8 minutes. That didn't take long

I've never used Firefox Mobile, and probably won't for a long time. Your insistence that Safari and Opera are complete web browsers, however, is laughable. Mobile Safari is by no means a 'complete' browser: no support for add-ons, missing Flash support, etc. Opera Mini isn't even a true web browser - it's a redisplay app like Skyfire, and neither of them are all that great. I can't talk about Netfront because I've not used it either. Got a download link?

He is wrong. Eventually everyone will come to realize the extent their private lives are exposed by a system like this. I tend not to include as much personal information as possible. Used to put more information available to the public, not anymore. When you start to get spammed you get annoyed, but it gets much deeper than that. I am not even worried about the government in particular, but corporations in general abuse personal information. Personal information is used (sometimes illegally) to figure out your credit limit, or if you are suitable for a job. Could just as well be used to see if you have risky behavior when getting that health insurance, or whatever.

These information systems will eventually lead to totalitarian regimes. Hopefully people somewhere will wise up and democratic regimes will implement safeguards against these kinds of things. Most people are so caught up in security paranoia against insurgents they ignore this more insidious development.

Yes, people default to sharing, that's human nature. Collecting all that private personal data is very easy, true. In a similar way all house locks are easily pickable, and all phone calls are easily tapped into.

Facebook could accommodate curious governments easily by providing "Yes, I want to share all my posts with government bodies and make them admissable in court as evidence." checkbox.

If that checkbox is left unchecked, no government representative has the right to read anything by the user, and nothing would be permissible in court as evidence, and, if proven to have used this evidence, the government would be liable.

Restricting our legal activities because of fear from our own public servants is not the way to go. Taking control over the activities of our public servants is.

Governments naturally grow, get corrupted and continuously demand more power. Running scared from them is not a solution.

Sucks that George Lucas was swapped for a pod person in 1995...

It looks like you forgot that he also did the Star Wars Christmas special...

But not of the officer who is writing the tickets, which I took to be the point.

Unless the officer gets a percentage of each ticket he gives out, in which case, yes, there is an incentive to write tickets "beyond that which is needed [to keep his job]".

Helo. Iz in yr hwy, killin yr doods. KTHXB...[connection lost]

Mandatory xkcd

In regards to IBM pulling the same against Oracle you forget one of the biggest reasons against it. Federal Action and Lawsuits. This would fall squarely under Anti-Competitive actions, thus the Feds (DOJ/Regulators) would all jump in and Oracle would have a Damn near ironclad suit against IBM for Lots more then 100M dollars. Even though the Nazgul would be out in droves, they still couldn't keep the ring bearer away from Mount Doom as the Armies of the 7 lands would be fighting them at the same time.

"ACTA comes from utterly fraudulent governance, and not from the public's mandate."

And which public would that be? The one's that take their civic responsibility seriously, or the public that yells at their politician through the TV? Your complaints about "fraudulent governance" or "public mandate" would actually mean something if people were actually participating and the entire failure was they were simply being overpowered. But it's rather hard to be sympathetic over someone who simply lies there and takes it. Get back with me on "fraudulent governance" and "public mandate" once the global public grows a backbone and actually starts understanding that mandates don't come from silence, but faulty governance does.

"In this economy, *if you are in the US*, you can be replaced easily and getting another job is near impossible"

There, corrected for you.

In any case, I would do exactly the same, economy or not economy, regardless of the country.

People need to grow some balls.

Wow, wish I could sneak that one by management. We're a small shop (10 devs) but have to account for 80% of all time spent towards a task for effective 'metrics' ... :\

Maybe that's why they enshrined the right to protest against the government? How many anti-war protesters were arrested for protesting the war (and not something else) during the Bush administration? How many Tea Party types were arrested for their protests (and again, not for something else?) Neither of those groups were really the victors (in that there's still a war and still a health care bill), but simply protesting the government isn't illegal.

I assume they're sausages that don't go off... errrr, spoil, when they're not refrigerated.

It would make surveillance more difficult. Which makes this crap even crappier. You'd think that the people who really are up to no good are busy covering their tracks. So who are the spies spying on exactly?