With regards to your comments about assumed stability, I believe you are right.<p>The slow attrition of our civil rights and the strengthening of the surveillance state is not unlike the process of smoking cigarettes. In the beginning it seems like fun. Everyone is doing it. People warn you that it&#x27;s dangerous, but you don&#x27;t feel bad, and in fact you feel kind of cool.<p>Some years down the line and you start to develop a bit of a nasty hacky cough. You brush it off, but in the back of your head you think it might be connected to your smoking habit.<p>Then one day you feel a lump. You don&#x27;t feel well, and after a bit of procrastination, you go and see the doctor. You find out you have cancer, and it&#x27;s terminal.<p>All of a sudden you&#x27;re dead. How did that happen? You feel like an idiot. You knew smoking was going to kill you, but you did it anyway.<p>Slow attrition is the worst for the human psyche. We just can&#x27;t get out heads around it.