"I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all."If you look around you'll find a lot more examples than these two, and you'll trace the root cause as illegitimate use of government force, i.e. use or threat of violence for what is simply peaceful activity.
If someone threatens you with violence, "for your own good", you tend not to trust. But for some reason, when government does this very same thing, most people still trust it. It's like how children still trust parents even though the parents might restrain or even spank them (and this makes good evolutionary sense), but the difference is that the government is not your parent, it does not actually have a concern for you as an individual, it doesn't love you. It is a collection of strangers with their own agendas.
Somehow, government has figured out how to not only co-opt this evolutionary circuitry that was meant for trusting parents at a time when the child really doesn't know what's good for him, and what's more, extend this infantile frame of mind beyond childhood.
All of this recent NSA stuff is just getting toward the final consequences of allowing yourself to adopt such a childish frame of mind. The government has no more right to take a threatening or coercive action against innocent people than any stranger does.