If you aren't doing anything illegal you shouldn't worry about the goverment spying on you

>if you aren't doing anything illegal you shouldn't worry about the goverment spying on you

is this a valid argument?

i don't thing thats Veeky Forums related

> If you have nothing to say, you shouldn't be worry about freedom of speech.

No it's not because most of those who spout it are irrelevant nobodies,the problem is the government spying on important figures and possibly even having their recordings of such people leaked,and ofcourse the potential to blackmail people if the government ever goes corrupt.

Maybe from a pragmatic standpoint?
It depends on the likelyhood of govt. abusing this spying to undermine civil liberties.

Not Veeky Forums related but just I don't want a government officer watch or even listen to me when I fuck my girl or I'm taking a fat ogre shit. How's that so hard to understand?

>If you're not a murderer wannabe gangbanger, you shouldn't need any weapons, the cops will handle anything bad
>If you're not completely outspoken and constantly starting political arguments, you don't need the right to free speech, because that's only needed for people who are willing to REALLY talk about the issues
>If you don't have it as bad as I do, you're not allowed to talk about your problems, because you don't have as much experience as I do in getting fucked 8 ways to Sunday

If you aren't doing anything wrong, you shouldn't worry about people looking at you is an argument that applies to government agencies and businesses. They may be holding back relevant information from their owners/customers.

It doesn't apply to private citizens. Or if it does, no private citizen should consent to it without first being certain they can see the internal files of any organization that makes the argument.


People who think legality and morality are the same thing... I don't even. The government in most of the world has made recreational drug use illegal, and it's not immoral.

> Hey bro, what are you doing?
> Writing in my diary
> Cool. Can i read it to make sure you aren't a terrorist?
> No. It's private.
> What the fuck? Are you doing something illegal and don't want me to know about it?

How about this? If we doesn't do anything illegal than government literally wasting our money, for spying on innocents and shit. Should we ignore wasting billions without any real merits?

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Oh hey, Niemoller said something.

I don't care if the government knows I'm looking at traps

For any kind of genuine social interaction you need the right to have privacy.
Also power corrupts, this is a maxim that people forget way too much. There's no such thing as benign political authority and there never has been. If you look at the rhetoric used by the NSA and other cheeky bastards they will call anybody who doesn;t want to be spied on an "extremist".

That's very true. It's also important to remember that giving the state precedent for spying on people when you agree with it can go very poorly if you, through inevitable change, find yourself disagreeing with that state.

Technically, yes, but ethically, absolutely not.

Whatever laws are in place can be followed if you follow the path of least resistance, right up until that one sharp turn.

Absolutely not. Every government has unfairly targeted people they consider enemies in the past. The US has a huge number of documented incidents of this. Shit like COINTELPRO is proof that the FBI and other agencies will come after you if the government doesn't like your face.
I don't know a whole lot about other countries, but the French once sent secret agents to New Zealand so they could bomb a Greenpeace ship that was in port (the Rainbow Warrior.)

The people who make up the government are no better than any of the people you meet on a daily basis. They just have more power.

Pretty much everyone is goddamn insane in private, even if they don't do anything technically illegal.

Spying on its citizens is the government's way of manufacturing probable cause for further investigation on literally everybody.

Chances are, on some level, every single person in this thread has, or is currently doing, something illegal. I bet there's a guy who's reading this right now who's listening to a song they pirated.

The fact is, nobody's hands are 100% clean, and I'm sure if the government looked hard enough, they could find a 'legitimate' reason to arrest any old person off the street.

This too. People are never normal, sometimes they are just more obsessed with appearing normal and what makes them abnormal is that they don't realize normalcy is a meme.

Not if the government constantly stretches what "illegal" means

no

The British military and intelligence community fucked around a lot during the Troubles.

You had things like MI5 funding strikes to foil peace agreements, the British Army seizing control of Heathrow without telling anybody in advance as a threat, and the police and military sharing information with Loyalist death squads, or just outright joining them when they were off duty.

Not at all.

It assumes that the only reason someone would want to keep something private is because they re doing something wrong. But people do things privately all the time that has nothing bad about it. You wouldn't want someone watching you fuck your wife, recording you singing in the shower, or reading your diary. None of these three things are bad, but they are still somewhat embarrassing if someone were to leak it. It could ruin someone's life to have a video of them fucking their wife, or to have their private thoughts in their diary leaked. Imagine you are sexually confused, but you don't feel confident about your sexuality, so you hide it in your diary. There is nothing wrong from a legal perspective in any western country to be sexually confused, but you still would rather people not know about it.

is correct. Aside from authoritarian politicians, the people who argue this are not important at all and don't have anything really to hide from the public for image sake. For example, doesn't care because he is an irrelevant loser on Veeky Forums. But imagine if it turned out that Donald Trump jacked off to traps regularly. It would ruin his career. Take Martin Luther King Jr. for example, who was blackmailed by the FBI after they wiretapped his phone. Already we can see that someone who was doing nothing wrong (unless you don't believe in civil rights) was getting not only spied on, but he actually had something to fear because he was blackmailed. Image is important, and no matter how important your message is, having an extreme BDSM rimjob fetish with trannies could fucking ruin your life if it was made public. On a similar note, there have also been cases of NSA employees spying on their lovers and ex girlfriends.

THE STATE IS AN ILLEGAL ENTITY IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Otherwise, it wouldn't be able to exercise its sovereignty over the Law and the People.

The concept of a law is pointless if it can't be enforced.

sort of
in theory, it's fairly valid
in practice, there's a few problems
- spying on people creeps them out
- the data from spying could be misused or leaked
- people disagree on what's wrong/unacceptable and want to get away with things they find acceptable (e.g. pirating music and movies)
the board is "History and humanities"; the humanities basically cover every field of study other than STEM

>But imagine if it turned out that Donald Trump jacked off to traps regularly. It would ruin his career.
no, his numbers would skyrocket as millions of deranged weebs vote for him to make anime real

Trump already got the weeb vote

...

Yes but it doesn't address the real reasons people are against government spying.

The real reason is that people should have the freedom to organise and challenge the government. It's not free guns that will make a revolution possible but the ability to create networks of dissent.

This is what privacy defends. Of course the government is going to spy on us anyway and I don't mind.

>How about this? If we doesn't do anything illegal than government literally wasting our money, for spying on innocents and shit. Should we ignore wasting billions without any real merits?