I think you may be conflating right to privacy with certain individual rights, but I'll start with a relatively trite observation by Benjamin Franklin that you should not give up liberty for security, and if you do, you deserve neither.

Nobody said society was or should be perfectly "safe" and it's not something we should optimize for. We should optimize for individual liberty and the rule of law. (I'm an American, for what it's worth). As for rebuttals, here's what I would consider for each of your points as a potential balancing counterpoint:

> "much harder to solve crimes as police work is thwarted at every turn" - there are reasons police require warrants to obtain information. This should continue to be the case. Warrants make their job harder, of course, but it also preserves individual freedom. This balancing act is at the crux of our society and always will be. I lean towards making it harder for the state if I have to choose.

> "much easier to plot terrorist attacks / etc" - see above point about security and liberty. We are not optimizing for complete safety, and any open society will run into these issues. The alternative is not something I would like to consider, personally. The tools that might solve these issues are also readily used to suppress dissent and empower the state. Best to make it difficult to employ them.

> "can't set up cameras on your property" - this is an individual rights issue not a privacy issue. You have the right to do this on your property.

> "hard to create companies that deal with data" - I don't think this is particularly hard right now, and we could use a few more laws about this to prevent third parties from wielding more power than the state without any recourse to the individual. In the end, it's not as much about privacy but rather about rights of the individual to appeal their being "on a list" or discriminated against as a result of being arbitrarily added to the list. If you want a concrete example of this, I'd say let's talk about Credit Ratings agencies and the power they wield in the United States.

> "much easier to hide your past mistakes" making things like "background checks" less useful. - I'm pretty sure it'll still be damned near impossible to really bury this kind of stuff without significant means. Furthermore, as a hypothesis, I'd argue the general benefit to society of not having a giant database is a net positive and the outliers / background check avoiders are probably very very few statistically. Leave blacklisting to the legal system where a felon, sex-offender, etc are tagged for life but at least it's done via laws. (see the previous HN post about a company tracking which bars you've been kicked out of)

I don't feel that my views here are extreme. Mostly I'm left feeling quite powerless to do anything without being tracked and monetized by somebody (at a minimum), and worse - potentially having my real-world life altered because of some random algorithmic detection that I have not opted into, did not realize, and cannot control or appeal. That feels weird, and I think there's a middle ground between the two that we can continue to investigate.

A combination of views on optimization as well as trust in government to uphold law in the way one expects likely determines a lot about where one falls in the continuum of individual privacy vs. access to information on this. I would argue for checks and balances.