I have no real problem if the UDID:s of my iPad/iPhone/iPod are stored with my name by intelligence organisations in democracies.
But... I do have problems with them being so incompetent that private information about me is leaked!!
We have to accept that we are being spied upon because we have no control over that, but we should always resent and resist it when possible.
The number of stopped terror attacks in the West over the last decade is quite large, that would hardly have happened without spying on the citizens.
Is it worth the security? I don't really know. As long as it is in very stable democracies, it ought to be safe...
Bull. Fucking. Crap.
For example, according to this[1] source, there have been not even 50 terror attacks against America in the last 90 years. And while the amount seems to have increased recently, this surely has absolutely nothing to do with the US playing world police and giving more and more people reasons to hate them (not that this excuses terror attacks, but you get the point).
This whole bullshit is a gigantic pile of FUD and propaganda. There is no terror threat. There never has been any. At least not more than randomly getting shot on the street or dying in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. I don't see people pushing for universal surveillance of the blood alcohol of all drivers or some other nonsense.
The whole thing is so fucktardedly ridiculous that the FBI regularly invents terror suspects[2], and arrests them "last minute" to then claim it has "once again eliminated a threat to national security". Everything's fair game to continue their bullshit pushes for more surveillance and less civil liberty. And what's even more enraging: people like you buy it.
Conclusion: No, we don't need surveillance. No, we don't need fed agencies spying on everyone and everything and no one to keep them in check (who watches the watchmen?). No, we don't need bullshit laws that further and further infringe on every human's civil liberties and human rights for no reason but "um... well... uh... BUT TERRORISM!!!1!1oneoneeleven".
[1]: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001454.html [2]: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/...
Uh, hell no. We have already seen the kind of evil things the FBI are willing to do in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cointelpro
But that was during the cold war, 40 years ago. The levels of paranoia increased after 9/11, but hardly to the pre-1989 levels.
No one has attempted to argue against my point about active terror threats imply high voter pressure for security.
But maybe the problem is that I'm Swedish.
Traditionally, Swedes trust the state uncritically to do the right thing (I've heard the explanation that the king historically was allied with the lower classes against the nobility).
I thought I was immune to those Swedish attitudes, after e.g. seeing oligopolies (food, building, etc) keeping prices high and hurting both individuals' economy and the country's, without getting any problems from either politicians or media.
But maybe I still have naive reflexes.
Edit: I wish I hadn't gone away for a while, so I could have added this comment while people still were reading and give feedback. :-)
They can't even manage their own internal information, so their fishing through our personal information seems a bit reaching, eh?
How can a government not love "terrorism"? It's a catch-all phrase that allows it to act as it wishes with impunity.
Democracy != immutable state.