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(from FabioAEsteves). "Don't confuse privacy with secrecy. I know what you do in the bathroom, but you still close the door."
Whenever somebody argues having nothing to hide I ask: 1) Where were you last night? 2) How much money is in your bank account? Do you have any debt? 3) What is your Debit Card PIN/account password/... 4) What is your address? Your families address? 5) Can I see your key? And so on. Everybody needs to proctect themselves and potentially others attached to them. There is a good reason for these questions being awkward…
This approach is one of my biggest annoyances because it's not the same. You're asking for them to give you something but they're not getting anything in return. When people use Facebook/Google etc. they get a service that they end up valuing very highly in return. That common argument of "Give me your phone and PIN" is so pointless because people wouldn't even give that stuff to Facebook if it didn't give them anyth…
- You close the door of the toilets. You do have something to hide (we all know what you're doing. you're hiding anyway)
"I don't need privacy because my actions are questionable, but because your judgment is" (think dictatures, wrong guys at the top of the decision pyramid, 2nd world war ..)
The point is that the majority of people live boring lives and don't have enough wealth to be a valuable target. I certainly fall into this category. I'm not important or interesting enough that anyone is going to look into me. It's possible that one day I'll become very important and then I'll wish that I had kept various embarrassing things from getting out. It's also possible that I'll become a billionaire. Neithe…
Whether or not you believe you have nothing to hide is immaterial, too; there are some people in the world who might disagree with you (for religious, political, or moral causes) and they could potentially be very interested in your data. Do you think the people who worked at the world trade center felt they had anything to hide? how about the folks at the Olympics in Munich? Hell, I bet the people we (US) drone strike don't feel like they have anything to hide; after all, they're the good guys, and those invading Americans are the aggressors.
This is far more complex than "I'm not valuable". Perhaps, philosophically, if you lived a perfectly saintly life and never made any enemies or had an opinion that upset anybody ever, you could say you had nothing to hide.
If you don't mind a heavy-going read, I recommend these papers by Solove: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy [0], Conceptualizing Privacy [1], A Taxonomy of Privacy [2].
See also this HackerNews discussion on the nothing to hide argument from a few months back. [3]
[0] https://ssrn.com/abstract=998565
[1] https://ssrn.com/abstract=313103
We want a society that respects free will and freedom from coercion. Privacy is necessary to achieve that end. Let's focus on achieving that end. Security experts spent 2 decades arguing for privacy. Very little has changed. For most people, privacy is not an end in itself.
What were you hoping for, exactly?
https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/ssl_certif...
https://letsencrypt.org/stats/#percent-pageloads
https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview?e...
Whenever somebody argues having nothing to hide I ask: 1) Where were you last night? 2) How much money is in your bank account? Do you have any debt? 3) What is your Debit Card PIN/account password/... 4) What is your address? Your families address? 5) Can I see your key? And so on. Everybody needs to proctect themselves and potentially others attached to them. There is a good reason for these questions being awkward…
Nothing to hide is an incomplete sentence. Nothing to hide from who? Surly you want to hide your children from abusers and predators? Don't you want to hide your banking details from con artists and fraudsters? Your identity from identity thieves.. Your location from burglars, your car keys from car thieves or your blood type from some rich mobsters with kidney problems..
we don't know who are any of these things. So we should protect ourselves from all of them, in effect we have everything to hide from someone, and no idea who someone is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if it's the same though. It doesn't work for me. Why do we like to defecate in privacy? What is the evolutionary reason? Animals do this too. Dogs only get to business when you give them some privacy and they like to get in the bushes if they can. I would assume it's an instinctive drive to get away from the community, to go somewhere with little social activity, so we don't make our living spaces dirty and…
> Niemals do this too You probably misspelt "Animals", but "niemals" is German for "never" or "no way". Gave me a chuckle in context. On topic: there's probably more to it in humans, because animals don't have cultural phenomena like shame about their sexual organs, making embarrassing noises or smelling bad. I would say the parallel with defecating in private is valid, as it can lead to the same perceived loss of so…
Whenever somebody argues having nothing to hide I ask: 1) Where were you last night? 2) How much money is in your bank account? Do you have any debt? 3) What is your Debit Card PIN/account password/... 4) What is your address? Your families address? 5) Can I see your key? And so on. Everybody needs to proctect themselves and potentially others attached to them. There is a good reason for these questions being awkward…
This approach is one of my biggest annoyances because it's not the same. You're asking for them to give you something but they're not getting anything in return. When people use Facebook/Google etc. they get a service that they end up valuing very highly in return. That common argument of "Give me your phone and PIN" is so pointless because people wouldn't even give that stuff to Facebook if it didn't give them anyth…
This is what I kept hearing from many people repeatedly. And I did a little experiment.
I bought an aged twitter account just to tweet a thread about privacy and see whether people care! )before iOS 14 was released) And I got 55,000 total engagements!
Some loggers are even selling (blogs with paywall) steps to turn off privacy settings!