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Claims from within our community that "Privacy is dead." concern me more than any warrantless wiretapping the FBI may be enjoying.

-- This is an important point, because the notion of "reasonable" will ultimately be a relative point. so, in this case "a sinking tide sinks all ships" (to bastardize an old phrase). This is arguably a 21stC disease.

But, If you have school debts to pay, those facy granite countertops, or a promotion on the line, etc people will revert to: "I'm smarter than XYZ, I deserve PQR, all these other people are [naive, dumb, suckers]...etc. So I'll do [whatever morally grey area thing] will be [instrumentally useful].

So, at the end of the day, root cause is (1) greed; and (2) entitlement. You could also throw in (3) moral haze. But in my experience, (3) often is a byproduct of (1) and (2) coming into conflict. There is also likely a component which is just "lack of imagination" in the pre-9/11 sense. You just won't believe tha people will do certain types of things, until its too late. Confronting the problems is too disruptive, etc.




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