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GAMSAT Section 2 quote prompts: Privacy

1 GAMSAT-style prompt on privacy. Each gives you five comments that disagree, so your job is to find the tension and argue a clear position. Give yourself about 30 minutes per essay.

Task A · ArgumentPrompt 1 of 1

Consider the following comments on privacy.

  • If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

    Anonymous

  • Arguing that you do not care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you do not care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

    Edward Snowden

  • Civilisation is the progress toward a society of privacy.

    Ayn Rand

  • We willingly trade our secrets for convenience, then act surprised when the bill arrives.

  • A society that keeps no secrets and a society that keeps too many are both forms of tyranny.

Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.

A way into this prompt

A productive thesis is that privacy is less about concealment than about power, specifically who gets to decide what is known about whom. Open by dismantling the seductive but hollow claim that the innocent need no privacy. Counter that privacy protects dissent, intimacy, and the freedom to change. A further move might examine how citizens trade privacy for convenience and whether that consent is meaningful. Caution: avoid framing the debate as individual versus state alone, since corporations and even communities are equally hungry for our data.

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