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This is a good example of why the "I don't have anything to hide" argument is incorrect. That way of thinking only works as long as your goals and positions ar

This is a good example of why the "I don't have anything to hide" argument is incorrect. That way of thinking only works as long as your goals and positions are aligned with the entity collecting information about you to begin with. If they're not, or the situation changes, imbalances of information lead to disadvantages for you pretty quickly. All it took was some bureaucrat feeling petty.

DanielBMarkham 10y ago
Not only in alignment with some entity collecting the information, in alignment with every entity that might ever look at the information -- for the rest of your life.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  This is the strongest point. Not having anything you're ashamed of does not mean not having anything to hide - it's all too possible for completely harmless traits like ethnicity and sexuality to become targets for someone else.
  - nkrisc 10y ago
    Your actions may be legal now, but that may not always be the case. You may be protected from retroactive prosecution now, but that may not always be the case. Data doesn't just go away.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    The most scary aspect is that if I know everything about you, I can frame you for a crime for which you will have no alibi, or threaten to in exchange for you doing what I ask. The second was a tactic often used by the Stasi to create more operatives - call someone in for questioning, accuse them of a crime for which they have no alibi, such as spying, and when they protest their innocence, ask them to help the government with something to show their good faith. That something could easily be to provide a pretext for arresting the real target.
    - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
      The Stasi is a good model for how quickly and badly this can go off the rails. The way it's supposed to work is that you have some public event of importance: a crime, a person applies for a security clearance, or whatnot. Based on that event, the state then conducts and investigation to see if there are any data they can discover that might lead to a response. The new way of working is that you collect all the data, on everyone, all the time. Then there's no more event. The only thing you do is pick out the person. Once you have the person, it's a simple data mining exercise (along with a lot of interrogation techniques) that takes care of the person. What's the old saying in communist countries? "You have a man. You have a problem. No more man, no more problem" Functional societies focus on events. Dysfunctional societies focus on the people.
literallycancer 10y ago
And this is how it looks in the 3rd world.[1] On 31 October, Congress party officials provided assailants with voter lists, school registration forms, and ration lists.[49] The lists were used to find the location of Sikh homes and business, an otherwise impossible task because they were located in unmarked and diverse neighbourhoods. On the night of 31 October, the night before the massacres began, assailants used the lists to mark the houses of Sikhs with letter "S".[49] In addition, because most of the mobs were illiterate, Congress Party officials provided help in reading the lists and leading the mobs to Sikh homes and businesses in the other neighbourhoods.[46] By using the lists the mobs were able to pinpoint the locations of Sikhs they otherwise would have missed.[46] ... One man, Amar Singh, escaped the initial attack on his house by having a Hindu neighbour drag him into his neighbour's house and declare him dead. However, a group of 18 assailants later came looking for his body, and when his neighbour replied that others had already taken away the body an assailant showed him a list and replied, "Look, Amar Singh's name has not been struck off from the list so his dead body has not been taken away."[46] 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_anti-Sikh_riots#Use_of_voter_lists_by_the_Congress_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_anti-Sikh_riots#Use_of_vo...
- pessimizer 10y ago
  And in the first world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust "The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country's Jewish minority. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 million.[15]"
- tjalfi 10y ago
  The US Census provided names and addresses for the Japanese internment. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-...
yummyfajitas 10y ago
Keeping in mind that this organization was a welfare office, what's the solution? Should the government stop keeping records of how much money welfare recipients have collected? Should they not keep logs of calls to customer support, tax payments and similar things? If a person is unable to manage their own life and requires the government to be their parent, it's unclear to me how the bureaucracy can simultaneously manage their life for them and also not keep records.
- ro_sharp 10y ago
  What the article is suggesting is that perhaps the release of a person's private financial information by a government agency is not something the broader community would consider to be acceptable. From reading this comment and others it appears you have a personal political view regarding the extent of Australia's social safety net, which I would suggest is not particularly relevant to the debate. What is relevant, however, is that the release of this information to the media was actively approved by Alan Tudge, the current minister for the Human Services portfolio.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Yosamino's comment, which is what I was replying to, was about the collection of information.
- yosamino 10y ago
  > If a person is unable to manage their own life and requires the government to be their parent That snide comment is really uncalled for. I hope you will never be in a situation where you require assistance, government or other. But to your larger point: Maybe government and other bureaucracy should strive to collect only that personal data that is strictly necessary for them to function and create a culture in their organization which emphasizes the importance of keeping private data private, and public data public. I'm not saying that there aren't sometimes conflicts between the two, but in general I would like for this issue to be taken seriously, instead of having to fear my information being used against me for petty reasons by these organisations. Whether I depend on them (which makes this a whole lot more sinister) or not.

DanielBMarkham 10y ago

Not only in alignment with some entity collecting the information, in alignment with every entity that might ever look at the information -- for the rest of your life.

Bartweiss 10y ago
This is the strongest point. Not having anything you're ashamed of does not mean not having anything to hide - it's all too possible for completely harmless traits like ethnicity and sexuality to become targets for someone else.
- nkrisc 10y ago
  Your actions may be legal now, but that may not always be the case. You may be protected from retroactive prosecution now, but that may not always be the case. Data doesn't just go away.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  The most scary aspect is that if I know everything about you, I can frame you for a crime for which you will have no alibi, or threaten to in exchange for you doing what I ask. The second was a tactic often used by the Stasi to create more operatives - call someone in for questioning, accuse them of a crime for which they have no alibi, such as spying, and when they protest their innocence, ask them to help the government with something to show their good faith. That something could easily be to provide a pretext for arresting the real target.
  - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
    The Stasi is a good model for how quickly and badly this can go off the rails. The way it's supposed to work is that you have some public event of importance: a crime, a person applies for a security clearance, or whatnot. Based on that event, the state then conducts and investigation to see if there are any data they can discover that might lead to a response. The new way of working is that you collect all the data, on everyone, all the time. Then there's no more event. The only thing you do is pick out the person. Once you have the person, it's a simple data mining exercise (along with a lot of interrogation techniques) that takes care of the person. What's the old saying in communist countries? "You have a man. You have a problem. No more man, no more problem" Functional societies focus on events. Dysfunctional societies focus on the people.

literallycancer 10y ago

And this is how it looks in the 3rd world.[1] On 31 October, Congress party officials provided assailants with voter lists, school registration forms, and ration lists.[49] The lists were used to find the location of Sikh homes and business, an otherwise impossible task because they were located in unmarked and diverse neighbourhoods. On the night of 31 October, the night before the massacres began, assailants used the lists to mark the houses of Sikhs with letter "S".[49] In addition, because most of the mobs were illiterate, Congress Party officials provided help in reading the lists and leading the mobs to Sikh homes and businesses in the other neighbourhoods.[46] By using the lists the mobs were able to pinpoint the locations of Sikhs they otherwise would have missed.[46] ... One man, Amar Singh, escaped the initial attack on his house by having a Hindu neighbour drag him into his neighbour's house and declare him dead. However, a group of 18 assailants later came looking for his body, and when his neighbour replied that others had already taken away the body an assailant showed him a list and replied, "Look, Amar Singh's name has not been struck off from the list so his dead body has not been taken away."[46] 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_anti-Sikh_riots#Use_of_voter_lists_by_the_Congress_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_anti-Sikh_riots#Use_of_vo...

pessimizer 10y ago
And in the first world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust "The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country's Jewish minority. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 million.[15]"
tjalfi 10y ago
The US Census provided names and addresses for the Japanese internment. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-...

yummyfajitas 10y ago

Keeping in mind that this organization was a welfare office, what's the solution? Should the government stop keeping records of how much money welfare recipients have collected? Should they not keep logs of calls to customer support, tax payments and similar things? If a person is unable to manage their own life and requires the government to be their parent, it's unclear to me how the bureaucracy can simultaneously manage their life for them and also not keep records.

ro_sharp 10y ago
What the article is suggesting is that perhaps the release of a person's private financial information by a government agency is not something the broader community would consider to be acceptable. From reading this comment and others it appears you have a personal political view regarding the extent of Australia's social safety net, which I would suggest is not particularly relevant to the debate. What is relevant, however, is that the release of this information to the media was actively approved by Alan Tudge, the current minister for the Human Services portfolio.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Yosamino's comment, which is what I was replying to, was about the collection of information.
yosamino 10y ago
> If a person is unable to manage their own life and requires the government to be their parent That snide comment is really uncalled for. I hope you will never be in a situation where you require assistance, government or other. But to your larger point: Maybe government and other bureaucracy should strive to collect only that personal data that is strictly necessary for them to function and create a culture in their organization which emphasizes the importance of keeping private data private, and public data public. I'm not saying that there aren't sometimes conflicts between the two, but in general I would like for this issue to be taken seriously, instead of having to fear my information being used against me for petty reasons by these organisations. Whether I depend on them (which makes this a whole lot more sinister) or not.