Is the privacy boom a foregone conclusion? The Internet has a history of overreactive paranoia when it comes to change. Example #1: I remember a huge privacy

Is the privacy boom a foregone conclusion? The Internet has a history of overreactive paranoia when it comes to change. Example #1: I remember a huge privacy backlash when the first social networking site opened. It was a combination of Facebook and Linkedin, yet it was more private than either of them. People were absolutely livid about the privacy implications. This site, Six Degrees, opened in 1998-fifteen years ago, and shutdown soon thereafter. However, over time, the boogeyman many feared never materialized, and people became more open about sharing online. Example #2: Later, when the DMCA was proposed, it was claimed that it would be the death of the Internet. The DMCA has been law for more than a decade, and the Internet still lives. So, based on past examples, I predict that people will stop caring about NSA-type programs when no harm ends up coming to them from wholesale data screening on the part of the government. Once can only be afraid of so many things at a time, and new scares will eventually pop up.