It's a placeholder, and talking about it is distracting from the point (the "point" being maybe we can have both privacy and safety, and that the dichotomy is false). There is undeniably
some activity that we can both agree is evil, and therefore we can talk about Evil without having to figure out exactly what that activity is.
Or rather, we could if you were being intellectually honest.
Most people, if given the choice, will nearly always pick safety over privacy. It's simply not enough to say you can't have both, because privacy will eventually get thrown out by the electorate, of any country.