And? Unless your cutoff point for "bad enough to care about privacy" is the literal holocaust, that doesn't change a single thing about what I've said in a single one of my comments.
It turns out that amazingly, it is possible for multiple things to both be very bad -- bad enough to prompt action and concern -- while not being the exact same amount of bad. It is remarkable, but true. For example, sometimes you might put your hand on a stove and it might be hot enough to burn your skin, but also not as hot as the surface of the heckin sun -- and somehow your hand will still be burned. It's just incredible the way that continuums work.
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Look, I've donated $5 to the EFF in your name, which I'm hopeful will allow me to more easily internalize that convincing one singular person online that privacy didn't become obsolete when Hitler died is not a good use of my time or energy. Nobody is going to read down this far so there's nobody else at this point who's sake I'm arguing for; and HN is enough of a privacy-supportive forum that very few people on here needed to be convinced you were wrong anyway.
In contrast to things like the civil rights movement, transgender rights, abortion rights, and so on, this argument we're having right now is actually something that only affects a single person and is not worth the trouble. I shouldn't have gotten pulled into it; I make this mistake far too often. And I think that $5 is enough to offset any potential social impact you would have in this thread.
Okay argument aside, I appreciate the donation. I do kind of find the EFF to be insufferable in their outreach (hyperbolic), but that's a really nice thing to do. Thanks.
Fundamentally, I think we disagree on whether or not privacy is worth the cost of the people harmed by its existence. I don't think a surveillance state is necessary, but I also don't think bad people should be able to operate with impunity. I trust the American judicial system to provide warrants when necessary, and I believe such an "invasion" of privacy is both necessary and important to keep our society safe.
I further think it's a straw man when pro-privacy advocates pretend like their opposition believes everything should be out in the open; my original point was that nobody thinks everyone's laundry should be fully public. Nobody actually thinks "I've got nothing to hide" (the submission's title). That's not the opposite of total privacy, the "opposing" view is much less extreme.
It turns out that amazingly, it is possible for multiple things to both be very bad -- bad enough to prompt action and concern -- while not being the exact same amount of bad. It is remarkable, but true. For example, sometimes you might put your hand on a stove and it might be hot enough to burn your skin, but also not as hot as the surface of the heckin sun -- and somehow your hand will still be burned. It's just incredible the way that continuums work.
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Look, I've donated $5 to the EFF in your name, which I'm hopeful will allow me to more easily internalize that convincing one singular person online that privacy didn't become obsolete when Hitler died is not a good use of my time or energy. Nobody is going to read down this far so there's nobody else at this point who's sake I'm arguing for; and HN is enough of a privacy-supportive forum that very few people on here needed to be convinced you were wrong anyway.
In contrast to things like the civil rights movement, transgender rights, abortion rights, and so on, this argument we're having right now is actually something that only affects a single person and is not worth the trouble. I shouldn't have gotten pulled into it; I make this mistake far too often. And I think that $5 is enough to offset any potential social impact you would have in this thread.