[throwmeaway33]

"But it gives the government enormous power to make decisions about you "

What the government can and can't do is limited by the rights granted to them by the constitution and other laws. They're extremely hamstrung.

I think your TSA example perfectly illustrates how the lack of privacy doesn't lead to an abuse of power; it's ironically a testament to how good our system is. To think there are people the government absolutely despises and whose lives they want to be extremely difficult and the best they can do is make them wait longer in line at the airport? That's awesome.

The real fight shouldn't be about privacy but about openness of the government and the expansion of our liberties. The real tragedy is not that these program exist but that they are trying to hide them.

(privacy isn't a liberty, because it doesn't allow you to do things. It disallows others from doing things.)

[lurchpop]

It's essential to liberty though, because the power structure uses information from the privacy invasion to get leverage on you. Stalin's quote, "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime" illustrates this pretty well. Note the word "find." The more data the attacker has, the more they can criminalize.

[throwmeaway33]

None of what you said proves it's "essential".

If you have liberty guaranteed by a legal system, then the government can't attack you.

I mean they can but they'd be violating your rights, and for the sake of this discussion we're assuming they will not do that (if you do assume they ignore laws then legislating privacy protections is meaningless)

Shouldn't the focus be on making sure the government doesn't have means to attack people? ie. That people are guaranteed rights and the power of the state is limited.

PS: Bringing up Stalin kinda makes my point. Privacy is only important in dysfunctional societies where the state is not going to abide by the laws that constrain it. No first world nation in the past 50 years has regressed to a totalitarian state.