Why privacy is important, and having “nothing to hide” is irrelevant

I'm not informed enough in law, much less international law w/r/t intangible assets [and, maybe more importantly, the political infrastructure surrounding them] to make an informed response to that but I'll try just based on my (limited) historical knowledge. (This is a pundit response, not an informed one.) Even if we constrained you request to simply a domestic domain, it'd be challenging because of the corporate interests who'd actively fight against it. Google et al would stomp on any bill that even remotely infringes upon their ability to aggregate data, as targeted ads are (or were as of circa 2011, when I last bothered to look a cash-flow report of their) ~95% of their revenue.

Magically, should a bill/resolution be introduced to the floor and not be stomped on immediately, enforcing it internationally would be about as difficult as say, enforcing international oil embargoes or a ruling by the ICC (i.e., nearly impossible - you don't see any proceedings against Cheney or Rumsfeld for war-crimes within the Hague, now do you?). Domestically, however, the US has (or had, historically from, say, 1930 until the mid 90s) the economic/political influence to effectively enforce their agendas fairly effectively. The new US gov't entity formed would have to have the intent to limit data collection then exhibit the willingness to penalize those institutions for violating those data collection policies (e.g. similar to an FDA fine issued for a multi-national drug company who has a presence within the US).

Again, too many financial interests opposed to see this happening, but the refusal to adhere to the legislation would mean (in theory) loss of US business, which would be catastrophic for most industries. HackerNews user:grellas (or was, I haven't seen him post in a couple years now) is an attorney specializing in tech affairs who'd be able to make a better response, but from a strictly political POV, even domestic legislation limiting data collection would never occur.

Don't mix misuse of private information and privacy. All the "chilling effects" listed here are implications of misuse of private information. On the other hand, in a world where we have weapons which can single handedly wipe out whole civilizations, we need to make sure it doesn't get used by some lunatic.

From that angle, a tight security apparatus (which may include surveillance), is necessary for our survival. I think we should think more about how we can prevent the "misuse" of private information than preventing surveillance completely.

Still not convincing, at least not to me and many of the people that I know. I'm pretty sure my insurance company has already calculated my premiums based on my demographics and claim history. I made not have told them "I have more than five drinks almost every weekend", but they know. They were making inferences from Big Data since back when it was just "data". And practically, I don't think most insurance companies have an infrastructure set up for handling snitching, especially not the smaller ones.

I'm really still waiting to hear a convincing argument as to why I have something to hide, ideally something practical as opposed to hypothetical or philosophical.

There are very few topics where I just cannot get the point of the discussion among smart people, but this is one of them.

Look at the real world NOW, 15 years after all the surveillance. You still can explode bombs and kill people middle in a european capital without any encryption at all. Is this the kind of surveillance you are afraid of?

If you want to hide something, there are infinitely many ways to do this. No surveillance can (or ever will) read the one time pad encrypted communication. So you have (and always will have) your freedom and capabilities to hide — what's your problem?

Arguments like "well then show me your bank account" are just plain stupid: I have no interest in sharing this information with my work colleagues, my neighbours or my friends just because it would have implications in some social aspects (it's not about security!). But his information is only sensitive in context of a personality. I'd neither have problem to show anything to a random stranger nor would I be interested myself in this information coming from a random stranger.

If somebody uses my information in an unethical way, it is not the problem of a surveillance, but that it's possible at all.

Exposing my personal data to a government during an investigation could also protect me by verifying my alibi. We have nothing to hide, right?

The comparison with free speech is ridiculous. Free speech is the opposite of hiding and doesn't imply breaking the law. Hiding implies playing by other rules, than commonly established. Free speech is important because eventually I might have something to say. But no one would ever agree that he or she will have something to hide eventually (without getting criminal).

So I'm still missing the point...

That test allows child porn as long as the participants don't get harmed in real life. It does make sense but I think most anti-child-porn proponents would say that causing harm isn't needed for it to be evil.

The fact is, our collective idea of good and evil is internally inconsistent. It's still skewed by our repulsion to sexual deviancy and our fear of being judged by our peers. We really can't distinguish right from wrong. We aren't even able to apply the simple test you proposed.