We don't live in China or Russia, what matters is political culture, not hiding from the government.
What is the worst that ever happened?
Do you think corporations would use the NSA to influence the government?
Or do you think the NSA would become a shadow government?
I understand the fear of 1984, but 1984 described China and Russia, not the US.
Assange and Snowden might sound like heroes to you, but to me they are not.
The law changing, and by then the law enforcers have a family member's web searches for reproductive care and throw someone in jail for murder.
People are going to jail for things this year that were legal last year.
> We don't live in China or Russia
Yet. Freedom takes work, and vigilance against its incremental loss.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” -- early 1800s saying (https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...)
“Freedom is a fragile thing and it's never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.” -- Reagan, 1967 (https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/january-5-1967...)
You can review it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument
I will also add: that hiding has a very successful track record (for all life forms) over time, because you don't ever really know what the future holds.
I also have a pet theory that there is underlying physics/information theory here that explains this (similar to thermodynamics/entropy, might even be the same phenomenon) ->
too much concentrated asymetric information becomes a single point of failure, and yields brittle systems.
As the dependencies on a single process rise, the probability of the entire system failing approaches 1.I think evolution figured it out a few billion years before me. I think it's just easy to forget.
Of course I could be entirely wrong. Just a hypothesis of mine.
Honestly it’s like listening to a Q-Anon group in here sometimes.