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Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Sunday, October 12th, 2014 9:23am PDT - promote requested by original submitter MrFisk.

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Interview was kind of a dick at the end

For me the video didn't work, i watched here: http://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters?language=en

I'm not sure he answered the question, or at least that wasn't his focus... rather than explain why privacy matters, he stressed that we 'like' privacy. Don't get me wrong, I like it too, and I don't see that there are any overarching security or economic concerns that consistently outweigh my liking it, but it would be interesting to hear if there are arguments that more directly address why privacy matters.

As far as I could tell, he had three overarching points:

1. Privacy is culturally and psychologically valuable to us, and we suffer if we feel that this private sphere is taken away from us. This is fine, but it doesn't really tell me why privacy 'matters', just that it's an artifact of our current civilization and culture. A similar argument could be made for religion, which I don't think is a necessary but certainly a very common phenomenon.

2. Privacy allows for dissent against tyranny and corruption to grow. This, to me, seems a little fallacious - in a system of asymmetrical privacy, where your government has more privacy than you, this might be true, but in a system of very high transparency on all sides it would be very possible to effectively express and build a dissenting voice. It seems dissent is possible in both very private and very open societies, but not in societies where privacy is only granted to the state.

3. Privacy is needed for creativity and unique expressions of talent. This might be true on an individual level (though it might also be a case of overlapping with #1) but transparency and openness are also facilitators of collective creativity. It might be that we need a private creative space for traditional acts of genius, but who's to say that we can't supersede this with crowd-sourced creativity in the future?

I'm not arguing in favor of any measures to take away privacy, but it would be interesting to see some more rigorous arguments for the need for privacy. Looking at what Snowden did, for example, we see that his actions might contribute to increased privacy in the long term, but in the short term he actually removed privacy (from the government) and made the equation a little more balanced in that sense.

Good parabola at the start (is it parabola.. anyway...) how to describe the levels of privacy. But the point here is, we have the right to choose what is private to us and what is not. That task is not up to security departments, it is done individually. Yes, it is a security risk. No shit sherlock. So are a lot of old social rules that we have honed during the millenias, spanning from cavemen to nerd. There would be NO crime if we would have NO privacy. And still, after tens of thousands of years, we have seemed it appropriate to allow more freedoms with small disadvantage but with a tremendous improvements on personal well being. Not to mention creativity, which often demands privacy. If you knew that someone is watching every draw of line you make, the picture turns out to be average at best, not exciting, dull, predictable. Because at those private moments, we find our selves free to take creative risks. Innovate without reprimand. You take that feeling of freedom away, force people to "behave" when at their own homes and we will live in a stagnated, boring world. We have to be allowed to break away from societal norms when private. The fact is that internet is a tool too for that inner self study.. We ask it daily questions we wont ask from our spouses. It is linked to the most private form of self. And thus, it has tremendous effect on our wellbeing and society as a whole.

Hmm. His argument seems to be that we all want privacy because we all have something to hide.... I kinda disagree in the sense that it's the wrong angle to look at. I think we all want honesty. Honesty as meaning being who we essentially are. You can't do this is you know your being watched, because when you are being watched you perform - you can't help it. Performing is inherently dishonest and your own sense of identity is compromised.

I dunno, I think that he was asking an (unfortunately) common question in a way that gave Greenwald a fair and friendly environment to respond to it -- which he did in spectacular style. I thought that his response was definitely the highlight of the Q/A at the end, and arguably a highlight of the entire speech/video.

If he went on Bill O'Reilly or some other Fox News show, the same question would be asked, and then he be interrupted during his response rather that allowing him to point out the ridiculousness of that line of thinking... So, I think that between A) playing Devil's Advocate and getting that question out of the way, and B) kind of "lobbing" the question to him instead of really going full-tilt, it was a good way to allow Greenwald to respond to that issue without having it seem like they were avoiding pressing him with the "tough questions". Pretty well done, I think.