While I do not necessarily agree with the article, I think it provides a reasonably solid argument explaining why your reaction is not necessarily as obvious as

While I do not necessarily agree with the article, I think it provides a reasonably solid argument explaining why your reaction is not necessarily as obvious as it might seem. The big deal about privacy is that it's not immediately obvious why having your privacy invaded is a particularly awful thing, which means that many people are not especially upset about it. The article gives the example of being able to analyze the mental health of a person through little more than a recording of their voice. Other recent progress includes being able to determine a person's sexuality from their face. As time progresses we're likely going to be able to determine more and more about people from entirely passive means. This opens up the door to immense exploitation without people ever realizing they're being exploited. Imagine we create a world with 100 people that are identical in every way except for one. 5 of those people will receive tremendous amounts of information, updated in real time, about the other 95 people. It's not hard to see that those 5 will eventually be able to obtain complete power over the 95, if they should seek it. The worst part is that it will seem all, more or less, organic - even though the conclusion is practically predetermined. In slavery the master-slave relation, and its inequity, was extremely visible and something clearly less than comforting to the senses. Aristotle mentions abolitionists in writings that are at least some 2,300 years old. Slavery persisted not for lack of opposition but because it was seen as a necessary evil by many. As Aristotle prophetically put it, "If the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves." But the inequity of privacy is mostly invisible. Demands for privacy are still even seen as somewhat bizarrely eccentric. It's improbable that the 'masses' will begin to understand how valuable their own privacy is any time in the foreseeable future. And so they will pay a tremendous price for this, all without ever realizing it or being able to change the trajectory that they're on.