Fear, Inc.
`Unsettling times are boom times. The government is spending billions of dollars subsidizing R&D for technologies that both threaten privacy, like video surveillance and data mining, and those that protect it, like encryption, network security, and anonymization applications. VCs and Wall Street are spending billions more. Private corporations, increasingly concerned for the safety of their operations and data (think about those empty office towers in downtown New Orleans) have joined the security frenzy. Spending projections echo the dotcom predictions that once poured forth so liberally from research firms like Forrester and Jupiter: a $400 million-security sensor market for 2005; an $800 million video analysis market by 2009; $10 billion for biometrics and $36 billion for physical security technology (such as body armor and explosives screening) by 2007. The industry is thought to be worth up to $200 billion today.’
