"I've been asked to explain why I don't worry much about the topics of privacy threat...One reason is that these scenarios seem to assume that there will be large, monolithic bureaucracies...that are capable of harnessing computers for one-way surveillance of an unsuspecting populace. I've come to feel that computation just doesn't work that way. Being afraid of monolithic organizations especially when they have computers, is like being afraid of really big gorillas especially when they are on fire." - Bruce Sterling, remarks on commercial use of private information, at Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference IV, Chicago IL, Mar. 26, 1994. [full transcript available at ftp.eff.org, /pub/Publications/Bruce_Sterling/cfp94_sterling.speech]
