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Comment by bmurphy1976 | Hacker News Reader

bmurphy1976

Well, that's not helpful. They already have an answer and it clearly works: because of the terrorists trying to take our land and take away our God!! Think of the children!!

I fail to see how reframing the argument is going to change anything. What we need is WAY more transparency. If there's transparency, then the abuses will be obvious, and once people see the abuses they will say "enough is enough."

That ultimately is why they want to keep this hidden. It's not because the "terrorists" will find out, it's because WE will find out and we won't like what we see.

Tit for Tat. If you want to take away our privacy, then we MUST have complete transparency in return.

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'Some might say "I don't care if they violate my privacy; I've got nothing to hide." Help them understand that they are misunderstanding the fundamental nature of human rights. Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority. But even if they could, help them think for a moment about what they're saying. 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. A free press benefits more than just those who read the paper.'

- Snowden

>I fail to see how reframing the argument is going to change anything

I would argue that joshuak's formulation above is not a reframing, but the original and correct definition of the right to privacy. Just as with property and liberty, the default presumption should be that there is an intrinsic right of title, and that any challenge to that entitlement should face a heavy burden of justification.

>Tit for Tat. If you want to take away our privacy, then we MUST have complete transparency in return.

Such a trade off could really only be made to work in the light the formulation above.

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