If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear • Hacker News Board

Re: If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

#131

Post by kuschku » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

pkaeding wrote: post #127

lern_too_spel wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing like that has ever happened to me. In fact, I have never been in a situation where I would have been better off with a gun on me. Funny how people who own guns seem to end up in dangerous situations so often.

I'd be careful implying causation here. Another way to look at it is that people who often find themselves in dangerous situations feel the need to have guns to protect themselves. When you think about it that way, it doesn't sound so 'funny'.

Well, in this case it might be. In a society where no one owns guns, the chance that some intruder has a gun is near to null, so you don’t need a gun either.

Re: If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

#132

Post by jotm » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

dmvaldman wrote: post #3

"When you say I don't care about the right to privacy because I have nothing to hide, that is no different than saying I don't care about freedom of speech because I have nothing to say or freedom of the press because I have nothing to write." - Edward Snowden

Oh, so that's who said it (shouldn't be a surprise). I like that quote.

Re: If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

#133

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #131

pkaeding wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be careful implying causation here. Another way to look at it is that people who often find themselves in dangerous situations feel the need to have guns to protect themselves. When you think about it that way, it doesn't sound so 'funny'.

Well, in this case it might be. In a society where no one owns guns, the chance that some intruder has a gun is near to null, so you don’t need a gun either.

Clearly a 5'1", 105lb woman has no need of a gun when a 6'4", 240lb man breaks into her home.

Re: If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

#134

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:15 PM UTC

pekk wrote: post #130

crazy1van wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've both bought a gun and gotten married. It definitely took much more government paperwork and time to buy the gun. However, I'm not sure the bureaucracy surrounding either really comes close to "persecution".

Buying a gun really only requires filling out a tiny slip, it took me less than 5 minutes and was not invasive in the least. Maybe this varies between states.

Does that tiny slip get filed somewhere, indexed and archived, triggering an invisible trawl through your personal record? Maybe it's the behind-the-scenes stuff that has gun enthusiasts worried.

Re: If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

#135

Post by twoodfin » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:16 PM UTC

And if you’re not content with living in a world where all of that data is public then you’d better stop repeating that silly mantra ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide then you’ve got nothing to fear’...

Serious question: Who's making this argument? I don't hear it articulated by anyone, frankly. I'm sure there are people who hold this position and have argued for it, but are any of them in a position to make policy? Have any of our dozen+ presidential candidates made this claim?

Re: If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

#136

Post by CyberDildonics » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

Then why is our government so secretive?

Re: If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

#137

Post by ovi256 » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

arh68 wrote: post #42

Sure, the Chinese have got the info, but could they sell it to American companies? Might a US employer be interested in that dataset? How much might they be willing to pay? Could I set up a Private Investigation firm and charge $10/file for access? Would an American pay to see their ex-husband/ex-wife's polygraph results? I could even take payment in Bitcoin. I think the television news emphasizes the possibility of…

I think the term data-laundering will come into use. It will describe the practice of taking illegally obtained data (such as this OPM leak) and selling it and plausible deniability that it comes from a clean source to willing buyers who would not otherwise have touched it because of legal liability.

I an utopia, a forbidden-fruit doctrine would develop and be enforced. Data from an illegal leak would be illegal to touch. In practice, who knows.

Re: If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

#138

Post by ams6110 » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:41 PM UTC

spdustin wrote: post #68

at-fates-hands wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an odd statement and fundamentally confuses two very different ideas. First of all, there is no express right to privacy in the Constitution. There is however, the Bill of Rights which everybody is familiar with. It does outline protecting specific aspects of privacy which include such things as the First Amendment (freedom of religion) or the 4th Amendment, (privacy of your possessions against unlawful…

I expect the fourth amendment to be a growing factor in SCOTUS cases related to privacy - at the time of inception, a person's self, house, papers and effects were tangible things - the idea that the other "digital effects" we all have in our "digital houses" didn't exist. I think the argument that an email would be a "paper" under the fourth amendment is going to be the first test. I know that sort of thing has been…

I would read "papers" as different from email. Papers I interpret as personal records: journals, financial records, etc. Email, tweets, Facebook postings, etc. are already by default shared with at least one other person or unknown other persons so there's an implicit reduced notion of privacy.

I agree with the larger point that information on digital devices should properly be considered "papers" or "effects" even if stored in something nebulous such as "the cloud." As long as there's no deliberate or implicit sharing of these things, "the cloud" should be considered as private as a desk drawer.

Re: If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

#139

Post by leereeves » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:42 PM UTC

reagency wrote: post #122

joonoro wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Today, the government's military is so advanced that they'd quickly squash any kind of uprising even if you somehow managed to obtain every legally purchased firearm in the country. You'd be surprised at how effective guerrilla warfare is.

Guerilla warfare can change who wins, but it won't stop you from losing. A war has more than two sides.

> it won't stop you from losing

One counter-example: the Taliban

Re: If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

#140

Post by vonklaus » Sat, Jul 11, 2015, 6:43 PM UTC

I flagged a thread a week or so ago that was an opinion piece about women in tech advocating hiring women. At the end of article the author compiled a huge list of women in tech from github, linkedin and other available resources and linked to it in a spreadsheet.

Leaving aside that hiring a female engineer from google would not add more women into the ecosystem, it is poor form to take a bunch of personal data and use it to compile a list without consent. From memory, the list had full names, position and links to public profiles. This was essentially a massive doxx dump of female engineers.

I assume most of the listed individuals weren't "hiding" their employment position, but this list could be used to target them, spam recruit them, make it appear as if they were shopping employment offers etc.