PBS had an interesting panel discussing privacy.  Most operate under the premise that it can be managed or protected somehow. Possibly it cannot, ultimately, be saved.  It is already eroded to an extent that I for one cannot even begin to conceive.  In fact, I am amazed at the continued residual illusion of privacy that I and everyone I know, live under. I think most of us have no idea how extensively our information is disseminated.  If the NSA monitors us, it is a drop in the bucket from what I hear.  We, justifiably need to be outraged and fight such a thing but for reasons beyond the meaning of privacy.Given a premise that the continued loss of privacy cannot be stopped, what could be done to protect us from…whom?    To protect us from power and one of the fundamental elements of power is its ability to conceal information from us while intruding upon our lives.  That’s what the framers thought we needed protection from.  It is a singular characteristic of all tyrannies.  Thought control whether by the Christian church via The Inquisition or by Stalin and Hitler through intimate informants.  Now the tools they have are overwhelming.  We complain about the lack of transparency of the administration; that’s exactly it: secrecy confers and protects power.In my crabby opinion there is only one solution available to human society under the circumstances:  That is to go to the opposite extreme and develop a society of laws and mores that opposes secrecy of any kind by anybody.  If Dick Chaney can find out where I go on the internet, I should be able to know where he goes equally and he should be aware.  The Ultimate Accountability: Mandatory Transparency for everyone. (I hope Lynne Truss does not read this as I am too lazy to pick up Eats, shoots, and Leaves to correct the punctuation horrors I am likely committing here.).

It is said that you can tell our true character by what we do when no one else will know.  Omygod!  Who could stand the thought of that being known?   Yet, what if we grew up in a society, that from the beginning, had the expectation that there would be no secrets, legally or by social expectation?  I can’t imagine everything we would experience but we certainly would learn we would have to stand behind each of our choices publicly.  We would actually have to be responsible for ourselves instead of just talking about responsibility while hiding from much of it.  What if the greatest sin one could commit in the eyes of others was to refuse to disclose, have secrets.

I gotta go but more on this later.