Trust is the new e-currency

“People are fearful of Google’s personalization efforts, they’re worried that they’re getting biased info on Wikipedia, and you just can’t find a good deposed Nigerian ambassador to invest in anymore.”

Kaila Colbin at the vortexDNA blog is asking, “Why is trust so important?”

“Other than the obvious, feel-good, look, I’ll-count-to-three-then-fall-back and you-catch-me sort of team-building aspect of it … trust is not a touchy-feely, airy-fairy commodity.

“Trust is what drives the world economy, and without it, our entire financial system would collapse.

“Trust is worth more than gold online these days.

“I’m going to say it again, in bold: In a world with few boundaries, trust is the only currency worth having.

Adding my broad sweep across the bow of the ship of state, there’s much work to be done in government too, where no web browser or trust certificate is offering us a lock and key.

In keeping with the brouhaha of the times we are living, a February 2007 survey by the Poneman Institute found that while we may trust the Post Office, the CIA, Homeland Security and the National Security Agency are “the least trusted federal agencies when it comes to protecting Americans’ privacy”, while the Department of Justice is on the very bottom of the list of 74 federal agencies!!

The study’s overall findings concluded that Americans remain concerned over a “loss of civil liberties and privacy rights,” “surveillance into personal life,” and “monitoring e-mail and Web activities.”