People seem to have been predicting a "digital pearl harbour" for over a decade now. I think such a thing might only be possible if most computing moves into "the cloud" and cloud systems become highly homogenized, such that a single exploit could affect many systems in a single catastrophic event.<p>In terms of privacy I think the biggest threat is likely to come from governments, because if people's entire private lives exist online then there will always be the temptation to want access to more and more of that in order to optimise public services, carry out automatic policing and issuing of fines, censor individuals, monitor protest groups and so on. It seems unlikely that in a world of ubiquitous information governments will remain content with the occasional census data which they obtain.