I am inclined to agree, I guess it is not easy though to take distance and think of a good solution amidst the privacy wars which are taking place these days. I did read the idea somewhere of reducing the volume of classified information from governments in general, as a smaller volume involving fewer people would be easier to secure. I think I’d largely agree with that.

But then again, perhaps it is also time to explicitly start defining a privacy realm of information, where we figure out what kind of information should be considered private unless the owner explicitly specifies otherwise. Right now, everybody can eavesdrop and info-harvest on everybody and governments and hackers across the planet apparently make gratuitous use of that. I think organizations and governments should be explicitly be prohibited to obtain certain types of information, unless there are strong juridical reasons or an explicit consent from the owner.

Then again, I guess the internet is a bit like the UN. Something so massive and global can’t be easy to change… I think the current state of affairs where everybody invades everybody’s privacy is not the right way though, and I’m a bit fearful for an ugly backlash.

Next to that: the trust in the US government, internally in the US, and the rest of the world is still dwindling, while wars that cannot be won (crime, drugs, terrorism) keep raging on. The US keeps dictating their (security) policies to the rest of the world and the people feel it now in their everyday lifes. The sense of freedom seems compromised by the very same powers that keep slapping their superior FREEDOM in everyone’s face. I can imagine that people want to know if the US is still ‘the good guy’ or want ‘proof’ of the opposite. Maybe they don’t want as much the truth as much as a sense of perspective and as black and white as possible, so sides can easily be chosen.

You ask: “Do we really want to go down that road of close-quarter shooting at each other’s privacy?”.

There should be no question that we _shouldn’t have to_ defend our privacy from our government. If we have to fight our chosen representatives, something is terrible wrong and it might be time for a big change.

Disconcerting is the fact that my linux box is also called ‘galactica’. So I was like, damn since when does he have an account on there, and why??