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"When you say I don't care about the right to privacy because I have nothing to hide, that is no different than saying I don't care about freedom of speech beca

"When you say I don't care about the right to privacy because I have nothing to hide, that is no different than saying I don't care about freedom of speech because I have nothing to say or freedom of the press because I have nothing to write." - Edward Snowden

PavlovsCat 11y ago
> I've heard quite a lot of people that talk about post-privacy, and they talk about it in terms of feeling like, you know, it's too late, we're done for, there's just no possibility for privacy left anymore and we just have to get used to it. And this is a pretty fascinating thing, because it seems to me that you never hear a feminist say that we're post-consent because there is rape. And why is that? The reason is that it's bullshit. > We can't have a post-privacy world until we're post-privilege. So when we cave in our autonomy, then we can sort of say, "well, okay, we don't need privacy anymore, in fact we don't have privacy anymore, and I'm okay with that." Realistically though people are not comfortable with that. Because, if you only look at it from a position of privilege, like, say, white man on a stage, then yeah, maybe post-privacy works out okay for those people. But if you have ever not been, or if you are currently not, a white man with a passport from one of the five good nations in the world, it might not really work out well for you, and in fact it might be designed specifically such that it will continue to not work out well for you, because the structures themselves produce these inequalities. > So when you hear someone talk about post-privacy, I think it's really important to engage them about their own privilege in the system and what it is they are actually arguing for. -- Jacob Appelbaum ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s )
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Post-privilege is impossible by definition in any society where scarcity exists. Even if various identities are all elevated to an equal level of acceptance, the term "privilege" will simply be shifted to more nebulous concepts. Finally, the conclusion that reaching post-privilege will result in a feasible post-privacy does not follow at all. What, is the implication here that white men "on stages" have nothing to hide? I don't get it. Leave it to some people to turn a human rights issue into an identity politics issue.
  - PavlovsCat 11y ago
    > Even if various identities are all elevated to an equal level of acceptance, the term "privilege" will simply be shifted to more nebulous concepts. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. > Finally, the conclusion that reaching post-privilege will result in a feasible post-privacy does not follow at all. From the claim that a post-privacy society would have to be post-privilege does not follow that all post privilege societes have to be post-privacy. Right now, when people say "no privacy", that in practice means zero privacy for some or most people, and total opaqueness for others (e.g. the NSA, or people who can make things go away with bribes, etc.). It doesn't actually mean "no privacy for anyone". For that to be the case, society would have to be actually egalitarian, e.g. post-privilege. > What, is the implication here that white men "on stages" have nothing to hide? They don't get killed by drones for starters. Appelbaum lives in Berlin because he feels safer there than in the US IIRC, it's not like he doesn't have spook pressure in his life; but he still considers himself privileged, imagine that. If someone says homeless alcoholics should be rounded up and put into camps, then the fact that they aren't that, and don't have a friend in that situation, is their "privilege" they may not be aware of. That has nothing to do with "identitiy politics" to me. And I don't see how that is nebulous either? "Privilege" is not a complicated word, it means what it means in context and is perfectly fine to use.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. We have. The question of how to eliminate "class privilege" has remained open for quite a while and will for as long as the optimal distribution of scarce resources is still an active field of study. It doesn't actually mean "no privacy for anyone". For that to be the case, society would have to be actually egalitarian, e.g. post-privilege. You're delving into Foucault territory here, which is fine but also somewhat tangential. Of course the people doing the spying and the people who fund it will be less affected (but maybe not with the bad state of infosec), that's a given where any power structure is involved. How would egalitarianism fix this? I think you're operating under a wholly different definition of egalitarianism than is commonly accepted. The only way to solve your dilemma is through a stateless society with a totally flat hierarchy with a method of economic exchange that doesn't involve a market system, or any mechanism that awards having more information. They don't get killed by drones for starters. Not yet. If someone says homeless alcoholics should be rounded up and put into camps, then the fact that they aren't that, and don't have a friend in that situation, is their "privilege" they may not be aware of. That's just asymmetry. You can just as easily have it be an oppressed group calling for the internment of a dominant group, which by definition they will not be a part of, and may not even be in contact with if there are factors like apartheid put into play. Calling it "privilege" makes no sense. "Privilege" is not a complicated word, it means what it means in context and is perfectly fine to use. The sociological concept of privilege is in fact an inversion of what we generally call a privilege. Sociological privilege often refers to constant and immutable characteristics that cannot be taken away, and moreover makes the value judgment that the group with privilege is bad, and that said privilege must be abolished. This is totally ass-backwards: it should be that the disadvantaged group is elevated to the same level of privilege, because more often than not (excluding class) "privilege" simply refers to the baseline that preferably all groups should be held to.
- zxcvcxz 11y ago
  What are his ideas to 'fix' the system?
  - PavlovsCat 11y ago
    That's a big question about someone who gives a lot of talks: https://www.youtube.com/results?filters=long&search_query=jacob+appelbaum https://www.youtube.com/results?filters=long&search_query=ja...
- lookbothways 11y ago
  Man, if there ever was an instance of alienating a sympathetic audience, this would be it. How does one take a golden argument like "privacy is an inalienable right," turn it into a tired "you should be ashamed for being white, check your privilege shitlord" flamebait, and still get taken seriously?
  - glesica 11y ago
    > you should be ashamed for being white, check your privilege shitlord You had to work pretty damn hard to get this out of that quote. His point was that a lot of people who say they (and by extension society, this part is important) don't need privacy probably don't need privacy because their privilege protects them. So then the goal has to be to convince them that their privileged position makes them a special case, and that they should care about the unprivileged. It isn't just white people who have privilege, that's just an example. This general idea really isn't controversial, but the terminology elicits very strong negative reactions in people for some reason (I honestly don't understand it). If I pointed out that the TSA screens darker-skinned people with extra vigor, often inconveniencing those people, most people would agree with me. If I then said that I don't care about this issue because I'm white, so I breeze through TSA checkpoints without any problems, many people would tell me I should be a little more considerate of others. But if I call myself "privileged" in this instance then all of a sudden people would be whining about social justice warriors or something like that. Very strange.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - aaronem 11y ago
      > But if I call myself "privileged" in this instance then all of a sudden people would be whining about social justice warriors or something like that No one has ever managed successfully to divorce the concept of privilege from the implication of blame, so saying that someone has privilege (or, worse in this context, is privileged), is tantamount to saying that they're a bad person and they should feel bad. Is it any wonder there's pushback? Whether privilege and blame should be so inextricably linked is a separate discussion, and one I've seen from time to time in progressive circles. But, to people who aren't deeply enough immersed in such circles to be familiar with all the theory around the concept, that's how it comes across.
jsingleton 11y ago
Well put. The Open Rights Group regularly do briefings on things like this and one of the "Responses you might get and how to counter them" arguments is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear That isn’t true. Surveillance has been used against journalists, whistleblowers and human rights activists. Most of us want to keep parts of our lives private." [0] I've had people use the naïve "nothing to fear" argument before. Tell them that even if they wrongly believe that they don't require privacy, people working in their interest do. [0] https://www.openrightsgroup.org/assets/files/campaign_resources/General%20Election%202015/Briefing%20pack.pdf https://www.openrightsgroup.org/assets/files/campaign_resour...
- perfTerm 11y ago
  And even if I have nothing to hide why can't I fear for potential whistle blowers, journalists, or activists? It's a shame that we love to boil incredibly complex issues down into simple platitudes. You find it on facebook, on the news, on twitter (although short and sweet does work well there), and every where else you look and people you talk to. It's a shallow way to talk about things.
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    I agree, except I don't think it's "incredibly complex". The bigger issue is in reducing things to a soundbite, we almost always end up with something that just speaks to the individual. And as you pointed out, I may have nothing to 'hide' myself, but want to ensure the privacy of others as a basic freedom.
    - Qwertious 11y ago
      As a general rule though, soundbites often do simplify things that are incredibly complex - the economy is broken, so clearly the solution to literally everything is to Reduce Taxes/Tax The Rich More/Your Nonsense Here. Those generally have a grain of truth, but there is no simple one-line solution here, it's invariably quite complex. The field of economics is an entire field rather than a one-paragraph summary, after all.
gambler 11y ago
This is the best way I'v heard anyone phrase this idea. Makes me want to watch more interviews with Snowden. Clearly, he is more than just some guy who leaked secret information. His personal take on surveilance is very interesting as well.
- Sideloader 11y ago
  The documentary film Citizenfour is a good place to start. Or, you know, half the Internet (YouTube especially) ;)
at-fates-hands 11y ago
This is such an odd statement and fundamentally confuses two very different ideas. First of all, there is no express right to privacy in the Constitution. There is however, the Bill of Rights which everybody is familiar with. It does outline protecting specific aspects of privacy which include such things as the First Amendment (freedom of religion) or the 4th Amendment, (privacy of your possessions against unlawful search and seizure). The supreme court refuses to protect privacy beyond those issues which are directly related to the Bill of Rights even though the public believes it is their right to have a blanket type of protection against congressional overreach. To hear Snowden confuse these things by lumping rights protected under the Constitution with a broad reaching idea of the public's right of privacy (which is does not have), and then equating them is puzzling.
- TorKlingberg 11y ago
  The concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of the press exist outside of US constitution.
- mikegioia 11y ago
  This makes no sense to me. What is Snowden "confusing" here? Is he confusing privacy rights with free-speech rights because the latter is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution while the former is only indirectly referenced? If that's the case, you do nothing to explain why it's odd, why it's puzzling to you, or what Snowden's confused about. His analogy does not fundamentally confuse anything; he's equating privacy rights to speech rights through a weak notion that having no interest for one equates to no need for the right. Privacy in and of itself might not be a right explicitly granted by the Constitution, but the analogy is clear and an accurate description of how ludicrous it is to give up a right because you see no need for it.
- effie 11y ago
  Not puzzling at all. He is making a general analogy between man's freedom to exercise speech and freedom to exercise privacy. There is no mention of constitution or bill of rights in that statement. Courts refusing to protect freedoms are not mentioned either.
- 11y ago
Sideloader 11y ago
“What people used to call liberty and freedom we now call privacy. And we say, in the same breath, that privacy is dead.” — Jacob Appelbaum
- thedragonaut 11y ago
  "I hope someone submits (one of) the OPM dataset(s) to @wikileaks. Would be a nice addition to ICWatch: https://icwatch.wikileaks.org/ https://icwatch.wikileaks.org/ " -- Jacob Appelbaum https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/609622195434819584 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/609622195434819584
hammock 11y ago
Or I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have a gun
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago
  > Or I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have a gun You're doing it wrong. If you want to paraphrase one of the two affirmations in that quote, you need to write something like: "Or I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have anything to shoot at". The second part of that structure is showing a use case for that freedom (speaking, publishing, shooting). Simple possession is not enough. So concentrate more the next time you feel like entertaining this fantasy that civilians need to be able to freely shoot at stuff, just like they need to freely speak and publish.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    Okay then: "I don't care about the freedom to bear arms because I have nothing to protect" I agree that fending off a modern army with rifles is a pipe dream which causes political blindness (although this disparity just illustrates how thoroughly the second amendment has already been trampled). But there are plenty of smaller scale immediate situations where one might really wish they had a gun - eg bears while camping. Also the whole premise around these sayings is ultimately flawed. When we are forced into coming up with justifications for natural rights (thought, communication, using tools, being left alone, etc), we're fighting a losing war.
    - carsongross 11y ago
      I agree that fending off a modern army with rifles is a pipe dream Tell that to the mujahideen...
      - mindslight 11y ago
        My version of "fending off" includes an end goal where you're no longer under attack and don't have to hide out in caves. Guerrilla campaigns work because they're driving less-committed foreign invaders out through attrition. Our domestic military has nowhere else to withdraw to, and would necessarily have broken free of public opinion (otherwise democracy would put a stop to anything long before sustained conflict). Don't get me wrong, if any such thing occurs I would much rather have distributed gun ownership than not. Furthermore, the right to bear arms quite obviously covers conventional explosives, armored vehicles, and missiles. To the extent that this might not be good policy, then the second amendment should have been rewritten rather than simply trampled. On the political front, it frustrates me to see the amount of energy shoehorned into "they're gonna take our guns", which imho causes people to be myopic to the other rights that are being oppressed. I'm not talking about commenters in this thread (who obviously have more than one issue in their head at once), but your less-connected punter who turns on talk radio and has their specific desire for freedom transmuted into support for a different flavor of tyranny.
imglorp 11y ago
It's also crucial to civilization that everyone _else_ has these rights, not just you. You can't take internet, roads, and telephones away just because bad guys sometimes use them. I want my neighbor to have all rights, even if he is doing wrong with them.
joshuak 11y ago
Also the argument is framed backwards. The question isn't, 'why do I need my privacy'. The question is, 'why do you need to take it'.
- bmurphy1976 11y ago
  Well, that's not helpful. They already have an answer and it clearly works: because of the terrorists trying to take our land and take away our God!! Think of the children!! I fail to see how reframing the argument is going to change anything. What we need is WAY more transparency. If there's transparency, then the abuses will be obvious, and once people see the abuses they will say "enough is enough." That ultimately is why they want to keep this hidden. It's not because the "terrorists" will find out, it's because WE will find out and we won't like what we see. Tit for Tat. If you want to take away our privacy, then we MUST have complete transparency in return.
  - Zuider 11y ago
    >I fail to see how reframing the argument is going to change anything I would argue that joshuak's formulation above is not a reframing, but the original and correct definition of the right to privacy. Just as with property and liberty, the default presumption should be that there is an intrinsic right of title, and that any challenge to that entitlement should face a heavy burden of justification. >Tit for Tat. If you want to take away our privacy, then we MUST have complete transparency in return. Such a trade off could really only be made to work in the light the formulation above.
  - TheHydroImpulse 11y ago
    'Some might say "I don't care if they violate my privacy; I've got nothing to hide." Help them understand that they are misunderstanding the fundamental nature of human rights. Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority. But even if they could, help them think for a moment about what they're saying. Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. A free press benefits more than just those who read the paper.' - Snowden
reagency 11y ago
That statement has 0 persuasive value to the target audience. Of course they see these equivalently. Try feel normal and they don't care about fringe people.
jotm 11y ago
Oh, so that's who said it (shouldn't be a surprise). I like that quote.
nkhodyunya 11y ago
This is a bad analogy(really, was there any good one at all?). It's clear that when you have nothing to write it means you have no reason to bother about freedom of press as a writer. But still, as a reader, you probably want to have access to what others write, so it more depends on other's abilities to write. But when we speak about privacy, the whole thing changes. If you have nothing to hide, it's hard to imagine why should you care about someone else's right to privacy.

PavlovsCat 11y ago

> I've heard quite a lot of people that talk about post-privacy, and they talk about it in terms of feeling like, you know, it's too late, we're done for, there's just no possibility for privacy left anymore and we just have to get used to it. And this is a pretty fascinating thing, because it seems to me that you never hear a feminist say that we're post-consent because there is rape. And why is that? The reason is that it's bullshit. > We can't have a post-privacy world until we're post-privilege. So when we cave in our autonomy, then we can sort of say, "well, okay, we don't need privacy anymore, in fact we don't have privacy anymore, and I'm okay with that." Realistically though people are not comfortable with that. Because, if you only look at it from a position of privilege, like, say, white man on a stage, then yeah, maybe post-privacy works out okay for those people. But if you have ever not been, or if you are currently not, a white man with a passport from one of the five good nations in the world, it might not really work out well for you, and in fact it might be designed specifically such that it will continue to not work out well for you, because the structures themselves produce these inequalities. > So when you hear someone talk about post-privacy, I think it's really important to engage them about their own privilege in the system and what it is they are actually arguing for. -- Jacob Appelbaum ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s )

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Post-privilege is impossible by definition in any society where scarcity exists. Even if various identities are all elevated to an equal level of acceptance, the term "privilege" will simply be shifted to more nebulous concepts. Finally, the conclusion that reaching post-privilege will result in a feasible post-privacy does not follow at all. What, is the implication here that white men "on stages" have nothing to hide? I don't get it. Leave it to some people to turn a human rights issue into an identity politics issue.
- PavlovsCat 11y ago
  > Even if various identities are all elevated to an equal level of acceptance, the term "privilege" will simply be shifted to more nebulous concepts. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. > Finally, the conclusion that reaching post-privilege will result in a feasible post-privacy does not follow at all. From the claim that a post-privacy society would have to be post-privilege does not follow that all post privilege societes have to be post-privacy. Right now, when people say "no privacy", that in practice means zero privacy for some or most people, and total opaqueness for others (e.g. the NSA, or people who can make things go away with bribes, etc.). It doesn't actually mean "no privacy for anyone". For that to be the case, society would have to be actually egalitarian, e.g. post-privilege. > What, is the implication here that white men "on stages" have nothing to hide? They don't get killed by drones for starters. Appelbaum lives in Berlin because he feels safer there than in the US IIRC, it's not like he doesn't have spook pressure in his life; but he still considers himself privileged, imagine that. If someone says homeless alcoholics should be rounded up and put into camps, then the fact that they aren't that, and don't have a friend in that situation, is their "privilege" they may not be aware of. That has nothing to do with "identitiy politics" to me. And I don't see how that is nebulous either? "Privilege" is not a complicated word, it means what it means in context and is perfectly fine to use.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. We have. The question of how to eliminate "class privilege" has remained open for quite a while and will for as long as the optimal distribution of scarce resources is still an active field of study. It doesn't actually mean "no privacy for anyone". For that to be the case, society would have to be actually egalitarian, e.g. post-privilege. You're delving into Foucault territory here, which is fine but also somewhat tangential. Of course the people doing the spying and the people who fund it will be less affected (but maybe not with the bad state of infosec), that's a given where any power structure is involved. How would egalitarianism fix this? I think you're operating under a wholly different definition of egalitarianism than is commonly accepted. The only way to solve your dilemma is through a stateless society with a totally flat hierarchy with a method of economic exchange that doesn't involve a market system, or any mechanism that awards having more information. They don't get killed by drones for starters. Not yet. If someone says homeless alcoholics should be rounded up and put into camps, then the fact that they aren't that, and don't have a friend in that situation, is their "privilege" they may not be aware of. That's just asymmetry. You can just as easily have it be an oppressed group calling for the internment of a dominant group, which by definition they will not be a part of, and may not even be in contact with if there are factors like apartheid put into play. Calling it "privilege" makes no sense. "Privilege" is not a complicated word, it means what it means in context and is perfectly fine to use. The sociological concept of privilege is in fact an inversion of what we generally call a privilege. Sociological privilege often refers to constant and immutable characteristics that cannot be taken away, and moreover makes the value judgment that the group with privilege is bad, and that said privilege must be abolished. This is totally ass-backwards: it should be that the disadvantaged group is elevated to the same level of privilege, because more often than not (excluding class) "privilege" simply refers to the baseline that preferably all groups should be held to.
zxcvcxz 11y ago
What are his ideas to 'fix' the system?
- PavlovsCat 11y ago
  That's a big question about someone who gives a lot of talks: https://www.youtube.com/results?filters=long&search_query=jacob+appelbaum https://www.youtube.com/results?filters=long&search_query=ja...
lookbothways 11y ago
Man, if there ever was an instance of alienating a sympathetic audience, this would be it. How does one take a golden argument like "privacy is an inalienable right," turn it into a tired "you should be ashamed for being white, check your privilege shitlord" flamebait, and still get taken seriously?
- glesica 11y ago
  > you should be ashamed for being white, check your privilege shitlord You had to work pretty damn hard to get this out of that quote. His point was that a lot of people who say they (and by extension society, this part is important) don't need privacy probably don't need privacy because their privilege protects them. So then the goal has to be to convince them that their privileged position makes them a special case, and that they should care about the unprivileged. It isn't just white people who have privilege, that's just an example. This general idea really isn't controversial, but the terminology elicits very strong negative reactions in people for some reason (I honestly don't understand it). If I pointed out that the TSA screens darker-skinned people with extra vigor, often inconveniencing those people, most people would agree with me. If I then said that I don't care about this issue because I'm white, so I breeze through TSA checkpoints without any problems, many people would tell me I should be a little more considerate of others. But if I call myself "privileged" in this instance then all of a sudden people would be whining about social justice warriors or something like that. Very strange.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - aaronem 11y ago
    > But if I call myself "privileged" in this instance then all of a sudden people would be whining about social justice warriors or something like that No one has ever managed successfully to divorce the concept of privilege from the implication of blame, so saying that someone has privilege (or, worse in this context, is privileged), is tantamount to saying that they're a bad person and they should feel bad. Is it any wonder there's pushback? Whether privilege and blame should be so inextricably linked is a separate discussion, and one I've seen from time to time in progressive circles. But, to people who aren't deeply enough immersed in such circles to be familiar with all the theory around the concept, that's how it comes across.

jsingleton 11y ago

Well put. The Open Rights Group regularly do briefings on things like this and one of the "Responses you might get and how to counter them" arguments is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear That isn’t true. Surveillance has been used against journalists, whistleblowers and human rights activists. Most of us want to keep parts of our lives private." [0] I've had people use the naïve "nothing to fear" argument before. Tell them that even if they wrongly believe that they don't require privacy, people working in their interest do. [0] https://www.openrightsgroup.org/assets/files/campaign_resources/General%20Election%202015/Briefing%20pack.pdf https://www.openrightsgroup.org/assets/files/campaign_resour...

perfTerm 11y ago
And even if I have nothing to hide why can't I fear for potential whistle blowers, journalists, or activists? It's a shame that we love to boil incredibly complex issues down into simple platitudes. You find it on facebook, on the news, on twitter (although short and sweet does work well there), and every where else you look and people you talk to. It's a shallow way to talk about things.
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  I agree, except I don't think it's "incredibly complex". The bigger issue is in reducing things to a soundbite, we almost always end up with something that just speaks to the individual. And as you pointed out, I may have nothing to 'hide' myself, but want to ensure the privacy of others as a basic freedom.
  - Qwertious 11y ago
    As a general rule though, soundbites often do simplify things that are incredibly complex - the economy is broken, so clearly the solution to literally everything is to Reduce Taxes/Tax The Rich More/Your Nonsense Here. Those generally have a grain of truth, but there is no simple one-line solution here, it's invariably quite complex. The field of economics is an entire field rather than a one-paragraph summary, after all.

gambler 11y ago

This is the best way I'v heard anyone phrase this idea. Makes me want to watch more interviews with Snowden. Clearly, he is more than just some guy who leaked secret information. His personal take on surveilance is very interesting as well.

Sideloader 11y ago
The documentary film Citizenfour is a good place to start. Or, you know, half the Internet (YouTube especially) ;)

at-fates-hands 11y ago

This is such an odd statement and fundamentally confuses two very different ideas. First of all, there is no express right to privacy in the Constitution. There is however, the Bill of Rights which everybody is familiar with. It does outline protecting specific aspects of privacy which include such things as the First Amendment (freedom of religion) or the 4th Amendment, (privacy of your possessions against unlawful search and seizure). The supreme court refuses to protect privacy beyond those issues which are directly related to the Bill of Rights even though the public believes it is their right to have a blanket type of protection against congressional overreach. To hear Snowden confuse these things by lumping rights protected under the Constitution with a broad reaching idea of the public's right of privacy (which is does not have), and then equating them is puzzling.

TorKlingberg 11y ago
The concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of the press exist outside of US constitution.
mikegioia 11y ago
This makes no sense to me. What is Snowden "confusing" here? Is he confusing privacy rights with free-speech rights because the latter is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution while the former is only indirectly referenced? If that's the case, you do nothing to explain why it's odd, why it's puzzling to you, or what Snowden's confused about. His analogy does not fundamentally confuse anything; he's equating privacy rights to speech rights through a weak notion that having no interest for one equates to no need for the right. Privacy in and of itself might not be a right explicitly granted by the Constitution, but the analogy is clear and an accurate description of how ludicrous it is to give up a right because you see no need for it.
effie 11y ago
Not puzzling at all. He is making a general analogy between man's freedom to exercise speech and freedom to exercise privacy. There is no mention of constitution or bill of rights in that statement. Courts refusing to protect freedoms are not mentioned either.
11y ago

Sideloader 11y ago

“What people used to call liberty and freedom we now call privacy. And we say, in the same breath, that privacy is dead.” — Jacob Appelbaum

thedragonaut 11y ago
"I hope someone submits (one of) the OPM dataset(s) to @wikileaks. Would be a nice addition to ICWatch: https://icwatch.wikileaks.org/ https://icwatch.wikileaks.org/ " -- Jacob Appelbaum https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/609622195434819584 https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/609622195434819584

hammock 11y ago

Or I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have a gun

stefantalpalaru 11y ago
> Or I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have a gun You're doing it wrong. If you want to paraphrase one of the two affirmations in that quote, you need to write something like: "Or I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have anything to shoot at". The second part of that structure is showing a use case for that freedom (speaking, publishing, shooting). Simple possession is not enough. So concentrate more the next time you feel like entertaining this fantasy that civilians need to be able to freely shoot at stuff, just like they need to freely speak and publish.
- mindslight 11y ago
  Okay then: "I don't care about the freedom to bear arms because I have nothing to protect" I agree that fending off a modern army with rifles is a pipe dream which causes political blindness (although this disparity just illustrates how thoroughly the second amendment has already been trampled). But there are plenty of smaller scale immediate situations where one might really wish they had a gun - eg bears while camping. Also the whole premise around these sayings is ultimately flawed. When we are forced into coming up with justifications for natural rights (thought, communication, using tools, being left alone, etc), we're fighting a losing war.
  - carsongross 11y ago
    I agree that fending off a modern army with rifles is a pipe dream Tell that to the mujahideen...
    - mindslight 11y ago
      My version of "fending off" includes an end goal where you're no longer under attack and don't have to hide out in caves. Guerrilla campaigns work because they're driving less-committed foreign invaders out through attrition. Our domestic military has nowhere else to withdraw to, and would necessarily have broken free of public opinion (otherwise democracy would put a stop to anything long before sustained conflict). Don't get me wrong, if any such thing occurs I would much rather have distributed gun ownership than not. Furthermore, the right to bear arms quite obviously covers conventional explosives, armored vehicles, and missiles. To the extent that this might not be good policy, then the second amendment should have been rewritten rather than simply trampled. On the political front, it frustrates me to see the amount of energy shoehorned into "they're gonna take our guns", which imho causes people to be myopic to the other rights that are being oppressed. I'm not talking about commenters in this thread (who obviously have more than one issue in their head at once), but your less-connected punter who turns on talk radio and has their specific desire for freedom transmuted into support for a different flavor of tyranny.

imglorp 11y ago

It's also crucial to civilization that everyone _else_ has these rights, not just you. You can't take internet, roads, and telephones away just because bad guys sometimes use them. I want my neighbor to have all rights, even if he is doing wrong with them.

joshuak 11y ago

Also the argument is framed backwards. The question isn't, 'why do I need my privacy'. The question is, 'why do you need to take it'.

bmurphy1976 11y ago
Well, that's not helpful. They already have an answer and it clearly works: because of the terrorists trying to take our land and take away our God!! Think of the children!! I fail to see how reframing the argument is going to change anything. What we need is WAY more transparency. If there's transparency, then the abuses will be obvious, and once people see the abuses they will say "enough is enough." That ultimately is why they want to keep this hidden. It's not because the "terrorists" will find out, it's because WE will find out and we won't like what we see. Tit for Tat. If you want to take away our privacy, then we MUST have complete transparency in return.
- Zuider 11y ago
  >I fail to see how reframing the argument is going to change anything I would argue that joshuak's formulation above is not a reframing, but the original and correct definition of the right to privacy. Just as with property and liberty, the default presumption should be that there is an intrinsic right of title, and that any challenge to that entitlement should face a heavy burden of justification. >Tit for Tat. If you want to take away our privacy, then we MUST have complete transparency in return. Such a trade off could really only be made to work in the light the formulation above.
- TheHydroImpulse 11y ago
  'Some might say "I don't care if they violate my privacy; I've got nothing to hide." Help them understand that they are misunderstanding the fundamental nature of human rights. Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority. But even if they could, help them think for a moment about what they're saying. Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. A free press benefits more than just those who read the paper.' - Snowden

reagency 11y ago

That statement has 0 persuasive value to the target audience. Of course they see these equivalently. Try feel normal and they don't care about fringe people.

jotm 11y ago

Oh, so that's who said it (shouldn't be a surprise). I like that quote.

nkhodyunya 11y ago

This is a bad analogy(really, was there any good one at all?). It's clear that when you have nothing to write it means you have no reason to bother about freedom of press as a writer. But still, as a reader, you probably want to have access to what others write, so it more depends on other's abilities to write. But when we speak about privacy, the whole thing changes. If you have nothing to hide, it's hard to imagine why should you care about someone else's right to privacy.