I've been thinking about "Herd immunity" a lot recently, but not with respect to /biology/. The concept that if we easily become overpowered by a threat if do not maintain an active defence against it is true in most political issues, too[1].
In the current NSA drama, for example, we are fortunate enough to HAVE a "vaccine" against many of the problems: encryption. It's not always something that can be used (just like vaccines), but if those are rare enough most of the abuse-of-power problems wouldn't even be attempted.
When a certain critical mass of people start skipping that protection, a tempting target is created and the problems com back, often much faster than expected. If I could just think of a clever epithet similar to "antivaxxers" to use when referring to someone who think they can skip encryption because "they aren't doing anything wrong" ("won't get $DISEASE").
[1]: insert traditional speculation about meme-vs-gene here
In the current NSA drama, for example, we are fortunate enough to HAVE a "vaccine" against many of the problems: encryption. It's not always something that can be used (just like vaccines), but if those are rare enough most of the abuse-of-power problems wouldn't even be attempted.
When a certain critical mass of people start skipping that protection, a tempting target is created and the problems com back, often much faster than expected. If I could just think of a clever epithet similar to "antivaxxers" to use when referring to someone who think they can skip encryption because "they aren't doing anything wrong" ("won't get $DISEASE").
[1]: insert traditional speculation about meme-vs-gene here