9/11: The day we lost our privacy and power

The catastrophe hardliners had secretly longed for was on everyone's screens, providing the justification for rafts of intrusive new surveillance measures.

Much aided and abetted by the internet giants' readily expressed contempt for privacy in the rush to monetise their customers and their customers' data, the long-term legacy of 9/11 is that new generations are being schooled to no longer see or understand why control of personal information may really matter, and why in history it does and did matter.