[heavenlyblue]

To be fair, I don't think it's worth discussing which of these paths we will take.

What's worth discussing, although - is the fact that these two (opposing and heavily developed) points of view both will degenerate the society towards the same authoritarian state.

Imagine a world where the government uses terrorism as a justification for it's surveillance programs and the companies are pushing the surveillance devices for customer satisfaction? Wait a minute...

The solution space is much wider and is thus more probable.