>I've clashed many times with folks here on HN who are super-pro-government liberals. Since we're talking about the surveillance state, we shouldn't be leaving

>I've clashed many times with folks here on HN who are super-pro-government liberals. Since we're talking about the surveillance state, we shouldn't be leaving the super-pro-government conservatives out of this. In the US (where these lib/con terms seem to matter most), both major parties love the surveillance state, and this is tied in heavily with the warfare state that both parties love as well. I'm not very optimistic that the situation is going to improve. Privacy is increasingly something of yesterday, not today, and certainly not of the future. Those who will enjoy some degree of privacy will be the ones who know how to achieve it, and many aren't going to bother, just as they don't today (people are lining up to give it away, in fact). >The point is that government is an ass. They fuck-up nearly everything they do. No disagreement here, though I'd suggest that the only things at which government seems to excel are areas where no one should want to excel. I'm thinking primarily of war, excessive policing, and weird, arbitrary laws.