So, a couple things:<p>I wish I had copies of the decisions handy, but the supreme court appears to not believe that quantity is a quality all its own. That is, until quite recently, the amount of surveillance the police or government could pull off was severely limited by personpower: how many employees they where willing to dedicate. Technological considerations, such as the ability to shove a gps tracking device into a car or use mobile phone tower checkins to get a pretty precise idea of where people have been, have considerably changed this, but the supreme court doesn't seem to think that a change in scale means the law should change. So privacy will probably require support from congress, which is unfortunately filled with the stupid, the venal, and people like Difi who doesn't care a wit about surveillance unless and until she is surveilled.<p>Also, people are stupid. I saw somewhere -- again I'm missing a reference -- that fb makes on the order of $20-$40 per US user per year. Given the quantity of employees and infrastructure dedicated to monetization via advertising, you'd think they'd be willing to take that much money in exchange for no advertising and come out ahead. So if the US would agree to pay $25/year, we could have ad-free fb (and a fb executive staff motivated by users' needs, where users == you and me, not advertisers.) Unfortunately, people are stupid, so they will never bite. They will, if they can be bothered to care at all, simultaneously bitch about advertising and privacy while being completely unwilling to pay money for services. I have no solution at all for this, but it makes me sad.