The director of the FBI has been visiting Silicon Valley companies asking them to build back doors so that it can spy on what is being said online. The Department of Commerce is going after piracy. At home, the American government wants anything but Internet freedom.

I'm rarely invited to start-up parties, but who cares about their trinkets and apps anyway?

Simply getting a country's population online is not going to trigger a revolution in critical thinking.

Mobile phones are one of the most insecure devices that were ever available, so they're very easy to trace; they're very easy to tap.

Most other documents leaked to WikiLeaks do not carry the same explosive potential as candid cables written by American diplomats.

In addition to their 'do no evil' motto, Googlers have always been guided by another, much less explicit philosophy: 'computational arrogance.'

I have no problem with technological solutions to social problems. The key question for me is, 'Who gets to implement them?' and, 'What kinds of politics of reform do technological solutions smuggle through the back door?'