I just saw this piece from Fortune reporting that Lawrence Lessig is predicting a catastrophic online event within the next decade that will prompt the US government to unveil an already-written bill similar to the PATRIOT Act which will grant the Fed additional powers in Internet surveilance and investigation. Evidently, Lessig got this information from a counterterrorism expert:

Lessig, a Stanford Law School professor who founded its Center for Internet and Society, said he came to this conclusion after a conversation with former federal counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke. Lessig said Clarke told him that the Justice Department had already written up much of the Patriot Act before the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and that there is a similar proposal on the shelf in case of an Internet catastrophe. Advocates of Internet openness will not be thrilled about its contents, Lessig said. “Vint Cerf is not going to like it very much,” Lessig recalls Clark saying.

If Lessig's right, this doesn't bode well for anyone. Lessig's comments were part of a panel discussion called, "2018: Life on the Net," about the future evolution of the Internet.