> I am intrigued how often people with the attitude that if you aren't don't anything wrong you shouldn't mind being observed apply that philosophy in only one direction. I see people who are upset that Snowden would leak and provide visibility into government actions, but don't blink that the revealed actions were actually the government spying on its own citizens. So governments are entitled to privacy, but their citizens are not?

I am strongly in the pro individual privacy camp FWIW, but I'm bored so I'll take a stab at steel-manning the premise that governments are entitled to privacy while individual people are not:

One of the obligations of governments is military defense. Governments are required to protect their people and the reality of war necessitates the keeping of some secrets. Failure to recognize this reality would constitute an abdication of their duty as a government. On the other hand, private persons are not permitted to wage war (this is why governments are obliged to defend their people, because they forbid people from doing it themselves.) Since people are not allowed to wage war on their own, the "realities of war" justification for governments keeping secrets doesn't justify people keeping personal secrets.

Rebuttal to the above: throughout history and particularly in the 20th century, tens of millions of people were killed by their own government. While governments may need to keep some secrets to effectively defend their population against external threats, people also need the right to keep secrets from their government to defend themselves against that domestic threat, which is every bit as real and concerning as the external threats.