Interrasant stykke debat om overvågning, samt lidt specifikt fra EU:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/09/22/1653221/EU-Funding-Orwellian-Arti...

Og en god kommentar om emnet generelt. Helt klart et læs værd.

Quote fra http://slashdot.org/~Xaedalus , bruger på Slashdot:
This is the single biggest threat to our freedom as individuals: the desire of the state to form a broad security apparatus, in order to protect itself from lawsuits filed by aggrieved citizens.

I don't believe there's some super-secret cabal out to restrict our freedoms and turn us all into mindless meme-spouting "Citizens" living in a modern-day panopticon. What this is, is the result of an ill-informed populace, fearful of terrorists, criminals, and anything/everything that could possibly disrupt their lives demanding that their leadership Do Something . So the government is placed in the impossible position of trying to predict potential future attacks/assaults/cataclysms, because a clear majority of its constituents has told it that this is necessary. And when they fail, the survivors/aggrieved parties file lawsuits because clearly the government has failed in its duties to predict and prevent bad things from happening to its people.

So now we have entities like the TSA in the US, which exists solely as a giant resource-sucking time waster of a stop-gap prevention against class action lawsuits against the government in case another 9/11 type attack occurs. That is all it is: an insurance policy the government has taken out against the possible threat of legal action from its citizens should the unthinkable occurs. We all know that the TSA isn't going to stop terrorists - it's so the government can say "See, we did everything we could to prevent it and it still happened". And in this case, I'm going to step into the blame game and blame US, not the government. I have Karma to burn, so here goes: the vast majority of us citizens, regardless of country, want security and safety - NOT freedom. We want to know that when we get into our cars and go to work, we are insulated from the random elements of chaos that make up the world we live in. And when that protective bubble gets popped, we get angry because by God/FSM/Entropy/Satan, we want our security! And so we sue our government because 'THEY' should have been able to stop it with all their resources and manpower. And our government finds itself having to establish all these 'safeguards' simply so we can regain some measure of belief in the illusion of security we demand the government provide us.

I'm no libertarian, but this is one case in which I agree with their ethos: leave us the hell alone and don't build a nanny/father state to protect us. Yes, it's scary to live in a world in which anything could happen, but the alternative to me is unthinkable: some faceless entity doing everything it can to remove risk from my life and give me the illusion of control/safety, because most of my fellow citizens want that. I'd rather face up to my limitations and fallacies on my own, thank-you-very-much; I don't need my issues with needing control to be enabled.

So before we go into another round of 'how much blame can we heap on the government', let's think for a moment that the government is nothing more than a reflection of its people, and their values.