1. cypherpunk on April 21, 2004 8:26 PM writes...

One problem I see looking at some of the initial blogging is that there seems to be very little sense of perspective in presenting the various issues, challenges and threats. Everyone seems to be turning up the volume and making their pet issue sound as dangerous as possible. The net effect is likely to be paralysis as it will seem that there are so many problems that we can't possibly deal with all of them.

Someone needs to go through and categorize these issues. Short term vs long term; corporate vs government actions; privacy threats vs freedom threats. This can be a first step towards bringing some order and rationality into the evaluation of just how dangerous the various trends are.

It should also be noted that in many areas we are seeing increases in privacy and freedom. The blogging phenomenon, for one, is giving a new voice to millions of people, making corporate and government misdeeds more visible. Increased use of cell phone cameras and the coming of ubiquitous personal recording devices will make it that much easier for the public to monitor the actions of the authorities. And in the online world, there is ongoing work to develop new privacy tools, such as the FreeHaven project, http://www.freehaven.net. P2P VoIP is another possibility on the horizon which could defeat many of the FBI's surveillance goals.

CFP should be educational, but that means that the presenters have the responsibility of offering a balanced discussion. Alarmism is counter-productive in the long run.