What’s a poor hermit to do?

I’ve been avoiding the NSA/IRS/DOJ/whatever thing, because none of it comes as any shock (hell, it was never really a secret; remember TIA? Did you really think they weren’t going to go ahead and do that anyway?) and frankly it’s just too depressing.

As William Briggs says,

There is no equivalent in this case. No citizen can compete with or evade a Dark Star or PRISM, the 007-enemy-like names our beneficent government chose for its programs (this was also Krauthammer’s observation). All a citizen can do is avoid anything electronic: no cell phone, no computer, no medical records (which the IRS will soon have), no credit card, no car, and no heat signature—drones will track these. Remember drones? Only proles and animals are free.

At some point, no matter what lengths you go to in your search for privacy, you have to decide where your priorities lie. Me, of course, I could go to some pretty damned extreme lengths without harming myself. I can go so far back in the boonies I can take a shower in my front yard without the slightest worry that somebody’s going to be inflamed or offended by the sight of my naked ass. Which is, BTW, magnificent. But am I ready to cut myself off from all human contact? Become some sort of anchorite? I am not. Those electronic goodies may be what betray me to the outside world, but they’re also what keep me connected to it. As of now, I still want that.

So I, like everybody else, need to weigh my priorities and take my chances. The feds will continue to have access to my communication patterns, and I hope they find them soporific.

Because like everybody else, at this point hope is all that’s left.