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.
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.
