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Comment by daniel-cussen | Hacker News Reader

Absolute least of my worries. Maybe if they spy on me enough they can figure out whodunnit when I get murdered, I'd really appreciate that.

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This is completely missing the point of why one needs privacy. Lack of it harms journalism and activism, making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy, it will be much easier to target them. Everyone should have privacy to protect them. It’s sort of like freedom of speech is necessary not just for journalists, but for everyone, even if you have nothing to say.

Well I want privacy from other things, I do. It just so happens the FBI isn't in my threat model, to the contrary of what the ACLU and civil liberty advocates talk about. I really didn't expect it to turn out that way.

Privacy is kind of a fantasy, though. The concept of privacy. There's a quintillion amplifiers made every year (ie transistors), and that rate is increasing rapidly. Moore's law is essentially antithetical to actual privacy, meaning nobody knowing your secret.

What there is is keeping a low profile and avoiding emphasis on what you don't want amplified and repeated. Working the system.

The number of transistors does not affect the privacy. It's how they are used. Try free software, which respects users. Works for me (by increasing the cost to spy, which is enough for the goal I stated).

>What there is is keeping a low profile and avoiding emphasis on what you don't want amplified and repeated. Working the system.

How is this helping anyone? If you have no privacy, your own emphasis doesn't matter.

OK, you changed my mind about one particular thing and I'm thankful you did: free software. It's beginning to look like the relationship between software cost and quality is inverted, cheaper is higher quality. For sure the contracts are better, more favorable. Free means no DRM. But it's not fully there yet, you still get better software usually, by paying for it in some roundabout way. The cost-quality curve is becoming flatter over time and in many cases is in some specific items negative-sloping, like Linux being the best for servers for a long time.

It happens whenever someone makes perfect work for free.

> Privacy is kind of a fantasy, though.

It's incredible to see how trendy despair is. It's a trend that suits those in power - imagine your opponents just quit! That seems like a fantasy.

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