One bit of optimistic news that rebuts the fatalist-apathy school of thought on the privacy issue:
Ever since the story started, I thought that its main significance would be to get a critical mass of users and providers to take security seriously, which would be beneficial against private-sector crooks even if the public-sector ones straighten up and start flying right. While the message clearly hasn’t been received everywhere (coffSonycoff), the trend does seem to be headed in that direction, and a reaffirmation that it isn’t a vain errand is bound to help in that regard.