[zxcdw]

Yes, that's what I too think right now in June 2013, although I am an European. But... How about in the future, considernig the progress towards a surveillance state which began around after 9/11 and Patriot Act? (And some say it began even earlier, but was greatly accelerated by Patriot Act)

The progress seems to be to give up individual liberties and freedoms in the name of War on Terror. Because the changes are incremental, people don't quite realize the progress until it is too late. By then, they consider it a status quo and youngsters don't even know what they are missing. It's the so-called boiling frog analogy.

[mpyne]

Except that even in the U.S. it has literally been much worse, even before computers. We have always had an ebb-and-flow with civil liberties.

First we enslaved the blacks, then we started making them free. Then we made a slave control law to forcibly rendition captured slaves back to their masters in the slave states. Then we fought and died and FREED THE SLAVES!.... except that we didn't, as it turns out. Reconstruction was a high-water mark, then Jim Crow and the KKK came.

Hell, we didn't even start off from a great place. Go read about the Alien and Sedition Acts when you get a chance.

And likewise with privacy rights. We didn't start off with those either. As long as the government didn't have to search you or your property to find something, it was fair game. But then we added controls for postal mail. Then telephones, and eventually cell phones, beepers, and more. We also had the Supreme Court essentially create "reasonable expectation of privacy" out of whole cloth (which I don't blame them for, but goes to show how we didn't start off with Jefferson's dream government just to beat back all the attackers over time).

Of course in between there were COINTELPRO, FBI watchlists, HUAC & McCarthy's red scare, J. Edgar Hoover (which even MULTICS referenced, IIRC), ECPA, CALEA, attempts at the Clipper chip, munitions controls on crypto, etc. etc.

So it hasn't all been consistent progress but it also hasn't all been consistent withdrawal. So while I respect and greatly admire those who fight for increased privacy because they think it's the right thing to do, I can only assume those who characterize civil liberties in the U.S. as something that has simply been slowly eroded over time have not studied as much U.S. history as they should have.