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“A democracy based on fear is not a democracy. Fear of the commies, fear of the terrorists—it never ends! You know who else used fear to keep people in check? Stalin, Hitler—”
Fear isn’t the answer. If we’re afraid of everything, then we’re afraid to do anything, and that means we’re giving up our freedom.
“No risk,” said Chuck, wagging one finger in the air, “equals no freedom.”
“Freedom is civil liberty, and the foundation of civil liberty is privacy. No privacy means no civil liberty means no freedom.
“Because once they have your fingerprints,” continued Rory, ignoring Chuck, “you instantly become a suspect in every crime. They’ll run your fingerprints against everything they find at a crime. You go from being a free citizen to being a criminal suspect.”
“Because you don’t know,” I replied. “You’re seeing conspiracies, taking away someone else’s freedom to feed your paranoia.”
“I’m using the term ‘hacker’ in its original meaning of tinkering with code, of creating, not abusing. Hackers have gotten a bad rap. They didn’t have anything to do with this.”
We were a nation of freeloaders, ninety-eight percent of us non-food-producers relying on the two percent who produced anything edible. The time had come for the ninety-eight percent to pay their share, and it would be paid in blood.
