Liberty through Privacy

"When a state imposes iron control over everyday life, silences even the mildest criticism, drives its citizens into their homes in fear, censors the news, closes the theaters, revokes passports, knocks on the door at 4:00 a.m. and drags parents from their screaming children -- who is served? The citizen in need of a modicum of order -- or the state itself, protecting itself from outrage?...Surplus order is that excess order imposed not for the benefit of the society, but exclusively for the benefit of those who control the state. Surplus order is the antithesis of beneficial or socially necessary order. The regime that imposes surplus order on its suffering citizens deprives itself of the Rousseauian justification for existence."
-- Alvin & Heidi Toffler, Powershift:
Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence
at the Edge of the 21st Century