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Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

One of the main things I want to keep private is just family life - conflicts, love, sex, etc. I don't want the government to know about my private family life. I don't see how a free, thoughtful, creative society can flourish if the government can always know the goods on everybody.

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Yes, but can your government really turn up to be your enemy ? I mean if you're a wealthy businessman, and if you can step on some political subject, I'd agree, but this article doesn't aim to explain it to everybody.

If the government was so repressive, people would know about it. It's america, not Russia. There are many things in place which makes it difficult for the government to literally take advantage of all this data.

I don't think the government wants to know about your private family life neither. I mean, it's edgy to imagine that the government has a secret file on all of us. But they don't do they? It's just very silly nonsense.

That was the argument before Snowden, but we now know that the government passively records and stores as much information as possible on anyone. So they can build a secret file on anyone should they feel like it. And they'll use every piece of information at their disposal (private family life, shopping and travel habits, what websites you browse, what media you consume, etc.) to profile you. Ever download a copyrighted file or view pornography? That will be used against you.

> we now know that the government passively records and stores as much information as possible on anyone

That's highly impratical. NSA's budget isn't infinite and they have many other operations that would also require funding.

Snowden demonstrates the way NSA and the British equivalent operate on demand* at the documentary film 'Snowden'. You should really skim through it at least, you will be surprised to what their finite budget can do.

* they collect bulk data, then develop the tools to sort them out

The government isn't a monolithic machine, it's people, and some of those people may abuse their access to the dossiers and databases.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT

Sure they do. The details of your private life gives them a source of great power: to embarrass you, expose you, blackmail you, and destroy you. Why would they want this power? Because you might threaten to expose them or otherwise oppose them.

People expose and oppose the government everyday in various forms. You would expect the news to be filled with scandals of government opposers or we would have no opposition at all in the US due to them being blackmailed etc. Neither is true.

"The government" is not a person and has no feelings. Additionally, the government has massive resources and one individual has humble resources (even the very wealthy ones). This is an asymmetrical comparison.

And? They ought to be exposed and opposed. They serve at our pleasure, not the other way around.

> they serve at our pleasure

No it actually doesn't and shouldn't. It would create a tyranny of the majority.

That my friend is called Democracy. When a majority rules..

And that's why the United States was designed precisely to avoid becoming a democracy and instead be a republic.

And look how that's turned out.

It took less than 200 years for it to devolve into a full-blown plutocracy.

Would you rather have tyranny left to the hands of a few?

Just because it isn't happening now does not mean it won't happen in the future.

You haven't been paying attention to the news over the last two years.

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