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‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

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Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#221

Post by kypro »

fsckboy wrote: post #99
kypro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with this. I live in the UK and when I raise concerns about government surveillance here people often say, "I've got nothing to hide". I learnt of a case just this week where a guy on Reddit left a slightly controversial comment and ended up being charged with hate speech, lost his job and received hate abuse online for his opinion. It was kinda crazy because "all" he said was that didn't care abou…

> I learnt of a case just this week where a guy on Reddit left a slightly controversial comment and ended up being charged with hate speech, lost his job and received hate abuse online for his opinion. the guy publically posted a racist comment in the UK where there is not an unlimited right of free speech and anti-social behavior is regulated. I don't see the privacy concern. I prefer an unlimited right of free spee…

I'm very charitable so perhaps that's why we disagree here, but I didn't read his comment as racist personally. That said, I understand the use of the word "monkey" could have been used with racist connotations, but the burden of proof would be on you to proof that instead of assuming guilt.

But either way he wasn't charged with being a racist. And outside of being a member of an extremist group I don't believe it's actually illegal to be a racist in the UK. It's illegal to be offensive. And that's what he was ultimately prosecuted for.

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#222

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

ransackdev wrote: post #214
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that in the simplest way this is true, and I am sure it is very clever, poetic and pithy. But this is not how it works in principle or in practice in the UK. The police work on behalf of the people, not the government. When government manages to suborn the police in even a small way it is very much noticed. It’s difficult for people outside the UK to see this, I suppose, but our experience with this is t…

Try to overthrow the government and watch your “police that work for the people and not the government” do a lot of work for the government.

I don't understand the point of this kind of argument from absurdity. It's not as clever as you think.

Also it's worth observing that a possible outcome is the majority of people wouldn't want their government overthrown, and the police should act to prevent it. Another is that the police wouldn't preserve a government that does not have the slightest mandate. There is no benefit to the police to do that. (Do you expect the FBI and state police forces to maintain an actually illegitimate US government? Because even from outside, I don't).

Again: Britain runs on realpolitik, not extremist absolutes. At no point would we on a cultural level feel it important celebrate "the peaceful transfer of power", for example. It's just not how our minds work. Our police are small and unarmed. It's just a very different place and the fact that HNers don't really understand it doesn't help with the oversimplifications.

(FWIW, nobody ever needs to overthrow a British government. The party in power usually manages this from within.)

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#223

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

kypro wrote: post #217
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Insulting people online or just saying something mildly offensive will often lead to prosecution. "will often": no, not at all. Could occasionally. You're not helping your argument by overstating this. The courts are not stuffed with people being fined for saying things that are "mildly offensive". And nothing of what you're talking about is government surveillance. The police aren't the government, and the police…

> "will often": no, not at all. Could occasionally. You're not helping your argument by overstating this. The courts are not stuffed with people being fined for saying things that are "mildly offensive". Yes, sorry – you're right. It happens occasionally. If you're willing to take the risk generally speaking you can be offensive and get away with it.

> If you're willing to take the risk generally speaking you can be offensive and get away with it.

We have a whole small news channel dedicated to it now! ;-)

Offensiveness on the whole is not policed, at all. (Except by Facebook, of course.)

Offensiveness that rises to the level of a crime can end up policed. The guidance around that is still poorly defined, so it's very unusual to see a charge or a conviction and it's for sure wasteful of resources.

I'm obviously not arguing that it's always a good idea to prosecute when people are just offended -- of course it's not remotely a good idea to have that standard. But I do think we in this country should be allowed to draw a slightly different line on racism or hate speech or trolling/griefing/abuse campaigns without being insulted for our lack of "principle", which is the routine HN argument.

It is, in my estimation, unprincipled to stand around and do nothing while people are harassed online, driven from their online activities, doxxed, abused with poster and letter writing campaigns, or incited against by conspiracy newspapers. Freedom of speech can have different limits than those chosen by the US constitution without being morally defective.

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#224

Post by caeril »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #223
kypro wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "will often": no, not at all. Could occasionally. You're not helping your argument by overstating this. The courts are not stuffed with people being fined for saying things that are "mildly offensive". Yes, sorry – you're right. It happens occasionally. If you're willing to take the risk generally speaking you can be offensive and get away with it.

> If you're willing to take the risk generally speaking you can be offensive and get away with it. We have a whole small news channel dedicated to it now! ;-) Offensiveness on the whole is not policed, at all. (Except by Facebook, of course.) Offensiveness that rises to the level of a crime can end up policed. The guidance around that is still poorly defined, so it's very unusual to see a charge or a conviction and i…

> Offensiveness that rises to the level of a crime

The larger question is, how is this even possibly a thing?

That there are legal liabilities that are wholly dependent on the internal emotional state of another person is absolutely insane. How is it possible to take a government that treats its adult citizens like kindergartners seriously?

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#225

Post by bemusedthrow75 »

midasuni wrote: post #174
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Insulting people online or just saying something mildly offensive will often lead to prosecution. "will often": no, not at all. Could occasionally. You're not helping your argument by overstating this. The courts are not stuffed with people being fined for saying things that are "mildly offensive". And nothing of what you're talking about is government surveillance. The police aren't the government, and the police…

> for those viewers who persist in believing that the surveillance system in Hot Fuzz exists in reality... They really do. Not just council cctv cameras, which are less problematic - any local Facebook group is full of pictures from ring doorbells of people who look like “trouble” who have the wrong skin colour, wrong clothing, wrong age etc. This is the norm and is embraced by a nation of curtain twitchers.

That is not the surveillance panopticon that HNers imagine.

That is "Little Brother" -- prurient neighbour-watching.

Yeah, Little Brother is everywhere. (It's the bigger threat to our culture, IMO).

But this isn't a UK-specific problem. The USA, for example, has Homeowner Associations, which tie neighbourhood-watch curtain-twitching and petty compliance to personal freedoms, property values, paint colour and lawnmowing. The average suburban person in the UK arguably has more freedom from curtain-twitching busybodies than in the USA (where 26% of the population live in an HOA or condo association)

The British police do not have warrantless power to just lazily aggregate Ring doorbell footage or any other such thing (they may have faster access to cloud content with a warrant, but I suspect it is probably still faster to just look at the doorbells in the immediate vicinity and ask permission).

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#226

Post by fraserphysics »

Society with privacy is different from and preferable to society without privacy. For one example, a lack of privacy enables the identity based political fragmentation that afflicts us. For another example, in developing relationships of any kind, people choose aspects of themselves to reveal to other parties. When negotiating a price, information about the counter party is an advantage.

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#227

Post by qerti »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #160
kypro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with this. I live in the UK and when I raise concerns about government surveillance here people often say, "I've got nothing to hide". I learnt of a case just this week where a guy on Reddit left a slightly controversial comment and ended up being charged with hate speech, lost his job and received hate abuse online for his opinion. It was kinda crazy because "all" he said was that didn't care abou…

For context, I'm generally sympathetic to the "I've got nothing to hide" people I find your example illustrates the point . The UK has insane libel laws The sane solution would be to address these laws, not to create mechanisms for people to arbitrarily evade laws A lot of pro privacy arguments seem to boil down to "well we should make it a bit easier for people to break the law, cus maybe the laws are just bad". Thi…

“Making it easier for people to break the law” is a weird way of saying “Making it harder for authoritarian governments to abuse its citizens”

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#228

Post by qerti »

dionidium wrote: post #79
deepthunder wrote: post #10

The problem with the "I've got nothing to hide" argument is it's not "you" who decides what is "right" or "wrong". The entity doing the "spying" determines what is right or wrong. "You" might think "x" is ok, however the "spying" entity may have the opposite view. And it is the "spying" entity's opinion that matters, not yours, because it always them that have the power and authority in determining what is "right" or…

There is a kind of sleight of hand at work in this counterargument, which is that nobody is advocating for a secret, extrajudicial, arbitrary set of rules about what is allowed and what isn't. Even if I say I'm OK with the government reading my email, all the work is ahead of them to prove specific charges in a court of law, should I catch their interest. The spy agency does not, in fact, get to decide what's right a…

“a secret police with extrajudicial powers”

Ever hear of how the IRS targeted certain political groups?

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#229

Post by someone321 »

alaxapta7 wrote: post #65
someone321 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

Not OP, but one thing I do is having a fake name on my mailbox and doorbell. I figured my neighbours don't need to know, and parcel services don't care. I don't legally live on that address, so that helps. I also try to keep my browser's headers more generic, especially the Accept-Language header (not applicable or particulary helpful for US residents, though). The rest (VPN, [and therefore] no Google and no social n…

[dead]

Re: ‘I've got nothing to hide’ and other misunderstandings of privacy (2007)

#230

Post by someone321 »

alaxapta7 wrote: post #65
someone321 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

Not OP, but one thing I do is having a fake name on my mailbox and doorbell. I figured my neighbours don't need to know, and parcel services don't care. I don't legally live on that address, so that helps. I also try to keep my browser's headers more generic, especially the Accept-Language header (not applicable or particulary helpful for US residents, though). The rest (VPN, [and therefore] no Google and no social n…

[dead]
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