Long and boring (I refer to my comment, of course, not the Register article)
"Kids today", even "phone bloggers", don't pay to lobby the government. Businesses do.
Living under surveillance causes psychiatric disorders. We know that but it has no traction with the unconverted.
You get political traction when you lobby government, as businesses do, and with them it's not so much privacy that they need as confidentiality. The secrecy they need when they have a new product coming to market or when they're planning a takeover is generally regarded as legitimate in a way that lying to an insurance company about HIV, to take Andrew's example, is not.
To get political traction on the downside of surveillance, may I suggest, the argument needs to move from personal privacy to commercial confidentiality.
NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ, the Guardian told us in August 2013.
Money.
Money is changing hands.
Surveillance costs money and that money has to come from somewhere.
While the security services are surveilling all and sundry that must include businesses, not just phone bloggers. The security services must come across not just personal but commercial confidences, e.g. the takeover by Berkshire Hathaway of Heinz, please see Heinz bought by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway for $28bn: "Shares in Heinz soared nearly 20% in New York to hit the $72.50 price being offered".
Armed with their advance knowledge, the security services could have secretly bought £100 million-worth of Heinz and tucked a £20 million profit into the budget a few days later.
That wouldn't go down well with Berkshire Hathaway or any of the other rich-as-Croesus enterprises who spend a fortune on political lobbying. That's where to get the traction.
And if the result is secure-ish email for businesses then individuals as well will get secure-ish email.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
