# Should we not trust the government? Historically, governments have killed a lot of people.

# Should we not trust the government?

Historically, governments have killed a lot of people
(Philip Zimmermann)

# Should we be concerned with Total Information Awareness and other Ashcroftian initiatives?

Yes, of course. I think the biggest threat to privacy is Moore�s law. The human population does not double every eighteen months but the ability to keep track of us does. This may be a prescription for an omniscient government. Democracy never had to face an all-knowing government. I don�t know how we�re going to get through that.
# Should I, being European and Swedish, be concerned with the development of U.S. policy on cyberlaw matters and U.S. encryption policy?

Absolutely! U.S. policy could in the long run jeopardise U.S. democracy. Since the U.S is the only remaining superpower it is vital that the U.S. has a healthy, functioning democracy. Democratic institutions might be weakened through surveillance. If the democracy is eroded, the rest of the world is in danger because of U.S.�s superpowers.

cryptography is about freedom of speech

"in the Information Age, cryptography is about political power, and n particular, about the power relationship between a government and its people. It is about the right to privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of political association, freedom of the press, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom to be left alone.
..
The U.S. federal government wants to built a nationwide communication system designed for domestic surveillance, with technologies that in the long run can be used by the tyrants of the world to keep themselves in power.
"

(preface to the Official PGP User's guide by Philip Zimmermann, October 1994)

no control leads to corruption

"Any government that can automatically generate an intimate profile of every one of ts citizens is a government endowed with a potential for absolute power that will eventually, to use Lord Action's phrase, corrupt absolutely. Few civil liberties are likely to survive such capacities in the hands of increasingly panicky authoritarians who run the embattled old beaucracies of the Meat World.
..
any govermnent which can see everything we do all the time will sooner or later feel compelled to add omnipotence to omniscience, which are, in the Virtual Age, much the same thing anyway."
(Foreword by John Perry Barlow to The Official PGP User's guide by Philip R.Zimmerman)