zlacker

>>syness+(OP)
"This affects all of us. We must care." is not an effective way of convincing someone.

I personally do not care about privacy. I see no reason why I should.

It's just my opinion. I know other people do but please don't generalize.

>>blitzp+6c
I think your opinion is valid and should be fairly represented, but consider that your reasons for not caring about privacy may be flawed or inconsistent.

Assuming that you don't care about privacy because you're apathetic, do you also not care about free speech because you don't say anything controversial? Do you care about your right to assembly even if you don't protest anything? As an extreme example upon which to build a baseline, would you mind if a neighbor had unmitigated access to watching you lounge in your underwear, take a shower or have sex?

Why do you not care about privacy? Do you feel that you don't need it because you have nothing to hide, or are you willing to sacrifice it for some greater good (e.g. terrorism etc.)? Are you merely indifferent or do you aggressively oppose the concept?

>>dsacco+lc
First of all thank you for respecting my opinion. I appreciate it.

1.) Free speech is a completely different topic. Snowden's quote on this page makes no sense to me no matter how often I re-read it. If free speech didn't exist I wouldn't be able to express my opinion about privacy :)

2.) Privacy means hiding the truth. Hiding what really happened. Hiding who you really are. I believe it is a flaw of the human personality that makes us want to hide information and eventually lie about it.

I don't care if Google or the government knows that I'm searching "[insert embarassing keywords for you here]" or if Facebook knows my location, or if Twitter knows what I like based on the people I follow.

Who is the government? It's people. People like you and me. If people decide to make assumptions based on data they collected and the assumptions aren't correct it's their own fault for assuming something in the first place (because...you know...it's an assumption...it can be wrong).

I am not aggressively opposing the concept of privacy. I respect other people's opinion.

>>blitzp+ng
I understand that you believe that privacy is hiding the truth. It appears that you believe that the only reason someone would hide any information is because it only allows one to lie. Thus you conclude that since lying is bad, privacy is also bad because it promotes lying. If the above chain of reasoning is accurate, then let's do a thought experiment. What if you personally hold a belief that is contrary to public opinion, in fact, let's say it's a crime to believe this, but you still believe it? And for some reason you decided to make mention of it to someone and you are outed for holding a belief. Do you think that even though you disagree with society at large, you should be punished for that belief? Who is correct in this scenario? You? The people? ... privacy isn't just about lies, it's about being able to have space to have thoughts and develop concepts that may not be ready for public consumption. It's about freedom to think about concepts or beliefs without State retribution for not holding the party line. It's not about withholding truth. It's about being able to control the information that you personally generate without fear of judgement from external parties.

>>mutati+Nh
The underlying assumption to your hypothetical is that thought crimes exist. I would say that someone in that situation doesn't have a privacy problem, they have a governance problem. Either a dictator has seized power or their fellow citizens have voted to make it illegal to express certain ideas. And in either case, encryption isn't going to be much of a solution. It'll only delay the inevitable. Someone who talks about illegal ideas is taking a big risk anyway.

It seems common that the arguments for privacy trumping other values depend on bad behavior by state actors. In which case, reforming the state by whatever means necessary would probably do more good than advocating for philosophical concepts.

>>karmac+Ot
Fair. I was just trying to take the problem to the hypothetical edge of having no privacy at all; to a case where you do not even enough privacy to share a thought without fear of retribution. I was also trying to align the idea with their understanding of freedom of speech, they do agree freedom of speech is ok, so if you can tie speech into thought and then also into privacy, maybe there would be a logical connection that allows them to understand the need for privacy as a type of freedom.

The situation is very complex because privacy has been implicit in our daily lives for so long, it's really difficult to map out the ways it would reduce our personal freedom. If we want to remove privacy, then we need to make it impossible for anyone to keep anything private from anyone else.

If privacy isn't important; then we should all live in proverbial glass houses where everyone can see everyone else's lives. Why should we trust the government with that power, why not everyone?