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This Man Has Nothing to Hide – Not Even His Email Password

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Re: This Man Has Nothing to Hide – Not Even His Email Password

#2
Reading this reminded me of the adage, "Character is who you are when nobody is watching".

Can you imagine being this guy's child and reading him talk about how "Yeah, maybe if people were watching me then I would have tried harder to spend time with my kids last summer". It's not that he wants to spend time with them, he's just worried about how it looks to other people.

The truth hurts, but that doesn't mean that the truth is an excuse to be hurtful. This project seems pretty gross; he gets some respect for taking a position and committing to it, but it's not really kind or respectful or fair to anybody he interacts with to commit them to the same position indirectly.

Re: This Man Has Nothing to Hide – Not Even His Email Password

#3
> "He is now a divorced professor at a technical college with no credit cards and extremely uninteresting finances, largely because the bulk of his paychecks are directly deposited, per his preference, in the account of his ex-wife."

That just about sums up how he is able to be so flippant with his privacy, even if he has nothing to hide!

Re: This Man Has Nothing to Hide – Not Even His Email Password

#4
Sounds like the person is an exhibitionist. My best take away from the article is the insightful statement by the author:

"Every one of us is entrusted with information that our family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances would rather that we kept private."

Re: This Man Has Nothing to Hide – Not Even His Email Password

#5
post #3

> "He is now a divorced professor at a technical college with no credit cards and extremely uninteresting finances, largely because the bulk of his paychecks are directly deposited, per his preference, in the account of his ex-wife." That just about sums up how he is able to be so flippant with his privacy, even if he has nothing to hide!

The other reason he can be so flippant is that he's an ex-Mormon who walked out on his family and church because he'd taken up sleeping around and atheism, so from his point of view the worst damage to his social standing has already been inflicted.

Re: This Man Has Nothing to Hide – Not Even His Email Password

#8
Excerpt:

"In most societies, we [recognize] the right of people to keep secrets. But really, there’s only one purpose for keeping secrets: secrets exist to prevent other people from acting as they would if they had complete information,"

Yeah, that's because most people cannot be completely trusted with your welfare. Der. They don't usually have your best interest at heart, even in cases where their intent is not specifically malicious.

Also:

He thinks most of us would live more ethically too.

I doubt that. They would just get better at appearing to be ethical, which really isn't the same thing.

Re: This Man Has Nothing to Hide – Not Even His Email Password

#9
post #3

> "He is now a divorced professor at a technical college with no credit cards and extremely uninteresting finances, largely because the bulk of his paychecks are directly deposited, per his preference, in the account of his ex-wife." That just about sums up how he is able to be so flippant with his privacy, even if he has nothing to hide!

The other reason he can be so flippant is that he's an ex-Mormon who walked out on his family and church because he'd taken up sleeping around and atheism, so from his point of view the worst damage to his social standing has already been inflicted.

I am intrigued by the "nothing to hide" = "nothing to lose" equivalence. "Nothing to lose" has always been a primarily mental phenomenon, but I think this clears away some of the potential dishonesty around claims like "if you have nothing to worry about, you shouldn't mind if the government reads your emails". Possible that they mean it, but I there are probably quite a few who do not understand what it means when they say it.
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