The point of the quote that many miss though is that Cardinal Richelieu wasn&#x27;t a clairvoyant, and by &quot;six lines written&quot; he <i>didn&#x27;t</i> literally mean Twitter. It&#x27;s true that, as you say, &quot;the power always can abuse information it gets, as long as it wants to target someone&quot;. If it wants to get you, it will abuse <i>any</i> information available. If you protect your Facebook from them, they&#x27;ll break your e-mail. If you encrypt your mail traffic, they&#x27;ll tap your phone. Or pull out census and employment data. Or simply ask around.<p>I agree that you may be marginally safer if you&#x27;re not &quot;feeding the machine&quot;. But let&#x27;s not delude ourselves - if the government turns evil, we&#x27;re fucked either way, and no amount of Internet privacy will help much. There&#x27;s too much data out there, and even more in the physical, material world.