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False equivalence is false— but, sure, anything to make espionage seem OK
Seeing as this was posted in c/privacy, I believe the intent was rather to say "actually that whole 'nothing to hide nothing to fear' premise government espionage programs enjoy thrusting on their citizens is patently bullshit, and they know it, as despite saying it to you while spying on you they make it illegal to spy on them."
Using paranoia to justify a logical fallacy - and espionage - isn’t a very good argument.
"Espionage" - Ed Snowden leaking PRISM docs
"Paranoia" - reading about it on WikipediaYou’re the only one who mentioned Edward Snowden
You're right, I mentioned it because it seemed like a good counterexample to your reasoning.
... Apparently you agree?
I wish I were on the drugs you are to find the reason in the obviously logically flawed and contradictory madness you keep making of this.
But if you need to keep telling yourself that espionage is OK just because some governments engage in some forms of mass surveillance, then I can’t stop you from making a fool of yourself by saying so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I still think that both are bad, and I still find it pretty easy to argue both points without conflating the two logically fallaciously.
Thing is, even if we don’t agree, I think you could do better arguing either or both points without conflating the two. And I think you’d be more convincing, if you didn’t rely on conflating them. That’s what I’m trying to say, is that you’re not really wrong on one point, the other is logically fallacious, but that you’re wrong for trying to say that they’re related.
What did Edward Snowden do, if not technically espionage? Some other crime?
Sometimes, it's good to do crimes. The more oppressive the government, generally speaking, then more good things might get turned into crimes. Criticism of the government. Protest. Etc.
This post actually illustrates the opposite of your interpretation. Satire generally extrapolates on the actual real events with logical evolutions that demonstrate that the original premise was laughable at best, and at worst creates a double standard.