<story><title>Privacy Protects Bothersome People (2013)</title><url>http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>return0</author><text>Fact: the worlds biggest and most spectacular privacy-breaching operation is being run by veritably democratic states, the &amp;quot;west&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s not some evil dictator who dictates this, it&amp;#x27;s the majority of citizens who demands spying on the rest. Another fact is that there are no &lt;i&gt;major&lt;/i&gt; (think, ukraine-size) protests about this anywhere.&lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that even democracy demands some privacy breach. Privacy may be protecting individual rights but it&amp;#x27;s not a prerequisite for democracy.</text></item><item><author>PythonicAlpha</author><text>To make it short: Privacy is about protecting Democracy!&lt;p&gt;As the newest information, we see that we are not only spied on, but there are also stealth techniques to mute bothersome people. It can go thus far, that you will become jailed for something you did not do.&lt;p&gt;This way, anybody that becomes bothersome to mighty people (and I don&amp;#x27;t speak about any president here) can become a target. People that are against atomic plants or against chemical fertilizers, or against ... you name it.&lt;p&gt;This thing can become worse to the democratic nations than killing random people by drones.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wpietri</author><text>Given that many of these democracies arose in conditions of substantial individual privacy, your conclusion is unproven.&lt;p&gt;It could be equally true that democracies die from insufficient privacy, but it just takes more than a decade or so of massive invasive snooping. In particular, the surveillance apparatus may not yet have been sufficiently corrupted to be used as a source of political power.&lt;p&gt;I should note that the US had a previous wave of improper snooping [1] which was seen as a threat to democracy and fought off. It provided a lot of the legal restrictions that prevented massive surveillance up until 9&amp;#x2F;11 got Washington&amp;#x27;s undies in a bunch.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;COINTELPRO&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Privacy Protects Bothersome People (2013)</title><url>http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>return0</author><text>Fact: the worlds biggest and most spectacular privacy-breaching operation is being run by veritably democratic states, the &amp;quot;west&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s not some evil dictator who dictates this, it&amp;#x27;s the majority of citizens who demands spying on the rest. Another fact is that there are no &lt;i&gt;major&lt;/i&gt; (think, ukraine-size) protests about this anywhere.&lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that even democracy demands some privacy breach. Privacy may be protecting individual rights but it&amp;#x27;s not a prerequisite for democracy.</text></item><item><author>PythonicAlpha</author><text>To make it short: Privacy is about protecting Democracy!&lt;p&gt;As the newest information, we see that we are not only spied on, but there are also stealth techniques to mute bothersome people. It can go thus far, that you will become jailed for something you did not do.&lt;p&gt;This way, anybody that becomes bothersome to mighty people (and I don&amp;#x27;t speak about any president here) can become a target. People that are against atomic plants or against chemical fertilizers, or against ... you name it.&lt;p&gt;This thing can become worse to the democratic nations than killing random people by drones.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dobbsbob</author><text>Watch the talk ex NSA executive Thomas Drake gave on why spying is kryptonite to any democracy &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgg8K26dcXs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=xgg8K26dcXs&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>