are doing exactly what, in this week's issue, we describe under the above title.

If one wanted to make lemons from lemonade, it's nice to have reality so closely in tune with our understanding of it. But we'd have been happier if Julian Assange had waited a week or two before putting the proof to our dark predictions around "The Perfect Surveillance System."

In the world of predictions, it can be both exciting and terrifying when the future and the present merge in real time. - mra.