"I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
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Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
#2Direct pdf link: http://crysp.uwaterloo.ca/courses/pet/F07/cache/solove.pdf
Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
#3That is a pretty good write up. I really like the point that 'privacy is only a desire to hide wrong things' when in fact it is a basic personal security issue.
Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
#4I think the most powerful argument here is that just because one may think that they have nothing to hide, and they don't mind "having their picture taken naked and distributed to their neighbors" doesn't mean that they should enforce their beliefs on others.
Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
#5He has a book out: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0300172311
Giving to my father for Christmas. He is in the "nothing to hide" camp.
Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
#6[deleted]
Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
#7“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
― Benjamin Franklin
Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
#8Thread on reddit /r/privacy where they tried to summarize the "I've got nothing to hide" paper and argument: http://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/10sui8/tldr_for_ive...
Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
#9In short, at the risk of trivializing the argument:
The ability to gleam private details about people is having some power over them. The entire modern theory of government rests on limiting and dividing up the power of those in power. With mass surveillance, that balance is broken. Not only do we have private details on individuals, that knowledge is held by a small and unaccountable elite, protected by state secrets.
Even if you live completely lawfully and morally and truly have nothing to hide you can either:
1. Unwittingly do something illegal (there are too many laws on the books for anyone to know they are completely innocent); or do something that can be construed as such, since the police and prosecutors can be fallible;
2. Still live in a society where a small group of individuals can exert blackmail and intimidation on a significant proportion of citizens. Even if that power would be rarely used, it creates an environment of fear. People start to be afraid to speak against abuse, those in power stand less for their own scrutiny.
Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy
#10I think the most powerful argument here is that just because one may think that they have nothing to hide, and they don't mind "having their picture taken naked and distributed to their neighbors" doesn't mean that they should enforce their beliefs on others.
Playing Devil's Advocate here (I actually agree with you), the main argument against privacy is that it hampers effective and just running of the government. Simply put, the government must gather such information to work in the way that it is told to (we elected almost all of these people, remember). An example of this working properly is search warrants: the government can and will search your private property without your permission, a clear invasion of privacy, but acceptable as it leads to a better justice system. Yes, the government is limited in what it can search, but that power is still held by the government even if the person in question doesn't agree with it.
The question shouldn't be about protecting privacy; it should be about being fair with how the government invades it. For example, the body scanners could be considered not fair as they invade more people's privacy than necessary (or they could be fair if they didn't).