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Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance

81 points by dsr12 10y ago

DigitalSea 10y ago
I am surprised that this Wired article didn't mention anything related to Snowden, considering he was the one who blew the lid on mass surveillance. Edward Snowden summed this up perfectly: >Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
- spiraldancing 10y ago
  Article is from June, 2013 ... right about the time the Snowden revelations were just starting to come out. Additionally, author is Moxie Marlinspike, a prominent privacy advocate in his own right.
  - DigitalSea 10y ago
    Nice pickup. I actually did not realise this was from 2013. I should always look at the dates, happens a lot on here.
- msimpson 10y ago
  > ...article didn't mention anything related to Snowden, considering he was the one who blew the lid on mass surveillance. I really wish people would look beyond Snowden. It isn't as if there was zero knowledge of these types of programs or whistleblowers before him. William Binney, Thomas Drake, J. Kirk Wiebe, and Edward Loomis, just to name a few, deserve a lot more credit in this instance.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    Published evidence goes back to the eighties, but made virtually no difference - until Snowden blew the lid off. Respect to all the others, yup, but Snowden broke the issue wide open.
    - msimpson 10y ago
      You need to reevaluate your definition of that idiom.
      - Nomentatus 10y ago
        You'll have to disambiguate (two idioms above) and specify your advice. References welcome.
        msimpson 10y ago
        The idiom "blow the lid off" means to publicly expose something which was previously secret or hidden. As you said yourself, evidence for these types of programs has existed for decades. Therefore, Snowden did not blow the lid off anything. What he did, instead, was to present corroborating evidence which added much needed detail in regard to such programs. I'm not trying to devalue his effort, just pointing out that he isn't some lone ranger. And the fact that so many people payed attention this time around had a lot more to do with the criminality of his actions rather than the information he presented.
        Nomentatus 10y ago
        Alas it this knowledge was hidden from the vast majority of people who rely on TV news for a long time. "Blow the lid off" doesn't mean the first person to reveal something, it refers to an explosion that can't be ignored. Kudos to the rest, but he was the one who really rang the gong. Many revealed the Holocaust to the Allies during WWII, but very sadly, no-one managed "to blow the lid off" until Germany collapsed. "The Nazis attempted to keep the Holocaust a secret, but in August 1942, Dr. Gerhart Riegner, the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, learned what was going on from a German source. Riegner asked American diplomats in Switzerland to inform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, one of America’s most prominent Jewish leaders, of the mass murder plan. But the State Department, characteristically insensitive and influenced by anti-Semitism, decided not to inform Wise. The rabbi nevertheless learned of Riegner’s terrible message from Jewish leaders in Great Britain. He immediately approached Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, who asked Wise to keep the information confidential until the government had time to verify it. Wise agreed and it was not until November 1942 that Welles authorized the release of Riegner’s message. Wise held a press conference on the evening of November 24, 1942. The next day’s New York Times reported his news on its tenth page. Throughout the rest of the war, the Times and most other newspapers failed to give prominent and extensive coverage to the Holocaust. During World War I, the American press had published reports of German atrocities that subsequently turned out to be false. As a result, journalists during World War II tended to approach atrocity reports with caution." http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/american-response-to-the-holocaust http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/american-response... So I thank Edward Snowden, even more than I thank the rest.
Razengan 10y ago
Just tell politicians to submit to surveillance, after all, they should have nothing to hide.
- gumby 10y ago
  Ideas like this sound sensible on the surface, but they have unfortunate side effects. For example if politicians must disclose a lot of private information, only those who don't care about that will become politicians. And then since they are comfortable with it, they won't see any reason to control dissemination of others' private info. (BTW I'm not criticizing you by saying this; I don't know a good fix). But you know how everyone gets a blast of schadenfreude when that anti-drink-driving politician is pulled over for driving dangerously after having a few too many? Of course I laugh too, but I wonder if they have been so vocal about the issue because they know how dangerous it is. Whereas I, who drink little and don't even like to drive, probably wouldn't pay much attention to the issue if I became a politician.
  - Razengan 10y ago
    I agree with you. But forcing lawmakers to give up their privacy too would at least, hopefully, theoretically, level the playing field.. Same way as we now at least hold them subject to the same laws involving money, taxes, and can use those laws to indict them.
    - gumby 10y ago
      > Same way as we now at least hold them subject to the same laws involving money, taxes, and can use those laws to indict them. Actually you can't really, and again for good reason, and again with unfortunate side effects as well. Legislators have legislative immunity for good reason: otherwise people would use the courts to attack legislators for making decisions the attackers don't like (the emolument suit against Trump is avowedly similar[1], although he has a slightly different immunity). You can, after all, attack them just as well via the ballot box. In the US the FBI can still investigate crimes they suspect were committed by sitting legislators, and the house or senate can waive one of their members' immunity, so it kind of works. At the opposite extreme, criminals run for office in India in order to take advantage of the legislative immunity from prosecution. All this goes in the "some problems are simple to characterize but not simple to resolve" bucket. When people hear famous quotes from very smart people along the line of "if your explanation of your problem is complex, perhaps you don't really understand it" they often confuse that with "your solution must be simple too." [1] I just heard an interview with one of the law professors bringing suit, Zephyr Teachout, who said she thought it would likely go nowhere but that it was worth making his life difficult. Even if you consider Trump an irredeemably corrupt mastermind, it is abuse of the legal system to use it when you know you'll fail. Not that this is the first time someone filed suit just to annoy someone else.
jhbadger 10y ago
There are good points in the article, but I'm annoyed that they bring up the "lobster law" as so many articles about "absurd laws you might be breaking without knowing it" do. There's actually a very valid reason why possessing a small lobster is illegal -- immature lobsters haven't bred yet and if you want to have lobsters in the future you shouldn't harvest them.
- throwaway11122 10y ago
  The validity of the reasons doesn't come into this because the point isn't that "possessing lobsters being illegal is stupid". The pint is "lobster are illegal, who would've guessed, can you imagine having a lobster and ending up in jail?, and can you imagine how many other thousands of unknown laws are you breaking right now?, it's not possible to keep track of them all"
hzhou321 10y ago
The right way to think about privacy would be "is that privacy worthwhile to protect". There is no absolute in reality. Everything is a balance. And that balance is constantly shifting. We, human, are experts in handling shifting balance though. Do not be stupid (blindly trusting any party, including our government or google), but do not be paranoid either (worrying about potential crisis every day). Just live your life, and use common sense.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  Go with the herd, don't go nuts look for cliffs upcoming. That could work. Or not.
ouid 10y ago
I would like to argue that the fourth amendment implicitly protects against legislation whose only method of enforcement would require unreasonable search. If you cannot observe any direct effects of an action without searching the person who performed the action, then it cannot be a criminal action, and theres a reasonable argument that this follows from the fourth amendment.
woodandsteel 10y ago
The thing that worries me most about all the personal data the government has is not its using it to indict people. It is that it will take information that would be embarrassing to politicians and either use it to blackmail them, or hand it over to the opposition to use in an election (from what I understand, J. Edgar Hoover did that). If that is going on, then you don't really have a democracy any more.
type0 10y ago
One of my relatives also said this "I have nothing to hide" BS, I replied by asking who they were talking about. Response: anyone but the criminals. Hmm, so I demanded to install a spy app on their phone to be able to monitor everything they do, where they are, record the conversations etc. They declined this offer, either implying that they perceive me as a criminal or they confirmed to being hypocritical about this reasoning. Also this reasoning implies that government agents and other officials are somehow immune from illegal or criminal activities. Edit: my impression is that the general public somehow thinks that this data collected from mass surveillance is stored so securely that it can never be accessed by criminals. The only thing that could ever change this perception is some major breach of personal information followed by massive economic consequences, otherwise no one cares and politicians care too much about they own power that they will only expand surveillance efforts.
- thomastjeffery 10y ago
  You just described the vast majority of my relatives. There is a lot of teaching for me to do...
thomastjeffery 10y ago
Today we need to expand the title from "Surveillance" to "Privacy". Privacy is integral to liberty. That is why this matters so much.

81 points by dsr12 10y ago

I am surprised that this Wired article didn't mention anything related to Snowden, considering he was the one who blew the lid on mass surveillance. Edward Snowden summed this up perfectly: >Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

spiraldancing 10y ago
Article is from June, 2013 ... right about the time the Snowden revelations were just starting to come out. Additionally, author is Moxie Marlinspike, a prominent privacy advocate in his own right.
- DigitalSea 10y ago
  Nice pickup. I actually did not realise this was from 2013. I should always look at the dates, happens a lot on here.
msimpson 10y ago
> ...article didn't mention anything related to Snowden, considering he was the one who blew the lid on mass surveillance. I really wish people would look beyond Snowden. It isn't as if there was zero knowledge of these types of programs or whistleblowers before him. William Binney, Thomas Drake, J. Kirk Wiebe, and Edward Loomis, just to name a few, deserve a lot more credit in this instance.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  Published evidence goes back to the eighties, but made virtually no difference - until Snowden blew the lid off. Respect to all the others, yup, but Snowden broke the issue wide open.
  - msimpson 10y ago
    You need to reevaluate your definition of that idiom.
    - Nomentatus 10y ago
      You'll have to disambiguate (two idioms above) and specify your advice. References welcome.
      - msimpson 10y ago
        The idiom "blow the lid off" means to publicly expose something which was previously secret or hidden. As you said yourself, evidence for these types of programs has existed for decades. Therefore, Snowden did not blow the lid off anything. What he did, instead, was to present corroborating evidence which added much needed detail in regard to such programs. I'm not trying to devalue his effort, just pointing out that he isn't some lone ranger. And the fact that so many people payed attention this time around had a lot more to do with the criminality of his actions rather than the information he presented.
        Nomentatus 10y ago
        Alas it this knowledge was hidden from the vast majority of people who rely on TV news for a long time. "Blow the lid off" doesn't mean the first person to reveal something, it refers to an explosion that can't be ignored. Kudos to the rest, but he was the one who really rang the gong. Many revealed the Holocaust to the Allies during WWII, but very sadly, no-one managed "to blow the lid off" until Germany collapsed. "The Nazis attempted to keep the Holocaust a secret, but in August 1942, Dr. Gerhart Riegner, the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, learned what was going on from a German source. Riegner asked American diplomats in Switzerland to inform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, one of America’s most prominent Jewish leaders, of the mass murder plan. But the State Department, characteristically insensitive and influenced by anti-Semitism, decided not to inform Wise. The rabbi nevertheless learned of Riegner’s terrible message from Jewish leaders in Great Britain. He immediately approached Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, who asked Wise to keep the information confidential until the government had time to verify it. Wise agreed and it was not until November 1942 that Welles authorized the release of Riegner’s message. Wise held a press conference on the evening of November 24, 1942. The next day’s New York Times reported his news on its tenth page. Throughout the rest of the war, the Times and most other newspapers failed to give prominent and extensive coverage to the Holocaust. During World War I, the American press had published reports of German atrocities that subsequently turned out to be false. As a result, journalists during World War II tended to approach atrocity reports with caution." http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/american-response-to-the-holocaust http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/american-response... So I thank Edward Snowden, even more than I thank the rest.

Razengan 10y ago

Just tell politicians to submit to surveillance, after all, they should have nothing to hide.

gumby 10y ago
Ideas like this sound sensible on the surface, but they have unfortunate side effects. For example if politicians must disclose a lot of private information, only those who don't care about that will become politicians. And then since they are comfortable with it, they won't see any reason to control dissemination of others' private info. (BTW I'm not criticizing you by saying this; I don't know a good fix). But you know how everyone gets a blast of schadenfreude when that anti-drink-driving politician is pulled over for driving dangerously after having a few too many? Of course I laugh too, but I wonder if they have been so vocal about the issue because they know how dangerous it is. Whereas I, who drink little and don't even like to drive, probably wouldn't pay much attention to the issue if I became a politician.
- Razengan 10y ago
  I agree with you. But forcing lawmakers to give up their privacy too would at least, hopefully, theoretically, level the playing field.. Same way as we now at least hold them subject to the same laws involving money, taxes, and can use those laws to indict them.
  - gumby 10y ago
    > Same way as we now at least hold them subject to the same laws involving money, taxes, and can use those laws to indict them. Actually you can't really, and again for good reason, and again with unfortunate side effects as well. Legislators have legislative immunity for good reason: otherwise people would use the courts to attack legislators for making decisions the attackers don't like (the emolument suit against Trump is avowedly similar[1], although he has a slightly different immunity). You can, after all, attack them just as well via the ballot box. In the US the FBI can still investigate crimes they suspect were committed by sitting legislators, and the house or senate can waive one of their members' immunity, so it kind of works. At the opposite extreme, criminals run for office in India in order to take advantage of the legislative immunity from prosecution. All this goes in the "some problems are simple to characterize but not simple to resolve" bucket. When people hear famous quotes from very smart people along the line of "if your explanation of your problem is complex, perhaps you don't really understand it" they often confuse that with "your solution must be simple too." [1] I just heard an interview with one of the law professors bringing suit, Zephyr Teachout, who said she thought it would likely go nowhere but that it was worth making his life difficult. Even if you consider Trump an irredeemably corrupt mastermind, it is abuse of the legal system to use it when you know you'll fail. Not that this is the first time someone filed suit just to annoy someone else.

jhbadger 10y ago

There are good points in the article, but I'm annoyed that they bring up the "lobster law" as so many articles about "absurd laws you might be breaking without knowing it" do. There's actually a very valid reason why possessing a small lobster is illegal -- immature lobsters haven't bred yet and if you want to have lobsters in the future you shouldn't harvest them.

throwaway11122 10y ago
The validity of the reasons doesn't come into this because the point isn't that "possessing lobsters being illegal is stupid". The pint is "lobster are illegal, who would've guessed, can you imagine having a lobster and ending up in jail?, and can you imagine how many other thousands of unknown laws are you breaking right now?, it's not possible to keep track of them all"

hzhou321 10y ago

The right way to think about privacy would be "is that privacy worthwhile to protect". There is no absolute in reality. Everything is a balance. And that balance is constantly shifting. We, human, are experts in handling shifting balance though. Do not be stupid (blindly trusting any party, including our government or google), but do not be paranoid either (worrying about potential crisis every day). Just live your life, and use common sense.

Nomentatus 10y ago
Go with the herd, don't go nuts look for cliffs upcoming. That could work. Or not.

ouid 10y ago

I would like to argue that the fourth amendment implicitly protects against legislation whose only method of enforcement would require unreasonable search. If you cannot observe any direct effects of an action without searching the person who performed the action, then it cannot be a criminal action, and theres a reasonable argument that this follows from the fourth amendment.

woodandsteel 10y ago

The thing that worries me most about all the personal data the government has is not its using it to indict people. It is that it will take information that would be embarrassing to politicians and either use it to blackmail them, or hand it over to the opposition to use in an election (from what I understand, J. Edgar Hoover did that). If that is going on, then you don't really have a democracy any more.

type0 10y ago

One of my relatives also said this "I have nothing to hide" BS, I replied by asking who they were talking about. Response: anyone but the criminals. Hmm, so I demanded to install a spy app on their phone to be able to monitor everything they do, where they are, record the conversations etc. They declined this offer, either implying that they perceive me as a criminal or they confirmed to being hypocritical about this reasoning. Also this reasoning implies that government agents and other officials are somehow immune from illegal or criminal activities. Edit: my impression is that the general public somehow thinks that this data collected from mass surveillance is stored so securely that it can never be accessed by criminals. The only thing that could ever change this perception is some major breach of personal information followed by massive economic consequences, otherwise no one cares and politicians care too much about they own power that they will only expand surveillance efforts.

thomastjeffery 10y ago
You just described the vast majority of my relatives. There is a lot of teaching for me to do...

thomastjeffery 10y ago

Today we need to expand the title from "Surveillance" to "Privacy". Privacy is integral to liberty. That is why this matters so much.