> Months later, the government arrested him. Their official reason? A minor, non-violent CFAA charge from an old workplace dispute that had nothing to do with Tor.
This is exactly the argument for privacy to people who say "I have nothing to hide". Authoritative governments will always find a reason to dig something up and the less privacy you have the easier it will be.
As a side note it sickening to see USA government doing this arrest straight out of gestapo/kgb playbook.
Privacy is not a deterrent to that.
The state does what it wants and in the end it doesn't even need an excuse.
An excuse is a nice to have, but that's it.
>The state does what it wants and in the end it doesn;t even need an excuse.
It doesn't need an excuse because people let it not need an excuse.
Every idiot, even on HN, heck, particularly on HN and other places where demographic factors result most never having been the target of government or think that they would be, is perfectly fine with it when the government behaves this way in pursuit of things they agree with. And so the only people complaining about any one government abuse are the small minority that care all the time plus whatever group care about the specific issue.
If people would stop being two faced snakes and have some principals and stand by them the problem would decrease on its own. But that's like saying "just go as fast as light", it's not a tractable problem.
The state has more power and therefore does what it wants.
Anything other than that is just wishful thinking.
I think the idea of the GP is, that people stand up for what they think is right, meaning that they gather in the millions on the streets to protest when injustice happens, instead of staying mostly at home and doing nothing.
> This is exactly the argument for privacy to people who say "I have nothing to hide"
People who say this will not be swayed by any argument. What they are really saying is "I don't want to think about this".
There's a truth I've come to accept in recent times: The vast majority of people are not able to extrapolate from their immediate personal situation. If they are not effected by something right now in a way they personally feel, they do not and will never care.
Once you accept that fact, so many things make so much more sense in this world. The whole MAGA movement explains itself, the complete disregard of climate change or even local environmental issues make sense and the complete ignorance of privacy issues. The only way to sway these people is when they are personally affected. So consider this Truth the next time you find out a service has been collecting private information in an unsecured S3 Bucket.