This is actually a pretty good article and I'd suggest others reading it. Don't be put off by this ridiculous line at the start:
This will be remembered as the year in which mass surveillance became normal, even popular.
"Mass surveillance"? If we've got enough people here on Khalid Sheik Muhamed's buddy list to qualify as mass, we've got way bigger problems than we think.
Owl_Eagle
"You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being"
Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey (Cameras Everywhere-Database Kept)
We like to think that we have made progress in the four centuries since, especially here in the United States. But we're up against a basic reality: As populations grow denser, and as technology improves, there's a natural need for more regulation to keep people's elbows, and machines, from banging into each other.
That's the reason why, for example, Wyoming is a more libertarian place than New York City. Out in the West, where miles might separate people, you can pretty much do what you want. But, if millions are going to live in close proximity to one another, then lots of red tape is going to thread itself around each resident, governing not only the obvious concerns, such as weapons and pollution, but matters such as noise abatement and cigarette smoking.
I have long believed that the U.S. Constitution is a unique document that could only have been written in a certain place (North America) and time (the post-Reformation colonial era), for it required a unique combination of two factors that didn't exist any other time and place in history and has become more difficult to find with each passing day. These are: 1) a social order based on Western culture and influenced heavily by a northern European, Anglo-Saxon civic/economic system; and 2) a sparsely-populated geographic region with a large frontier.