> I'm very surprised to see this kind of reasoning on the hacker's forum I'm not. HN is typically more liberal than what some might consider a traditional hack

> I'm very surprised to see this kind of reasoning on the hacker's forum I'm not. HN is typically more liberal than what some might consider a traditional hacker to be; I'd imagine the real hackers congregate somewhere else. Somewhere less "white hat-y", if you will. The problem with getting through to people who are willing to surrender their freedoms for a false promise of security is that they don't see the government as a threat. If the government is not a threat then why not surrender your freedom to them? Are they not there to protect us? This idea has been present throughout history and most notably in western literature. It's believed by some that in order to have an achievable utopian society we must enslave ourselves to the government only at the cost of our personal freedoms. By this definition we've long been enslaved, it's just that some are now noticing it. Of course some level of opposition will always be present. However the size of such is so small that the power they have must be leveraged through some alternative means. Some say this is the internet. We now know that's not true.