Back when I was 16, playing Shadowrun, we used to say that paranoia was not a disease, but a survival strategy. There are moments when I get close to freaking

Back when I was 16, playing Shadowrun, we used to say that paranoia was not a disease, but a survival strategy. There are moments when I get close to freaking out about it. I am currently reading Gravity's Rainbow, and now, for the first time, I get the paranoia in that book, I feel it. It is even less pleasant than I had imagined. And even with FLOSS and the best encryption technically possible, we have to ask ourselves, what does it lead to? In a society where the state no longer trusts the citizens, where citizens need to use military-grade encryption to keep the intelligence services from accidentally flagging them as potential terrorists because they have a gross sense of humor or a weird hobby, the very fabric that holds society together begins to erode. If we go down this road, we will become even more estranged and isolated than we are now.