Privacy for everyone or for noone?

I just had a really scary thought. I was reading an article about privacy in a software development magazine and they were talking about who deserved privacy. They said that terrorists, criminals, spammers and people abusing their corporations networks didn’t deserve privacy.

But when I thought about it, I thought “wait a minute, if they can invade the privacy of terrorists, criminals and spammers, what’s to stop them invading my privacy?”. How can you say “everyone except spammers can have privacy” or “everyone but terrorists can have privacy”? Privacy is something that either everyone gets or noone gets because as soon as someone has the ability to invade anyone’s privacy, they have the power to invade everyone’s.

So if someone is asking me if I think it’s ok for them to have the ability to invade the privacy of a criminal/terrorist/spammer.. are they really asking me if it’s ok for them to have the ability to invade mine too?

Something interesting to think about anyway..