American Civil Liberties Union

What could be warmer and fuzzier than “trust”? Between two human beings, it’s a hard-won bond that binds them together. In society, it is a currency that helps create a prosperous and efficient economy and culture, as thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama and Bruce Schneier have argued. But recently the word has taken on a new cast of ambiguity, and seems to be fast becoming the newest entry in the lexicon of Orwellian formulations, along with such once purely warm and positive words such as “security,” “defense,” and “intelligence.”