I don't really think this is a liberal/conservative issue. I'm what most Americans would call extremely liberal, and yet one of the very few legislators whose views consistently align with my own on matters of encryption and privacy is a tea-party libertarian Republican.

I think the proper political theory axis on which to hang this debate is libertarian-authoritarian, both of which exist in liberal and conservative thought.

If you're interested more in these issues, I wrote an article last month about california politics and silicon valley looking in particular around privacy legislation http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/12/30/losing-figh...

I most certainly am interested. Thank you for the link.

And for what it's worth, I hope the Al Jazeera America cutbacks don't affect the excellent written journalism you all do.

Wow I really liked this article. It encapsulates my thoughts and validates some of my suspicions on private data trafficking quite well.

Thinking of Silicon Valley as the both the bad guy and the good in the fight for privacy is quite interesting. On the one hand these big companies fight for anti-surveillance measures and they fight against laws for weakening encryption. On the other hand, they fight against laws designed to curb dissemination of private information and general consumer protection. This dichotomy is really striking to me.

Sacramento is very liberal. Sacramento County has its conservative areas.