It really isn't common sense, it is common but not sensical.

Privacy is a great good and a lack thereof has vast implications none of which are beneficial to the whole of society. Privacy may be well worth the occasional death-by-terrorist or even the drug problem (which is far larger than terrorism). And who am I kidding, it's not as if the terrorists and the drug traffickers are the real target of this surveillance, it's basically the prelude to a statist future where any progressive will be 'on the radar' before they even realize they're worthy of the term.

If you choose to assume that privacy is inherently good, of course you will reach conclusions that say we should prioritize privacy over other things. Not really useful to people who recognize that privacy was nothing more than a temporary artifact of urbanization happening before widespread access to technology, and on the balance made people measurably less happy.

Other people with far better writing skills than me have written entire tomes on the subject.

This is a nice start:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/20/glenn-greenwald-pri...

As for privacy being nothing than a temporary artifact of urbanization and on the balance making people less happy: where do you get these conclusions? Do you honestly believe that before urbanization we didn't have meaningful privacy? Does the fact that you have privacy really make you less happy? How come?

Just because someone has written a thing - and even gotten it published - doesn't mean there is any truth to what they have written. Otherwise your link could just be to my comment.