If there isn't anything inherently wrong with collecting, and future abuse is the only thing you are worried about, then you should probably worry about protecting against abuses, not collecting. Especially if you have no other point to be had for privacy, when the opposition claims unobjected that giving it up can and does save lives.
That said, I think the criminal breach argument is a valid one but the one that really nails it is one already mentioned above:
"privacy isn't something you can just give up. It's a right given to society by our framers, not individuals. A smoothly functioning democracy depends on dissent, which requires privacy to allow alternate points of view to gain traction. So privacy is a social good, not a personal right, and if we reduce privacy, we are reducing our democracy. The Soviets didn't have privacy. Free countries must."
Sans the soviet part, in my opinion... Seems useless and even fallaciously counter-productive to mention it, I don't get why it's even there
edit: What I mean by the first paragraph, in case it's not clear, is that most technologies can and probably will be abused, which doesn't go a long way to say that they should be forbidden right at the start, if there is good to be had in them. You just have to be careful not to allow abuses (which by your post I figured you don't think are happening at this moment)
> What I mean by the first paragraph, in case it's not clear, is that most technologies can and probably will be abused, which doesn't go a long way to say that they should be forbidden right at the start, if there is good to be had in them. You just have to be careful not to allow abuses (which by your post I figured you don't think are happening at this moment)
Collecting data isn't a technology, it's a use of a technology. And preventing mass data collection is how you disallow abuse.
The vast majority of the productive use of e.g. location tracking data is possible when you have the data on yourself and nobody has mass data on everyone. The things that are only possible with bulk data collection are almost universally bad.
That said, I think the criminal breach argument is a valid one but the one that really nails it is one already mentioned above:
"privacy isn't something you can just give up. It's a right given to society by our framers, not individuals. A smoothly functioning democracy depends on dissent, which requires privacy to allow alternate points of view to gain traction. So privacy is a social good, not a personal right, and if we reduce privacy, we are reducing our democracy. The Soviets didn't have privacy. Free countries must."
Sans the soviet part, in my opinion... Seems useless and even fallaciously counter-productive to mention it, I don't get why it's even there
edit: What I mean by the first paragraph, in case it's not clear, is that most technologies can and probably will be abused, which doesn't go a long way to say that they should be forbidden right at the start, if there is good to be had in them. You just have to be careful not to allow abuses (which by your post I figured you don't think are happening at this moment)