I didn't mean any specific strategy at all, I am just wondering why you think that achieving transparency of the kind that you seem to have in mind would be easier than maintaining/gaining back privacy. I read what you wrote as "gaining back privacy is hard, therefore, we should aim for transparency". What I didn't see was a justification for why that would actually be easier. And if it's equally hard, that argument kindof falls apart, doesn't it?

Also, I don't see why your suggested options are even necessarily in conflict? At least conceptually, I don't see any problem with transparency for governments and corporations, but privacy for individuals (unless they are acting in a role within those organisations)?!

> However, Path #1 sounds a hell of a lot healthier in the long run to me.

Do you mean that a society where noone feels the need to keep secrets would be a healthier society than what we have today, or do you mean that forcing everyone to publish all their secrets against their will would lead to a healthier society? Or something else entirely?

> It's the one I advocate, because I believe more information is always better. You can certainly argue that it will be abused, but if everyone can see everything, then you can see the abuser doing the abuse as well. That's a key point that's easy to miss.

Well, the one problem is, of course, whether that is actually any more realistic than strong privacy. Just because you hope that more transparency of the powerless will also bring more transparency of the powerful, doesn't mean one actually implies the other. You can actually have total lack of privacy for common folk and total secrecy of the elite at the same time. With power come the resources to maintain secrecy, whether legal or not.

But maybe more importantly: Do you actually see the abuser doing the abuse? How would you actually find that out, in practical terms? Would you personally read all the data that's being published by the government? Millions of pages every day? After all, the more data, the better? Or wouldn't you, for the most part, have to rely on others, like journalists or activists, to filter out the interesting stuff and to put it into context for you? What do you expect powerful groups to do when they can clearly see how those journalists and activists are preparing to report on their wrongdoing? Just sit there and hope for the best, like, say, Putin or Erdogan?

> As to the diminished power, there's a similar argument to be made regarding wealth inequality. Hard to imagine the wealthy would agree to higher taxes if it hurts them, yet some of the most enlightened and even the very wealthiest do believe this, because they understand that while their individual wealth goes down if viewed in isolation, holistically, their true wealth goes up, because they improve the quality their country, its services, and the people they share their lives with.

The question is: Do you therefore want to give the wealthiest the power to write the tax code that's being enforced on everyone?

Do you think that because some people have good intentions with all the data that's being collected, anyone who manages to collect data should therefore have the right to override the wishes of the people the data is about?

If you want to find out whether something is risky, it's no use to only look at the successes. There absolutely have been monarchies where the monarch was a wise and responsible person. What does that tell us about whether monarchy or democracy should be the peferred form of government?