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?