One problem with software you don't have control over is that anything is subpoenable. We don't have to wait for the government to impose their own tracking mec

One problem with software you don't have control over is that anything is subpoenable. We don't have to wait for the government to impose their own tracking mechanisms, because as soon as they get probable cause, that's it (which includes missing a finger, having >7 days food supply at home, if you believe Rand Paul anyway). Or just look up Google's government transparency report[1]. When you don't have control over your data, it's just a warrant/polite request away from the government. Not all government access to private data is bad. After all, it's needed to stop things like child prostitution/pornography rings, and yeah, terrorism. But what I liked so much about this article was putting the slippery slope into perspective. It's easy enough to quote the transparency report, "The number of user data requests we received increased by 29% compared to the previous reporting period." and go "well - just 29%" but that's one year. I'll make the surprising bet it doesn't go down. Compare to three decades ago, and a lot of what's happening now seemed draconian then. [1] http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/