The best we can hope for in future is a transparent or sousveillance society where an informational balance of power is maintained. Currently the main bottleneck is ISPs, and these are points of weakness where top-down control can be introduced to a greater or lesser extent.
The end of privacy was a foregone conclusion: with such rapidly falling cost for video and audio hardware, the only way to keep privacy would be totalitarianism.
It should be mentioned that Rop admitted at last year's congress that they were too pessimistic and that things are actually better than they looked back than. The German constitutional court has been surprisingly effective in stopping many of the government's surveillance initiatives, which no one really expected back then.
Of course, none of this really contradicts your main point, but I thought the change of opinion of the speakers might be interesting.
http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2005/22C3-920-en-we_lost...
The best we can hope for in future is a transparent or sousveillance society where an informational balance of power is maintained. Currently the main bottleneck is ISPs, and these are points of weakness where top-down control can be introduced to a greater or lesser extent.