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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> What is truly a scary thought is if the vast, mindless mass of people...

This is why privacy advocates (and libertarians more generally), can't get more popular traction: the incredibly derisive and arrogant tone with which they address their fellow citizens, and their flippant, dismissive attitude towards democracy.

Why should I listen to the opinions of someone who calls my parents, most of my friends, my in-laws, my wife, etc, "mindless"? Just because they have different priorities and care about different issues, or (gasp!) have different ideas about the appropriate boundaries of police surveillance?

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It is not that you are mindless, it is that we are too dumb to contain the sums of human knowledge within our head. Individually, we can be great at disciplines that we specialize in. But expecting us to decide competent government officials to represent us? That's impossible.

I think you're generalizing and/or hanging out in the wrong places. For instance, on Reddit's [libertarian sub-reddit][1] I've found "sheeple" comments get downvoted pretty quickly.

edit: I'd also add that I've never felt this elitism from libertarian figureheads either. I can clearly recall Milton Friedman saying that libertarianism should never be forced on people, and if it isn't taken up freely then it wasn't meant to be.

[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/libertarian

Just look at how much "oh my god I can't believe the public doesn't care about this" angst has bubbled up in the HN threads on the NSA's actions. Amusingly, you see the same sort of rejection of democratic consensus from some extremist feminists ("women can't be trusted to know what they want because they've been brainwashed by the patriarchy.")

Geeks internalize the network. It's like an extension of their mind and body. Intrude into their online activities and you might as well be touching them in their no-touchy zone.

You sound like a bleeding "blame the victim" sexual harassment apologist. All the other secretaries are okay with the bosses' constant groping, what's the big deal? Maybe they like being touched. You were asking for it by dressing that way (putting your data on the cloud) anyway.

Well, it's not their fucking decision whether the abused secretary should put up with the boss's wandering hands!

It's interesting that you mention groping. The tort of battery is evaluated according to an objective standard: would a reasonable person consider the contact offensive? It is defined by social norms: grabbing someone's ass is offensive, bumping into someone on a crowded subway is not.

So your point fails even within the four corners of your analogy. That secretary will have a pretty tough time arguing that her boss's handshake was sexual battery, even if she belongs to an obscure religion that considers hands to be sexual objects.

Mindless with respect to political issues, is quite appropriate, I think. When my mom or my dad or my grandma says, "I have nothing to hide" (and they do, whenever I call them about some privacy concern), my respect for them with regards to political issues, drastically drops. Perhaps "mindless" is harsh, but they certainly aren't being insightful or politically educated.

I'm not trying to launch ad hominem attacks on you or your relatives. I'm trying to get people to wake up.

My parents are extremely politically educated, as is my wife. My dad has traveled the world extensively (80+ different countries) and seen nearly every kind of government under the sun. He was very involved politically when Bangladesh was seeking its independence. My wife, for her part, lived in east Germany after high school and observed the political situation in a city where many people still remembered life under communist rule. Yet, none of them care about your pet issue.

Fact is not everyone sees life in terms of slippery slope fallacies. The status quo is really pretty good, and it's perfectly rational to think there are more pressing political concerns than the NSA knowing how often you call your mom. My dad has his pet issue (he's anti-war), and my wife has her's (she's an adherent feminist). People aren't mindless or irrational because they don't share your political beliefs or your priorities with respect to political issues.

> Yet, none of them care about your pet issue.

Actual former East Germans still remember the Stasi and Germany itself has fought for privacy (see Germany v. Facebook).

Do you always consider people with differing opinions "mindless"?

Everyone has different levels of privacy needs. I imagine you are OK with people seeing your face, knowing your name, or generally overhearing your conversations on the street. This is simply a different level of openness than being OK with people knowing what websites you visit or hearing your telephone conversations remotely.

In the same way that I don't care if some random guy at a coffee shop sees me visiting HackerNews or watching cat videos, I don't really care if the government sees it either. How does that make me mindless?

I can guarantee you that you won't get people to wake up by insulting them. At least I can't recall a single case that's ever worked.

Hyperventilating nerd rage is not helpful, but it will get you a lot of upvotes.

Privacy advocates are not a subset of libertarians. Libertarians may be privacy advocates, but there are many privacy advocates that are not libertarians.

Privacy advocacy is popular among the upper classes, because they really don't want anyone from the lower classes sticking their noses into their business.

Libertarians are unpopular because some of their policies are deeply unpopular. For example, many libertarians oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because they feel it violates their first amendment rights.

> Privacy advocacy is popular among the upper classes, because they really don't want anyone from the lower classes sticking their noses into their business.

That is, in my experience, my friends' only real problem with the TSA (other than the hassle). They hate people with GED's bossing them around.

I think it's also the stupidity. You know you're going through this ordeal that could be easily circumvented by even a moderately clever attacker. It just seems like such a waste.

Just curious. If it could be circumvented by a moderately clever attacker. Why hasn't it been?

http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/1b-of-nude-...

and the TSA's response:

http://blog.tsa.gov/2012/03/viral-video-about-body-scanners....

Draw your own conclusions.

Schneier wrote about this here:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/05/why_arent_ther...

Maybe there just are not that many clever attackers trying to board our airplanes?

>Privacy advocacy is popular among the upper classes, because they really don't want anyone from the lower classes sticking their noses into their business.

I hope that this is either patently untrue or you're just misled.

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