And of course the "inefficiency" of government only helps until they reach a certain level of technological sophistication, which doesn't leave us much time even if you assume they're ten years behind the private sector.
We are losing this battle because very few people care about privacy any more.
Rephrase: "We have lost this battle because privacy disappeared a long time ago." This isn't a new concern: I remember Usenet discussions over ten years ago about the loss of privacy due to the amount of personal data stored in large corporate databases and how easy it was for that data to be stored and transferred. It's increased exponentially since then. Look, 2 months ago I wanted to send a friend a snail-mail letter but I couldn't remember her whole address. A quick hop to Google Street View and I just "drove" down her street from my computer 120 miles away until I recognized her house and got the address off the sign.
Seriously guys, find another battle to fight: this one was lost a long time ago. Database Nation http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565926530/ was written a decade ago!
Oh, and Merry Christmas :-)
Trying to stop people from seeing your front lawn via the Internet is comparable to DRM, both in principle and effectiveness. Merry Christmas.
Even though most consumers don't care about things like this there are those of us who do care, and we can eventually make a difference. This is one of the reasons why I support the EFF.
... and that makes selling the whole "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" thing a lot easier.
>>is meant to help locate and disable the phone if it is lost of stolen.
And are never shown this
>>your iphone may record your voice, take a picture of your location,record your heartbeat and send that information to the mothership
Seriously, hackers, maybe some on this site, write this software and design this hardware, to do these things. Maybe a better question is why do we as a profession do so?
Or maybe the term is meant to include that stuff too, despite the explicit definition.
Answer is "something written by turncoat mercenary Geeks".