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Comment by warmwaffles | Hacker News Reader

> yet your entire life is accessible to the NSA.

I'll bet you money that most Americans are not okay with this either.

They're nominally "not ok" with it, unless it's couched in some piece of legislation like the PATRIOT Act or snuck into a Defense Authorization Act, particularly after a national tragedy happens. Then a lot (a majority?) of Americans will suddenly be ok with the "if you got nothing to hide you got nothing to fear" mantra.

I'm actually not a huge fan when people act like Americans are a a bunch of flag-waving morons, because I think that people who say that are often being extremely reductive to a borderline-offensive level [1], but in this case I do think Americans are uniquely ok with pretending their rights don't exist when they're convinced it's for a greater good.

[1] Disclosure, I'm American

>" I do think Americans are uniquely ok with pretending their rights don't exist when they're convinced it's for a greater good."

Check Canada. We are way more screwed up in this department

> "if you got nothing to hide you got nothing to fear" mantra.

I know people like this and it's not a good mantra to follow. I have to remind them that all that needs to happen is to have political winds go the other direction and soon something they do regularly becomes illegal or suspicious. So dumb to give up privacy for safety.

That's always been my perspective. I'm going to take the radical position that not everyone in the government can be trusted, so we have to assume that there are bad actors who are going to abuse their power and use the questionably-obtained information to their advantage.

I'm not a fan of that, and the only way I can think of to avoid this being an issue is for them not to have the information in the first place.

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