We have no privacy. The genie is out of the bottle. There's relatively little left to protect.
I once saw a demo of a data mining product that integrated commercial and public data to lay bare anyone's private life. You gave someone's SSN or name & address and a whole life history came out, with social networks and all. It was shocking.
Total Information Awareness is already here whether we like it or not. It's really just a matter of degree from here on end. The problem is: it is in the wrong hands.
I agree with the concept in Mike McL's diary: we need to turn the table and strip our political appointees and their own appointees of their privacy in the conduct of our business, and I would say with few caveats for national security.
Now let me be clear, as much as I would want to believe otherwise, the threats used to justify the monitoring of our communications are in fact real. These threats are becoming increasingly asymetrical and the trend is exponential. It is becoming easier and more affordable to genetically engineer a new plague or miniaturize WMDs. In a decade or so, a teenager will be able to bioengineer viruses using only low-cost, desktop equipment. What then? Don't you want to know that your neighbor's kid is trying to hack some nasty bug?
Yes, the current administration has used threats to national security over and over as a bludgeon to grab power and wealth, without addressing the threats and while making them worse. That does not mean the threats are not real.
So the unfortunate need to monitor all communications and all accesses to information will keep growing until some day our species' wisdom and compassion completely overtakes our urge and ability to do harm. This may take a while.
To minimize the enormous risks to democracy that our loss of privacy entails, we must urgently infuse our government with a culture of social responsibility, honesty and competency. To achieve this, transparency is key and secrecy the enemy.
So, I regrettably do want our communications monitored but only if we the people are able to subject our government to the same level of scrutiny.
Now what are the odds of that happening? Well, they get better if we become involved and start reclaiming the levers of power.