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Comment by chewxy | Hacker News Reader

The mainstream media is covering this (ABC covered this topic a few days ago as well: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-16/metadata-retention-pri...)

But nobody is doing anything. Nobody is making noise. Young people (and I feel old for saying this) accept this as the norm. Bleh

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A great sentiment I can agree with, but what exactly are young folks supposed to do?

- Protest? Recent events have shown the media will simply turn face and demonize us as pariahs.

- Activism? When faced with the backlash from "I have nothing to hide....you must have something to hide," most people don't know how to respond to this logical fallacy[0]

- Spreading Awareness? Now this is something I can get behind. But tell me how one goes "greyhat" and explains himself to authorities. AFAIK, even POTUS is given sec disclosures and does nothing on them.

Finally you have to consider the sheer amount of young folks, men and women, who are now earning their livelihoods from this same issue. I scoff at it as a developer, but I can't harp on the vast numbers of unemployed seeking ad revenue on their blogs (which goes hand and hand with massive corporate surveillance) as a way to make money and support themselves.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

Sorry, not directly an answer to your points. But here goes:

  - Activism? When faced with the backlash from "I have nothing to hide....you must have something to hide," most people don't know how to respond to this logical fallacy

I like the Snowden argument[0] about this one, and try to say it to people as often as possible. So I am going to repeat it here as well. Maybe then can we teach people who "don't know how to respond" how to respond:

> 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.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/36ru89/just_days_left...

What about the terrorists? People fear the terrorists. They see the terrorists doing terrible things every week. Are we willing to sacrifice some of our rights to our government to better protect us from the merciless, bloodthirsty terrorists?

While more and more people are seriously considering the question, a good majority of people would still say yes without any reservation.

Until we can convince the majority of the population we don't need to give up privacy to continue to be safe, they're going to keep brushing those "anti-government nutjobs" off. It's just noise to them until they're personally impacted.

It just isn't bad enough yet. If you look at the past it seems that humans will continue to ignore their predicament until it actually becomes unbearable. Take for example Russia in wwI or the French revolution. Action only started happening after people were dying in the streets and everyone was generally miserable.

These days you might feel a bit uncomfortable with sending pictures to a friend. But life in the western world is not uncomfortable enough to spur the masses into direct action. I think the change with regards to spying/hacking/bugging will come slowly and not as a result of mass protesting.

I would rather get burned by "the norm" than something unexpected. At least if I know something is happening, I can plan for it. The fact that young people "accept this as the norm" is encouraging, because it certainly beats the alternative of being completely unaware of it.

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