[jessaustin]

...the types of dangers inherent to an open Internet...

You haven't made the case that the NSA's shenanigans are in any way "inherent" to the internet as currently designed and implemented. I would suggest that these phenomena are due far more directly to the current organization of the USA federal government, and to the oligopoly that exists in internet service in that country. I think we ought to give Cerf, Kahn, and Postel a pass on this one.

[mpyne]

> You haven't made the case that the NSA's shenanigans are in any way "inherent" to the internet as currently designed and implemented.

Not the NSA's shenanigans, the shenanigans of any properly resourced foreign (or domestic!) intelligence service. After all, the U.S. itself suffers the same problem in reverse from China and Russia and God only knows who else.

If there's anything I've learned from hacktivists, it's that if you leave your stuff on the open Internet it will be exploited eventually, the only question is who will be exploiting it.

[jessaustin]

You're describing two different classes of threat. The threat posed by bad actors from the other side of the world is necessarily bounded: they can't take more from me than I have "online" in the first place. If I have a bank account, a secret soft-drink formula, or other assets subject to attack, what I spend on defense can be proportional to the assets themselves.

The threat posed by the bad actors affiliated with the state to which I am subject is qualitatively different. Based on intended-private information that can be construed as unlawful or even vaguely against the national interest, they can take away the rest of my life. There's nothing proportional to that.