“so, show me your deductions on your taxes for the last decade. no reason, really, i’m just curious...”
Ask HN: What's a good response to “It's fine, I've got nothing to hide online”?
71–80 of 87 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's a good response to “It's fine, I've got nothing to hide online”?
#72"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu
Re: Ask HN: What's a good response to “It's fine, I've got nothing to hide online”?
#73Just ask them to post their social security number and credit cards.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good response to “It's fine, I've got nothing to hide online”?
#74Lots of good responses here so I will add a tangent. I have often wondered what it would be like if we had total openness and everything everyone did and said was recorded and available to everyone. Would it be a nightmare or not?
I'm thinking of something along the lines of 'The Invention of Lying' but I don't think I can imagine anything worse...
It would certainly be very different. Everybody could lie, but probably nobody would given how easy it would be to check. It is certainly a thought I will explore as the consequences don't appear obvious.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good response to “It's fine, I've got nothing to hide online”?
#75Tell people everything is sprayed with pesticides, and they respond "well I have to eat something".
Being aware of something isn't much help, they have to take action, so what action is required? Firefox? Linux? Tor?
If you enumerated all the steps they need to take, the effort required might start to seem unreasonable.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good response to “It's fine, I've got nothing to hide online”?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would airport security care about your reasoning? They don't need a warrant when you're still outside the border, and they most likely are not in a position to bargain with you on what they may and may not do — and they probably won't respond favourably to any attempt to do so.
True on all counts, but it might make the person actually doing the search question their own motives for doing so. Just because they have the power to conduct random warrantless searches with no prior suspicion (which I totally abhor as it likely leads to racial profiling, like Stop and Search here in the UK), does not mean they need to use it. Then again, I'm a university-educated white male. It'll probably never h…
I'm not sure that security people have "motives" - I think they have jobs. If their job requires asking random people to decrypt their phones, then attempting to enlighten them is only going to annoy them.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good response to “It's fine, I've got nothing to hide online”?
#77The most correct answer is in fact, yes I do have something to hide from you. All this reasoning and rationalizing is a distraction from that main point. I have stuff I dont want other people to know, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good response to “It's fine, I've got nothing to hide online”?
#78I'd ask you what are you trying to hide..
Seriously though, this is a good read that still rings true. The author does a lot with both privacy and surveillance..
Re: Ask HN: What's a good response to “It's fine, I've got nothing to hide online”?
#79You're wasting your time arguing with people like that.
Explain the facts and if they choose to stand naked in the street wearing a "kick me" sign then that's their choice. (just an expression)
Re: Ask HN: What's a good response to “It's fine, I've got nothing to hide online”?
#80I would ask to rifle through their phone right in front of them. There's a subtle difference between something you'd want to hide (because it could be incriminating) and something you don't want made public (because it could be embarrassing). I have nothing incriminating, but I have embarrassing stuff on my phone that I would rather nobody looked at. A phone is an intensely personal device where a lot of your private…
This isn't a comparative response. Anything I put on Facebook is there with the full knowledge that it isn't going to be private, and that my activities there may be used for profiling purposes.
Anything I put on my phone is under a presumption of privacy except as I specifically choose otherwise.