We all got a rude awakening when Edward Snowden exposed the NSA’s spying on our emails, phone calls, and the like. A lot of people felt their right to privacy had been violated, and Snowden was a whistleblower who should be honored. Others felt Snowden was a traitor, revealing secrets about the capacities NSA has developed to keep America safe. If you don’t like it, move to Russia... like he did.

What we think about Snowden probably turns on what we think about privacy. So what is privacy? An inalienable right? Or a privilege we need to give up on behalf of national security?

We need to make a distinction between two spheres of privacy. One is what we do in our private lives, like the personal choices we make. The other is what we think, or feel, or say privately to our friends and family, unless we choose to make these things public.

One might argue that this second sphere of privacy a bit out of date? Look at what Americans, particularly younger Americans, choose to disclose about themselves on Facebook. They don’t seem to care what the public knows about them! Every detail about what they think and what they do is on Facebook or some new device for teenage exhibitionism.

Still, although the younger generation(s) may choose to disclose a lot more about themselves than us older folk would be comfortable with, what you see on Facebook is still what they choose to disclose. If there are things they don’t wish to disclose, they have the right to keep them private.

There is -- or, at least, ought to be -- a difference between social media on the one hand, and an email or phone call on the other. If I share something publicly or with a large group of people I may not know very well, then I don’t have the same expectation of privacy that I have when I send a personal email or make a phone call. In the latter case, I think I have a legitimate grievance if someone listens in.

我必须承认，我怀疑没有人对我的电话或电子邮件特别感兴趣。我对自己的邮件几乎不感兴趣，所以为什么国家安全局或其他人会想要阅读它们?除非我有理由相信我在计划做些危险的事。在这种心情下，我想:国安局从我这里收集元数据有什么大不了的?只要收集到的信息是用来做好事的，也许就没有问题。如果我能让国家安全局随时更新我的日程表并提醒我约会，我可能会喜欢这个主意。

But in more sober, philosophical and reasonably paranoid moments, I ask: what’s the guarantee that the information won’t be misused by governments or -- don’t forget -- corporations? We don’t need to be doing anything illegal to want to keep information private that could be used to harm or embarrass or blackmail us. But even if our private information is collected and nothing is done to hurt us with it, that’s still a violation of our rights.

我的理解是，我们在欧洲采取的策略与在美国不同。这里我们对普通人的信息收集没有什么限制，但对信息的分布有一些限制。在欧洲，他们试图通过限制可以收集和保留的关于人的信息来保护隐私。但如果你是个遵纪守法的公民你真正害怕的是什么?在这方面，就像公共交通和公共医疗一样，我们有很多东西要向欧洲学习。