>Many think that security’s choke hold on privacy started post 9/11, but this is not accurate. It had started half a decade earlier in the advent of the internet, and the popularization of mobile phones. Edward Snowden’s allegations much later, they too largely were part of the debate that started around 1995.<p>By the time Snowden came around, I felt like the battle over privacy had long since been lost. I felt like every passionate statement was a point in an argument made a decade earlier that lost largely due to apathy from the general community (though the tech community always held privacy at a high level of importance).<p>The way things related to privacy are today, they are irreversible, IMO. Forget governments, private companies have long understood the value of information. Whether it's good or bad, the point is moot. Now we're in the era of figuring out what to do with all the data. Luckily for the world, I feel that the data has much more indirect commercial value than direct. Yes, it's nice to be able to target users with ads about phones when you know they are ready to upgrade. But it's more valuable to be able to answer questions like "what are the top 30 locales in the U.S. where a x business would succeed", or "what elements would provide the most compelling story-line to a high budget movie targeting x customer base".<p>It's not that users' individual privacy is being held in particularly high regard, it's simply that collective information provides the answers to more interesting and more profitable questions.<p>Where government treatment of privacy is concerned, that's a pendulum that sways too far in either direction at any given point. It's a tough debate in general because people are constantly asked to weigh the balance between preventing their worst fear and creating it. You want the government to be able to break down any wall to get your lost child returned home, but you don't want the government breaking in your door because you happened to order pizza from the same restaurant as the kidnappers. At some point the person with the kidnapped child will be the most sympathetic character in the argument, at another the person who ended up in the hospital because of an unnecessary raid. Politics isn't about cooler heads prevailing, it's about garnering support and creating passionate followers.<p>One thing for sure, the U.S. government interest in technology and information has spawned some inventions that otherwise wouldn't exist. Things like realtime translation, advances in battery technology, gps navigation, and the internet itself are all examples where we wouldn't be where we are today without the enormous amount of interest and funding that follows a government project.