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People with nothing to hide

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Re: People with nothing to hide

#81

Post by D9u »

rmc wrote: post #60
ck2 wrote: post #39

Think about how the NSA helped stop all the killings and maimings at the boston bombing. Oh wait, they didn't - from two super stupid criminals not even trying to hide what they were planning. So WTF good are they doing for all the damage they've done to our society. NSA has become just like the TSA, completely useless theater that hassles everyone and accomplishes nothing. Just wait until they can park hundreds of d…

Select bias. You don't know what they did stop.

"They" knew that the "Ft Hood shooter" had been in contact with extremists, yet we all know what the end result there was.

    13 dead
    30 + wounded

Re: People with nothing to hide

#82

Post by stfu »

john_flintstone wrote: post #78

Questions for people with nothing to hide: 1. Have you ever had an abortion? 2. Have you ever cheated on your husband / wife? 3. Are you currently looking for a new job? 4. Have you ever being diagnosed with a mental illness? 5. Are you currently on anti-depressants? 6. Were you ever sexually abused as a child? 7. Have you ever fancied someone of the same sex? 8. Have you ever had sex with someone of the same sex? 9.…

Apparently those people in the twitter feed are fine with getting registered and living under high transparency.

My suggestion would be a crowd funded campaign to doxx each one of them. Would be happy to donate a few hours of my time tracing their real names.

With some funded capital we could buy and publish for each one a personal background check sort of a personal gift to free them from the burden of anonymity.

Re: People with nothing to hide

#83

Post by glick »

When people say they have nothing to hide, there is an implicit qualifier. They still have much to hide -- from coworkers, neighbors, friends, etc.

What they really mean is they have nothing to hide from an entity with which they have a very special relationship. So special is it, that it's superfluous - perhaps even disrespectful - to mention it when saying things like "I have nothing to hide," "I pay my taxes," or "I'm law abiding."

It is the relationship between the owned and the owner.

Re: People with nothing to hide

#84

Post by altero »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #38
mantas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why sad?

It is sad that you (and most people here) prefer to live in a society where it's socially acceptable to hide who you truly are based on irrational fear of judgement, rather than be open and benefit from the improved communication which publicity offers. We learned to accept and tolerate most directly noticeable features of people. Maybe you don't want to communicate your skin color, your height, your gender or your l…

> Tolerance has no limits. All it requires is some adaptation time. One day, people will be open about their sexuality, religion, political ideologies and feelings, and the world will be a better place.

Or some extremist party wins election and this information becomes excellent hit-list for persecution. It already happened to jews a few decades ago.

Re: People with nothing to hide

#85

Post by coldtea »

It would be fun if "internet detectives" (think 4chan) have a look at the profiles of people with "nothing to hide" and expose all their dirty secrets (affairs, comments that could be taken as racist, tax avoidance, listening to Bieber, gossiping about coworkers, naked pics or sex chats they made with their partners, whatever) to the internets.

Especially nice it would be if that would get them fired (e.g a negative comment about their company boss in an email to a friend).

That might illuminate them about the value of privacy.

That said, they are not the targets of NSA, because they are useless to society anyway (they are not active citizens), and not a threat to any government.

But any activist, dissident, whistleblower, investigative journalist, hacker, writer, progressive politician etc, people that move society and laws forward, people from MLK to Aaron Swartz to Phil Zimmerman, are those that can and will be targeted by such measures. The same kind of people that today's J.E. Hoover's would target.

Re: People with nothing to hide

#86

Post by coldtea »

rmc wrote: post #60
ck2 wrote: post #39

Think about how the NSA helped stop all the killings and maimings at the boston bombing. Oh wait, they didn't - from two super stupid criminals not even trying to hide what they were planning. So WTF good are they doing for all the damage they've done to our society. NSA has become just like the TSA, completely useless theater that hassles everyone and accomplishes nothing. Just wait until they can park hundreds of d…

Select bias. You don't know what they did stop.

I don't think so. Any BS success they would advertise to high heavens.

Re: People with nothing to hide

#88

Post by skore »

heyitsnick wrote: post #70

The sad irony out of all this is that if you are served with an NSL, you now are legally obligated to have something to hide . As Nicholas Merrill, writing anonymously in 2007 for the Washington Post [1] puts it: "Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -…

> When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been.

This is sure to make short work to any friendship, especially relationships. Disgusting and dehumanizing.

Imagine being legally required, by your government, to seem as though you are having an affair.

Re: People with nothing to hide

#89

Post by mehwoot »

ck2 wrote: post #39

Think about how the NSA helped stop all the killings and maimings at the boston bombing. Oh wait, they didn't - from two super stupid criminals not even trying to hide what they were planning. So WTF good are they doing for all the damage they've done to our society. NSA has become just like the TSA, completely useless theater that hassles everyone and accomplishes nothing. Just wait until they can park hundreds of d…

This is silly. It is impossible to know how many other bombings have been stopped because of intelligence gathering attempts. In fact since 9/11 I've been extremely surprised at the low number of terrorist acts which have subsequently occurred, although maybe I was just wrong to assume how frequent / easy they would be to carry out.

There are much better reasons to oppose this than "To me it looks like they didn't stop every attack so it is useless".

Re: People with nothing to hide

#90

Post by tripzilch »

nodata wrote: post #57

Obligatory reading: The Eternal Value of Privacy http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securityma... Reddit comment from this week: http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_belie...

> Reddit comment from this week: http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_belie...

Wow, probably the best story/argument against "I've got nothing to hide" I've read so far. I posted a link to an article with a convenient list of counter arguments yesterday[0], but this one, in the sense of direct, believable danger easily surpasses those (for me, at least).

That story is actually happening. Various parts of it have already happened in all sorts of civilized countries (US, UK, NL, DE ...), infiltration of completely innocent protest and activist groups, blackmail, he didn't mention agent provocateurs but things invariably get real messy really quick when the agency gets pressed for results of these expensive operations and the activists are in fact quite innocent, just exercising their rights to have meetings and organising protests, nothing more. And then everyone and their friends & family gets on a list.

The torturing, maybe not yet. Not in my country as far as I know. But that is actually going on, on large scale, in countries that seem otherwise quite civilized. And it is happening to the people that had "nothing to hide" just as much.

Probably even moreso because they do not realize what the stakes really are until it's too late to hide.

[0] http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127...

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