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Comment by tru3_power | Hacker News Reader

I totally agree with this. Personally I think the reason for this is because a lot of people don’t really comprehend what’s going on and can’t visualize the level of surveillance that’s actually already in place (they don’t see physical cameras/microphones everywhere).

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That viewpoint seems a little condescending. Maybe people can comprehend exactly what is going on and simply don't care. The type of people who frequent HN will quickly dismiss the "you have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide" argument, but it is still the belief held by a wide swath of normal citizens. Many people are perfectly fine with some faceless government entity knowing who they are talking to if that decreases their odds of dying in a terrorist attack by a tiny percentage. I also have yet to see anyone in our tech circles able to clearly establish a link between this surveillance and a negative impact on the day-to-day life of the average American voter. If you want people to make this issue an political priority, you need to do a better job than just appealing to abstract ideals and slippery slope arguments about future dystopias.

It is the same thing with Facebook. It isn't necessarily that people don't know the sacrifices they are making to their own privacy by using Facebook. It is that the utility people get out of Facebook is more valuable to them than any abstract idea of privacy. You need to show people the real world repercussions if you want them to change their behavior or beliefs.

> they don’t see physical cameras/microphones everywhere

Rather, they don't understand that cellphones that all of us provides that, along with GPS tracking etc.

They see the cameras, but they do not understand the implication...

Except they don't see cameras. I've started pointing out surveillance cameras to my more normie friends, who are frequently surprised.

I've found this to be the case as well. There's an enormous amount of surveillance technology that over the last ~3 years has sprung up on buildings, streetlights, traffic lights, and highway poles. I try to talk to people about these things, but they've often never seen them. When pressed, they say "it's probably for traffic". When pointed out, they shrug. They might say, chuckling, "they're watching you" as if it's silly and meaningless to consider. Finally, there's "so what are you gonna do about it?"

You should see the horror on the faces of co-workers when I explain how data aggregation works personally against them.

A lot of it is how you explain it in a way that relates to them.

You can get through to none-techies but you have to couch it in a way that resonates.

People are slowly changing as well, ironically Facebook seems to be the one that is making more people slowly question whether putting their entire life out in public is worth it.

I think most of the reason is that many people who post online got Greenwald's misreporting of the NSA documents (OMG, PRISM can access anybody's emails), while the public in general got the less sensational facts about what the NSA was actually doing.

this is a good argument to publish the full bulk unredacted Snowden archive then

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