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I don't think such thought-terminating clichés are useful in the modern era. So only criminals don't file their SEC statements or their taxes? Yes. That is tru

I don't think such thought-terminating clichés are useful in the modern era. So only criminals don't file their SEC statements or their taxes? Yes. That is true. And we make it true because otherwise the injury society suffers granting such flavors of privacy is greater than the benefits society gains safeguarding such privacy. It allows bad actors too much freedom of movement in the dark if we don't enforce tax law or SEC disclosure law. As always, privacy is a balancing act between personal integrity and public need.

gottorf 3y ago
> because otherwise the injury society suffers granting such flavors of privacy is greater than the benefits society gains safeguarding such privacy Ideally this statement would be true of every piece of law or regulation that reduces individual liberties, including that of privacy. However, what actually seems to happen in practice is that: - government employees are incentivized to make things easier for themselves by expanding their own powers - elected policymakers are incentivized to enact sweeping new laws with their name stamped on them, and are not disincentivized from or punished by engaging in government overreach - ordinary people are not sufficiently inconvenienced by any single new breaches of privacy It all adds up to a ratcheting mechanism that only goes in the direction of less privacy and fewer individual liberties over time, and only "crackpots" (or people principled to the point of removing themselves from everyday society, e.g. rms when it comes to free software) oppose it.