Unfortunately, Snowden would likely be prosecuted under the ridiculously over-broad espionage act, which has no exceptions for public interest. Ref: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131223/17054725677/if-snowden-returned-to-us-trial-all-whistleblower-evidence-would-likely-be-inadmissible.shtml

"It's very patriotic for corporations to work with governments"

I'm sure that's what Mubarak is thinking with regards to Facebook and Google right now.

"Of course, if you have nothing to hide, it's fine, right?"

Everyone has something to hide. It may be a surprise party for a friend, or a present ordered for a family member for Christmas, or any of a million other things that probably doesn't mean much to anyone besides you and the other person. However, if someone wanted to seriously mess with you, and had access to all this information, they could use it to undermine all of your secrets, even though the secrets hold no danger to anyone at all.

Look at what this could do to businesses. Those in league with the government (or info collector) could easily undermine secrets for competitive advantage. There's no security reason for monitoring such info, but it can certainly be used to help competitors.

This is one reason news such as the FBI claiming over-reaching surveillance rights without being willing to tell you which law enables those rights (http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/11/v-print/2062565/justice-department-assertion-fbi.html), and non-review extension of the Patriot Act (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110214/16191413089/as-expected-house-agrees-to-extend-patriot-act-with-no-discussion-no-oversight.shtml) is ridiculous.

These things don't make us safer - they allow the government to have more control over us. In the case of google, some people have chosen to willingly yield some privacy for the other benefits that google can provide. In the case of the government, we're yielding control because many buy into the false sense of security that the government has created, or because we don't have a choice and haven't bothered finding a hundredth of the courage that our brothers and sisters in Egypt displayed to put our collective foot down and start peacefully fighting back.

Actually, many people will quote the answer they've been taught without ever actually thinking about it. This is where the author has a point - it makes it easier for people who don't want to think to look up their opinions online instead of looking up facts and coming up with their own opinion. Think of the rise of talk-news - who needs facts when we have the opinion of a talking head?

Sadly, I think such people greatly outnumber those of us trying to use the internet to expand our capabilities.

Sadly, corporations have "corporate personhood" (http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/). So, in legal terms, they have similar options to lobby the People's representatives that all non-citizens have.

I suppose it could be worse... they could be "corporate citizens" with full voting rights, too...

I'm sorry, but this is no longer true. The North won the US Civil War. They didn't bother to revoke the 10th amendment to the US Constitution, but that doesn't change the fact that it is effectively dead.

Time and time again, the US federal government overrides States' rights, primarily using budgetary powers. A simple example is the legal drinking age. The federal government decided it should be 21, but the states have the legal right to determine the drinking age. So what does the federal government do? It refuses to send transportation infrastructure funds to each state until they raise the legal drinking age in their state to 21.

All federal social programs are also illegal according to the 10th amendment. But there have been no successful legal challenges to the overall Social Security or Medicare system. Would this truly be the case if the 10th amendment still had any legal standing?

This happened to me, too... bitdefender would flag nearly any file, and it first flagged a file that I had just updated, so I was genuinely concerned. The next file is flagged, however, was usbstor.sys, so I knew the AV was probably wrong.

Some people were running virus scans... tens of thousands of false detection, and all of the files were quarantined or deleted... it was a really bad situation for many. I'm not sure how non-technical users fared.

I use bitdefender on my computer only - I like the aggressive detection capabilities and reporting options. However, no one else in my house wants to know what their AV is doing - they just want it to work - and bitdefender is probably the worst option for them.