Why privacy so important?
Why should I very cares about privacy?
1. I'm not spy, rebel, etc. I'm not even using illegal soft or downloading films from PirateBay.
2. I'm not using e-money, internet-banking, etc.
3. I'm not working with top-secret data.
Now I see only one good reason for caring about privacy(in my case): shame.
It would become abundantly clear why privacy is important, I imagine, if you lived in a country ruled by a vicious, oppressive regime, like North Korea.
Nobody should ever have full access to information about your personal life. Such power cannot be entrusted to anyone.
"if you lived in a country ruled by a vicious .."
If my aunt had been a man, she'd have been my uncle.
I'm not going to move to North Korea. =)
"Nobody should ever have full access ..."
If you will take all information about me, only a certain portions can be dangerous for me.
But I just cannot imagine how information on my computer may be used against me.
Maybe I have a bad imagination? Please, give me REALISTIC examples.
No, you don't move to north korea, but perhaps north korea moves to you.
This seems to be exaggerated, but privacy is the big, iron door which keeps your treasure save, and this treasure is the collection of human rights.
In history, it appeared over and over again that a despot exploited the emotional reaction of the people in certain situation to take away their privacy -some kind of danger, terrorism nowadays, which makes the people beg "please take away our privacy and keep us safe - , and then it was very easy to establish even more power and get rid of other rights as well.
I didn't get the idea of rational egoism wrong. I don't even need the exact definition, because you have mentioned in another thread (about software petants) some actions which I would refuse to consider as
part of any good form of egoism (which certainly is necessary) .
Now on your imagination:
Imagine the government can see everything you do on your computer.
But not only on yours. They can see what happens on everyone's computer. They have cameras on the streets, can track where everyone goes and so on.
This is no big problem if the government is a good fellow you can trust. But imagine they change their minds and do bad things.
Who can afford any more to strike against them?
Organizing demonstrations, practising active resistance....
Everyone who tries to do so is visible and vulnerable. It paralyses the people, creates an atmosphere of fear and gives power to the mighty.
Perhaps you have seen the lord of the rings, the two towers.
A small whole in a big wall is very bad.
If they can justify to take away a little bit of privacy, they can take more and more.
I would go even further: privacy entails freedom of thought.
An excellent talk by Eben Moglen: http://12.re-publica.de/panel/why-freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media-and-why-free-media-require-free-technology/