Does anyone really believe that these systems could possibly remain private in such a situation?

In today’s competitive marketplace, communications providers have an enormous incentive to protect your privacy. If they don’t, you have options. Cable competes against DSL, Satellite competes with both, and as the economics change to a more favorable environment perhaps wireless providers will move into the market as it matures and promises profitability.

A government-run system, though, has the ability to dip into tax dollars to hide the actual cost to consumers. You will wind up paying for the system in your property or income taxes, but the subsidized rate will make private providers poor competitors with the developing government monopoly. They will become bit players—or perhaps cut a deal with the government just to maintain their businesses.

In many ways this seemingly benign trend—to “move municipal infrastructure into the 21st Century” some would say—could turn out to be one of the greatest threats to our liberty in our times.

Liberty is rarely lost in one fell swoop. It erodes little by little, bit by bit, as we cede control of ever increasing parts of our lives to government control and regulation. This trend, however benign it appears to most observers, is perhaps the greatest long-term threat to our liberty today. Controlling the communications high-ground—bandwidth to consumers—should never be put into the hands of government officials, or any monopoly for that matter.

Government officials are asking you to make a false and dangerous trade: supposedly “lower” prices (actually subsidized by your tax dollars) in exchange for your very freedom. It’s a fool’s bargain.

Only the free market—which will directly respond to consumers’ desire for privacy, offers any hope at all for keeping the communications market both free and private. Consumers will flee service providers who won’t maintain their privacy—that is, unless they no longer have the option when government controls the market.

So when your city or county suggests to you that they get into the communications business—to save you money, of course—you should give them one answer and one answer only: hell no!