I'm sure there are people who say this, but there seem to be infinitely many more people who will smugly repeat this quote instead. It's getting a little tired and, in the context of HN, is definitely preaching to the choir. We're almost all on the same page about the importance of privacy.
You're going to keep hearing it as long as those back doors exist. You know what I'm a little tired of? Politicians using the same old "won't someone think of the children!" arguments every time they erode our privacy even further.
The issue is that I don't think it is the most effective argument for influencing others to change their mind.
Why? Because people assume that it is highly unlikely that they will be the target of such a search, assume that a warrant would be needed, and in the bigger scheme of things, a backdoor is worth having in case someone who has committed a crime or is reasonably suspected of having committed a crime can be pursued.
So there's a principles / practicality tradeoff that I think people are making.
Further, telling people that the government might spy on you with the purpose of locking you up or fining you comes across as overly paranoid. Again, not saying this hasn't happened in the past or in other regimes, but this just isn't a sizable number of people's experience (in the US or Canada for example).
>people assume that it is highly unlikely that they will be the target of such a search
Rather than directly handing someone an unlocked phone, I like to think of it more like the residents of high-rise buildings who leave their curtains open no matter WHAT they're doing in the apartment. They figure the chances that someone is looking in THEIR window is miniscule even though the technology to do so is cheap and easy to obtain. The thing is, I bet a LOT of high rise residents, especially on higher floors, do leave curtains open all the time.
Well no. You need to THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Take the case of primary school teacher Gladys. She beats children when she's drunk to much at school. If a kid makes trouble on the playground sometimes she even kicks them until they stop asking for her attention. She doesn't have any children of her own and you can actually see her skin crawl when yet another parent makes the suggestion she might want one. What a headache. Well, the headache might be yesterday's booze, but you get the point.
You see, every year there's one or two toddlers in her class that realize that either they can hit back, or take revenge by stealing those plastic cards in her purse she finds so important. And the other gets the idea they might get some support from their parents if they steal her emergency Jack Daniels bottle and take it to their parents.
With privacy HOW WILL THE POLICE FIND REASONS TO THROW THOSE CHILDREN INTO RE-EDUCATION CENTERS? Without constant surveillance of yet more aspects of those children's lives (OUTSIDE of school or anything perfect, I mean government related, of course). I mean unless every hairdresser tells Youth Services that these are bad parents.
With privacy how will youth services find reasons to throw children of parents who've committed heinous crimes into youth services? Heinous crimes such as abortions or same sex marriages or even ... gone to a protest for those unmentionable rights, or legalizing Satan-juice and Belzebub-smoke? Those parents could even be Jesus-killers, sorry, Jews is the PC term isn't it? Or terro...Muslims. We can't use that as a reason, but obviously children can't be trusted to those parents, so we'll trust them to youth services, you know, where half the girls grow up to be prostitutes, and most boys have more drugrunning arrests than points on their final exams. I mean the ones that actually do their final exams at all. Ahhhhh ... God bless good old American government style child upbringing!
Think of the children! Think of Gladys! Think of the heinous crimes some children might be confronted with! DO YOU WANT BABY JESUS TO DIE?
In other words privacy is bad if and only if the government is near-perfect. If the government is no better (and in fact significantly worse) than the society it serves ... then privacy protects you.
Politicians can implement whatever draconian policy they want and with zero resistance by simply telling right-wing people that it's stopping the bajillion pedophiles that are around every corner in society, and telling left-wing people that it's stopping the bajillion neo-nazis that are around every corner in society.
Personally, as someone who is very passionate about privacy HN is not a safe-harbor for pro-privacy talks.
Anti-privacy people come in a lot of shades.
Some of them like to think of themselves as "good people" who never need to be protected from the law because they believe they always follow the law, therefore, the law is always on their side.
Some of them are holdouts of a bygone age where people championed an open internet coupled with an open society and open government.
There's probably more categories than that, but those are the two I encounter most often on this website. Unfortubately, if you read into what they're sayinf, they hold moral positions on the issue so it's next to impossible to have discourse with them.
What does a "safe harbor" mean to you? If you're looking for uncritical acceptance, you aren't going to find that anywhere (well, you will, but those places are not going to be interesting, conversationally).
I'm pro-privacy: I think we have a fundamental (natural) right to privacy, and I support legislation that practically strengthens that right. But that doesn't mean that I agree with you on everything, and it's unreasonable to expect that.
Solid question and thanks for the callout. I'm never looking for uncritical acceptance. I am looking for a non-hostile environment though; ideologies which would be willing to explore the nuance and reasonings of the privacy movements and debate them with me are more than welcome.
Safe harbor was probably not the right word; I'm talking about people you can't even have basic privacy conversations with because their worldview is just so baseline different. It's next to impossible to have conversations about privacy with a person who believes you should be able to view all sensitive information about a person because of their belief that a transparent society is analogous to bleach. The people who believe they and their friends are the last bastion of good people on Earth and that they have nothing to hide cannot be reasoned with either.
These are people who won't even say, "privacy is important".
