>it just seems incredibly unlikely in this day and age, at least in developed countries. This opinion wouldn't be quite as naive if there was some magical boun

>it just seems incredibly unlikely in this day and age, at least in developed countries. This opinion wouldn't be quite as naive if there was some magical boundary that keeps digital information solely in the hands of benevolent rulers in developed countries, but there's not. >Governments have also, at times, discriminated against people for their sexuality, or gender, so should the government never be allowed to gather any information on those attributes? That's somewhat like how some gun rights advocates say it's futile to ban guns because you can just kill people with knives, so why don't we ban knives too? We're talking about virtually total information awareness which is far more powerful, problematic, and discriminate than knowledge of superficial attributes such as race and gender. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness