[brashrat]

the name may be intended to be ironic, but the irony of the irony is that if you are interested in communicating about conducting one or more felonies, I would in fact urge you to use encryption.

I hate when people hate the "if you have nothing to hide, why do you care?" question because it's a valid question. You can answer, "because I fear the creeping growth of a surveillance state like in 1984", but then again, if you do that you no longer get to claim that other "slippery slope arguments are fallacies".

I've been a bigger privacy freak than all of you since before you were born, google my somewhat unusual name, you won't even find me. But still, I enjoy making fun of the groupthink that infects these types of communities.

[cyphar]

Ignoring the arrogance, "If you have nothing to hide" isn't a valid question because everyone has something to hide. People have curtains and doors for good reasons, and everyone expects a certain amount of privacy in their lives -- but they don't realise how much they care about it until after they get screwed.

Oh, and it's not a slippery slope fallacy if we literally are headed towards 1984. Not even Orwell thought that social graphs would allow for automated analysis. The NSA doesn't need tele-screens when they have Facebook.

[brashrat]

no slippery slope argument is a fallacy when the underlying process can best be described as a slippery slope. "Slippery slope" is not a fallacy, it's an analogy.

I'm in favor of crypto, privacy and the same things you are... I just don't lie about it: criminals are more interested in crypto than the average citizen, so are kiddy pornographers (for those of you who don't think that's a crime). So are "chinese dissidents", but seriously, there are more criminals out there.

my arrogance comes from my ability to be both smart and honest rather than a propagandist.

[cyphar]

> criminals are more interested in crypto than the average citizen

That is the problem that should be solved. Everyone should be interested in crypto. You're just spouting arrogance and irrelevant information.

[Sir_Substance]

>if you do that you no longer get to claim that other "slippery slope arguments are fallacies".

You probably shouldn't be making that claim, to be honest. It's only a slippery slope fallacy if there's no historical evidence to support it. Part of the reason we record history is so we can tell whether a slippery slope might be a real danger.

There's several instances where a historical collection of information on citizens, done under claims to protect the people, turned into an oppressive regime, sometimes leading to the deaths of innocent citizens. The SS, Stasi and OVRA are all good examples, and a more current example can be found in China.