The bank I used on the east coast of the US for my personal banking and my business was a small regional bank. I don't regret the decision, they helped me out a couple of times above and beyond what I expected. However since I have moved to Arizona I need to shut down one of the accounts. To do so I have to write a formal letter to them courtesy of the mis-named Patriot Act.

The woman on the phone that I spoke to kept repeating that it was because of the Patriot Act and was to ensure my safety. I didn't go off on her, the number of times she repeated it suggested it was from a script, and she didn't really seem to believe it either. Literally it is government red-tape because government can.

There probably isn't an area I am in danger from terrorism anymore. The rules for flying changed by the time the first two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. The fourth flight knew they were going to die and fought back. In the past if you were hijacked you stayed calm and waited for the Israeli's, Germans or French to shoot every hijacker in sight once they got established and worked out what was going on.

As a disruptive technology hijacking a plane and then crashing it has a limited half life. As the crazy fellow in Tasmania showed, cause any sort of disturbance and you have stewards and passengers lining up to hand out a beat down. The rules have changed.

But government doesn't lose an opportunity to add more control over its citizenry. The monopoly on violence and legislation is an addiction. Bruce Schneier wrote:

Since 9/11, two - or maybe three - things have potentially improved airline security: reinforcing the cockpit doors, passengers realizing they have to fight back and - possibly - sky marshals. Everything else - all the security measures that affect privacy - is just security theater and a waste of effort.

By the same token, many of the anti-privacy "security" measures we're seeing -- national ID cards, warrantless eavesdropping, massive data mining and so on -- do little to improve, and in some cases harm, security. And government claims of their success are either wrong, or against fake threats.

The debate isn't security versus privacy. It's liberty versus control.

That comment is nothing ground breaking. Any commentator interested in liberty and limited government is aware of what is going on. History has shown over and over that increasing liberty is a superior form of self-organisation.