Then the government might start monitoring some phone calls.
"It's just a few phone calls, nothing more." The government
might install more video cameras in public places. "So what?
Some more cameras watching in a few more places. No big deal."

What I've learned from the privacy debate culture over the past years is that even amongst many privacy advocates the "So what?" mentality is prevalent. Their actions, not words, reveal this. While everyone rushes to use Threema, TextSecure, Telegram, OTR, GPG nearly no one bothers to check key fingerprints. That leads me to believe that the majority of people in this scene are using privacy technology as a means to simply feel better about themselves. To feel morally satisfied with themselves. It's not entirely dissimilar to the "support the troops" yellow ribbon, fight cancer "livestrong" wrist bands, or support the fight against AIDS red iPod. What we see is that people, even people that believe this is an important "fight", actually wind up with the same behavioural pattern of the "So what"'s. Both they and the "nothing to hide"'s reveal that this fight is actually not a fight at all but a window into the changing definitions of self and identity.

Privacy is a deeper topic than government surveillance. I suppose the article attempted to get slightly past that but not far enough imho. The change of this social contract has little to do with the NSA scandal. The focus on government intrusion of privacy is actually a distraction from the more existentialist issue at hand. That being we have and are changing.

The importance of secrecy is actually a great point from which to understand how the social contract of privacy is and will change. Philosopher George Simmel (born 1858) describes the importance of secrecy as:

You are only an individual to the extent at which
you are NOT transparent.

(shout out to philosopher Alice Lagaay for her work on the topic) But Simmel, other dead philosophers, dead poets or dead "founding fathers", were products of their time. In retrospect it is clear that, with the latency created by the physicality of their world, they lived in a transparency surplus. For this reason I argue that the debate surrounding this social contract lay not in post-privacy but in the understanding of post-existentialism (a relook at existentialist thought from the understanding of the networked-self -- identity increasingly built on relationships and extroversion).

The majority of people arguing "I have nothing to hide" aren't doing so because, as at one point this article argues, they feel the security value outweighs their concern for privacy. They are doing so because the networked self is creating very relevant non-security values to individuality. Something induced by the change from the physical self to self of the network. They are individuals that are focused on just living a better life, not some moralist agenda for a better life that used to be. If you hear "I have nothing to hide" and are inclined to enforce your moral understanding then you're missing the opportunity to understand these changes that are happening.

If you do want to argue it, regardless, the best argument I've heard is from the Privacy Extremists:

Because I value many things, therefor I hide many things

http://shadowlife.cc/2012/11/the-treasure-which-is-privacy/