We may only be certain that the latter will continue to expand, always under the direction of men who hold the public's liberties and right to privacy in contempt.
How can we have real consent of the governed when the government is entrenched with extreme secrecy, surveillance and contempt for privacy?
Yet, for so many reporters, such conflicts over privacy, harassment or contempt are foreign.
Absent the Constitution's prerequisite of "probable cause" and the statutory requirement of reasonable suspicion, each of these arbitrary stops flouts the law, makes a travesty of the right to privacy and breeds contempt for law enforcement.
But when the government introduced the bill into parliament on Tuesday, it demonstrated not only its disregard for privacy but its contempt for that other key pillar of British society: democracy.
If we do, we risk breaching privacy injunctions and contempt of court charges, which come with severe fines and possible jail time.
It will come as little surprise to many Britons that the government has contempt for privacy.
This is because J so artfully mirrors the main features of our current "lifestyle", from the endless production of formulaic pop culture and the glorification of infantile consumption, to the avoidance of difficulty and a systemic contempt for privacy.
True, the individual who tweeted the names of celebrities who have supposedly obtained privacy injunctions could face contempt of court proceedings if he can be identified - and if he knew that the information he published was restricted by court orders.
Last month the poet John Burnside rated J as worthy of being "seen as the dystopian British novel of its times" because it "so artfully mirrors the main features of our current 'lifestyle', from the endless production of formulaic pop culture and the glorification of infantile consumption, to the avoidance of difficulty and a systemic contempt for privacy".
