I think we're looking at things from fundamentally different perspectives. You're using liberal/libertarian paradigms. Your placing the government and its deci

I think we're looking at things from fundamentally different perspectives. You're using liberal/libertarian paradigms. Your placing the government and its decisions at the center (or the beginning). I'm seeing/contending that the government here is an agent of a more fundamental force. A technological progression force, kinda. IE, governments' access, collection & analysis of our "private data" is a sort of inevitability. One agent of an unstoppable force. BTW, governments' themselves are also victims of "private" information being accessed, collected & analyzed. That's what the wikileaks & (ironically) Snowden stuff was. Data getting free. I'm hesitant to put my thoughts int a strong abstract statement because as I said, I don't feel like I have a good understanding of it. But "All your data available to everyone everywhere" might be where I'd start to construct it. Once it's in gmail, Google have access to it and probably a few spy organizations. That's a few places that we know of. It will never be deleted and who knows who else will end up with it. Proliferation goes one way. It never goes back. One of these stores will eventually leak to the public like the US embassies' emails leaked to the public. I'm claiming (hesitantly, please be nice) that I think that maybe this isn't a matter of policy or laws. It's not about what a government will decide to do. It's a tidal wave that we can't keep out. Computers store, copy and distribute information. All our information is digital. Eventually it will all get out into the wild. So if there's a photo in your phone. An email in your gmail account or a GPS log in your watch, that is future public information.