Why should we fight government attempts to gather and open up even more information, regardless of the promises that might be put forward by our representatives and agencies?

Health care privacy law: All bark, no bite? - The Red Tape Chronicles - MSNBC.com:

In fact, there have been 22,664 HIPAA privacy-related complaints filed since the privacy rule took effect in 2004, and not a single institution has been fined for privacy lapses, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which enforces HIPPA. It's not clear that any of the three incidents above generated HIPAA privacy complaints, so the total number of privacy-related incidents is no doubt higher.

The government won't even enforce statutory information protection laws against private entities. Why would we ever expect the government to enforce regulations against itself? Of course, my favorite whipping boy, the Real ID Act, didn't even legislate privacy; it removed what limited privacy was already in place.

Two questions to consider:

1. What's the likelihood DHS will enhance privacy protections (rather than merely the legislated weakening of the DPPA inherent in the Real ID ACt) with its draft regulations for Real ID?
2. How likely is it that even if there is enhanced privacy, it will ever be enforced, when the easiest defense is "We were trying to root out terrorists?"