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A reminder that "you have nothing to hide" argument is a fallacy because people abuse their power: Some first hits as reminders of places where their powers ar

• metamate419 4y ago
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• AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  People abuse their power, but that wouldn't matter if you really had nothing to hide. But everybody has something to hide. Your social security number? Your bank account number? Your debit card PIN? Yeah, pretty sure you have something to hide.
  • isk517 4y ago
    The other issue is just because something doesn't need to be hidden today doesn't mean a change in the political/social winds could happen that requires you to hide it tomorrow.
  • x86x87 4y ago
    No. Sorry. This is invalid. It would be pretty bad if we declare some shit illegal and retroactively apply the "law". You will be charged for shit that everyone did and is perfectly fine. For example: How would you like to go to jail for not being a Christian? This will be weaponized. This is what fascism looks like.
    • lockhouse 4y ago
      It was okay to be a Jew in Germany until it wasn't. I know, Godwin's Law, but valid in this case.
    • croes 4y ago
      Imagine they make Marijuana illegal again in the states where is legal know. Before that you shared your consuming habits online. Then it becomes illegal. You are now a suspect and get a search warrant and if they find traces of marijuana you go to jail.
  • croes 4y ago
    Or like the anti-abortion laws showed, at first you have nothing to hide, them they change laws and all of sudden you have but it's too late
  • yakubin 4y ago
    That’s the second time I see bank account number framed as something private. Why? It doesn’t authorise anyone to do anything. It’s not like a debit/credit card number.
• jcutrell 4y ago
  For people who say they have nothing to hide, I ask them why they have locks on their doors, passwords to their email, and clothes on their body.
  • hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Well, clothes are mostly down to weather and laws on public decency, and nudists are the counterpoint that prove some demographics would prefer to be naked if the law allowed it, same with tribes like Koma. Locks are more for security than privacy, and it's important not to conflate the two. People can have nothing to hide, but also not want to be robbed. And as for email, that's again a matter of security because then someone could impersonate you for one, and I can't name a service that allows you to omit having a password for your email account. (I know, looking too deeply into it! Sorry.)
    • pksebben 4y ago
      In an information environment, security and privacy are the same thing. The terms may have different connotations culturally, but good security-in-depth is the same set of practices that enable digital privacy, because the objective is the same: prevent leakage of facts.
      • hammyhavoc 4y ago
        You can have E2EE to the service provider, but they can be free to rummage through your data if they choose to or are coerced to by a legal demand from an authority. But it eliminates the average schmoe from going through that data. Is that adequate security? Is that adequate privacy? This is what bills like EARN IT and its ilk are positing with backdoors et al. It depends on your threat model. If a warrant opens a door or account one way or another, it can be argued that privacy-wise, locks and passwords are poor solutions. Are you protecting business data or trying to survive in an oppressive regime? Different solutions for different problems, how appropriate they are varies with demographics too. This is an interesting talking point about privacy and security: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35617773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35617773
• genocidicbunny 4y ago
  Anyone who uses that argument, ask them to hand you their phone, unlocked, and a list of passwords for all of their accounts. If you have nothing to hide, why would you have a problem with me poking around in the most intimate aspects of your life?
  • iknowstuff 4y ago
    This doesn't really convince them. To them, a friend might be someone they want to hide things from, but they won’t care about some unknown government entity having access.
    • AnthonyMouse 4y ago
      This comes from not knowing what organizations are likely to do with it. Would they be okay with the data being used to overcharge them whenever they're in a hurry because the organization knows when they don't have time to comparison shop? How about maximizing their tax burden by using the data to calculate the highest tax rates each area would tolerate before moving or changing their vote? Suppose the government falls under the control of the party they don't like. Should they have access to the data that allows them to most effectively target their propaganda?
      • genocidicbunny 4y ago
        And it doesn't even have to be an organization. How often do you hear of cops or civil employees poking around in records they have no business to poke around in?
        • AnthonyMouse 4y ago
          That kind of thing happens to be sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEXINT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEXINT But I find the sort of people who believe in "nothing to hide" tend to believe in the efficacy of bureaucratic systems set up to prevent that sort of thing. A belief (ironically) bolstered by the privacy those organizations secure for themselves, so that those kinds of individual abuses are rarely discovered. Who watches the watchers? Whereas it's easy to understand that if you don't have a high opinion of the opposing party's most recent President, you might very well not want their administration knowing everything about everyone.
• adventured 4y ago
  Nothing to hide is a premise based on most people being terrified of confrontation. It's an intentional staging to force confrontation or capitulation. When people say they have nothing to hide, in most cases what they're actually saying is that they're afraid of the confrontation implicit in the opposite response (I'm going to forcefully argue for a right to privacy). They're telling you that they're a coward.
  • corsac 4y ago
    The more I think about this, the more it rings true. Implicit in the phrase "I have nothing to hide" is an assumption that everything is open to inspection by default, and concealment is deviance. In most situations, nobody assumes anything close to that. When they do, they're taking a supine position, like an animal submissively exposing its belly.
• colordrops 4y ago
  Well also the 4th amendment.
• wintogreen74 4y ago
  Even framing it as "nothing to hide" implies that hiding is the exception. Shouldn't it be the default?
  • waboremo 4y ago
    Yes, even those who overshare on social media still are operating (and benefitting) from privacy as a default.
  • BirAdam 4y ago
    For a society to work properly, yes. If we have zero rules around what a government can or cannot do, can or cannot have access to, and so on we will have created a moral hazard that will be grossly abused.
• sschueller 4y ago
  Was there a black mirror episode regarding that phrase? If not I think they missed an opportunity to show people that everyone has something to hide.
  • wyldfire 4y ago
    I remember an episode starring Toby Kebbell that had his character submitting to authorities to review his sense-perspective audiovisual recordings.
  • waboremo 4y ago
    Kind of (if you mean the Shut Up and Dance one), in classic black mirror fashion the episode is littered with twists that make it difficult for people to really grasp the point and instead can argue against it. In the episode the main character gets infected with malware (the tool he wanted is actually a sting operation), but because of what he's being blackmailed about a lot of people feel that's justified.
• MikeDelta 4y ago
  Many seem to not realize that privacy is not about having something to hide (I guess that would be secrecy), but about the right to keep things to yourself. Those are two different concepts.
  • StingyJelly 4y ago
    Exactly! The best way someone put it - right to choose what to share and who to share it with.
    • sixstringtheory 4y ago
      The best analogy for this I've seen is this: it's no secret that everybody poops. But that doesn't mean everyone likes having other people watch while they do it (privacy).
      • sporkl 4y ago
        I've tried using this in an argument and gotten a response along the lines of "I don't mind if people watch me poop."
        • sixstringtheory 4y ago
          Well I'd say they're full of shit, haha. Most people have something they care about; them refuting a specific case doesn't refute the general concept. They're either arguing in bad faith or are not very good at thinking logically. If they truly have no ethical or moral boundaries, then they are probably deviant enough that they won't be able to get into a position to set much policy, anyways, by definition of their lack of fitness to represent the majority of any population.
          • boneitis 4y ago
            Right. I don't "mind" being seen pooping, per se. You go ahead and zen out and, in turn, take those things with grace by going along with it when someone raises a fuss ("oh, I am soooo humiliated! :)"). Or if you're of another archetype, you'll find witty ways to playfully snap back and turn it around on people trying to clown on you (alas, I'm not of this type/talent). Moreover, there are the countless, other not-uncommon approaches that often lead to escalation/hostility/violence. Then it becomes a drag (and where the issue lies) when it really catches on in wildfire manner, to where it will have practically problematic effects on you personally or professionally, not unlike the lie that makes it halfway 'round the world before the truth can put its pants on. As far as I see it, all of that is what is trying to be highlighted with the pooping witness analogy. Of course, that should probably be underscored when presenting it. You'll probably still get a "yeah, that's fine" or "I don't care what anyone else thinks" after you elaborate. And tons of other cans of worms can reasonably be opened as topical offshoots; I'm just trying to concur that the "I don't mind" response doesn't really feel like a response.
• nullc 4y ago
  even if they didn't currently abuse their power or abused it only an "acceptable" degree, we're never more than one election away or even just one hiring decision away from someone who would do much worse. The right protection is for the power to not exist.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Bran_son 4y ago
  A better example are people that do have something to hide - whistleblowers, union organizers, political activists, journalists, upstart politicians... How does the nature of their work change, if the current government in power knows all their secrets, and abuses or selectively leaks/prosecutes them? And does that change society for the better, or for the worse?
• Zamicol 4y ago
  Those seeking to abuse power employ the nothing to hide fallacy.
• BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  I think "why do you have the right to know?" is a decent answer. "What level of trust do you think you've earned?" "What do you want to do with all this information?" "How will this make things better?' "Don't you have more important things to spend time and money on?" "Is this really the best thing the government should be working on right now?" "How does this help any of society's ills?" "Will taxes need to be increased to manage, store, and analyse the mountains of information that will be created?" "How long will you store messages between me and my daughter about her contemplating suicide, and will those messages prevent her from getting a government job later in life?" "Does the storing of all this data come with a responsibility to make it accessible to defend people who have been accused of a crime?" "My wife works in law enforcement, will she have access to this trove of data?" "Will there be a process to remove data from this trove that may be libelous or cause undue harm to an individual or company?" "Is the government responsible for the complete chain of access to this data, or are there private companies involved that have to be trusted not to sneak a peek?" "What specific issue, currently facing today's society, does this solve?"
  • BizarroLand 4y ago
    "IT PROTECTS THE CHILDREN!" they'll scream, while using it to take more power away from society and concentrate it into their own hands. Surveillance isn't some harmless thing, because you can tell a million lies with a drop of the truth in them for any reason you want. Imagine you get established in life and decide to run for local politics only to have the fact that you've gone to Vegas 4 times in your life somehow turned into a completely untrue "drug use and prostitution" scandal that destroys your credibility and political career before it even started. Imagine having your grandkids' college scholarships revoked because you ran an incredibly unprofitable and short lived onlyfans for 3 months in your late teens. Maybe the results won't be as overt as this. Maybe it will be worse. Either way, it is invasive and gives complete strangers power over your future and your children's future that they simply should not have and have no reason to ever have. It's morally repugnant and abhorrent to any person who takes the time to think not of what information will be collected but of what that information will be used for and by whom. The children of the people who as of today are still talking about how great trump is and how he "brought peace to the middle east" and how "evil demoncrats are running a global cabal to turn humans into monkeys" are the people who at best will be the parents and friends and neighbors of the people who will have finely grained and exacting data of everything you have done from well before the day of the passing of a bill like this. This bill would make America the equivalent of living in an overly nosy HOA city everywhere for everyone. The people who fit in and don't make waves will get the 1950's nuclear family treatment, and those that don't will get the April 26, 1986 Pripyat nuclear treatment.
• clnq 4y ago
  To my mind, another problem is the one-sidedness of this effort. Why is someone privileged to scan my data but I can’t write a scanner and parse theirs? There seems to be a fundamental injustice here. Completely ignoring privacy as a concept for a moment, a fair trade should be like for like, value for value.
  • akomtu 4y ago
    Imho, sponsors of this bill want to collect dossiers and use them to blackmail opponents in the future. For example, you want to do something unpopular and a noisy council member opposes your plan. You reach to the "official and confidential" box, find there a personal file on that politician, conveniently created by the AI-scanner, share your discoveries with him and suddenly he changes his mind.
    • autoexec 4y ago
      > Imho, sponsors of this bill want to collect dossiers and use them to blackmail opponents in the future. I wonder how it is that the NSA hasn't already enabled that. One of my early concerns with government spying is that we'd up with some kind of NeoMcCarthyism on crack where someone in power would be able to discredit any inconvenient person or even identify and eliminate the career of a potential opponent before they grew to become a real threat. It's astonishing to me that with the wealth of data being collected already it hasn't happened. We've certainly had some very petty and morally bankrupt people in high positions who I'm sure would not have hesitated to abuse that information. The risk is certainly real, and laws like EARN IT would only make it easier. Even today it seems like it'd be trivial for someone in power to plant a forbidden sequence of zeros and ones on somebodies mobile device at anytime and ruin them.
      • dabluecaboose 4y ago
        > I wonder how it is that the NSA hasn't already enabled that On paper, at least, the NSA technically isn't allowed to act on US soil or against US persons. The FBI would be the most likely vector for such a political police action, imho.
• teddyh 4y ago
  Bruce Schneier put it quite succinctly in his article The Eternal Value of Privacy (from 2006): Some clever answers: “If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me.” “Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition.” “Because you might do something wrong with my information.” My problem with quips like these – as right as they are – is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect. — https://www.wired.com/2006/05/the-eternal-value-of-privacy/ https://www.wired.com/2006/05/the-eternal-value-of-privacy/
• sirmarksalot 4y ago
  I think this is a straw man. I don't think any politician would ever suggest such a thing at face value unless couched in some other argument. For example, after 9/11 a politician would have said, "I respect your need for privacy, but we live in extraordinary times, and we need to temporarily lift the restrictions on our agencies to effectively combat an imminent threat." The real argument being made isn't that we should give all our secrets to the government, but that we should trust that the government will comply with our 4th Amendment protections and avoid gathering this data without a valid warrant issued by an impartial judge. If you're reading this, I'm guessing that like me, you don't believe a word of that. But that's the argument that's being made, and that's what needs to be debunked loudly and publicly.
  • autoexec 4y ago
    I think the US government has debunked that for us, repeatedly and thoroughly. If this is really their argument they've already lost.
    • aww_dang 4y ago
      Lost in which arena? Do you trust politicians to not expand the scope of governance? If they are called out, they can simply rebrand their efforts under a new bill until 3 letter agencies get all the goodies they desire. How much patience does a low information public have? Is it as much as the political and security state classes?
      • autoexec 4y ago
        You're right, I don't think they can convince us this won't be abused, but they absolutely could sneak it past us. They didn't get much push back when they threw out net neutrality which most Americans supported and as far as I know nothing was ultimately done about the faked opposition either (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/biggest-isps-paid-for-8-5-million-fake-fcc-comments-opposing-net-neutrality/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/biggest-isps-pai...)
    • JoshTriplett 4y ago
• HaZeust 4y ago
  “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.” - Snowden
• citruscomputing 4y ago
  Completely agree. Also a reminder that there are things to be scared of, today. People getting abortions in states where it's illegal need their communications to be safe and secure. The current forced medical detransition of adults in Montana means people are going to need to rely on underground distribution networks for their medication, starting in a few weeks. Their communications need to be secure from government spying as well. The police are not your friend. It is no longer necessary to talk about theoretical futures or nebulous harms to privacy, the unjust laws are already here (& should be ignored, fought, frustrated, or routed around, as necessary). We do not need a cop on our phones.
  • citruscomputing 4y ago
    s/Montana/Missouri/ I'm very tired
  • trinsic2 4y ago
    I think all of these injustices are be created to further gaps between classes of people to lay the groundwork for a future paradigm shift towards totalitarianism. Is the same thing we do in other countries to spread the so called democracy under the guise of a dictatorship.
• froggychairs 4y ago
  I’ve found that reminding folks who use the “you have nothing to hide" argument often quickly change their mind if you just remind them the political party they don’t like could use it against them This worked surprisingly well and without fail for the conservative side of my family. The instant I reminded them who was president at the time (Obama) all of them changed their mind I don’t love this strategy. It leans into fear mongering a bit much, but if none of the other very helpful rhetorical techniques folks have shared here don’t work. This one has some staying power.
  • nullsense 4y ago
    Look at human history. We absolutely ought to fear power and those who wield it.
    • prox 4y ago
      As I mentioned in a recent comment: The balance between privacy and the authority is just that. We outsourced the rule of law to the state in order to have a fair and just society. Ipso facto the government should be fair and just to have the right to invade some amount of privacy in order to keep a society free, fair and just. That’s why the judicial branch exist: to see if what the government (or anyone) did was playing by the rules. Which brings us back to politics being a danger to a society if people vote in unjust or unfair people.
      • nullsense 4y ago
        It's going to be awfully weird to see who the embodied AGI members of society vote for and what dynamics they inject into politics.
• triska 4y ago
  Also, the statement is itself wrong already at face value in many situations, for example if someone has a credit card or runs an online shop and is contractually required to hide something. For instance, quoting from https://usa.visa.com/legal/checkout/terms-of-service.html https://usa.visa.com/legal/checkout/terms-of-service.html: "You are responsible for protecting the confidentiality of your username and password(s), if any. In addition, if you choose to be remembered on your device or browser, or link your use of the Visa Solution with a digital wallet, on one or more device(s), you are responsible for protecting the safety of and access to such device(s). It is important that you do so since we are not responsible for any losses you incur as a result of unauthorized use of your Eligible Card and, depending on the circumstances, your Issuer may hold you responsible for unauthorized use of your Eligible Card account." Another example for mandatory secrecy are confidentiality requirements imposed by professional obligations, such as for lawyers and physicians, in order to ensure fair trials, and for the protection of human dignity.
• Heston 4y ago
  What a ridiculous argument. That's like saying the police shouldnt have weapons to defend themselves with because there's a history of police killing innocent people. No, the real answer here is to address the actual corruption to expose and remove it. Not to mention, if you have nothing to hide, how can someone abuse their power to use it against you? These bills are put in place because they save lives, especially vulnerable children.
• Nasrudith 4y ago
  Personally I favor a confrontational retort: "No, you never get to decide that. The inquisitor does." Revolutions are a messy example which demonstrate what happens when the mandatory becomes forbidden without ex-post-facto restrictions. There is a reason many people get the hell out of dodge even after the fighting stops.
• coldtea 4y ago
  >A reminder that "you have nothing to hide" argument is a fallacy because people abuse their power Also because we have a lot to hide that we should be able to. Our intimate pictures with our partners, our chats with friends (and gossip), our business plans, our in-progress work and ideas, yet to be filled patents, password and account credentials, and lots more.
• ajyotirmay 4y ago
  Also, "you have nothing to hide" is so wrong, that people fail to understand that privacy isn't about hiding your private life, but having the power to sharing those details with consent and when you're comfortable sharing them. Just because you don't have nothing to hide, doesn't mean anyone can walk in your private life and peek into all corners. And as you mentioned, power will be abused. Unchecked power will be abused unchecked. This is ethically, morally and humanely wrong. There's so much wrong with this bill and the thought behind it. It should never see the day of light.