A couple of info bits on surveillance - and keep in mind this was 2006 era technology.

And forget what the war on terror has spawned, now the IRS claims it has the authority to read your emails without a warrant (though they won't use it of course :-) Does the bit about consolidating data from social networks, shopping etc. make snyone a teensie bit unsettled? The fact is that today, the avg. person is being recorded, by cameras, GPS in cell phones and cars, credit card transactions, web activity etc. ad nauseum. Isolated bits would be troublesome enough but aggregated, it's the ball game. Now if you believe that anyone can be trusted not to abuse that kind of power, rest easy, it's all paranoia. If you believe that no one will ever be interested in you because you're an honest citizen, sleep tight. It's all a fantasy that even nuns get on the list for supporting some peace and justice cause that rankles the administration du jour. The safety in numbers thing went out with databases and supercomputers. And that's without the 'well-meaning' idiots like the ones on reddit who tabbed some poor innocent schmuck as the Boston bomber - or your spouse's divorce lawyer et al because surely they would never get access to that data. Nah, must be just crazy lefties who probably want the terrorists to win - like these guys:

"Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it." - Thomas Paine

"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience." - Albert Camus

OK, Paine probably was a terrorist according to his majesty, and Camus sounds suspiciously French.

"My guess is the whole idea was thought up by a wizz kid who never imagined that so many people were not on line."

In a way, I think this is part of the trend away from privacy. Someone who's never seen a telephone booth probably has trouble imagining that people once valued private conversations, rather than walking around blabbing to the world about who they're f*****g etc. :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken