My students did not value privacy as I did, but they also did not hold stuff against people that my generation would.
Privacy is either a freestanding value or it is not. The concept cannot be linked to the question "What do you have to hide?" That linkage is not a quibble;it's the death of the idea.
This is why common sensical and well meaning citizens do not support the Exclusionary Rule. In their view, it only protects the guilty, and they have no interest in protecting the guilty.
Judges are forever tempted to view the Fourth Amendment differently for a half a dozen joints than for a pistol, a ski mask, and a sack of money.
That way lies madness.
The kids are right in the sense that if we, as a society, get less exercised over each other's sex habits or choice of intoxicants, the immediate exposure is less of a big deal.
But do you really want to do it all in public?
Ever have more than one girlfriend/boyfriend at the same time? Did you mean harm or were you just trying to understand things?
Ever troll for a job before quitting the one you have? Did you mean harm or were you just insecure? Curious?
Ever talk to a reporter "not for attribution"? I have. Judges are severely limited in what they can say, but I cannot see harm in pointing a reporter toward people who can speak or documents likely to be overlooked.
Do you really want to do it all in public?
Snowden is right that the younger generation is being raised with little conception of privacy as we have known it. The live question--sorry, Mr. Snowden--is how much that matters? The answer is not self-evident, and you really cannot justify privacy in terms of what you might want to hide. In the remarks above, I am suggesting that a lot of what we reflexively hide may be more innocent than it appears.
But if we are going to chuck privacy, we are going to have to give each other a lot more slack than we have in the past. That which is harmless in the consequentialist sense has to be rendered harmless in the political sense.
Mr. Snowden is right to say privacy is threatened. He's on less firm ground when he tries to explain why that's bad. Terrorism is both a real danger and hard to bring off in a panoptic society.
On the other hand, if we take privacy to be a freestanding value, it makes sense to mention that terrorism is a real danger like lightning strikes and shark attacks: scary but rare.
Go down that path and you admit that the terrorists get to decide how we shall live. The more carnage they can pull off, the less privacy matters. Really?
This reminds me of Bush the Younger's remark, "They hate us for our freedom!"
What follows from that is if our own government takes away our freedom, then "they" will no longer hate us, right? And we'll take the government's word that they are interested in your political associations rather than pillow talk with your girlfriend.
Or will we?