"I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy • Hacker News Board

Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy

#41

Post by deadbea7 » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 5:17 AM UTC

fragsworth wrote: post #23

munin wrote: post #16

there's something that frustrates me about arguments like this. I think that technology is inescapably taking us towards a future where anyone and everyone can record everything that any individual does, perpetually, and at arbitrary scale. In many ways we are already there, especially in certain domains (gmail, facebook, cell phones, creep shots, etc). It sounds pessimistic to say "this is inevitable" and I'm sure m…

Maybe the solution should involve some sort of mass surveillance of the government itself, by the citizens.

Monitoring at this scale would require tremendous resources that the Federal government has plenty of but individuals are unable (or unwilling) to invest. The article makes the argument for accumulation of information as a means to obtain power; in the case of individuals collectively accumulating information on the government, who holds the power? If the derived power is fragmented then no one would be motivated to take action.

Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy

#42

Post by techsupporter » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 5:19 AM UTC

wippler wrote: post #29

techsupporter wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "unwittingly do something illegal" is the most common refutation I've heard used. I think it's the most powerful as an example of the fallacy of this argument and an example of how unwieldy our laws have become in the United States. A coworker used the following story, apt since he lives in a state bordering another country: "Let's say I go to Canada for a day trip, Montreal perhaps. I speak enough French to get…

Are you sure about this? Reading wikipedia suggests only 90mg or higher unit dosage falls under Schedule II narcotic. You may not be guilty after all :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeine#North_America

Good point. I'm not all that versed in US drug laws. However, having seen a whole bunch of signs when doing cruises, I imagine that telling the Customs agent that you have a bottle of medicine containing codeine isn't a good idea since Vicodin and the lot are only available by prescription. Either way, his point is still a good one, I think: Even if you're the most open and giving person on the planet, do you really want to court fate like that?

Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy

#43

Post by baddox » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 5:25 AM UTC

pi18n wrote: post #33

wippler wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about this? Reading wikipedia suggests only 90mg or higher unit dosage falls under Schedule II narcotic. You may not be guilty after all :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeine#North_America

This is not a helpful comment. The anecdote is not suggesting that everyone who commits an accidental crime is trafficking Tylenol One. It's a story about how a small action can turn out to be a felony. This has been true in other cases that have nothing to do with Codeine.

The anecdote relies on it being possible or such a situation to occur.

Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy

#44

Post by neilk » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 8:08 AM UTC

hooande wrote: post #28

Let me try to present the other side of this argument in a way that doesn't sound crazy: When one of your people dies, it really hurts. If you were the one in charge of guaranteeing the safety of that person, its a failure much deeper and more profound than the worst startup company failure. Most people will be willing to do anything to prevent the loss of another life on their watch. The monitoring of communications…

> Very few innocent people will ever know that they're being monitored, and the risks to those people are very small.

Except, once you start a regime of easy and ubiquitous surveillance, you cannot guarantee that those risks will remain small.

Surveillance is useless without absolute secrecy of who is being surveilled and why. The potential harms of such an institution should be obvious. Which is why American jurisprudence allowed such surveillance only with court orders, or the assent (sometimes after the fact) of special courts like the FISA court.

What we are fighting today is surveillance, through technological means, of everybody all the time. It is therefore absolutely guaranteed that a concomitant amount of government operations and agenda, related to this surveillance, will become secret and unaccountable. At this point, persecution and abuse is not just a possibility, it is guaranteed.

Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy

#45

Post by ajb » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 8:29 AM UTC

It's ironic that this article is on google docs, which means I have to declare my identity by logging in to google in order to read it.

Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy

#46

Post by mikevm » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 8:38 AM UTC

alan_cx wrote: post #40

hooande wrote: post #28

Let me try to present the other side of this argument in a way that doesn't sound crazy: When one of your people dies, it really hurts. If you were the one in charge of guaranteeing the safety of that person, its a failure much deeper and more profound than the worst startup company failure. Most people will be willing to do anything to prevent the loss of another life on their watch. The monitoring of communications…

Shame you are down voted for this because you have an important point, our human contradiction. If government lets something bad happen because of privacy issues, we the people complain, and can vote them out. If the government pull out all the stops, including trampling all over privacy, then we don't like that either, and can vote them out. So what is a government supposed to do? The next problem is that we the peo…

Are you so naive as to think that the real terrorists will be communicating in the open? "Real" terrorists will use Tor, TrueCrypt, PGP, Steganography and any other tool in the toolkit to hide their tracks. I don't see how a gov't surveillance apparatus is going to catch any of them.

IIRC, in 9/11 the problem wasn't that there wasn't enough surveillance, because information regarding the attacks DID reach the White House, but it was apparently ignored.

Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy

#47

Post by kyllo » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 8:47 AM UTC

wippler wrote: post #29

techsupporter wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "unwittingly do something illegal" is the most common refutation I've heard used. I think it's the most powerful as an example of the fallacy of this argument and an example of how unwieldy our laws have become in the United States. A coworker used the following story, apt since he lives in a state bordering another country: "Let's say I go to Canada for a day trip, Montreal perhaps. I speak enough French to get…

Are you sure about this? Reading wikipedia suggests only 90mg or higher unit dosage falls under Schedule II narcotic. You may not be guilty after all :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeine#North_America

Ok, how about another example: you buy a box or two of Cuban cigars in Canada and smuggle them home to the US in your suitcase. This is a crime, but millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens have done stuff like this.

Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy

#48

Post by konstruktor » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 8:53 AM UTC

techsupporter wrote: post #27

iwwr wrote: post #9

In 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 secret…

The "unwittingly do something illegal" is the most common refutation I've heard used. I think it's the most powerful as an example of the fallacy of this argument and an example of how unwieldy our laws have become in the United States. A coworker used the following story, apt since he lives in a state bordering another country: "Let's say I go to Canada for a day trip, Montreal perhaps. I speak enough French to get…

I think the problem with laws like the one you mentioned is that they aren't perceived as a threat because of selective enforcement. Assuming your posting reflects the legal situation correctly, many people who consider themselves law abiding citizens have committed a felony, but it is only enforced on, say, the guy who gets into an argument with a cop at a traffic stop and then has his vehicle searched.

While that is much worse than a law that can and will be enforced broadly, people will paradoxically seem to perceive it as less of a threat. The problem is that there are many such laws, which accumulate into a weapon the authorities have against you. You may be accused of something totally absurd (putting up a light installation in public), but instead of having to back down after discovering you aren't a terrorist, the authorities will find a law that will allow them to hold you responsible for their excessive reaction, or at least "punish" you for them embarrassing themselves.

This is why I think society would, to some degree, benefit from radical transparency. If all crimes were punished, people would be much more motivated to actually fight unjust, overly broad or unspecific laws, because everybody knows that they will be affected.

Personally, I have made a conscious decision to go out of my way to preserve my ability to start every unwanted encounter with a cop by asking him for the reason he stopped me and for his badge number (a right I have in my country), even though that may not be what I would actually do. However, that means that I cannot so some things I consider OK but aren't legal. But then, I live in a country with reasonably simple and understandable laws, even for a layperson.

Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy

#49

Post by napoleond » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 9:11 AM UTC

munin wrote: post #16

there's something that frustrates me about arguments like this. I think that technology is inescapably taking us towards a future where anyone and everyone can record everything that any individual does, perpetually, and at arbitrary scale. In many ways we are already there, especially in certain domains (gmail, facebook, cell phones, creep shots, etc). It sounds pessimistic to say "this is inevitable" and I'm sure m…

I'm working on something that I hope will turn back the tide somewhat: http://parley.co

Re: "I've got nothing to hide" and other misunderstandings of privacy

#50

Post by shantanubala » Sun, Dec 23, 2012, 9:24 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #34

It's interesting how people struggle with this argument. Just the fact that this guy needs to write a 30 page essay to explain the point tells you something. However I tend to stop short of this kind of analysis, because it all seems to be trying too hard. My argument, is that in the end it's just biological. We're built this way (not all, but most of us). Perhaps for good reasons, perhaps not, but it doesn't really…

I'd be careful not to attribute unexplained aspects of our desires and behavior to biology alone. A lot of it can be a social construction. If you're used to having your privacy regularly invaded from a very young age, it's possible that you won't have any "biological sense" of privacy invasion.

Does our intuitive sense of biology come from our genes, or our cultural value of "personal space"? The fact that we have weird reactions to nudity and social norms that prevent us from sharing the most intimate details of our lives indicates that it may be a cultural thing.

Obviously, this just makes privacy invasion on a systematic level even more ominous.