[sukhbir]

FTA:

"If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, then why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards? [...] If you hide your mail inside envelopes, does that mean you must be a subversive or a drug dealer, or maybe a paranoid nut?"

Whenever I try to explain the importance of privacy (online and in real life) to family or friends, not surprisingly, the most common retort to this is: "I have nothing to hide". When I counter this argument and explain why privacy matters, usually by giving them instances from day-to-day life where they want their privacy respected but don't think about it that way, the message gets across quite clearly. There is this paper [0] "'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy" which dives deeper into countering this argument; it's a very interesting read.

[0] - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

[Spooky23]

People in the United States, especially younger people, are amazingly obtuse about this stuff.

When you peruse the mailing lists or other discussion forums re: GPG or PGP, you'll start to notice that you are interacting with, or at least reading stuff from more Germans than you had previously.

Think about why Germans seem to be more interested in privacy and personal email security. Many Germans were or know victims of the pervasive police state, or know folks who participated in that apparatus.

I suspect that people here won't smarten up until some massive and egregious privacy violation emerges.