When asked 'who are you?', people in different cultures tend to define themselves
fundamentally differently in terms of what their respective culture considers to be
most important. In cultures where one's professional and economic status is most
important, people say 'I am an engineer', or 'a priest at St John's church', or
whatever one's profession is. In cultures where family ties and ancestry are most
important, people say 'I am John's son', or 'Hsiu's grandson'. Hardly anywhere
does one answer the 'who are you?' question by asking 'in what context?'; societal
pressures in most societies force most individuals to have largely one-dimensional
personas.
The all too human yearning for security and for acceptance by others often
makes some of us internalize and accept our immediate community's prevailing
standards and beliefs as gospel without using any of our own judgment, and
viewing with suspicion those that dare question those beliefs. Most in pre WWII
Germany accepted Nazism because it was the 'in' thing; similarly, most ruthless
dictators have a considerable number of followers, and so do most quasicharismatic
leaders of assorted oddball cults even if some of these leaders have
mesmerized their followers into committing mass suicide - as has happened time
and again.
The yearning by most people to have someone else 'spoon-feed' them what is
'right' and what is 'wrong', and to relieve them of the burden of deciding that for
themselves, is, I believe, very strong for most people. It is no surprise, then, that the
notion of privacy for others (as opposed to privacy for oneself) is very threatening
to many; after all, it implies that someone else may have different views - God
forbid - and that privacy may get in the way of the rest of the community knowing
that!
For related reasons, citizen privacy is certainly threatening to most any government
because it could keep dissent from being identified and being nipped in the
bud. Even democratically elected governments that pride themselves in their
purported respect for citizen privacy have a catch-all exclusion such as 'except as
lawfully authorized ...'. In short, privacy is OK as long as you believe what the
state (or the community) believes. Stated differently, you can choose any color as
long as it is the one that is approved.