Google itself, and other companies, may have the best of intentions and never willingly violate your privacy. At the same time, the NSA, tapped into the major Internet routers as they are already and probably with unlimited access to services like ChoicePoint, could be watching everything we do on Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, SMS texting, mobile location, AIM, Yahoo, QQ, and every other significant networking system, as well as banking and debit/credit transactions. The companies themselves do not need to help those who would desire to spy on us. We WILL be watched, just as people out on the street or local grocery watch you as you pass by and many cameras record you every day. The question becomes when has it all gone too far. What we have to do is be vigilant, keep an eye on the courts, and make sure the legislators are protecting our privacy with appropriate laws.

As I've heard it said before, "There is an infinitesimally small but non-zero chance."

Perhaps, but statistically one of those must eventually make a mistake and actually get past that level of technology.

It makes me shiver just to think about it.

Isn't this exactly the sort of physics that the LHC machine was designed to investigate? Higgs boson and particle mass, to be sure. That's what we always hear about, but it's more than that. The LHC will be brought up to full power gradually, over a series of incremental tests and experiments, over months and years, looking for anything unusual in the data, something we haven't anticipated. The data from those experiments can be examined for signs of black hole formation. If they do appear anywhere below LHC maximum energy, then that data can be analyzed before taking the next step, and so on. We feared the sound barrier, feared fusion weapons, feared nuclear power reactors, feared space, and so on. With each of those, we expermimented, we learned, and we came to accept each in time.

Think of it as very expensive therapy. Having something that looks similar, but does not have the same personality should gradually allow the owner to let go.