Snowden Gives Alternative Christmas Message On Channel 4

codeusirae wrote in with news that Edward Snowden gave an alternative to the UK's yearly Christmas message, speaking about his objections to mass indiscriminate surveillance by governments. The message aired on channel four at 16:15. Slashgear posted a transcript. Quoting: "Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves — an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that's a problem, because privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be."

Comments

Dramatic nonsense.

[argStyopa]

"...They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves â" an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought..."

Bullshit. This is just drama-queen nonsense right here.

No, their complaints aren't private...because they post them immediately to Facebook, snapchat them to someone else, or can't help but tweet their latest crisis to their 465 followers. Surprise, announcing your private thoughts and feelings to hundreds if not thousands makes it unlikely your thought is "private".

Today, any person can have a "private moment". They can have "private thoughts". There are even lots of opportunities for actual privacy, and they're pretty much all the same ways people have done these things through the centuries (unless you choose to avail yourself of modern communications).

To claim otherwise is pure histrionics.