Hey, I actually can kind of see where this premise is coming from. Not completely. But let's see how it kind of philosophically does make a tiny bit of sense. It does violate my privacy (even more) if someone tells me they've been spying on me.
To see this, consider: after someone spies on you, what's the least damage they can do to your privacy? Obviously the most is to publish everything they have on you for everyone. But what's the least?
The least damage is to completely forget it, never mention it, never think about it, and not even acknowledge or record it - let the world be exactly the same as if they had not spied on me.
I'm not saying this is better than ACTUALLY not ever spying on me, but it's the best thing for my privacy once they have.
Say you're a security person and do bag searches, a celebrity comes through and you actually see something very embarrassing in their bag, on some subject there's been public speculation on. (Their sexuality, whether they have some disease and you see meds for it, whatever). What's the best way to protect their privacy after you clear them (nothing dangerous in the bag)?
Obviously, by not even mentioning/acknowledging that you searched them, just by moving on.
If all my email (along with everyone else's) is being scanned to see if I'm concocting a terrorist plot, then the best you can do after this fact is not even ackowledge this and in every way act and produce a world as though it never happened.
Note that this does not make the original invasion of privacy any better. It doesn't condone it. It may also make it harder to instate more appropriate privacy policies in the future. But the premise "If I answered you 'every single person on US territory who has sent an email or made or received a telephone call in the past 36 months' then it would violate your privacy" is not completely devoid of any merit. Should every single person's privacy have been violated? No. We have constitutional protections against that sort of thing.
If it has, would it violate their privacy further to go boasting about this fact? What if it means that anyone suing you for anything can use this knowledge to do discovery and request your communications from the government? In this and a myriad other scenarios, telling the extent to which you invaded people's privacy can be worse for their privacy than refusing to do so.
Not saying I'm convinced. I'm just saying there's a little something in this line of thought. Obviously the late Martin Luther King's privacy is far worse off now than if we never knew that the FBI kept detailed files on him...
To see this, consider: after someone spies on you, what's the least damage they can do to your privacy? Obviously the most is to publish everything they have on you for everyone. But what's the least?
The least damage is to completely forget it, never mention it, never think about it, and not even acknowledge or record it - let the world be exactly the same as if they had not spied on me.
I'm not saying this is better than ACTUALLY not ever spying on me, but it's the best thing for my privacy once they have.
Say you're a security person and do bag searches, a celebrity comes through and you actually see something very embarrassing in their bag, on some subject there's been public speculation on. (Their sexuality, whether they have some disease and you see meds for it, whatever). What's the best way to protect their privacy after you clear them (nothing dangerous in the bag)?
Obviously, by not even mentioning/acknowledging that you searched them, just by moving on.
If all my email (along with everyone else's) is being scanned to see if I'm concocting a terrorist plot, then the best you can do after this fact is not even ackowledge this and in every way act and produce a world as though it never happened.
Note that this does not make the original invasion of privacy any better. It doesn't condone it. It may also make it harder to instate more appropriate privacy policies in the future. But the premise "If I answered you 'every single person on US territory who has sent an email or made or received a telephone call in the past 36 months' then it would violate your privacy" is not completely devoid of any merit. Should every single person's privacy have been violated? No. We have constitutional protections against that sort of thing.
If it has, would it violate their privacy further to go boasting about this fact? What if it means that anyone suing you for anything can use this knowledge to do discovery and request your communications from the government? In this and a myriad other scenarios, telling the extent to which you invaded people's privacy can be worse for their privacy than refusing to do so.
Not saying I'm convinced. I'm just saying there's a little something in this line of thought. Obviously the late Martin Luther King's privacy is far worse off now than if we never knew that the FBI kept detailed files on him...