Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 96 posts

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

#41

Post by Mz »

kijin wrote: post #37
Mz wrote: post #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 spe…

> They would just get better at appearing to be ethical, which really isn't the same thing. There's a long and hard-to-kill tradition of thought, both in the West and in other cultures, that says something along the lines of "If you try hard enough to look like you care about X for a long time, you'll end up actually caring about X." It's the idea behind every educational system that requires students to wear uniform…

I was sexually abused as a child. My healing process has been a long, strange journey. HN is not the right place to get into an in-depth discussion of my experiences. Suffice it to say that I have done a great deal of reading and thinking about sexual ethics and I have come to believe that there is a really huge difference between looking ethical and behaving in an ethical fashion. In fact, most "moral" people seem to be mostly concerned with social approval and doing things other people will agree is right. Actually ethical people seem to often be (or appear to be) amoral: They have standards they live by and public opinion be damned.

That last stance gets harder if everything is in view. The first one easier. It isn't an outcome I long for.

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

#42

Post by justinlloyd »

The people who declare "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" never grew up in a parochial village that persecuted anything that was different. I was interested in books, SciFi, computers, electronics.

Because I did not subscribe to the populist viewpoint of all that mattered was sports, sports, and more sports, getting blackout drunk on Friday and Saturday night, fishing and torturing small furry animals "just for fun" I suffered more than my fair share of persecution, beatings (lots and lots of beatings) and ostracism.

The idiots that declare "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" are privileged minority, usually white, male and middle class.

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

#43

Post by kazinator »

The premise of the article is a fallacy of equivocation over the word "nothing".

"I have nothing to hide" is used as an argument meaning "I have nothing to hide for which I might be wanted by the authorities"; it does not literally mean "nothing at all".

"I have nothing to hide" is an argument used against the advocacy of tools for anonymity and cryptography, and in particular tools that use strong cryptography and are free of back doors.

The counter argument "you have your personal privacy to hide" to hide makes a strawman out of "I have nothing to hide" around the interpretation of the word "nothing".

The nothing-to-hide argument, in its strongest form, is specifically limited as an argument against the advocacy of tools that make governments nervous, not against fig leaves and coconuts. That part of it is plausible, in fact: basic privacy arguably does not need strong anonymity and crypto tools that are free of back doors.

You can be investigated by a government in ways that actually "respect" your privacy, so to speak. By this I mean that they get into into your accounts (using exploits or deliberately planted back doors), don't find what they're looking for, and then move on. Nothing private of yours has become public, and you don't even know.

I'm not saying I agree with any of this, just that you have to take the "I have nothing to hide" argument more seriously: the taunt "so open your e-mail to everyone" is not really an effective response.

Those who use the "I have nothing to hide" argument are statists and conformists; they really mean "I am willing to open all aspects of my life to the authorities in cooperation with any investigation", not "I'm willing to open my life to the public". (The tacit implication is "those who are not willing to unconditionally cooperate with the authorities to the extent that I am are not merely advocates of liberty: they likely have something to hide, whether it be links to terrorist organizations, child porn, or evidence of crime. Unlike me, the advocates of those tools and systems are not so confident that nothing will be found.")

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

#44

Post by dinkumthinkum »

This is about the silliest thing I've read in awhile. All right so he wants to do this dumb PR stunt where he films his life and he wants to raise money on Kickstarters. OK, I will just wait for him to raise the money, log in to his Kickstarter or his bank account, take all his money and voila I have won the game. I mean this is extraordinarily ridiculous and I don't know how this is making any intelligible point about society or how we shouldn't care about privacy.

So without privacy politicians would work to build a Utopia or something? This is not worth the time of The Atlantic, or what I thought that institution was about. The idea that people will act more ethically because of privacy is something out of a Dystopian novel, but he actually sees this as Utopian; this makes me wonder if this is a prank.

Let us wonder, if we give up all privacy, I imagine this applies to institutions. So, when Google gives me their Secret key, or wait, no one will ever use encryption because there will be no secrets, what stops someone from firing a nuclear weapon because of course we will not have secrets like the "launch codes." I realize in such a Utopia we won't need nuclear weapons but let's Utopia will start tomorrow, before we get rid of these weapons ... What's to stop some mentally ill person from using the free knowledge to destroy the world of all new-found anti-privacy advocates?

Oh, you may say "we won't share those secrets." OK, where does this end because I don't know see how you get Utopia without everyone following this silly idea. I mean, it may come as a surprise, but humans are (relatively) intelligent self-interested agents and will not always follow such noble ideals as no-privacy, particularly if they will have grey area sorts of cases, such as keep launch codes secret. It's just such a farce. I never thought anyone could make Zuckerberg seem like someone that has intelligent thoughts about privacy but here we are.

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

#46

Post by tolmasky »

nsajko wrote: post #33
tolmasky wrote: post #21

> "And having been transparent with his coreligionists about his loss of faith and with his ex-wife about his lost willingness to be monogamous, he gradually came to this life philosophy: Society would be better if no one had any secrets." Spoken like someone blessed to have been born a white heterosexual male in 21st century America. I wonder if he'd feel the same way if he was a homosexual in an incredibly homophob…

But wouldn't government have less of an advantage over you in that respect in that society than it currently has?

Our society currently theoretically condemns murder, I don't think that government is more harshly judged for the people it kills than the citizenry is. I don't see why in a society that condemns secrecy government would be held more accountable for secrets than its citizenry.

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

#47

Post by dinkumthinkum »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #24

I totally agree with that guy, and I've been looking for likeminded people for months. Beside social stigma, the most important barrier to living a transparent life is our reliance on secrets for identification. That includes Social Security numbers, Credit Card numbers, bank account passwords/nips, all details about physical keys and locks, etc. You might say that public access to the above information is only a pro…

Really? I don't want to brow beat you but I really if you agree with this person, I can't help but think you need to wake up to reality. This is just utter nonsense.

Privacy/secrecy as it relates to identification or ownership is just one facet of the world. You realize people are not actually robots or play-things in a Dystopian novel right? People have complex lives, desires, strategies for achieving their goals, feelings, etc.

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

#48

Post by adwf »

tolmasky wrote: post #21

> "And having been transparent with his coreligionists about his loss of faith and with his ex-wife about his lost willingness to be monogamous, he gradually came to this life philosophy: Society would be better if no one had any secrets." Spoken like someone blessed to have been born a white heterosexual male in 21st century America. I wonder if he'd feel the same way if he was a homosexual in an incredibly homophob…

I'm reminded of an example of this - read the Lethal Car Decorating:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear:_US_Special

If you can't get hold of the episode, they essentially paint pro-homosexuality slogans on the side of their vehicles and drive through an Alabama town.

It's scary to think that even in this day and age there are people who will react in such a fashion. And if you think this is bad, driving through the town... imagine living there as a gay man.

PS: I'm aware that Top Gear is an entertainment show and not everything may be exactly as it appears, but I believe this was legit in this case.

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

#50

Post by dinkumthinkum »

mmalone wrote: post #23
rabbyte wrote: post #20

> "secrets exist to prevent other people from acting as they would if they had complete information" And? I don't understand why the reader must assume it would be good for people to act with complete information. Privacy is required where trust is absent because people in the abstract are not responsible or empathetic enough to warrant the risk. Ask any celebrity if privacy is a barrier to equality. This isn't pessi…

Eh... I don't get it? Why is privacy required where there is no trust? I see how the two are related but I see it kind of differently... it's hard not to trust someone when you know they're not hiding anything. In a totally utopian sense I believe that privacy is bad. Practically it's probably impossible to implement society without privacy. I wouldn't share my email password because we're not living in a utopia and…

So what amazing sort of philosophical argument are you using to arrive at the value judgment that "privacy is bad?" I don't think it is good enough to just have this tacit idea "no privacy is inherently good but obviously we don't live in a Utopia;" I think that is a flawed concept entirely.

In fact, I think your position is entirely immoral. You want to find some kind of technology to force me to give up my privacy to you, and absent such a technology, you think it is unfortunate because that would be Utopia ... That's just hard to take seriously.

Post reply on HN