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The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

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Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

#21

Post by metalman »

jokoon wrote: post #3

I disagree What really matters is judiciary due process and the legitimacy of a government. Companies are the ones gathering data, it's not the government doing it. Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens. The internet makes it more difficult for the government to catch criminals and fraudsters. If you live in Russia or China or under Trump's administration, there are good reasons to hide.…

governments have always collected "data*", and use it for power/controll, any company doing so is actualy hoping that the government like's the stink of there particular shit, but now as forever, false positives/negatives will undermine and destroy a career. The true "nothing to hide" good honest decent folks, will almost certainly leave a convoluted trail of there meandering through life that can and will lead anywhere, but as the author points out, that other relentlessly "perfect" demographic is likely to be dangerous competition, rather than a general danger, and so will be assesed as to potential threat/uses, almost like a job interview...potentialy usefull idiots

Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

#22

Post by atemerev »

jokoon wrote: post #3

I disagree What really matters is judiciary due process and the legitimacy of a government. Companies are the ones gathering data, it's not the government doing it. Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens. The internet makes it more difficult for the government to catch criminals and fraudsters. If you live in Russia or China or under Trump's administration, there are good reasons to hide.…

Any country can turn to a dictatorship in three years. We just had a fine demostration.

Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

#23

Post by faidit »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #18
filterfish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contempt is very different to hate.

It is very interesting, in our polarized times, what people read into a statement, and if they interpret it charitably or in the worst possible way. Like you, I find contempt and hate very different.

The author clarifies a couple sentences later that the contempt they feel is "the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator" - "collaborator" apparently meaning something like the very bad WWII kind of collaborator, rather than the benign artistic co-author kind. So, despite the implicit acknowledgement that there are multiple types of contempt, this particular contempt does sound fairly close to hatred.

Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

#24

Post by codethief »

To anyone who says "I have nothing to hide" I respond with "Unfortunately, you are not the one who gets to decide whether what you have is worth hiding."

(I think I first might have come across this beautifully succinct and unfortunately very true counter in a Reddit AMA with Edward Snowden way back when, but I might be misremembering.)

Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

#25

Post by netsharc »

flowerthoughts wrote: post #7
jokoon wrote: post #3

I disagree What really matters is judiciary due process and the legitimacy of a government. Companies are the ones gathering data, it's not the government doing it. Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens. The internet makes it more difficult for the government to catch criminals and fraudsters. If you live in Russia or China or under Trump's administration, there are good reasons to hide.…

> If you live in a country where freedoms and due process are respected, there is no point in hiding, UNLESS you can really argue that due process and freedoms are eroding, but that's a different debate. This assumes usage of collected data stays the same forever. But regime changes do happen, and once the data has been allowed to be collected, you have no power. I think Trumpland was once considered a state where fr…

For example data of your period, if you're female...

Considering the reckless lawlessness of the current regime of "the shining beacon of democracy", I wonder if they could retroactively convict "murders of unborn babies" and find them by trawling to online health data and looking back at gaps of female periods.

Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

#26

Post by alan-crowe »

My "importance of privacy" story:

I get my gas and electricity from Scottish Power. Recently a rival company, Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute. The front line of defence against this kind of dispute is that the bills give the serial numbers of the meters. The bill from Scottish Power gives the same meter serial numbers that are embossed on the front of my meters, and is therefore valid. The bill from Ovo Energy gives different serial numbers and is therefore in error.

Picture though the internal processes in Ovo Energy. A second clerk is tasked with attending to the problem. He has a choice. He can change the address to agree with the meter serial numbers, correcting the error. Or he can change the meter serial numbers to those for my address, compounding the error.

Since the meter serial numbers are confidential, to me and Scottish Power, Ovo Energy does not have the second option; they do not know the serial numbers (which are long, like a credit card number, not just 1,2,3,...). Thus the clerical error gets corrected, or just left, but not compounded.

My guess is that confidential information, (such as meter serial numbers, credit card numbers, and account numbers), are the front like of defence against both clerical error and fraud based on impersonation. It is a rather weak defence, but it is light weight, and seems to how much of billing and billing disputes work.

We all have lots to hide: the confidential information that the system needs us to keep confidential to stop clerical errors from compounding.

Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

#27

Post by spacecadet »

Speak softly and carry a big stick. Im a fairly private person. Id also end my life in defense of freedom and autonomy... I read posts like this and I cant imagine what an extremist like this is trying to protect? To continue living a life in shadow? Well, when the time comes that his giant "machine" the governments all poorly maintain and utilize finally awakens and results in concentration camps... you better forget all you knew about dumb technology, hope you have a big stick.

To think, "no presence" = no problems. If I were a dumb machine, I just might decide to pick up all citizens with birth certs that are also internet ghosts. What was the point then?

Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

#28

Post by BLKNSLVR »

> We must all become deviations

Already there friend.

I feel that I have nothing to hide, but I do my darnedest to ensure that it costs a maximal amount of time and effort to find that out.

If a random stranger (law enforcement or otherwise) wants to know shit about me, then I'm immediately creeped out and the last thing I want to do is make (online) stalking of me an easy task. The harder it is, the more likely they'll give up and move on to someone else (pending their reasons).

As it should be for everyone.

Edited to add: One thing I can tell you from experience: law enforcement only look for things that will confirm their suspicions. They do not look for counter evidence, no matter how obvious it is or how easy it is to find - even within government records to which they would already have access.

As such, beware what trail you leave, if it suits the right (wrong) agenda, it will be used to point in the worst possible direction.

Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

#29

Post by bloomingeek »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #11

> And then comes the part they can't (or won't) fathom. The context shifts. The political winds change. The Overton window slams shut on a belief they once held. A book they read is declared subversive. A group they donated to is re-classified as extremist. A joke they told is now evidence of a thoughtcrime. There are at least some people who would respond by (still) saying "I have nothing to hide." They are proud of…

I think the author is trying to say in today's world we face a sort of moral/societal vacuum of privacy. The more we try to remain private, whether by being an open book or by some type of digital way, it's basically futile or will eventually be broken.

My spin, as a recovering perfectionist, is when you've done everything you can to be "innocent" and the political or whatever wind changes, the pit of despair is a real and devastating thing. When this happens, sometimes the decisions that are made are desperate.

Re: The Deviancy Signal: Having "Nothing to Hide" Is a Threat to Us All

#30

Post by bloomingeek »

atoav wrote: post #20
NickForLiberty wrote: post #2

There's a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, "I have nothing to hide." It's not the gentle pity you'd have for the naive. It's the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator. Because these people aren't just surrendering their own liberty. They're instead actively forging the chains for the rest of us. They are a threat, and I think it's time they were told so. Their argument is a "patholog…

Hannah Arendt in her most famous television interview after the Eichman process said what shocked her in 1933 when the Nazis came to power wasn't that the Nazis came to power, it was how many of the people she preceived as friends and allies, especially in the intellectual space would convince themselves with fantastical theories about why Hitler being in power might be a good thing actually. The truth is that many p…

Excellent work.
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