“How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
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Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#2If they're serious, I'll give them the points made in the comments on the page.
If they aren't serious or don't care about the answer, I ask them to leave the door open next time they poop.
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#3First, you have things to hide. Your bank account number, at a minimum. I'm pretty sure that everyone understands that one as soon as you say it. You don't want your bank account access information to be general knowledge.
Second, if you have a window that someone can look through (the feds, say), someone else can also look through it (criminals, say). What one can do, someone else can do.
I think most people can grasp those two points. (For the second, you may need to give some examples of NSA-only stuff that became generally available.) But the combination of those two points leads them to "I have things I need to hide, and I can't let even the government peek."
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#4"Then why don't you live stream yourself pooping? Why don't you let people walk into your house and look around, just out of curiosity?" Tell them their privacy belongs to them. When they let someone shift the question from "what do I want you to see" to "what have I got to hide", they cede power to that someone. They might not care about that power now, but when they end up caring, it will be too late.
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#5Ask them to unlock their phone and hand it over. Reassure them they can watch everything you do with it and that you won't use it to impersonate them, and if they want you to stop, the safe word is "I have something to hide."
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#6Maybe they are just saying "I have nothing to hide from the government"? This might be true for most law-abiding citizens in the US atleast where there is a reasonable rule of law (as compared to many other parts of the world!).
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#7Ask them if they close and lock the door when they go to the bathroom. If they say yes, ask them why.
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#8Just say "I have something to hide. Do you believe I should be able to?"
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#9They usually have something to hide, so make a jokenthat proofs this (ask them to let you scroll through their picture gallery etc). And then when they feel uncomfortable change to a more serious tone and tell them how information translates to power. It is not the other person that is the problem — it is a problem when this information is abused by megacorps and governments.
So in a very old school way privacy for citizens is about division of power and restoring symmetry. If your government or a company knoes everything about you while you are only allowed to know the glossy salespicture version of things, something is off.
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#10Well, one thing is that people don't know the things they might have to hide. Many of the jews murdered in the Holocaust were basically unaware they were even jews, before they started to be persecuted for it. Hannah Arendt was one such case.
Unfortunately, this is very common in history. You would never have known that buying a noble title in Bourbon france would lead to the guilotine, nor that being a committed communist would probably get you shot under Stalin. These things are very unpredictable. Being German in early-20th century Montana was dangerous. Being black in 1700's Haiti was, so long as you were free, absolutely not a problem - until it suddenly was.
There are countless examples like this. Nobody knows what's coming next.