Privacy - why the Govt. wants privacy for themselves

Cory Doctorow has written a good piece about why you should be worried about privacy. Basically, it covers:

• being wrongly accused of something and then being labelled as being a threat even though you are still innocent
• privacy is a right (e.g. keeping the toilet door closed even though everyone knows what you're doing).
• collecting more data about a population doesn't mean that you will catch more criminals, if the data isn't criminal.
• being snooped upon makes systems less secure
• it can be used against you by the bad guys in the future

He also makes the point that you shouldn't worry about your privacy if you have nothing to worry about. That's why privacy was used when the Govt. wanted to present evidence in court about the UK's role in rendition to countries that advocate torture.

So, basically, privacy works when the state wants it to work, but not when you want it to.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2013/jun/14/nsa-prism