The Law is Whatever the Law Becomes: Why the Ammendments Don't Matter

Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'

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By Daniel J. Solove

"On the surface, it seems easy to dismiss the nothing-to-hide argument. Everybody probably has something to hide from somebody. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared, "Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is." Likewise, in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's novella "Traps," which involves a seemingly innocent man put on trial by a group of retired lawyers in a mock-trial game, the man inquires what his crime shall be. "An altogether minor matter," replies the prosecutor. "A crime can always be found." "

http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/

  Solove has written a good, solid article on why we should all be concerned about the loss of privacy, government data dredging, and the shredding of the 4th Ammendment.

   The larger question, though, is how we're going to live in that system that will/(has?) become like Kafka's in The Trial, and Orwell's in 1984. Not a question of how we're going to avoid it, or STOP it, but how we're going to live in it. We will. And we do, as it's all now just a matter of magnitude. The average American is not Winston, nor Joseph K. simply because we have not yet run afoul of the law. But that percentage is shrinking rapidly. Prison population numbers prove it. We still live under the illusion that we're free and have rights. But the state, and the corporations that run it, or own it, can and do revoke those "legal rights, writ in stone" all the time, capriciously, and convince us it's for our safety and in our best interests. From the Patriot Act, to reproductive rights , to sex crime registries, to eminent domain, to drug laws, the powers have the lawyers, the courts, and the police/military apparatus, and they can and do rewrite what ever they like. Between (approved of) commerce, and the church, there is no protection.
  The point is that, today, you may think you're doing nothing wrong, therefore have nothing to hide. But much of what you do, may well not be "right" tomorrow. So you're going to have to give that up. Is it right that they can make you stop, for example, oral sex? Don't worry. They can make the case, if they want. And you will either believe it, or be a criminal. And now, with total lack of privacy, the state can find out if they wish.
  We're not talking about some future sci-fi world. We're living it. And for the most part, we don't even know it. And they prefer it that way. And so do we. That's how it works.
  So we can celebrate Snowden, And WikiLeaks, and Manning. And we should. I do. But their efforts are futile.
  This is not a call to arms. There's nothing possibly to be done. This is a public service announcement. Figure out what you're willing to give up. Because  you will.
  Commerce, the church, and the system will be protected at all costs.

The Banality of Evil

"Normalization of the unthinkable comes easily when money, status, power, and jobs are at stake. Companies and workers can always be found to manufacture poison gases, napalm, or instruments of torture, and intellectuals will be dredged up to justify their production and use. The rationalizations are hoary with age: government knows best, ours is a strictly defensive effort, or, if it wasn't me somebody else would do it. There is also the retreat to ignorance, real, cultivated, or feigned. Consumer ignorance of process is important."


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7278.htm