Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on August 25, 2020, 10:14:38 AM

Quote from: Betwrong on August 25, 2020, 09:05:37 AM

transparency will be a bad thing only for terrorists, fraudsters and other outlaws. Normal citizens will not suffer from it at all.

Completely disagree.

You are essentially making the "nothing to hide" argument - if you aren't doing anything shady or immoral, then you have nothing to hide, and therefore you have nothing to fear from the government/feds/big brother sticking their noses in to your business and monitoring all you transactions. Only criminals/scammers/terrorists/etc. who are doing illegal things have something to fear.

Privacy is a fundamental human right. Without it, "normal citizens" as you put it suffer greatly. They simply become subjects of their government, willing to roll over and do whatever they are told to. Privacy must be protected.

Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on January 02, 2020, 08:47:38 AM

I don't need to spend a lot of time dismantling the "nothing to hide" argument, because it is already widely discredited. I will share one of my favorite quotes on the topic though:

Quote from: Glenn Greenwald

The old cliché is often mocked though basically true: theres no reason to worry about surveillance if you have nothing to hide. That mindset creates the incentive to be as compliant and inconspicuous as possible: those who think that way decide its in their best interests to provide authorities with as little reason as possible to care about them. Thats accomplished by never stepping out of line. Those willing to live their lives that way will be indifferent to the loss of privacy because they feel that they lose nothing from it. Above all else, thats what a Surveillance State does: it breeds fear of doing anything out of the ordinary by creating a class of meek citizens who know they are being constantly watched.

Privacy must be protected, I agree with you. And to not let the government to go too far in "tightening the screws", we need people like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald. Such people devote their lives to protecting our fundamental rights, and we must be grateful to them for that.

However, all humans are not perfect. We all make mistakes. And someone has to keep an eye on the process of protecting our freedoms, lest our protectors go too far in that. Let's not forget that there is the Paradox of Freedom, formulated by Karl Popper in the following way:

Quote from: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/349707.Karl_Popper

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek."

- Karl Popper

When I was younger, I'd say "Go, f**k yourself with your "paradox". I want as much freedom as possible!" But today I have come to realization that we would have 9/11 happening every week, if there were no surveillance.

Again, I'm not criticizing what people like Greenwald and Assange are doing. I'm grateful to them. I just claim the right to disagree with what they are saying, at least partially.