[coldtea]

>This is the usual privacy hysteria knee-jerk reaction: "Watch out, the big companies are going to get data on you!".

Whether you care about privacy or not, I don't see anything "hysteric" about it. Indeed, big companies ARE going to get data on you (and they already have too many).

That said, not caring about privacy seems to me a first world privilege. And only because most people are so boring. Sure, if all you do is work, sleep, buy stuff from Amazon, Whole foods and Costco, go for the occasional holiday, watch some Netflix, rinse and repeat, who even cares if the government has data on you?

Try being an activist of any kind however (even someone like MLK who had tons of enemies at the local and big government level, and volumes of FBI files), rubbing the police the wrong way (e.g. being in some group against police violence etc), or even a regular citizen with some democratic views in any place from Egypt to several shady Latin American "democracies", and see what happens...

>Also, I'm not sure the author of this piece understands what encryption is about since he laments that most people don't search with https on. Er... what? If you want Google to search something on your behalf, they have to be able to read the words you type. Encrypting these words so Google can't read them would be comically useless.

No, but encrypting these words so third parties can't read them would be extremely important (that said, Google has https on by default IIRC).

[1stop]

That's a strange arguement.

That's like saying it's not hysterical to say everyone needs Kevlar, because try being a soldier without Kevlar!?

It makes no sense.

People who need to hide things have encrypted options. People who don't, also have options. I don't see the problem.

[Cau5tik]

> People who need to hide things have encrypted options. People who don't, also have options. I don't see the problem.

This viewpoint is tricky. This basically turns encryption use into a big target on a user. If only people who have something to hide use encryption, then everyone using encryption must have something to hide.

Also, your argument makes the assumption that everyone grasps the value of all of their information. Not everyone understands how much of their life can be found out through their Google Maps history.

I prefer to look at it from the perspective of my life not being anyone else's business. If my local MP came up to me and asked me who I'd talked to and where I'd been for the last week, I'd tell them to sit and spin. Why should passive surveillance be any different?