[diminoten]

For someone like me, someone who has explored this area philosophically (and if you think that sounded pompous, just wait), I find arguments like, "YES YOU DO HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE" to be a) presumptive and b) not compelling. It just smacks of a lack of understanding about personal responsibility and honesty.

What I'd want, if I didn't yet think privacy was necessary, would be an argument not that privacy is itself an inherent right, but that privacy is a reaction to the flawed nature of humanity. I'd look for why privacy is necessary and not innate, because that makes more sense to me than this abstract idea of a "right to privacy".

Even your argument takes about a dozen leaps to arrive at the conclusion that without privacy, governments can be more private. What you should be talking about is not the government's ability to hide things, but the idea that any government is a flawed entity which are governed by an imperfect set of laws built to represent a cultural morality. Without privacy, you should be saying, the inherent greed and cruelty that exists within every collection of people would run rampant over minorities.

If man were capable of not harassing minorities, then privacy wouldn't be such a big deal. So no, I don't think someone like me would want to hear that privacy is a human right. Someone like me would want to hear that privacy is absolutely necessary to combat the inherent evil that comes with collecting groups of people together. It's not about hiding what you have, it's about protecting minorities from the majority. That's all.

[Ygg2]

I don't think that privacy has anything to do with government. Privacy to me at least, is the ability to filter information I present to other people or groups of people.