Steve
,
I'm well aware that they are being used. Unfortunately, I don't share your benevolent view of the role or intentions of government. As for people buying things - did they have a real choice about what they bought? How much surveillance are you personally willing to accept? When you wake-up one morning and find that you've changed your mind about some aspect of surveillance that you thought was benevolent, how are you going to change it back? I have two favourite quotes with regard to freedom. I don't usually like 'quotes', since I believe them to be a lazy man's substitute for thinking. Nevertheless, I'm feeling a bit lazy today :
'None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.'
Goethe
'Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn't stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband -- it creeps up insidiously... step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone.'
Baron Lane
[The swastika allusion is unfortunate, but not the sentiment.]
BTW I didn't just Google those to make my point - I trully believe them to be valid. I little paranoia and a lot of skepticism are good things. Trusting any power which controls our lives without those two questioning elements is, I believe, a big mistake.
Tommy