The Patriot problem isn't going anytime soon. The levels of surveillance enabled by modern technology were going to get used, somehow, by governments. Counter

The Patriot problem isn't going anytime soon. The levels of surveillance enabled by modern technology were going to get used, somehow, by governments. Counterterrorism is just the manifesting justification of this inevitability. The debate on privacy -- or more accurately, the debate on the inflection point between real safety vs real privacy -- will be long and hard. It's a complex question that hasn't had an answer settled by any means. My guess is that it's going to take a lot of work by folks like Wikileaks and the courts to make understood how the power is really being used. Only after a few cycles of (massive-problem -> privacy regulation) are we going to see some rational work in this area. Sadly this is probably the only way it can happen; there just isn't any real data on what levels of privacy are appropriate with a civilization built on current levels of cyber-interconnection.