There are laws to protect privacy yes, but for how long (look at the way things are going) it is after all the government who decide the privacy laws anyway.
Sure. But that's a failure of the political system, not technology. It's not technologies fault that the political (and by extension judicial) system is:1) Inherently flawed as it assumes a static (and often religious) frame of reference, both morally and ethically.
2) As a consequence of the fallacy of this assumption, horribly out of date.
3) Neigh impossible to change without a violent and bloody revolution.
4) Plays favorites to big business, as they are the only ones able to afford lobbyists.
Look at the situation with google in china, as soon as the government "asked" for info on political bloggers they just handed it over.
As I'm sure they would in America if they had some sort of child pornography service in countries that allowed that. Again it's a political problem that cannot be solved by technology. This ofcourse makes the fact that almost every politician (and their supporters) are raging technophobes, for whom technological progress will only be tolerated providing it suits their agenda. And I want an OS-native user interface.
Unless it's in Flash/Flex or?!? unless its for something inherently web based
There are no platform limitations that are inherent attributes of any type of software.