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Comment by BryanB55 | Hacker News Reader

I pretty much agree, they talked about "innocent peoples privacy" but if they are truly innocent then it shouldn't matter if the FBI sees their information. If my data were on that server and I was doing nothing wrong I really don't think I would mind handing it over to the FBI to help find even the smallest threat to our country.

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Right to privacy is fundamental in the United States. People should never have to respond to the argument that if they are truly innocent they won't mind some breach.

But, was anyone's personal data really on that server? If it's an anonymous emailing service I would think that just the service was disrupted.

Could be. I'm curious to hear why my comment was down voted though, regardless of whether there was information on the server or not. It seems a lot of people are always screaming "privacy!" and when I mention I'm willing to give up some privacy to protect the safety of other people and our country others do not agree with me. What is it you think will happen if the FBI gets a hold of your data on a server? This of course is just my opinion and I respect everyone else's opinion but I would like to hear a counter argument.

You're getting downvoted because you've just rephrased the "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" argument. Here, have a counterargument: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565...;

Thanks. I'll look it over.

Gathering, pre-processing, entering, and storing information costs time and money.

Having more data about more people increases the risks of false positives ("Innocent Bob is a terrorist!") and false negatives ("Terrorist Ann is innocent!"); and raises the risks of faulty data being gathered, processed and entered.

So, having data about innocent people just increases costs and decreases quality.

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