I find it ironic that the reason for all this surveillance and data-gathering is to protect people from terrorists. Terrorism isn't about killing people, it's a

I find it ironic that the reason for all this surveillance and data-gathering is to protect people from terrorists. Terrorism isn't about killing people, it's about making us all afraid (terrified). That fear will then lead us to limit our personal freedom. We say: "Please Mr. Government, protect us from the evil terrorists" and with that we give the government the mandate to introduce massive surveillance. As the magnitude of the surveillance starts to dawn on us, we start censuring ourselves online, not to risk a visit from the men in black. Even if what we do online today isn't illegal, laws will change and it's not unheard of people being persecuted for their political/religious alignment, even in western countries, even today. So we shrivel and crawl back into the hole we crawled out of and wait for change. All this is perfectly aligned with what the terrorists want. So they won. We killed them, but they won. As long as we are guided by our fear of terrorism, as long as we let our countries be guided by our fear of terrorism, the terrorists have won.