You don't have to hide anything. You simply choose to, which is sad.
I despise the government.
NO dude, people hide who they are because other people don't like who they are or because other people may wrongly interpret who they are without the proper context, a fact that is known throughout history to have lead to discrimination, marginalization and even genocide when taken to the extreme.
If you don't like what they do, which is my case, fight them. Don't hide behind privacy.
We learned to accept and tolerate most directly noticeable features of people. Maybe you don't want to communicate your skin color, your height, your gender or your location when walking down the street, but you still do and probably don't really care about it. It's socially accepted to communicate these features anyway.
How are more "private" information about you any different? After all, walking "naked" on a nudist beach is also normal and socially acceptable.
Tolerance has no limits. All it requires is some adaptation time. One day, people will be open about their sexuality, religion, political ideologies and feelings, and the world will be a better place.
You seem to be saying that I shouldn't hide them. My choice is to stop doing something I like doing, or accept that people will judge me and I will be treated a little worse. Why? Why should I have to do that? Why can't I keep going as I am? It makes me happier, it makes everyone else happier. What's so fucking wonderful about me being less happy?
People without secrets are perpetually putting on a show; removing privacy won't cause everyone to suddenly accept everyone's differences. You have some kind of utopian fantasy in which if everyone knows everything about everyone else, the world magically becomes a better place. It's not true. Tolerance has no limits? Have you met humans? How about that tribe where a boy becomes a man by being anally raped by other men? Or the neighbouring tribe where he becomes a man by orally servicing other men? There are cultures and societies in the world where anally raping children is simply not tolerated. How about gender selection? Killing a healthy child a few hours old because you wanted the other sex? The society I live in has a very low tolerance for drowning children in a bucket. Extreme examples, yes, but making it public won't suddenly make everyone tolerate it, and won't make everyone agree "oh, well they're different, it's okay for them to be like that".
We are different. Differences lead to disagreement and conflict. Privacy, amongst other things, gives everyone a means to shield their differences; be it something legal that society disapproves of, or something illegal that everyone does anyway, or something that's illegal in other cultures, or just odd. It's a necessary part of living in this world without either spending our time killing each other, or ending up a bland monoculture in which nobody ever steps outside the lines of society's accepted behaviour.
Privacy makes people think they're alone with their problems. If no one talk about theirs, I guess it's because they don't have any. Should we simply rely on stats to know we're not alone without knowing who is like us? Is anonymity the actual solution to privacy?
An example: If you work in support for anything like the general public, you either don't swear or keep it to a minimum. You may swear like a trooper in your private life, but it's not worth the social friction to "be open to everyone" in your support job.
Basically you're taking the argument to a purely theoretical level, where everyone needs to buy in for it to work, and that's just not feasible.
And in any case, whether or not we're open with each other is an entirely different argument as to whether we're open with an authoritative entity that doesn't always act in the best interests of the general public.
You soon won't have the choice whether you keep things private or not. Everything is going to become public at one point or another. Never underestimate technology.
No, I don't. I think it's because significant differences we can easily see have already been exterminated. Zero privacy does not bode well for the continued existence of differences.
Or some extremist party wins election and this information becomes excellent hit-list for persecution. It already happened to jews a few decades ago.
Let's say some crazy guy kill people that help others. Would you, as a person that help others, regret helping them because it resulted into your death? Nope.