Privacy is key to the exercise of individual freedoms – to read, to think, to express oneself, to conduct intimate relationships, and to be let alone. Privacy is also key to political evolution. Without a zone of protection, those who seek to evolve the country’s laws and policies, to challenge the status quo, are at risk of imprisonment or blackmail by those in power, and those in power are at risk of blackmail or embezzlement by other powerful people. Americans natively understand this is true in despotic countries. But similar civil liberties attacks have happened here in the United States, and may become an even more serious challenge to our democracy in the future.
It’s like you can see the train wreck coming.