Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

Re:Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is... by tdyen on Wednesday January 06, 2016 @02:00AM (#10849066)

I think Snowden showed that it is as easy as pressing a button which is why he went and blurted it out. The NSA were also working to make it easier to track people.

My take on it is privacy is dead or nearly and we have to have good legal protections of who can use what data and when. The privacy arms race will mostly be won by big government with lots of resources and enough willing/foolish patriots (Depending on your point of view).

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Re:Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is... by cm2187 on Wednesday January 06, 2016 @03:01AM (#10849228)

I agree. And the logical next step is that there will be inevitably abuses, that some of the victims of these abuses will ultimately access power, and that we will have proper privacy protection after that, like we do for regular mail or like we do for your physical home.

It is just a shame that we have to go through the whole cycle given that we just know it should happen. But in a way, the more extensive the surveillance is, the quicker this cycle will happen. And right now we are in a pretty bad place already. So let's be optimistic!

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