WHY SHOULD YOU BE WORRIED ABOUT IT?
If you’re a normal person, you are probably a thief. Millions of people use BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer utilities to illicitly acquire music or movies. Illegal downloads are a great way to distribute malicious software—hide a virus in a popular piece of content, and thousands or millions of people could infect their own computers.
A hacker interested in more than just burning your hard drive or turning your computer into a spam-distributing slave can trick you into installing software that will invade your phone or GPS. Once your device is infected, hackers gain access to your contacts list, your e-mail, your text messages, and your Internet traffic. They can log passwords and credit card numbers directly off your phone, and you might never suspect a thing.
Identity theft is an international industry worth billions. Because the link between the theft of personal information and actual fraud is often difficult to discern, no one can say for sure how bad the problem actually is, or even what your chances of being a victim are. What we do know, though, is that the potential gains for a criminal are huge, for a relatively small risk.
On the other side of the coin, a government with the ability to track every one of its citizens is a dangerous creature. A government that holds such a power will inevitably try to use it. The ability to track our movement is only a short step from the ability to control our movement, at which point the government becomes our owner rather than our servant.