As have I. But have you ever had the opposite extreme that wrenched control from you? – A stroke? A chemical imbalance in your brain?
Chocolate?
Vil du spiser nu?
Want you eating now? Gotta love that babelfish.
I’m a determinist, I believe I’m living that opposite extreme all the time. But think of me as a logically determined program that has found it’s in my own best interest to set things up for extreme integrity. If I can’t, too bad, but I’m still a thinking being capable of overcoming most problems. Of course, there are some problems you can’t overcome at all, and some problems get tougher if you focus on mental integrity, but overall I still say depending only on yourself, the entity you have the most control over, is a reasonably good thing. It’s math, really. Depending on external, unreliable factors < Depending on internal, controlable factors.
By the way, anyone read (about, as I admit is my case) all these studies claiming that human well-being is a fairly constant thing, and at about 70%? Another reason to worry about stuff!
As an aside, the writer Vernor Vinge presents a potential future in which “Ubiquitous Law Enforcement” has eventually arisen in several societies and brings them into total collapse. This scenario is rapidly becoming more and more plausible.
Before commenting on the OP directly, I’d like to make an aside to Bricker: Are you really contending that every individual in this country can be reasonably expected to know every law, rule, and regulation that might affect them? When I moved from Colorado to California in the 1970s, I had no reason whatsoever to suspect that my pet gerbils would suddenly become illegal. Certainly, when the law was explained to me (gerbils were illegal in California because of fears that they’d escape, go feral, breed like…well…gerbils, and overrun crops and native species). Before hearing that explanation, though, how could one possibly suspect such a law? Gerbils aren’t exotic pets any more than hamsters or guinea pigs!
And I don’t buy the excuse from page 2 or so of this thread that we should only be thinking of serious laws that carry jail time as a penalty. If every detail of your live was public knowledge, you’d be subject to harrassment or blackmail for even the smallest violations of your homeowners association CC&Rs. Recordkeeping would become a ludicrous burden. To take the music example, I bought a Steppenwolf CD which I can’t find anywhere. Luckily (for me), I ripped it to my computer, so I still have the music to enjoy. I’ve purchased that music three times (once on vinyl, once on 8-track, and once on CD), yet I’d have no way to prove to the RIAA that I’ve paid for it. Without some semblance of privacy, I’d be subject to losing the music as soon as I lost the physical CD.
Back to the OP, privacy is definitely a form of freedom. Do you express yourself differently on the SDMB behind the semi-protective veil of your dopername? Do you have the freedom to negotiate better without the other party knowing how much is in your bank account or wallet?
Privacy gives us peace of mind, too. Do you suppose the folks in the federal witness protection program would be comfortable if their identities were public knowledge? Would you be treated the same at work if everyone knew you had an “icky” disease or defect? Should the people who conceal their ethnicity or country of origin be forced to reveal it, even if they’re treated unfairly as a result?
Politeness is often called a societal lubricant. Privacy serves the same purpose. It’s best that your boss doesn’t know what you said when you were blowing off steam last night with your spouse. And I, for one, would be much more comfortable chatting with sinjin if I didn’t know which color butt plug she wears on Tuesdays. 
D-uh… then there’s supposed to be three tapes of you buying that music… The Man knows everything!
The Man was hanging out in that used record store in Boulder in the 1970s? :eek:
You obviously don’t know about the 17/23 correlation…
Now the Google ads are getting downright strange. At the moment, we have:
[ul]
[li]Florida Condo Associations[/li][li]Montana Rabbits[/li][li]Homeowners Insurance[/li][li]Rabbits[/li][/ul]
Huh?
Do not give away my rights because you are feeling a little unsafe. You picture some group with high moral and ethical standards protecting you and not using gatherered information improperly. You need protection from bad guys. You need protection from the police and politicians too. Why not just a complete police state .wouldnt that feel safe.We have to fight to keep our power. We are losing. But of course when the internet is taken over this board will be censored by those you trust . I dont.
Heres a point. The people police fbi Who you want to give up your rights to are people.They have problems,foibles and humazn problems. They make mistakes. Every interplay puts you in potential conflict. I just want them to leave me alone.I will leave them alone.
If you arent doing anything wrong. The Patriot act designates green Peace,Sierra Club and other environmental organizations as domestic terrorists. When Libraries were forced to give up the information on users they were stopped under penaly of law from revealing that a request had been made. An innocent Guy had FBI agent come into his house when he was out took DNA samples and took everthing available from his computer…They searched his home. It was mistaken identity.
Terrorist arent using the phones for significant information transfers. They know of the Patriot act. All they will get is your personal information.They7 have access to your health records ,financial records computer records etc.
Every time the Patriot Act is invoked…a freedom loses its wings.
Times like this are exactly when these rights and freedoms should be buttressed and strengthened. Talk and debate leads to truths. We always need truths and always need freedoms.
In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass goes through his early days as a slave. He says that witnessing the brutal beating of his aunt while shut in the closet and made to watch was his “blood-stained” initiation into the hell of slavery. As he learns more and tricks white boys into teaching him how to read and write, he gets more freedoms. Eventually, the wife of one of his owners starts seriously teaching him. Upon learning, her husband becomes furious, yelling about how that can ruin a slave. Douglass agrees, because he no longer wants to have his freedoms stripped from him. He has knowledge, he has access to these things that the white people had and the slaves were kept ignorant of. As of this point, Douglass is useless as a slave, because he knows he is the equal of the white man.
This is what stripping our freedoms would do. We’d be moving back TOWARDS slavery.
If Years of your privacy is violated a person should be notified also told why. If not and they are violated for years the effects could have its pros and cons. The major pro…done for safety but again a person should be informed and they will appreciate it I’m sure. CONS NUMEROUS. Exploration of innocent people all ages. Effects similar to prison industrial complex. Stalking by Losers who can have you questioning your mental state. Manipulation and control through situations similar to terrorist tactics. Unfortunately this appears to have become the norm. If not why are other people giving freedoms while others have to silently suffer because of not having control. 
Its good for a person s pocket…for them. to sing about it or give you clues but when the table has turned on them they gonna try to flip it on the innocent person and try to make them once again reap the repercussions of them being exploited.
The OP is thought provoking, though in a kind of depressing way. I assume the writer is a younger person of ‘secular left’ type upbringing. I know it’s presumptuous to make such assumptions, but it’s naturally where my thoughts turn seeing such a question. Is our ‘progressive’ society really reaching the point of asking why people are entitled to their privacy? Again it’s natural to think this way because when you reject tradition, you have to start over again on a lot of such basic questions, and the OP question seems an example of that.
Now I’m sure a lot of the commenters bemused by the premise of the question are also younger people educated to recite the progressive catechism correctly (about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion is for losers [except non-Western religions of course], traditions [again except for non-Western ones] are oppressive etc etc) So all is not lost, yet. It’s certainly possible to re-reach the same conclusions about human freedom our Western ancestors did. However I think a question like this is a cautionary note that such conclusions are not necessarily obvious products of simple logic. Tradition does matter.
And fairly many people play along with the idea that privacy is mainly a matter of hiding illegal or wrongful acts ‘the people’ (in the form of their government) have some right to know. Covering illegal acts has about zero to do with how and why I value my privacy.
Even if there was some metaphysical barrier preventing all my information from ever departing the halls of the authorities, I still could not ever accept such a thing. There is too much a danger of my information being abused by the authorities, let alone by someone outside of authority.
A crime is committed; the police don’t have a good case in order to put someone away. At the same time, they refuse to lose their credibility by letting this one get away - it’s personally embarrassing to one of their superiors. What do they do? They find a fall-guy, a scapegoat, and rack him up to look like they’re doing a good job. Look at the absurdity of ‘tough on crime’ legislation; it is not so much actual security that people vote for as it is the circus of security.
Put it simply, I do not trust other human beings enough to come together and wisely elect people to have this power. I have never known Americans, or people of any other country, to do the difficult and long-term thing when a short-term solution presents itself instead.
My dad has no problem with the NSA, and sounds like the OP.
I pointed out that child molestation is a bigger problem than terrorism and often happens in a bed. Therefore it should be law that every bedroom in the nation has a night vision camera on at all times with the feed going to a large data base. Now of course no one will watch those videos unless they suspect a crime has been committed (they super duper promise) then everyone can feel safer and the only reason to object is from a desire to do something illegal in your bedroom.
If a senior politician were accused of a crime, and all their internet chats were open to investigation, it’d be trivially easy to a) Find senior politicians who cheated on their wives b) Find senior politicians who flirted with the idea of cheating and c) Find senior politicians who did nothing like that, but who could be made to sound like they did.
Or they could look back on your posts from when you were 18 and use them against you when you were 32.
You could never do anything wrong.