I understand people will go far lengths to protect their privacy but with the internet once you have a email they probably have a good idea about you already, and unless you are doing something with malicious intent the government probably (hopefully) doesn’t really care, so why is it such a huge thing?
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It’s basically the “I have nothing to hide argument.” The problem is that governments are not inherently good or what is legal is not inherently morally right (and vice versa). Nor is there any guarantee that their rules will stay the same way.
Think back about the history of your own country. Almost everyone can bring up an example of their country persecuting something that nowadays they do not. Or other way round, their government starting to punish something that it previously did not. Data collection intensifies the threat. You simply don’t know if what is fine now will incriminate you in the future.
Look at Turkey 2016 – authorities used collected data to target thousands of academics, journalists, and civil servants, leading to arrests. Or East Germany before the wall came down – the Stasi used surveillance information to blackmail, harass, and suppress dissidents and ordinary citizens who might have expressed anti-government sentiments. Or South Korea’s blacklist on ordinary citizens used to deny them government services (2016). None of these are too long ago.
You never have a guarantee that this will not happen (again) in any given country. It could currently be happening.
A lot of people distrust that the government uses such data responsibly. There are plenty of cases of governments collecting excessive data on citizens for no good reasons. Many people question why.
For example, NSA Surveillance, Germany’s BND Surveillance, etc. Some people fear that everyone is considered a suspect until proven innocent (see the war on terrorism in the US).
Some people also fear that surveillance stifles freedom of expression. People are more careful when they feel watched. The next question is if this data is stored securely. It could be hacked and abused.
The essential argument is this: By putting faith in the government’s goodwill and competence to handle this sensitive information, we may expose ourselves to risks that far outweigh the intended benefits of security or law enforcement.
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