General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Greenwald Lashes Back At Critics Who Call Snowden A Russian Propagandist [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)"Privacy on the phone, or privacy on the internet, is like privacy at the food court at the mall."
I do not expect privacy when I go to the food court at the mall or any other 'public' place.
I do expect privacy when I sit in my home and call my best friend.
The Constitution gives us certain freedoms. When we go to the mall we give up temporarily the right to eat with our feet on the table. But when we sit in our homes and talk to friends and family on the phone, we can have our feet wherever we want. The difference exists because when we leave our home and go to the mall we decide to enter an area that we clearly share with others. We do not expect privacy in the mall.
But when we stay at home and call our friends and family, it is in part because our homes are our safe places. We have an expectation of privacy. When James Madison published The Federalist Papers with his friends and they all used pseudonyms, it was because they were claiming and expected to have anonymity and privacy in their expression of their views on the proposed Constitution. They expected privacy.
It is incomprehensible to me that people are willing to relinquish their privacy with regard to phone and certain password-protected internet activity.
But then, most Americans have no idea what it is like to live in societies such as those that existed in Eastern Europe under Communism. I did not live there either. But for some years I lived right next door and talked to people from some of those countries. When you fear surveillance even if it is not really very intrusive, you stop talking as freely as you do when you feel free. The surveillance in the mall is expected. We don't talk as freely when we are at the mall as we do when discussing politics with our friends. I do not understand why so many Americans have difficulty understanding this.