Wei Dai wrote: | Also, I don't quite understand your first argument. It seems to suggest | that privacy should exist for no reason in particular. If this is the | case then it doesn't make sense to argue about the costs/benefits of | privacy. But it is my understanding that most cypherpunks believe more | privacy benefits everyone, and therefore work to making more privacy for | everyone. What I'm looking for are arguments that support this belief. Privacy should exist because information is power. Information about me gives you power over me. If you don't know my home address, you can't stalk me as easily. If you don't know my phone number, you can't make harrassing phone calls. New laws get passed from time to time. Laws banning behaviors that were perfectly legal before. Smoking pot, drinking without the state's intervention, gambling, buying fertilizer, were all legal and free at one point. If todays mechanisms for invading privacy (such as surveillance cameras, credit card tracking of purchases, etc) were in place, then the government could have used them to round up thousands of people, like they did with the Californian Japanese in the second world war. They did this via Post Office and IRS records. Being Japanese wasn't illegal, but those Japanese who built privacy into their lives had a chance to move to a less racist state. Privacy matters because information is power, and power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Adam -- "Well, that depends. Do you mind the end of civilization as we know it?"