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

231–240 of 293 posts

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

#231

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

caeril wrote: post #224
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're willing to take the risk generally speaking you can be offensive and get away with it. We have a whole small news channel dedicated to it now! ;-) Offensiveness on the whole is not policed, at all. (Except by Facebook, of course.) Offensiveness that rises to the level of a crime can end up policed. The guidance around that is still poorly defined, so it's very unusual to see a charge or a conviction and i…

> Offensiveness that rises to the level of a crime The larger question is, how is this even possibly a thing? That there are legal liabilities that are wholly dependent on the internal emotional state of another person is absolutely insane. How is it possible to take a government that treats its adult citizens like kindergartners seriously?

> How is it possible to take a government that treats its adult citizens like kindergartners seriously?

Because that isn't the standard. Why do you imagine it is? There you are assuming that Brits are mentally enfeebled. Standard HN position.

Look, just because the USA draws this nice simple extreme bright line doesn't mean it's magically the right line or that it works particularly well.

There is a coupling between your obsession with absolute freedom of speech and your obsession with absolute rights to bear arms that leads to you arming yourself in arguments that could be resolved better over a cup of tea.

Racist language isn't just offensive, for example -- it reinforces racist conduct and can be seen in that wider context. There's no reason to assume there's a freedom to be racist in actions in a country that still has racial divides; I'm not sure why "speech" is excluded from those actions. It can rise to the level of harassment. Trolling and griefing is a massive social problem; free speech shouldn't protect you if you make someone's life a misery even only online with entirely broadcast speech.

We (sometimes! actually unusually!) deal with this at the level of misdemeanour (magistrates courts).

The USA has been known to prosecute jaywalking and can't even deal with swatting -- a means of using overkeen armed police who can only perform conflict resolution if they are armed like soldiers to potentially accidentally murder someone at distance -- so I think perhaps it's a little churlish to come after us because we in our crowded little country think being rampantly offensive to large numbers of people sometimes rises to the level of misdemeanour.

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

#232

Post by midasuni »

FireBeyond wrote: post #194
midasuni wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does have an unlimited right of free speech? Because once you start threatening politicians in the US see how far it gets you. Post a picture of yourself with an AR15 and a comment of “looking for Biden” and see how well that first amendment works.

We literally had Trump say of Clinton “I’m not sure what can be done about her, maybe some of you Second Amendment folk can do something”… And it worked very well, because precisely nothing happened.

https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/world/fbi-shoot-dead-man-accu...

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

#233

Post by wnoise »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #207
prox wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious: then how did the mechanism work of the Redditor that got arrested in the parent comment?

I am assuming it is just a random police officer reading Reddit on a personal basis and deciding to act on evidence of a crime (either because they are the local force or by passing it on). Police aren’t ever really off duty in this sense. Why assume a surveillance mechanism when police are individuals who also use the more popular sites?

It's not assuming a surveillance mechanism, it's _describing_ one. Individual police keeping their eyes open _is_ a surveillance mechanism. Admittedly, just about the most banal one possible, but the anti-social behavior it's catching is also the most harmless. But the bad law does actually make it a problem.

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

#234

Post by wnoise »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #211
midasuni wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which means they get all the downsides, and none of the upsides...

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

#235

Post by wnoise »

kypro wrote: post #216
ransackdev wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You could have said "sex-segregated" instead of "women-only" and not drag in the definitional arguments. Or, at least less so.

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

#236

Post by wnoise »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #114
wnoise wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> police by consent

It's a lovely idea, but Peelian principles are currently only paid lip-service. People are trying to drag it back to something approaching that, but it's not the current actual situation, particularly in London. (Kettling, etc.)

> are operationally independent of HM government,

> the police literally are not the government,

> do not spy for the government,

Again, in the sense of "political party currently in control of Parliament", yes. But they're literally the enforcers of the law -- and their meaning of the law. People not in Parliamentary systems have a broader, and far more useful meaning of "government" -- those governing, determining what is going to be punished and what won't. If you're actually stuck on term "government" in the partisan meaning, please give me some other term to refer to the coherent actions of the state. The bureaucracy and enforcement arms actually do govern, regardless of whether they're doing so at the behest of particular partisan guidance (though sure, that's worse in terms of being able to politically course correct). An arrest and detention whilst CPS sorts out taking to the next level is actually a punishment. Hence the quote "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."

> do not routinely surveil the population; their surveillance powers are limited and regulated.

Hah. Hah. Hah. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/business/london-police-fa... .

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

#237

Post by nvy »

dionidium wrote: post #218
nvy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the agency finds something they don't like they'll just come up with a plausible way to arrest you for something unrelated.

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

#238

Post by phendrenad2 »

Anti-"I've got nothing to hide" is a trap for people who didn't think deeply enough about it. Calling "I've got nothing to hide" a "misunderstanding" is itself a misunderstanding. This appeals to people who want to mansplain privacy to the average person, however, these people don't understand the average person.

"I've got nothing to hide" taken literally, is, of course, wrong. Everyone has something to hide. Maybe you made a right turn when there was a "no turn on red" sign. If your car was recording every action you ever took and the car company decided to turn all of that data over to the government, congratulations on your fine! However, we shouldn't take things literally. We aren't, as a society, unable to understand subtext, are we?

And the context of "I have nothing to hide" is: "I have nothing to hide from the system as it currently is and I am taking a calculated risk that the system is not going to change radically any time soon"

The layperson is bad at expressing this deeper concept that they intuit, and why should they be good at it? People are busy living their lives, not everyone wants to become an expert on their own motivations because someone on the internet decided to shove a "You do have something to hide, actually" article in their face.

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

#239

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

wnoise wrote: post #233
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am assuming it is just a random police officer reading Reddit on a personal basis and deciding to act on evidence of a crime (either because they are the local force or by passing it on). Police aren’t ever really off duty in this sense. Why assume a surveillance mechanism when police are individuals who also use the more popular sites?

It's not assuming a surveillance mechanism, it's _describing_ one. Individual police keeping their eyes open _is_ a surveillance mechanism. Admittedly, just about the most banal one possible, but the anti-social behavior it's catching is also the most harmless. But the bad law does actually make it a problem.

Public racist abuse of a dead victim is the most harmless?

Well it's a take, I guess. Go with it.

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

#240

Post by Zetice »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #142
Zetice wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time in modern history western society has started down the path of outlawing some form of existence, we self correct.

Cool. Real question, and truly think about it deep and hard: are you okay with being the martyr who ends up jailed, prosecuted, dead or what-have-you before we self correct? These statements are very easy to make, but when push comes to shove the individuals saying it won't put their money where their mouth is. So, will you?

Yes, as are you, in the same way we’re willing to drive a car and therefore risk death.
Post reply on HN