Of course they shouldn't pry into every damned phone call and email, track your every twitch, vet you with key phrases and travel profiles.
But they will. No matter who's in charge.
"Obama sucks!" "Bush started it!"
Balderdash. Allen Turing started it, though you could just as easily blame Hollerith. Or my dad.
It doesn't matter who's in power. Those in power will use every tool at their disposal to track, trace and tail citizens, as many as possible and, once the tools get good enough (read "now"), all of 'em. This applies to all sorts of power. In this respect, there's no difference between a Cheney and a Zuckerberg. They'll do it because they can. They'll do it because it gives them an edge. Heck, they'll do it because it's fucking cool.
I don't like it, but what can I do about it? Turning off everything and moving to a tinfoil tipi in Wyoming won't work. In this day and age, nothing sticks out brighter than someone not in the system.
About the time the Junior Mob stole Florida and the White House, I began to rethink my 20-year strategy of studied anonymity. It had worked okay (kept a lot of pesky fed people off my behind), but it was becoming obvious than any participation in society was soon going to mean full immersion in the infosphere.
After September 11, it was clear there would never be "privacy" again.
So I changed my tack. Instead of trying to keep my head down and hoping the eyes in sky passed me by, I fell back on my greatest natural skill: mouthing off. Flooding call-in shows and LTE pages, sputtering on blogs (all apologies there), jamming out records, videos, stickers, graffiti, whatever public outreach pipeline I could find. Under my own name.
The idea being, if there's no more privacy, fame, or at least notoriety, is the only defense against repression. You make enough noise, in front of enough people, in enough places, there's a chance somebody might notice if you get disappeared in the middle of the night. (There are exceptions; Pauly Shore comes to mind).
I don't really know whether this is a realistic approach to self-protection in the age of cyber-nakedness, but it seems the only possible way for those of us without gazoodles of money to assure a modicum of personal security in a time when no citizen can expect to enjoy the fundamental right expounded by Louis Brandeis: the right to simply be left alone.
Not much, I'll admit. Just all that's left.
Your thoughts?