>> After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device ins

>> After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the installation of such devices in open spaces, eventually private ones. I agree that this hypothetical is an accurate depiction of the future, but I think eventually we'll see this as the better of two evils. As the pace of technology accelerates, the average crazy man is going to be capable of killing more and more innocent people. Eventually, creating a safe society is going to involve closely monitoring every citizen and weeding out bad actors. That, or, eventually, some crazy man is going to build a nuclear bomb in their garage and obliterate the world.