Here is how we are beginning: companies we sign up with online are basing their entire business model on collecting troves of personally identifying data about us, and then selling it. The ones that aren’t selling us out are storing troves of information about us, and those troves are repeatedly stolen by criminals. Instead of moving to protect us, laws are being developed to excuse those companies from responsibility. Law enforcement itself is engaging in an unchecked campaign of universal profiling and data gathering, and government agencies don’t appear to be any better at safeguarding our privacy than companies.

Household consumer devices which peer into your home and record your behaviors are under constant attack, inevitably bowing to sophisticated aggressors against whom it would be dangerous to retaliate.

Each of these potential adversaries is backed by deep pockets, with large teams of round-the-clock talent who have access to advanced technology.

On the opposing side, the task of our common defense has been heroically lead so far by a small number of national leaders like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union. Those few individuals who have made their home on the forefront of digital privacy defense labor at the margins, viewed by the public as exotics (at best).

It is in this daily crossfire the public finds itself friendless and bewildered, feeling powerless and understandably resigned.

The result is a staggering and increasingly consequential parade of vulnerability; we are being monitored, sniffed, attacked, penetrated, compromised and owned into a widespread posture of passive capitulation, with implications that are ruinous for our future.