Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

papers.ssrn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 293 posts

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#111

Post by mptest »

Zetice wrote: post #28
deepthunder wrote: post #10

The problem with the "I've got nothing to hide" argument is it's not "you" who decides what is "right" or "wrong". The entity doing the "spying" determines what is right or wrong. "You" might think "x" is ok, however the "spying" entity may have the opposite view. And it is the "spying" entity's opinion that matters, not yours, because it always them that have the power and authority in determining what is "right" or…

The real problem is that this argument relies on people actually meaning “anything”. It’s a strawman that’s so good, you get people actually trying to argue it, but the real argument isn’t about absolute publicity of information, it’s about providing access to additional information as a means to investigate wrongdoing. Very few people are practically suggesting every single fact ought to be public about a person. Be…

>"anything [harmful] could be illegal!" isn't backed by anything real or lasting Are you serious? that's a pretty ahistoric view... Being jewish was illegal, being a free black person was illegal, shit, woman having freedom of medical procedure is illegal in some states today!

how on earth can you earnestly suggest things won't be made illegal that will harm people

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#112

Post by epalm »

chacham15 wrote: post #45

The simplest retort I've heard to "I have nothing to hide" is "then send me a nude photo of yourself." Theres nothing wrong with nude bodies, but it is definitely private. I.e. privacy has nothing to do with hiding wrong/illegal things. (obligatory disclaimer: a little inaccuracy saves a lot of explanation, but I think this gets the gist across)

My version of this is “Just go ahead and send me your browser history, I’ll wait.”

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#113

Post by MikePlacid »

anotherevan wrote: post #60

"I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgement and intentions are." https://infosec.exchange/@itisiboller/109472911587284824

My personal recipe is: add “potential criminal” to any human entity mentioned in a formula. Thus, “I have nothing to hide from the FBI” should be more correctly formulated as “I have nothing to hide from potential criminals working in the FBI”.

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#114

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

wnoise wrote: post #109
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Insulting people online or just saying something mildly offensive will often lead to prosecution. "will often": no, not at all. Could occasionally. You're not helping your argument by overstating this. The courts are not stuffed with people being fined for saying things that are "mildly offensive". And nothing of what you're talking about is government surveillance. The police aren't the government, and the police…

> The police aren't the government Not in the ridiculous "party controlling parliament" sense, no. But they are absolutely the enforcement arm of the state, which is more on point.

No, they aren’t.

British police, significantly, police by consent, are operationally independent of HM government, and cannot (currently) prosecute without the aid of the (equally independent) CPS. In England there isn’t even one single police force, and unlike the FBI, no normal part of the police is a part of a government department. (MoD Police are, I guess, but their remit is military policing).

I was responding to the somewhat hysterical parent post to correct the conflation of: the police literally are not the government, do not spy for the government, and do not routinely surveil the population; their surveillance powers are limited and regulated.

Does any arm of the state surveil the populace in any sense? It falls within MI5’s remit to spot domestic threats. Their surveillance operation surely operates far less less broadly than that of the NSA, which has far less oversight.

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#116

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

nonethewiser wrote: post #110
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Insulting people online or just saying something mildly offensive will often lead to prosecution. "will often": no, not at all. Could occasionally. You're not helping your argument by overstating this. The courts are not stuffed with people being fined for saying things that are "mildly offensive". And nothing of what you're talking about is government surveillance. The police aren't the government, and the police…

I have to ask… do you disagree with prosecuting offensive comments or not? You say it doesn’t happen often and they can’t enforce it. But do you think its a bad thing? Doesnt seem that way. The point is it shouldn’t be legal.

Do I think offensive comments can be prosecuted in practice? Yeah, I do. Just as there are limits to free speech in the USA, there are comments that can have consequences.

The bar should be set high, and in general it is, but no, I don’t think hate speech is inherently free speech, for example.

The US way of doing things is not a) the only way of doing things, b) intrinsically the best way of doing things or c) trending in the right direction. Free speech is not something with a magical clear definition, and I think it goes without saying that we at least try to take incitement to actual race hate a little more seriously. We can set the bar differently; we have.

The problem in the UK is not a rash of prosecutions for offensive comments because despite what the parent comment says, they rarely come to trial. There is no enormous procession of these cases, and knobends are actually pretty free to be knobends here. Speech is free, newspapers don’t get raided when they happen to investigate the local police chief.

The problem at the moment is that the guidance is in flux, and too much time is wasted determining that something won’t be prosecuted. (Well, that’s the main problem. The secondary problem is the USA exporting its newest renewable resource, alt-right trolling, to every corner of the English speaking world, exhausting everyone’s patience.)

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#117

Post by MereInterest »

dredmorbius wrote: post #63
Swizec wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m wondering: is there a good list of data privacy failure consequences? The ultimate example is how 1940’s Germany used 1930’s Germany’s census data. In 1933 it didn’t seem so bad to tick a box with your religious affiliation …

The Netherlands as well. Dutch census religious affiliation data were used by the imposed regime 1940--45. Several Dutch officials enacted wholesale destruction of those records as the occupation became obviously imminent, which saved many, though the Jewish population of the Netherlands fell from 154,887 in 1941 to 14,346 in 1947. The point being it's not necessarily your own government you need be worried about. In…

There was a dedicated effort by the Dutch resistance to destroy the records of the civil registries. During the occupation, forged documents could be checked against the records in the civil registry. By bombing the civil registry office, the forged papers could no longer be validated against the civil registry, and would pass inspection.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_bombing_of_the_Amsterdam_...

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#118

Post by dredmorbius »

MereInterest wrote: post #117
dredmorbius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands as well. Dutch census religious affiliation data were used by the imposed regime 1940--45. Several Dutch officials enacted wholesale destruction of those records as the occupation became obviously imminent, which saved many, though the Jewish population of the Netherlands fell from 154,887 in 1941 to 14,346 in 1947. The point being it's not necessarily your own government you need be worried about. In…

There was a dedicated effort by the Dutch resistance to destroy the records of the civil registries. During the occupation, forged documents could be checked against the records in the civil registry. By bombing the civil registry office, the forged papers could no longer be validated against the civil registry, and would pass inspection. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_bombing_of_the_Amsterdam_...

Thank you! That would indeed be the action I had in mind.

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#119

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

version_five wrote: post #89
kypro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with this. I live in the UK and when I raise concerns about government surveillance here people often say, "I've got nothing to hide". I learnt of a case just this week where a guy on Reddit left a slightly controversial comment and ended up being charged with hate speech, lost his job and received hate abuse online for his opinion. It was kinda crazy because "all" he said was that didn't care abou…

There's two separate issues here. Privacy should be a right, I agree. But also we shouldn't tolerate our countries becoming authoritarian police states. It's already happened in the UK early, Australia and Canada are well on the way, and the US isn't far behind. Good privacy as a substitute for a government that isn't batshit crazy is not going to work in any event. Advocate privacy, but also advocate not letting giv…

I find this notion that the UK is a police state quite hilarious.

Ours is not the country where the police bring guns to seemingly every minor dispute and fairly often draw them. Ours is not the country where police kill you for resisting arrest, stand by while your kids are murdered in a school, or seize your money out on border roads without needing cause. Ours is not the country with a toxic plea bargaining system that throws the book routinely and a 90% conviction rate, or prosecutors who run for election on promises to be ever tougher. Ours is not the country with three strikes laws, death penalties, tent prisons run by fascist antiheroes, rampantly profiteering private prisons, corrupt local sheriffs, newspapers getting raided when they investigate the local police chief, Stand Your Ground and SWATting.

Yeah. We overpolice people being rude. It matters when you have the equivalent of one fifth of the population of the USA crammed into a country a bit smaller than Michigan.

Batshit crazy is clearly subjective, right? Try looking at things from a different perspective.

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#120

Post by chii »

deepthunder wrote: post #10

The problem with the "I've got nothing to hide" argument is it's not "you" who decides what is "right" or "wrong". The entity doing the "spying" determines what is right or wrong. "You" might think "x" is ok, however the "spying" entity may have the opposite view. And it is the "spying" entity's opinion that matters, not yours, because it always them that have the power and authority in determining what is "right" or…

I will always counter it with "If you got nothing to hide, then why do you close the door when you're in the toilet?".
Post reply on HN