I don't think it is just that. Look at an HN thread on privacy and you will find a lot of people that do not see any issues.
The problem really comes down to complexity and trust. The truth is that there never is a problem if we operate under the assumption that all actors are honest and good natured. But the reality of the world is that this is a naive assumption. All citizens should be concerned about changing objectives from their authorities. A democracy can vote in dictators and a benevolent dictator can quickly change to a malicious one (which has happened frequently historically). We also need to be concerned with non-authority threat actors, from criminals to nation-state actors competing states (and even allies for the same aforementioned reason).
That's the problem. The realistic conditions we need to solve for are far more complex than the ones people operate under and we have a difficult time talking to one another about it. For a privacy conscious person it does not matter if the holder of the data is the most benevolent entity that could exist, it is if there is the opportunity for the data to be held by anyone else. Thus, no one should hold it. No matter how "worthy".
Even on HN there are a large number of users who think they are not the target of hackers, and especially nation-state hackers. Of all places on the internet this should be one of the most informed on the matter and best suited to understand that being "normal" is what makes them a target, to be incorporated into bot-nets or other reasons like being used for lateral movement. It is the exact same problem: the reality is far more complex. The assumption of not being a target is based on the understanding that they are not the end target but the complexity of reality is that this is not the condition for being /a/ target.
I do agree that collective action matters. But it is hard to form collective action when people do not have the motivation for action. And they don't have the motivation because they have a naive approximation of the problems at hand.
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I don't think it is just that. Look at an HN thread on privacy and you will find a lot of people that do not see any issues.
The problem really comes down to complexity and trust. The truth is that there never is a problem if we operate under the assumption that all actors are honest and good natured. But the reality of the world is that this is a naive assumption. All citizens should be concerned about changing objectives from their authorities. A democracy can vote in dictators and a benevolent dictator can quickly change to a malicious one (which has happened frequently historically). We also need to be concerned with non-authority threat actors, from criminals to nation-state actors competing states (and even allies for the same aforementioned reason).
That's the problem. The realistic conditions we need to solve for are far more complex than the ones people operate under and we have a difficult time talking to one another about it. For a privacy conscious person it does not matter if the holder of the data is the most benevolent entity that could exist, it is if there is the opportunity for the data to be held by anyone else. Thus, no one should hold it. No matter how "worthy".
Even on HN there are a large number of users who think they are not the target of hackers, and especially nation-state hackers. Of all places on the internet this should be one of the most informed on the matter and best suited to understand that being "normal" is what makes them a target, to be incorporated into bot-nets or other reasons like being used for lateral movement. It is the exact same problem: the reality is far more complex. The assumption of not being a target is based on the understanding that they are not the end target but the complexity of reality is that this is not the condition for being /a/ target.
I do agree that collective action matters. But it is hard to form collective action when people do not have the motivation for action. And they don't have the motivation because they have a naive approximation of the problems at hand.