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

211–220 of 293 posts

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

#211

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

midasuni wrote: post #176
i8comments wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government snooping is a reality if they find you interesting, even if youve done nothing.

I don’t mind that - if someone wants to tap Joe Bloggs’ phone then that’s fine. Get a court order with evidence that he might be doing something wrong It’s scalable surveillance that worries me. Suddenly cctv which is pulled in case of a crime becomes constantly monitored, with face, gait, clothing, and other types of automated recognition, gathering data on everyone, pumping that data into pattern matchers. But the…

This is the dark HN fantasy of scaleable British panopticon surveillance again.

The police have surprisingly little constantly available CCTV. Police and national government control a minuscule fraction of the CCTV in the UK. (Local government a bit more, but it’s town centre anti-nuisance stuff —- pickpockets —- and a few secure buildings, and the police do not have routine access to it). There isn’t the money, the intent or the legal framework to so what you’re suggesting, and nor, I would say, do we “love it”.

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

#212

Post by belter »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #206
belter wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"More than 1,500 UK police officers accused of violence against women in six months" - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/14/more-than-15... "Police ‘warrior culture’ makes US-style police brutality a UK problem too" - https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2023/police-warrior-cultur...

Again with your links. Is it performance art? Are you an AI aggregator? (The violence against women thing is serious but it’s not a question of law enforcement behaviour or brutality. That is about the international problem of police being hard to fire when they are awful individuals in private; it’s an ongoing problem that is being addressed here through campaigns, and I am afraid I do not remotely believe that dome…

As opposed to your arguments, who are solely based on your individual statements, and advocacy for the MI5 being a well supervised mass surveillance organization?

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

#213

Post by kkfx »

antihipocrat wrote: post #175
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real cases are everywhere, in front of everyone, every day W He is looming to something that is well written and convincing, something salient. Punchy Your post is not that. it is difficult to express this so wlel that it is irrefutable

I'm suggesting that there doesn't need to be a punchy irrefutable post that wins the argument. Anyone who interacts with a variety of humans on a regular basis has all of the proof they need that entrusting anonymous others (including corporate entities) with personal information is a bad idea. The day that humans no longer swindle and scam each other, no longer become jealous or seek revenge, and no longer use power…

Beware a thing: in the modern world it's not "everybody knows about everybody" vs "nobody knows nothing about everybody", it's just: very few people know almost anything about everybody, while most do know next to nothing about them.

It's such asymmetry the very issue.

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

#214

Post by ransackdev »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #146
ekianjo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The police aren't the government, The police is the dog of the government. What difference does it make to you if the dog or the master attacks you?

I understand that in the simplest way this is true, and I am sure it is very clever, poetic and pithy. But this is not how it works in principle or in practice in the UK. The police work on behalf of the people, not the government. When government manages to suborn the police in even a small way it is very much noticed. It’s difficult for people outside the UK to see this, I suppose, but our experience with this is t…

Try to overthrow the government and watch your “police that work for the people and not the government” do a lot of work for the government.

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

#215

Post by ransackdev »

kypro wrote: post #58
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 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…

I think the person who said a kid deserved to die is a pos and he maybe needed his ass beat, but I can’t understand how anyone can be charged with hate speech for talking shit about a dead person. Who’s rights were violated there? Did it get thrown out? Maybe I’m obtuse and such a thing is not out of the ordinary.

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

#216

Post by kypro »

ransackdev wrote: post #215
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…

I think the person who said a kid deserved to die is a pos and he maybe needed his ass beat, but I can’t understand how anyone can be charged with hate speech for talking shit about a dead person. Who’s rights were violated there? Did it get thrown out? Maybe I’m obtuse and such a thing is not out of the ordinary.

> Did it get thrown out?

No. He pleaded guilty to "sending a communication of an indecent or offensive nature" and was fined accordingly.

At the end of the day what he said was indecent and therefore is illegal in the UK. Perhaps he could have fought it, but I believe he would have needed to argue that a reasonable person wouldn't find his comments indecent, and that would probably be difficult.

The larger point here is that anyone who gives an opinion online here in the UK is at risk of something similar happening. It depends less on the opinion and far more on the subjective nature of what is and isn't offensive. For example I could say some highly offensive things, but so long as I say them about Nigel Farage or Piers Morgan I'd be unlikely to be charged. I'd argue these laws are very subjectively policed and typically used to against people with political opinions that are not considered "acceptable". For example, it's often used against feminists who argue in favour of women-only spaces since this is considered transphobic and hateful by some.

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

#217

Post by kypro »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #88
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…

> 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…

> "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".

Yes, sorry – you're right. It happens occasionally. If you're willing to take the risk generally speaking you can be offensive and get away with it.

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

#218

Post by dionidium »

nvy wrote: post #108
dionidium wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a kind of sleight of hand at work in this counterargument, which is that nobody is advocating for a secret, extrajudicial, arbitrary set of rules about what is allowed and what isn't. Even if I say I'm OK with the government reading my email, all the work is ahead of them to prove specific charges in a court of law, should I catch their interest. The spy agency does not, in fact, get to decide what's right a…

Look up "parallel construction".

Not sure I see how it's relevant here, since we're granting that the spy agency in this case has every right to gather evidence. The point is that they don't get to unilaterally decide if that evidence constitutes a crime, which is what the original comment suggested.

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

#219

Post by tim333 »

ransackdev wrote: post #215
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…

I think the person who said a kid deserved to die is a pos and he maybe needed his ass beat, but I can’t understand how anyone can be charged with hate speech for talking shit about a dead person. Who’s rights were violated there? Did it get thrown out? Maybe I’m obtuse and such a thing is not out of the ordinary.

I guess it could justify killing more of the "Toxteth monkey" lot.

These kind of restrictions are quite common re the holocaust and jew killing for fairly obvious reasons.

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

#220

Post by tim333 »

kypro wrote: post #217
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…

> "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". Yes, sorry – you're right. It happens occasionally. If you're willing to take the risk generally speaking you can be offensive and get away with it.

At least get away with it legally. It can effect you in other ways also.
Post reply on HN