The history of the evolution of mankind has showed repeatedly how the very change or progress intended in the first place to serve a great good, can have such adverse effects that it may lead us to reconsider the necessity of such innovation in the first place. Atomic fission, black powder, these are two of the most infamous inventions of the human race. Two creations intended for entertainment for one, and as an invaluable source of affordable non-polluting energy for the other; this didn't stop humans from causing the death of tens of millions of their own using them. Are we going to consider the present technological boom as a double-edged sword as well in a few years?
             The danger here is not the loss of human lives but the risk that the information era may ring the final bell on one of our most cherished rights, freedom. It appears highly unlikely that the military researchers responsible for dreaming a network allowing a flowing exchange of information between remotely located computers could have envisioned that the same network would be at the same time a gateway to peoples' lives, a tool that both governments and criminals could, and indeed do, use to gain access to information supposed to be in the realm of the private. The results of such situation are pretty obvious to ponder, identity theft, "big brother" effect, intellectual property violation and the list goes on of the many threats to liberty that can ensue from the unregulated flow of information that is the process of finalization of the information super-highways. Though the Internet related part of this weakening of the private individual's ability to defend his or her right t!
             o privacy has received a lot of press lately, the problem's roots go far beyond information technologies and extend into our medical records and the way they are mishandled by health provider, into our financial data, every bit of information can now be acce...