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

216 points by NickForLiberty 11mo ago

NickForLiberty 11mo ago
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 "pathology of the present tense," a failure of imagination so profound it borders on a moral crime. What they fail to understand is that by living as an open book, they are creating the most dangerous weapon imaginable: a baseline of "normalcy." They are steadily creating a data profile for the State's machine, teaching its algorithms what a "good, transparent citizen" looks like. Every unencrypted text, every thoughtless search, every location-tagged post is another brick in the wall of their own cage. 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. Suddenly, for the first time, they have something to hide. So they reach for the tools of privacy. They download the encrypted messenger. They fire up the VPN. They start to cover their tracks. And in that single act, they trigger the Deviancy Signal. Their first attempt at privacy, set against their own self-created history of total transparency, is a screaming alarm to the grown surveillance machine. It's the poker player with a perfect tell, or the nocturnal animal suddenly walking in daylight. Their very attempt to become private is the most public and suspicious act they could possibly commit. They have not built an effective shield, as they have painted a target on their own back. By the time they need privacy, their own history has made seeking it an admission of guilt. But the damage doesn't end with your own self-incrimination. It radiates outward, undoing the careful work of everyone around you. Think of your friend who has practiced perfect operational security, who has spent years building a private life to ensure they have no baseline for the state to analyze. They are a ghost in the machine. Then they talk to you. Your unshielded phone becomes the listening device they never consented to. You take their disciplined effort to stay invisible and you shout it into a government microphone, tying their identity to yours in a permanent, searchable log. You don't just contrast with their diligence; you actively dismantle it. On a societal scale, this inaction becomes a collective betrayal. The power of the Deviancy Signal is directly proportional to the number of people who live transparently. Every person who refuses to practice privacy adds another gallon of clean, clear water to the state's pool, making any ripple of dissent ... any deviation ... starkly visible. This is not a passive choice. By refusing to help create a chaotic, noisy baseline of universal privacy, you are actively making the system more effective. You are failing to do your part to make the baseline all deviant, and in doing so, you make us all more vulnerable. There is only one way to disarm this weapon: we must destroy its premise. We must obliterate the baseline. The task is not merely to hide, but to make privacy the default, to make encryption a reflex, to make anonymity a universal right. We must create so much noise that a signal is impossible to find. Our collective goal must be to make a "normal" profile so rare that the watchers have nothing to compare us to. We must all become deviations.
- paganel 11mo ago
  You’re correct on all things in principle, but hiding one’s subversive thoughts (or what may be catalogued by any given regime as subversive) only plays into the regime’s hands, because it atomizes any chance of real resistance. It is much more valuable to bring the fight out in the open, yes, while still playing by the regime’s rules in a way, but out in the open, because that still keeps open the possibility of a community of resistance. Being able to hide stuff only generates conspirators, but keeping (even if heavily camouflaged) resistance out in the open has bigger chances of eventually toppling any given regime, because people power consists in numbers, and you can’t have numbers if the default setting is “hide behind a VPN”.
- atoav 11mo ago
  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 people are cowards and even more people are just small-minded. The problem of the "I have nothing to hide"-excuse is that it shows thst this person has no concept about how their small personal ideas would affect the world once you roll them out in scale. Not only that but it shows that they haven't understood how power is organized in their democratic societies. Let's say we would have nothing to hide and we give up our rights to the people we as the voters are meant to hold accountable. Even if it is a benevolent government filled with honest actors, large scale surveillance has the problem that there will be false positives. Surveil 360 million people each day and with an totally utopic accuracy of 99% and you still get 3.6 million false positives a day. In reality however these processes are much less accurate and the people who use those powers much less benevolent and honest, e.g. it is not uncommon that police look up their exes, spouses, people they personally hate etc. The biggest problem however is that we have a division of power for a reason in democracies, and the people who vote giving up power in order to give more to a government is bad actually. Democracies need to be designed in such way they can survive one or two governments that try to abolish that system. Giving them a "spy on everybody" -power coupled with let's say secret courts is a good way to risk that form of government for generations who then have to fight bloody civil wars and revolutions to get the power back.
jokoon 11mo ago
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.
- sheepdestroyer 11mo ago
  Once your data is out there it's too late. If the hypothetical country you live in - where freedom & due process is respected - suddenly has an authoritarian change of direction, you're done. It's my understanding that, organically or under external influences, many democratic countries in EU are at the emerging risk of going full fascists. I see that in France, Le Pen & friends don't hide the fact that they'd make a new constitution. Richest guy in the world has vowed to use his propaganda power to make this happen for the sake of cancelling the EU, fun times
- flowerthoughts 11mo ago
  > 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 freedoms and due process were once respected.
  - immibis 11mo ago
    It was once considered that, but it was never actually that. Ever since it was founded it was locking up or killing the people with different skin colours, over and over and over and over and over!
  - netsharc 11mo ago
Animats 11mo ago
He's running for governor of California. He's apparently having trouble getting 6,000 signatures or $5000 to get on the ballot, so he's probably not a serious candidate.
- youarentrightjr 11mo ago
  > He's running for governor of California. He's apparently having trouble getting 6,000 signatures or $5000 to get on the ballot, so he's probably not a serious candidate. The popular, well funded politicians haven't exactly served their constituents well in the privacy domain...
- BLKNSLVR 11mo ago
  Regardless, the points made are valid.
- NickForLiberty 11mo ago
  Signature collection legally started only two days ago ;)
general1465 11mo ago
If we have nothing to hide, then I want every politician to have every bit of communication publicly available and searchable. We are stopping corruption here, so only corrupt people could oppose such decision and they should be immediately investigated.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
> 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 their moral choices and confident in their convictions. Arrest them if you dare. I wonder if the author still has contempt for them?
- advael 11mo ago
  In many moral frameworks, inconsistency isn't the only wrong someone can commit. The argument constructed in this article is essentially utilitarian, making the claim that the mechanisms of surveillance and privacy make this behavior harmful to others, regardless of their intentions or internal sense of morality. In fact, the author doesn't mention hating these people at all, although I suppose that's not a completely unreasonable thing to infer. From the perspective of this argument, this only lacks the harm the "deviancy signal" would itself do to the individual, though in the oppressive regime proposed they would perhaps take greater risk by openly deviating
  - Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
    > In fact, the author doesn't mention hating these people at all The article opens with: >> There's a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, "I have nothing to hide." Which isn't literally saying "I hate them" but I'm not sure how else to interpret "a special kind of contempt." Regardless, I've edited my original post.
    - filterfish 11mo ago
      Contempt is very different to hate.
      - abc123abc123 11mo ago
        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.
NGRhodes 11mo ago
"I have nothing to hide" only makes sense if privacy and disclosure are treated as a binary. In reality, both exist on a spectrum: privacy is controlled disclosure, shaped by what is shared, with whom, at what level of detail, and under what power asymmetry. Large surveillance systems inevitably build baselines. They don't just detect crimes; they detect patterns and anomalies relative to whatever becomes "normal". The problem with "nothing to hide" is that it defaults to maximal disclosure. Data is persistent, aggregatable, and reinterpretable as norms and regimes change. The data doesn't. This isn't purely individual. Your disclosures can expose others through contact graphs and inference, regardless of intent. And it doesn't matter whether the collector is the state or a company; aggregation and reuse work the same way.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 11mo ago
  Yes. In that realm, absence, too, is a signal; perpaps stronger one than just random chatter.
globalnode 11mo ago
ok, as a privacy enthusiast, some people just dont get it, and they never will. what you need to do is not discuss anything you dont want broadcast with them... ever. im even thinking of using edge or chrome so i look like a normie in a sea of normies. i mean i really dont have anything to hide but i dont want anyone to know that.
- jjbinx007 11mo ago
  I've got lots to hide. Doesn't mean you or anyone else has a right to know what it is and it doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong either. We should all admit that we have lots we want to hide from other people and that's just fine and normal.
codethief 11mo ago
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.)
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 11mo ago
  I was thinking a little about it lately. Not the saying itself, but the positioning to the general public. The annoying reality is that for most of the things that I consider important enough to voice discontent over ( and maybe even suppress need for convenience for ) are not always easy to 'present'. Note that it is not even always easy here either, but we do, by design, give one another a charitable read. Hell, look at me, I care and I accepted some of it as price to pay for house peace.
- bobbyschmidd 11mo ago
  yeah, it's a cascade. maybe you are not a threat to gov or corp but locally there's people who are like the people in clubs who spike you because they want you out or because they want your girls or the girls you will steal from them. info can be power. rumors, gossip, your browsing history, what you draw, what you code in your free time, what you talk to your kids about, what they do with that when they visit "friends" who already had info that you decided wasn't worth hiding ... from your kids ... all can and will be used to induce stress or to divert attention of the young ones. governments used to build massive societies and create rules and order and kaizen infrastructures that would get us as far away from the dark ages as possible ... but here we are closing that gap again. Go VCs! Go Agents! Go Puppies of Wall Street! Go work for LLM companies instead of using those big capable brains of yours for something other than personalized copypastable copypastacopypasta ... "the other girls and kids made it through, and so will you, just let it happen, let it be" and so it goes ...
- PunchyHamster 11mo ago
  I prefer short and snarky "then drop your pants". Shuts up most.
alan-crowe 11mo ago
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.
- deepstate25 11mo ago
  This is a valid story and I’m sorry to hear that you went through this. However, it’s a strawman for the current argument from the blog post, which is that living life in the open and acting normal is setting things up for failure, and I don’t believe that it is. Having nothing to hide is fine. Nothing to hide and doing nothing wrong is least likely to cause trouble. The blog post’s argument that someone would be more likely to get watched if they start hiding after not hiding is not valid. ALL encrypted and unencrypted communication is a valid target for analysis, but ANY encrypted traffic is obviously more of a concern, just like one person walking into a store brandishing a gun is as alarming as 5 brandishing guns, and it doesn’t matter whether they used to not carry guns into the store.
  - fn-mote 11mo ago
spacecadet 11mo ago
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?
- Griffinsauce 11mo ago
  What is your big stick? Governments and large corporations are unfathomably powerful these days.
BLKNSLVR 11mo ago
> 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.
- goku12 11mo ago
  > I feel that I have nothing to hide Though you made the right determination later on, this is what you need to correct first. You don't have to be a murderer to have something to hide. Everyone does, no matter how innocent you are. Imagine that you're a young girl. Is it safe to expose the GPS tracks of your daily commutes? Let's cut to the other end of the spectrum. Imagine that you're the chief of a law enforcement agency. How about exposing your GPS tracks now? Even information about newborn babies should be kept private. Always be aware of the consequences of sharing your information, when you must do so. The narrative 'I have nothing to hide' actively discourages such concerns and precautions, even if it's just a feeling. It encourages bad security practices at an individual level throughout the society. That's why this article is so pertinent. It's justifiably hostile towards that claim.
  - Terr_ 11mo ago
    Perhaps: "I'm not yet aware of the current and future forces I will have a desperate and very-moral reason to hide from." Something to hide often occurs retroactively, when evil people gain power today they didn't have yesterday.
nkrisc 11mo ago
What’s important to hide is always changing. So even if you have nothing to hide now, you may wish you had hidden it in the future.
- itopaloglu83 11mo ago
  Pre-WW2 census in Germany was conducted by IBM and included religion and other family origin related questions. Fast forward a few years and the Nazi regime used census results to go after every family that was undesirable for them using the census data they bought from IBM. Privacy and anonymity are not needed until they are desperately required.
  - coldtea 11mo ago
    This can be read as if IBM did this unknowingly and only before WW2. But IBM knew what they were assisting with, and even pre-WW2 was already assisting the Nazi regime of 1933-1939. And they didn't stop come WW2, if anything IBM opened new subsidiaries and continued throughout the second world war. "(...) IBM leased, rather than sold, its machines. The company retained control of punch-card supply and provided service through subsidiaries. Each set of cards was custom-designed to Nazi requirements. He later wrote that the IBM headquarters in New York oversaw these arrangements through subsidiaries across Europe" "(...) IBM New York created a subsidiary in Poland, Watson Business Machines, after the 1939 invasion. The firm managed railway traffic in the General Government and ran a punch-card printing shop near the Warsaw Ghetto. He stated that this subsidiary reported through Geneva to IBM New York, and revenues were transferred accordingly." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
    - esafak 11mo ago
      It was authorized by the CEO, Thomas J. Watson Sr., who apparently had a "soft spot" for the Nazis. Hitler decorated him: https://www.nytimes.com/1937/07/02/archives/thomas-j-watson-is-decorated-by-hitler-for-work-in-bettering.html https://www.nytimes.com/1937/07/02/archives/thomas-j-watson-... and it took the occupation of France and the Low Countries three years later for Watson to decide to return the medal.
shrubby 11mo ago
I am trying to burn my bridges well enough not to be accepted to the clan of complacent narcissists. I'm well aware of the possible and even unavoidable consequences of the current trajectory. But this is a conscious decision to try to shape the norm so that the current dystopian zillionaire future would not happen fully. My reasoning is most likely the humanely typical post-hoc rationalization and strategic reasoning, but I try to think good old MLK quote fits it. "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends"
- shrubby 11mo ago
  I was meaning to write complicit but complacent autocorrupt fits surprisingly well.
myself248 11mo ago
2013 called: https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide.html https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to...
sjducb 11mo ago
When people say they have nothing to hide I like to remind them about fraud and criminals. All law abiding citizens have data that they want to hide from fraudsters. Fraudsters often get their hands on government data through breeches and bribery. Also fraudsters pretend to be government agents to get data from big tech companies. So any channel that governments use to get data from tech companies is abused by fraudsters to commit crime. Fraud is a very big deal. The UK economy loses 219 billion per year to fraud. Our national deficit payment is 93 billion per year and we spend 188 billion on the NHS. If we improved privacy of all of our citizens then the savings from fraud reduction would cover our entire government deficit
- heisenbit 11mo ago
  You don‘t need fraudsters just a run of the mill bully is enough. I remember a phase in my life where I had to do some high visibility reporting. I showed all underlying facts, methodology and conclusions and every week the bully tore into a minor detail devaluing my work and distracting from vital tasks. Only when I started shielding data and my reasoning as private and just delivering high level summary results I was able to put an end to it.
  - ndsipa_pomu 11mo ago
    Not wishing to join the bully's side, but I think making something private to prevent discussion/criticism has a bad smell about it. It's possible (to someone who knows neither you nor the bully) that the bully had some valid suggestions and that you became over defensive in allowing that to become a distraction rather than saying something like "okay, but can you make these suggestions after the meeting and we can work through them later". Personally, I don't like the idea of someone hiding data and methodology just because of not wanting feedback.
    - AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
      Well, it's a judgment call. Is this critic operating in good faith, or not? The reporter is not necessarily in the best position to judge. On the other hand, they have the best grasp of all the details of the interaction with this (alleged) bully. "You don't want continuing abuse" is quite different from "you don't want feedback".
deleted 11mo ago
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ankur3 11mo ago
"You hide from those whom you don't trust!" so now comes the question... "How much do you trust a human, despite being your favourite?"..... We need to learn about 'trust' and its role in our lives! Information is power! And 'trust' me, you don't want to give it to anyone over you! The upcoming era of transparency will come in the form of compliances (or, chains) you will never withdraw yourself from! Surely facility and security will baited for this! Also, with the rise in the fields of biotech and nano-tech, infused with A.I., they are preparing us to be their 'lab rats', and they don't need our consents! We shouldn't be ignoring this at all!
t0bia_s 11mo ago
- I have nothing to hide. - Sure, but why are you closing the door when taking sh*? Is your sh*ing somehow special?
- veryberry 11mo ago
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blaze33 11mo ago
Ok so this "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument is so recurrent I once went looking where it came from. The oldest account I found is in a religious book from 1832 [1]: "We must have nothing to hide, nothing to fear", but, and this is the important bit, this is in the context of your relationship with Christ. Later accounts are mostly from judicial documents like "well tell us what happened, if you have nothing to hide, you'll have nothing to fear". And later on we start to see the current form of the argument related to privacy, except now this argument is never directly used to erode it. It will always be in some form of "ok now we have to do this collective thing because of criminals, because of terrorism, because of protect the children, etc.". If you search "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" 100% of the results are about how it is a logical fallacy, nobody at all seems to defend the argument and yet, here we are! Food for thought: - this argument may well be stuck in the collective unconscious of lots of people (albeit in the religious context) - many governments, organizations and in any case the people in position of power and authority can develop a god complex (power corrupts etc.) So unless I end up dealing with an all-loving and all-forgiving entity I could fully trust, I'd like to keep my right to privacy, thank you very much! [1] https://www.google.fr/books/edition/Sermons_on_the_Spiritual_Comfort_and_Ass/k33tPmgrmDkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22nothing%20to%20hide%22%20%22nothing%20to%20fear%22&pg=PA126&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.fr/books/edition/Sermons_on_the_Spiritual...
- estearum 11mo ago
  Just because you don't see it written verbatim "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" doesn't mean it's not the argument being made. Right now you have half the country downright giddy about federal agents terrorizing broad swaths of Americans, driving recklessly down their freeways, waving guns around their neighborhoods, bodyslamming random passersby, all fundamentally because half the country believes the only reason someone could not be giddy about this is because they "have something to hide."
  - billy99k 11mo ago
    [flagged]
drfranks 11mo ago
I’d try to take this seriously, but: https://thompson2026.com/declaration_of_war/ https://thompson2026.com/declaration_of_war/ Umm- not sure we’re playing with a full deck here.
- metadope 11mo ago
  You should take it seriously. We are not playing. At all. It's all hands on deck, is what the (would-be) Captain is saying. Be there or be square.
  - capitel 11mo ago
    Going all the way then? Not sure if the world can handle anonympotus. Just taking it for a ride?
amelius 11mo ago
Them: "I have nothing to hide!" Me: "What is your salary? Can I see your medical records?" Them: "Oh wait"
- veryberry 11mo ago
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draw_down 11mo ago
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sallveburrpi 11mo ago
Famous quotes from an inquisitior in the 16th century: “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
delichon 11mo ago
A police officer walked into the office where I was stationed as a security guard for a high rise condo, and demanded the keys to a particular apartment. I declined and he got angry. So I turned the matter over to my boss, the manager, who lived in the building. He immediately gave up the keys, no questions asked. The cop left and the manager turned to me and said, "just do whatever they say, we have nothing to hide." I thought "but what about Mrs. Crenshaw in unit 566?" I didn't say it, but the manager seemed to think his argument covered that too.
pino999 11mo ago
It depends on what you fears are. You can also generate chaotic signals and learn what happens then make it public. Like a journalist.
ndsipa_pomu 11mo ago
Whilst there's some valid responses to "I've got nothing to hide" such as "drop your pants", "what's your bank PIN?" etc., there's a lot of people missing out far more insidious examples where privacy is required. e.g. A woman escaping from an abusive relationship will often be in direct danger if her location is given out. Also, consider a whistleblower leaking essential information about wrong-doings at an organisation - they should be able to do so anonymously if their livelihood would be in danger for performing such a public service. It's a position of privilege to be able to state "nothing to hide" and depends on other people not being racist/sexist/classist etc. It's such a blinkered and sheltered view to hold.
vovavili 11mo ago
The author is a bit uncharitable. "I have nothing to hide" usually is a shorthand for "it would be imprudent and inconvenient to dedicate my limited time and resources to an abstract good like privacy. This would not be the case if I had something illegal or reputation-ruining to hide." Nobody denies the value of privacy, but practicality beats purity in the eyes of a person who doesn't have a particular ideological conviction.
- rpdillon 11mo ago
  Right, but that practicality is predicated on the ability to switch to a more privacy-focused posture later on. And the point of the blog post is, when you need it, it won't be there when you reach for it.
  - vovavili 11mo ago
    Not arguing with that specific claim, but the author claims to hold a "special kind of contempt" for ordinary people making practical day-to-day choices. That attitude is much more hostile.
- knallfrosch 11mo ago
  It can also mean: I prefer the police catching murderers. I'm fine when wife cheaters get caught in the drag net. Privacy advocates never admit that there is not only a "next" government abusing surveillance, but also a "current" one, which uses surveillance for beneficial purposes.
  - vovavili 11mo ago
    Fair point.
  - franklyworks 11mo ago
    I am a privacy advocate, and also am disappointed at how narrow minded some of the arguments of privacy advocates are. "Banning encrypted chat will just mean the bad people moved to banned platforms". Perhaps, but some bad people have to operate where victims are (Facebook stalkers, eBay cons, ...) "Police should be forced to just do... actual police work." It's pretty reasonably for police to want to increase the chances and speed of resolution. We should champion and defend privacy, in spite of the good reasons to weaken it. There's no need to strawmen.
xtiansimon 11mo ago
Reminds me of this lecture: “Don’t talk to Police”, Law Professor James Duane. The argument goes, there are a lot of laws and there are virtually an infinite variety of possible circumstances which could trigger a possible violation making it impossible for anyone to know if their statements might appear relevant to a prosecutor. https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?si=9ZYuVSlPsfEgQyc9 https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?si=9ZYuVSlPsfEgQyc9 Of course, if you don’t have time to watch that excellent presentation, just crib this one: National Lawyer’s Guild of Detroit, MI: “When the cops come calling, what do you do? SHUT THE FUCK UP!” https://youtu.be/nWEpW6KOZDs?si=eobu1fTfSMTwbXME https://youtu.be/nWEpW6KOZDs?si=eobu1fTfSMTwbXME
charlescearl 11mo ago
If you attend any “public” meeting of a government or quasi-state entity in the US (library board, energy regulation board, county board,…) it becomes clear that the state seeks to hide and shift accountability at every turn and is willing to bring in armed force to squash even the slightest demand for transparency. Living in actually existing fascism requires adoption of anonymity & privacy preservation processes. You have so much worth protecting because you have everything to lose.
arjie 11mo ago
Certainly there are many who use privacy to safely be opposed to things. Being in a database having some characteristic means you are selectable for that and therefore targetable for it. And there is a herd immunity in that if everyone is in a database but you, being absent from it is as good as being in it with the characteristic of “opted out of this information” and therefore everyone being private protects the ones who most need privacy. All of this is sound. In many ways, I have lived my life in a way opposite to this. My genome is public, many of my life affairs are public[0], and I have had a child in a manner[1] that many people[2] have expressed antipathy for. It is entirely possible, perhaps even likely that my family and I will face consequences for this. I won’t pretend I have nothing to fear. So why do it? Perhaps it’s worth looking at others who have done the same. Being gay in America was a great risk once. The mechanism of defence in that society was for homosexual people to operate in what we now call the “don’t ask; don’t tell” environment. By having a general taboo about discussing sexual identity in certain contexts it was possible for gay people to not be threatened. If you didn’t know anyone’s sexual identity how could you harm the homosexuals among them? Why then did gay people decide to abandon the safety of privacy and push for public acceptance? Do they regret this new world where many gay people are known to be gay? I think that as a whole, those who are gay prefer to live in this society of open acceptance than that society of private tolerance. I won’t pretend that all places in the world are like this. I would be much more hesitant to do this in the country of my birth: India. And even California’s checkered history with gay marriage is outmatched by, say, the Netherlands. So it’s not risk-free to be public, but sometimes it’s worth it. In our case, I think humanity stands to benefit greatly from modern biotechnology. I think many people who would previously struggle to have children or who may fear passing on some disease can now safely have children. I think this is very important. And I think I would rather we defend the medicine required for this in law and legislation (like GINA) than that we silently and privately tolerate it. My wife and I are normal people. My daughter so far is healthy and I pray she grows up and lives as such. I want you to know that this is what this technology is for: normal people to increase the chance they will have healthy children. That’s why I’m public. Not because I have nothing to hide. But that I think it’s sometimes worthwhile to say “I could have hidden this but I would prefer for it to be publicly accepted”. 0: on my blog you will see a pregnancy log, and an IVF log, and pre-implantation screening results 1: we sequenced every embryo and chose one unaffected by the condition we share 2: from right wing non-profits to members of this forum or normal people reading the news, examples to follow https://www.liveaction.org/news/reproductive-startup-sequence-genome-gattaca https://www.liveaction.org/news/reproductive-startup-sequenc... (Inaccurate accusation here - the third was aneuploid) https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/16/orchid-polygenic-screening-embryos-fertility/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/16/orchid-... (Scroll down to see us - click comments to see the overwhelming opposition but with gratifyingly some support)
djoldman 11mo ago
"nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is trivially disproved. Humans arrive at conclusions about other humans based on information. Sometimes these conclusions are incorrect because humans aren't perfect at reasoning and this happens more often with some kinds of information. Therefore, it's perfectly rational to hide/not-disclose/obscure some information to lessen the chance that others take action based on faulty conclusions.
clejack 11mo ago
Am I the only one who doesn't take this statement literally and immediately extrapolate it to all aspects of an individual's existence? "I have nothing to hide" is a broad statement that clearly encompasses "everything", but it's often said in the context of a specific thing that a person doesn't care about. Those of you who would ask someone for financial information after they say this, would you also say "it's hot out side" if they described something as cool during the summer? Ultimately, given the complexity of security, expecting there to be some cultural shift on privacy is silly unless it's made trivially easy. We can't get people to eat right, exercise, or control their screen time and social media use and all of those have more immediate and tangible consequences. I appreciate the message, but I don't think the call to action is practical.
like_any_other 11mo ago
> A joke they told is now evidence of a thoughtcrime. Suddenly, for the first time, they have something to hide. That's a decent list, but the real list is even broader. Are you a lawyer litigating against a multinational company? Or planning to? Imagine if the company knew exactly who you, and every potential litigant, talked to. Or maybe you're trying to start a new political party. Or looking for a new job without alerting your employer. There were stories (unfortunately I can't find them at the moment) of nurses getting worse salary offers if they were in debt, on the logic that the desperate will settle for less. DoorDash would steal tips and use them to pay salary [1], something impossible with private, cash-based tips. And retailers will use every bit of data they have on you to price discriminate (without telling you, of course) [2]. Surveillance harms you in every way, from the most significant to the most trivial. You're always better off hiding, even if you think you don't have to. Knowledge is power, and knowledge of you is power over you. [1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/02/25/doordash-settlement-millions-to-drivers-over-pocketed-tips/80222432007/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/02/25/doordash-sett... [2] https://spyboy.blog/2024/11/24/unfair-pricing-tactics-targeting-iphone-users/ https://spyboy.blog/2024/11/24/unfair-pricing-tactics-target...
bongripper 11mo ago
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tyrust 11mo ago
I wonder if, in the libertarian worldview, privacy legislation is viewed as a force for good preserving liberty or evil stifling free enterprise.
lisbbb 11mo ago
I believe the entire western world is sleep walking into totalitarianism. It's soft glove right now, but mass surveillance, no matter what the original purpose, only needs concentration of power to turn into something truly inhumane. We've seen it already and that was well before technology pushed the boundaries of what is now possible. I just want to remind everyone that the technology and the police and all of that crap utterly failed to prevent the attacks at Brown and MIT. Total and complete failure. The only thing that mattered was some burned out genius that the world forgot who was illegally living the basement of the engineering building because he had literally nowhere else to go. And then they didn't even catch the killer, he controlled all the events and killed himself two entire days before he was found. Mass surveillance is a false god as are background checks and pretty much every other measure human take to try and feel safer because there is no safety and never was.
- derektank 11mo ago
  Weird example. The redditor only identified the perpetrator of the shooting because the police pulled video surveillance from all across campus and widely distributed it. He wouldn’t have been able to associate the vehicle with the suspect without those images.
mystraline 11mo ago
If you have nothing to hide... Post your full name, address, social security number, date of birth, mothers maiden name and other security questions, list of active logins and passwords and URLs, your full body scan nudes, sexual fantasies, diary/journal, your ashamed moments in your life, sly or trickster things you've done to others, sordid family secrets, and more. Oh, that was a no? I guess you DO have something to hide.
athulbc 11mo ago
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scoofy 11mo ago
I think there is an error of omission in the article. Organized crime syndicates can inflict harm just as well as a corrupted government can, and usually with less recourse. To advocate total privacy for everyone has nontrivial costs in addition to the nontrivial benefits.
Nasrudith 11mo ago
The best argument in my opinion against "nothing to hide" is that you don't get to decide that. The accuser does. If that doesn't scare you then you didn't think it through fully. A change in regieme is a downright terrifying variant of Pascal's Wager - where you are judged for heresies against ideologies that were obscure or didn't even exist yet. The Khmer Rogue made being an intellectual or wearing glasses something to hide. All sorts of absurd ideological hypotheticals become terrifying.
Ongyten 11mo ago
Protecting your anonymity isn't a sign that you're hiding something because you have done something wrong. It is because you're cautious. Benign information can be used against you. European Jews in the early 1900s gave census takers the info they were Jews. Decades later that info was collated with punch card machines by the Nazis to build family trees to hunt them down. This is an example of how "innocent" info can be weaponized in ways you would never dream of.
ongytenes 11mo ago
Protecting your anonymity isn't a sign that you're hiding something because you have done something wrong. It is because you're cautious. Even the most benign information can be use against you. European Jews in the early 1900s gave census takers the info yhat they were Jews. Decades later that info was collated with punch card machines by the Nazis to build family trees to hunt them down. This is an example of how "innocent" info can be weaponized in ways you would never dream of.
- delichon 11mo ago
  Unfortunately similar to US census data being used to intern Japanese during the war.
  - int_19h 11mo ago
    This is also happening right now with ICE combing through the various federal databases that they previously didn't have access to. But the worst thing is that the sheer amounts of compute available to even fairly small organizations, never mind governments, means that it's so easy to data mine stuff like that. And now there's AI to do the same with unstructured data. And meanwhile our corporate overlords are happy to profit from it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46349281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46349281
eadwu 11mo ago
“Nothing to Hide” is more akin to a fundamental truth than a deviancy. If you wish to hide something, why have you leaked it in the first place? Why not ask the other question? Why are you trying to hide public information to begin with? Why are you introducing encryption on top of an underlying public interface. This is intentionally different from are there things one would generally not be to be widely accessible or generally public. There is nothing to hide if it is already public, because it is already public, you can't hide it even if you want to, you're only making it more difficult for a general member of the public to access that data. Even if you consider that "hiding", the source is still public.
greatgib 11mo ago
This guy looks like to have a good mindset, I hope that fellow HNers living there will vite for him to give us a little bit of hope in the current very sad world!

216 points by NickForLiberty 11mo ago

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 "pathology of the present tense," a failure of imagination so profound it borders on a moral crime. What they fail to understand is that by living as an open book, they are creating the most dangerous weapon imaginable: a baseline of "normalcy." They are steadily creating a data profile for the State's machine, teaching its algorithms what a "good, transparent citizen" looks like. Every unencrypted text, every thoughtless search, every location-tagged post is another brick in the wall of their own cage. 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. Suddenly, for the first time, they have something to hide. So they reach for the tools of privacy. They download the encrypted messenger. They fire up the VPN. They start to cover their tracks. And in that single act, they trigger the Deviancy Signal. Their first attempt at privacy, set against their own self-created history of total transparency, is a screaming alarm to the grown surveillance machine. It's the poker player with a perfect tell, or the nocturnal animal suddenly walking in daylight. Their very attempt to become private is the most public and suspicious act they could possibly commit. They have not built an effective shield, as they have painted a target on their own back. By the time they need privacy, their own history has made seeking it an admission of guilt. But the damage doesn't end with your own self-incrimination. It radiates outward, undoing the careful work of everyone around you. Think of your friend who has practiced perfect operational security, who has spent years building a private life to ensure they have no baseline for the state to analyze. They are a ghost in the machine. Then they talk to you. Your unshielded phone becomes the listening device they never consented to. You take their disciplined effort to stay invisible and you shout it into a government microphone, tying their identity to yours in a permanent, searchable log. You don't just contrast with their diligence; you actively dismantle it. On a societal scale, this inaction becomes a collective betrayal. The power of the Deviancy Signal is directly proportional to the number of people who live transparently. Every person who refuses to practice privacy adds another gallon of clean, clear water to the state's pool, making any ripple of dissent ... any deviation ... starkly visible. This is not a passive choice. By refusing to help create a chaotic, noisy baseline of universal privacy, you are actively making the system more effective. You are failing to do your part to make the baseline all deviant, and in doing so, you make us all more vulnerable. There is only one way to disarm this weapon: we must destroy its premise. We must obliterate the baseline. The task is not merely to hide, but to make privacy the default, to make encryption a reflex, to make anonymity a universal right. We must create so much noise that a signal is impossible to find. Our collective goal must be to make a "normal" profile so rare that the watchers have nothing to compare us to. We must all become deviations.

paganel 11mo ago
You’re correct on all things in principle, but hiding one’s subversive thoughts (or what may be catalogued by any given regime as subversive) only plays into the regime’s hands, because it atomizes any chance of real resistance. It is much more valuable to bring the fight out in the open, yes, while still playing by the regime’s rules in a way, but out in the open, because that still keeps open the possibility of a community of resistance. Being able to hide stuff only generates conspirators, but keeping (even if heavily camouflaged) resistance out in the open has bigger chances of eventually toppling any given regime, because people power consists in numbers, and you can’t have numbers if the default setting is “hide behind a VPN”.
atoav 11mo ago
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 people are cowards and even more people are just small-minded. The problem of the "I have nothing to hide"-excuse is that it shows thst this person has no concept about how their small personal ideas would affect the world once you roll them out in scale. Not only that but it shows that they haven't understood how power is organized in their democratic societies. Let's say we would have nothing to hide and we give up our rights to the people we as the voters are meant to hold accountable. Even if it is a benevolent government filled with honest actors, large scale surveillance has the problem that there will be false positives. Surveil 360 million people each day and with an totally utopic accuracy of 99% and you still get 3.6 million false positives a day. In reality however these processes are much less accurate and the people who use those powers much less benevolent and honest, e.g. it is not uncommon that police look up their exes, spouses, people they personally hate etc. The biggest problem however is that we have a division of power for a reason in democracies, and the people who vote giving up power in order to give more to a government is bad actually. Democracies need to be designed in such way they can survive one or two governments that try to abolish that system. Giving them a "spy on everybody" -power coupled with let's say secret courts is a good way to risk that form of government for generations who then have to fight bloody civil wars and revolutions to get the power back.

jokoon 11mo ago

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.

sheepdestroyer 11mo ago
Once your data is out there it's too late. If the hypothetical country you live in - where freedom & due process is respected - suddenly has an authoritarian change of direction, you're done. It's my understanding that, organically or under external influences, many democratic countries in EU are at the emerging risk of going full fascists. I see that in France, Le Pen & friends don't hide the fact that they'd make a new constitution. Richest guy in the world has vowed to use his propaganda power to make this happen for the sake of cancelling the EU, fun times
flowerthoughts 11mo ago
> 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 freedoms and due process were once respected.
- immibis 11mo ago
  It was once considered that, but it was never actually that. Ever since it was founded it was locking up or killing the people with different skin colours, over and over and over and over and over!
- netsharc 11mo ago

Animats 11mo ago

He's running for governor of California. He's apparently having trouble getting 6,000 signatures or $5000 to get on the ballot, so he's probably not a serious candidate.

youarentrightjr 11mo ago
> He's running for governor of California. He's apparently having trouble getting 6,000 signatures or $5000 to get on the ballot, so he's probably not a serious candidate. The popular, well funded politicians haven't exactly served their constituents well in the privacy domain...
BLKNSLVR 11mo ago
Regardless, the points made are valid.
NickForLiberty 11mo ago
Signature collection legally started only two days ago ;)

general1465 11mo ago

If we have nothing to hide, then I want every politician to have every bit of communication publicly available and searchable. We are stopping corruption here, so only corrupt people could oppose such decision and they should be immediately investigated.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

Wowfunhappy 11mo ago

> 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 their moral choices and confident in their convictions. Arrest them if you dare. I wonder if the author still has contempt for them?

advael 11mo ago
In many moral frameworks, inconsistency isn't the only wrong someone can commit. The argument constructed in this article is essentially utilitarian, making the claim that the mechanisms of surveillance and privacy make this behavior harmful to others, regardless of their intentions or internal sense of morality. In fact, the author doesn't mention hating these people at all, although I suppose that's not a completely unreasonable thing to infer. From the perspective of this argument, this only lacks the harm the "deviancy signal" would itself do to the individual, though in the oppressive regime proposed they would perhaps take greater risk by openly deviating
- Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
  > In fact, the author doesn't mention hating these people at all The article opens with: >> There's a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, "I have nothing to hide." Which isn't literally saying "I hate them" but I'm not sure how else to interpret "a special kind of contempt." Regardless, I've edited my original post.
  - filterfish 11mo ago
    Contempt is very different to hate.
    - abc123abc123 11mo ago
      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.

NGRhodes 11mo ago

"I have nothing to hide" only makes sense if privacy and disclosure are treated as a binary. In reality, both exist on a spectrum: privacy is controlled disclosure, shaped by what is shared, with whom, at what level of detail, and under what power asymmetry. Large surveillance systems inevitably build baselines. They don't just detect crimes; they detect patterns and anomalies relative to whatever becomes "normal". The problem with "nothing to hide" is that it defaults to maximal disclosure. Data is persistent, aggregatable, and reinterpretable as norms and regimes change. The data doesn't. This isn't purely individual. Your disclosures can expose others through contact graphs and inference, regardless of intent. And it doesn't matter whether the collector is the state or a company; aggregation and reuse work the same way.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 11mo ago
Yes. In that realm, absence, too, is a signal; perpaps stronger one than just random chatter.

globalnode 11mo ago

ok, as a privacy enthusiast, some people just dont get it, and they never will. what you need to do is not discuss anything you dont want broadcast with them... ever. im even thinking of using edge or chrome so i look like a normie in a sea of normies. i mean i really dont have anything to hide but i dont want anyone to know that.

jjbinx007 11mo ago
I've got lots to hide. Doesn't mean you or anyone else has a right to know what it is and it doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong either. We should all admit that we have lots we want to hide from other people and that's just fine and normal.

codethief 11mo ago

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.)

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 11mo ago
I was thinking a little about it lately. Not the saying itself, but the positioning to the general public. The annoying reality is that for most of the things that I consider important enough to voice discontent over ( and maybe even suppress need for convenience for ) are not always easy to 'present'. Note that it is not even always easy here either, but we do, by design, give one another a charitable read. Hell, look at me, I care and I accepted some of it as price to pay for house peace.
bobbyschmidd 11mo ago
yeah, it's a cascade. maybe you are not a threat to gov or corp but locally there's people who are like the people in clubs who spike you because they want you out or because they want your girls or the girls you will steal from them. info can be power. rumors, gossip, your browsing history, what you draw, what you code in your free time, what you talk to your kids about, what they do with that when they visit "friends" who already had info that you decided wasn't worth hiding ... from your kids ... all can and will be used to induce stress or to divert attention of the young ones. governments used to build massive societies and create rules and order and kaizen infrastructures that would get us as far away from the dark ages as possible ... but here we are closing that gap again. Go VCs! Go Agents! Go Puppies of Wall Street! Go work for LLM companies instead of using those big capable brains of yours for something other than personalized copypastable copypastacopypasta ... "the other girls and kids made it through, and so will you, just let it happen, let it be" and so it goes ...
PunchyHamster 11mo ago
I prefer short and snarky "then drop your pants". Shuts up most.

alan-crowe 11mo ago

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.

deepstate25 11mo ago
This is a valid story and I’m sorry to hear that you went through this. However, it’s a strawman for the current argument from the blog post, which is that living life in the open and acting normal is setting things up for failure, and I don’t believe that it is. Having nothing to hide is fine. Nothing to hide and doing nothing wrong is least likely to cause trouble. The blog post’s argument that someone would be more likely to get watched if they start hiding after not hiding is not valid. ALL encrypted and unencrypted communication is a valid target for analysis, but ANY encrypted traffic is obviously more of a concern, just like one person walking into a store brandishing a gun is as alarming as 5 brandishing guns, and it doesn’t matter whether they used to not carry guns into the store.
- fn-mote 11mo ago

spacecadet 11mo ago

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?

Griffinsauce 11mo ago
What is your big stick? Governments and large corporations are unfathomably powerful these days.

BLKNSLVR 11mo ago

> 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.

goku12 11mo ago
> I feel that I have nothing to hide Though you made the right determination later on, this is what you need to correct first. You don't have to be a murderer to have something to hide. Everyone does, no matter how innocent you are. Imagine that you're a young girl. Is it safe to expose the GPS tracks of your daily commutes? Let's cut to the other end of the spectrum. Imagine that you're the chief of a law enforcement agency. How about exposing your GPS tracks now? Even information about newborn babies should be kept private. Always be aware of the consequences of sharing your information, when you must do so. The narrative 'I have nothing to hide' actively discourages such concerns and precautions, even if it's just a feeling. It encourages bad security practices at an individual level throughout the society. That's why this article is so pertinent. It's justifiably hostile towards that claim.
- Terr_ 11mo ago
  Perhaps: "I'm not yet aware of the current and future forces I will have a desperate and very-moral reason to hide from." Something to hide often occurs retroactively, when evil people gain power today they didn't have yesterday.

nkrisc 11mo ago

What’s important to hide is always changing. So even if you have nothing to hide now, you may wish you had hidden it in the future.

itopaloglu83 11mo ago
Pre-WW2 census in Germany was conducted by IBM and included religion and other family origin related questions. Fast forward a few years and the Nazi regime used census results to go after every family that was undesirable for them using the census data they bought from IBM. Privacy and anonymity are not needed until they are desperately required.
- coldtea 11mo ago
  This can be read as if IBM did this unknowingly and only before WW2. But IBM knew what they were assisting with, and even pre-WW2 was already assisting the Nazi regime of 1933-1939. And they didn't stop come WW2, if anything IBM opened new subsidiaries and continued throughout the second world war. "(...) IBM leased, rather than sold, its machines. The company retained control of punch-card supply and provided service through subsidiaries. Each set of cards was custom-designed to Nazi requirements. He later wrote that the IBM headquarters in New York oversaw these arrangements through subsidiaries across Europe" "(...) IBM New York created a subsidiary in Poland, Watson Business Machines, after the 1939 invasion. The firm managed railway traffic in the General Government and ran a punch-card printing shop near the Warsaw Ghetto. He stated that this subsidiary reported through Geneva to IBM New York, and revenues were transferred accordingly." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
  - esafak 11mo ago
    It was authorized by the CEO, Thomas J. Watson Sr., who apparently had a "soft spot" for the Nazis. Hitler decorated him: https://www.nytimes.com/1937/07/02/archives/thomas-j-watson-is-decorated-by-hitler-for-work-in-bettering.html https://www.nytimes.com/1937/07/02/archives/thomas-j-watson-... and it took the occupation of France and the Low Countries three years later for Watson to decide to return the medal.

shrubby 11mo ago

I am trying to burn my bridges well enough not to be accepted to the clan of complacent narcissists. I'm well aware of the possible and even unavoidable consequences of the current trajectory. But this is a conscious decision to try to shape the norm so that the current dystopian zillionaire future would not happen fully. My reasoning is most likely the humanely typical post-hoc rationalization and strategic reasoning, but I try to think good old MLK quote fits it. "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends"

shrubby 11mo ago
I was meaning to write complicit but complacent autocorrupt fits surprisingly well.

myself248 11mo ago

2013 called: https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide.html https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to...

sjducb 11mo ago

When people say they have nothing to hide I like to remind them about fraud and criminals. All law abiding citizens have data that they want to hide from fraudsters. Fraudsters often get their hands on government data through breeches and bribery. Also fraudsters pretend to be government agents to get data from big tech companies. So any channel that governments use to get data from tech companies is abused by fraudsters to commit crime. Fraud is a very big deal. The UK economy loses 219 billion per year to fraud. Our national deficit payment is 93 billion per year and we spend 188 billion on the NHS. If we improved privacy of all of our citizens then the savings from fraud reduction would cover our entire government deficit

heisenbit 11mo ago
You don‘t need fraudsters just a run of the mill bully is enough. I remember a phase in my life where I had to do some high visibility reporting. I showed all underlying facts, methodology and conclusions and every week the bully tore into a minor detail devaluing my work and distracting from vital tasks. Only when I started shielding data and my reasoning as private and just delivering high level summary results I was able to put an end to it.
- ndsipa_pomu 11mo ago
  Not wishing to join the bully's side, but I think making something private to prevent discussion/criticism has a bad smell about it. It's possible (to someone who knows neither you nor the bully) that the bully had some valid suggestions and that you became over defensive in allowing that to become a distraction rather than saying something like "okay, but can you make these suggestions after the meeting and we can work through them later". Personally, I don't like the idea of someone hiding data and methodology just because of not wanting feedback.
  - AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
    Well, it's a judgment call. Is this critic operating in good faith, or not? The reporter is not necessarily in the best position to judge. On the other hand, they have the best grasp of all the details of the interaction with this (alleged) bully. "You don't want continuing abuse" is quite different from "you don't want feedback".

deleted 11mo ago

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ankur3 11mo ago

"You hide from those whom you don't trust!" so now comes the question... "How much do you trust a human, despite being your favourite?"..... We need to learn about 'trust' and its role in our lives! Information is power! And 'trust' me, you don't want to give it to anyone over you! The upcoming era of transparency will come in the form of compliances (or, chains) you will never withdraw yourself from! Surely facility and security will baited for this! Also, with the rise in the fields of biotech and nano-tech, infused with A.I., they are preparing us to be their 'lab rats', and they don't need our consents! We shouldn't be ignoring this at all!

t0bia_s 11mo ago

- I have nothing to hide. - Sure, but why are you closing the door when taking sh*? Is your sh*ing somehow special?

veryberry 11mo ago
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blaze33 11mo ago

Ok so this "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument is so recurrent I once went looking where it came from. The oldest account I found is in a religious book from 1832 [1]: "We must have nothing to hide, nothing to fear", but, and this is the important bit, this is in the context of your relationship with Christ. Later accounts are mostly from judicial documents like "well tell us what happened, if you have nothing to hide, you'll have nothing to fear". And later on we start to see the current form of the argument related to privacy, except now this argument is never directly used to erode it. It will always be in some form of "ok now we have to do this collective thing because of criminals, because of terrorism, because of protect the children, etc.". If you search "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" 100% of the results are about how it is a logical fallacy, nobody at all seems to defend the argument and yet, here we are! Food for thought: - this argument may well be stuck in the collective unconscious of lots of people (albeit in the religious context) - many governments, organizations and in any case the people in position of power and authority can develop a god complex (power corrupts etc.) So unless I end up dealing with an all-loving and all-forgiving entity I could fully trust, I'd like to keep my right to privacy, thank you very much! [1] https://www.google.fr/books/edition/Sermons_on_the_Spiritual_Comfort_and_Ass/k33tPmgrmDkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22nothing%20to%20hide%22%20%22nothing%20to%20fear%22&pg=PA126&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.fr/books/edition/Sermons_on_the_Spiritual...

estearum 11mo ago
Just because you don't see it written verbatim "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" doesn't mean it's not the argument being made. Right now you have half the country downright giddy about federal agents terrorizing broad swaths of Americans, driving recklessly down their freeways, waving guns around their neighborhoods, bodyslamming random passersby, all fundamentally because half the country believes the only reason someone could not be giddy about this is because they "have something to hide."
- billy99k 11mo ago
  [flagged]

drfranks 11mo ago

I’d try to take this seriously, but: https://thompson2026.com/declaration_of_war/ https://thompson2026.com/declaration_of_war/ Umm- not sure we’re playing with a full deck here.

metadope 11mo ago
You should take it seriously. We are not playing. At all. It's all hands on deck, is what the (would-be) Captain is saying. Be there or be square.
- capitel 11mo ago
  Going all the way then? Not sure if the world can handle anonympotus. Just taking it for a ride?

amelius 11mo ago

Them: "I have nothing to hide!" Me: "What is your salary? Can I see your medical records?" Them: "Oh wait"

veryberry 11mo ago
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draw_down 11mo ago

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sallveburrpi 11mo ago

Famous quotes from an inquisitior in the 16th century: “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

delichon 11mo ago

A police officer walked into the office where I was stationed as a security guard for a high rise condo, and demanded the keys to a particular apartment. I declined and he got angry. So I turned the matter over to my boss, the manager, who lived in the building. He immediately gave up the keys, no questions asked. The cop left and the manager turned to me and said, "just do whatever they say, we have nothing to hide." I thought "but what about Mrs. Crenshaw in unit 566?" I didn't say it, but the manager seemed to think his argument covered that too.

pino999 11mo ago

It depends on what you fears are. You can also generate chaotic signals and learn what happens then make it public. Like a journalist.

ndsipa_pomu 11mo ago

Whilst there's some valid responses to "I've got nothing to hide" such as "drop your pants", "what's your bank PIN?" etc., there's a lot of people missing out far more insidious examples where privacy is required. e.g. A woman escaping from an abusive relationship will often be in direct danger if her location is given out. Also, consider a whistleblower leaking essential information about wrong-doings at an organisation - they should be able to do so anonymously if their livelihood would be in danger for performing such a public service. It's a position of privilege to be able to state "nothing to hide" and depends on other people not being racist/sexist/classist etc. It's such a blinkered and sheltered view to hold.

vovavili 11mo ago

The author is a bit uncharitable. "I have nothing to hide" usually is a shorthand for "it would be imprudent and inconvenient to dedicate my limited time and resources to an abstract good like privacy. This would not be the case if I had something illegal or reputation-ruining to hide." Nobody denies the value of privacy, but practicality beats purity in the eyes of a person who doesn't have a particular ideological conviction.

rpdillon 11mo ago
Right, but that practicality is predicated on the ability to switch to a more privacy-focused posture later on. And the point of the blog post is, when you need it, it won't be there when you reach for it.
- vovavili 11mo ago
  Not arguing with that specific claim, but the author claims to hold a "special kind of contempt" for ordinary people making practical day-to-day choices. That attitude is much more hostile.
knallfrosch 11mo ago
It can also mean: I prefer the police catching murderers. I'm fine when wife cheaters get caught in the drag net. Privacy advocates never admit that there is not only a "next" government abusing surveillance, but also a "current" one, which uses surveillance for beneficial purposes.
- vovavili 11mo ago
  Fair point.
- franklyworks 11mo ago
  I am a privacy advocate, and also am disappointed at how narrow minded some of the arguments of privacy advocates are. "Banning encrypted chat will just mean the bad people moved to banned platforms". Perhaps, but some bad people have to operate where victims are (Facebook stalkers, eBay cons, ...) "Police should be forced to just do... actual police work." It's pretty reasonably for police to want to increase the chances and speed of resolution. We should champion and defend privacy, in spite of the good reasons to weaken it. There's no need to strawmen.

xtiansimon 11mo ago

Reminds me of this lecture: “Don’t talk to Police”, Law Professor James Duane. The argument goes, there are a lot of laws and there are virtually an infinite variety of possible circumstances which could trigger a possible violation making it impossible for anyone to know if their statements might appear relevant to a prosecutor. https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?si=9ZYuVSlPsfEgQyc9 https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?si=9ZYuVSlPsfEgQyc9 Of course, if you don’t have time to watch that excellent presentation, just crib this one: National Lawyer’s Guild of Detroit, MI: “When the cops come calling, what do you do? SHUT THE FUCK UP!” https://youtu.be/nWEpW6KOZDs?si=eobu1fTfSMTwbXME https://youtu.be/nWEpW6KOZDs?si=eobu1fTfSMTwbXME

charlescearl 11mo ago

If you attend any “public” meeting of a government or quasi-state entity in the US (library board, energy regulation board, county board,…) it becomes clear that the state seeks to hide and shift accountability at every turn and is willing to bring in armed force to squash even the slightest demand for transparency. Living in actually existing fascism requires adoption of anonymity & privacy preservation processes. You have so much worth protecting because you have everything to lose.

arjie 11mo ago

Certainly there are many who use privacy to safely be opposed to things. Being in a database having some characteristic means you are selectable for that and therefore targetable for it. And there is a herd immunity in that if everyone is in a database but you, being absent from it is as good as being in it with the characteristic of “opted out of this information” and therefore everyone being private protects the ones who most need privacy. All of this is sound. In many ways, I have lived my life in a way opposite to this. My genome is public, many of my life affairs are public[0], and I have had a child in a manner[1] that many people[2] have expressed antipathy for. It is entirely possible, perhaps even likely that my family and I will face consequences for this. I won’t pretend I have nothing to fear. So why do it? Perhaps it’s worth looking at others who have done the same. Being gay in America was a great risk once. The mechanism of defence in that society was for homosexual people to operate in what we now call the “don’t ask; don’t tell” environment. By having a general taboo about discussing sexual identity in certain contexts it was possible for gay people to not be threatened. If you didn’t know anyone’s sexual identity how could you harm the homosexuals among them? Why then did gay people decide to abandon the safety of privacy and push for public acceptance? Do they regret this new world where many gay people are known to be gay? I think that as a whole, those who are gay prefer to live in this society of open acceptance than that society of private tolerance. I won’t pretend that all places in the world are like this. I would be much more hesitant to do this in the country of my birth: India. And even California’s checkered history with gay marriage is outmatched by, say, the Netherlands. So it’s not risk-free to be public, but sometimes it’s worth it. In our case, I think humanity stands to benefit greatly from modern biotechnology. I think many people who would previously struggle to have children or who may fear passing on some disease can now safely have children. I think this is very important. And I think I would rather we defend the medicine required for this in law and legislation (like GINA) than that we silently and privately tolerate it. My wife and I are normal people. My daughter so far is healthy and I pray she grows up and lives as such. I want you to know that this is what this technology is for: normal people to increase the chance they will have healthy children. That’s why I’m public. Not because I have nothing to hide. But that I think it’s sometimes worthwhile to say “I could have hidden this but I would prefer for it to be publicly accepted”. 0: on my blog you will see a pregnancy log, and an IVF log, and pre-implantation screening results 1: we sequenced every embryo and chose one unaffected by the condition we share 2: from right wing non-profits to members of this forum or normal people reading the news, examples to follow https://www.liveaction.org/news/reproductive-startup-sequence-genome-gattaca https://www.liveaction.org/news/reproductive-startup-sequenc... (Inaccurate accusation here - the third was aneuploid) https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/16/orchid-polygenic-screening-embryos-fertility/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/16/orchid-... (Scroll down to see us - click comments to see the overwhelming opposition but with gratifyingly some support)

djoldman 11mo ago

"nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is trivially disproved. Humans arrive at conclusions about other humans based on information. Sometimes these conclusions are incorrect because humans aren't perfect at reasoning and this happens more often with some kinds of information. Therefore, it's perfectly rational to hide/not-disclose/obscure some information to lessen the chance that others take action based on faulty conclusions.

clejack 11mo ago

Am I the only one who doesn't take this statement literally and immediately extrapolate it to all aspects of an individual's existence? "I have nothing to hide" is a broad statement that clearly encompasses "everything", but it's often said in the context of a specific thing that a person doesn't care about. Those of you who would ask someone for financial information after they say this, would you also say "it's hot out side" if they described something as cool during the summer? Ultimately, given the complexity of security, expecting there to be some cultural shift on privacy is silly unless it's made trivially easy. We can't get people to eat right, exercise, or control their screen time and social media use and all of those have more immediate and tangible consequences. I appreciate the message, but I don't think the call to action is practical.

like_any_other 11mo ago

> A joke they told is now evidence of a thoughtcrime. Suddenly, for the first time, they have something to hide. That's a decent list, but the real list is even broader. Are you a lawyer litigating against a multinational company? Or planning to? Imagine if the company knew exactly who you, and every potential litigant, talked to. Or maybe you're trying to start a new political party. Or looking for a new job without alerting your employer. There were stories (unfortunately I can't find them at the moment) of nurses getting worse salary offers if they were in debt, on the logic that the desperate will settle for less. DoorDash would steal tips and use them to pay salary [1], something impossible with private, cash-based tips. And retailers will use every bit of data they have on you to price discriminate (without telling you, of course) [2]. Surveillance harms you in every way, from the most significant to the most trivial. You're always better off hiding, even if you think you don't have to. Knowledge is power, and knowledge of you is power over you. [1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/02/25/doordash-settlement-millions-to-drivers-over-pocketed-tips/80222432007/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/02/25/doordash-sett... [2] https://spyboy.blog/2024/11/24/unfair-pricing-tactics-targeting-iphone-users/ https://spyboy.blog/2024/11/24/unfair-pricing-tactics-target...

bongripper 11mo ago

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tyrust 11mo ago

I wonder if, in the libertarian worldview, privacy legislation is viewed as a force for good preserving liberty or evil stifling free enterprise.

lisbbb 11mo ago

I believe the entire western world is sleep walking into totalitarianism. It's soft glove right now, but mass surveillance, no matter what the original purpose, only needs concentration of power to turn into something truly inhumane. We've seen it already and that was well before technology pushed the boundaries of what is now possible. I just want to remind everyone that the technology and the police and all of that crap utterly failed to prevent the attacks at Brown and MIT. Total and complete failure. The only thing that mattered was some burned out genius that the world forgot who was illegally living the basement of the engineering building because he had literally nowhere else to go. And then they didn't even catch the killer, he controlled all the events and killed himself two entire days before he was found. Mass surveillance is a false god as are background checks and pretty much every other measure human take to try and feel safer because there is no safety and never was.

derektank 11mo ago
Weird example. The redditor only identified the perpetrator of the shooting because the police pulled video surveillance from all across campus and widely distributed it. He wouldn’t have been able to associate the vehicle with the suspect without those images.

mystraline 11mo ago

If you have nothing to hide... Post your full name, address, social security number, date of birth, mothers maiden name and other security questions, list of active logins and passwords and URLs, your full body scan nudes, sexual fantasies, diary/journal, your ashamed moments in your life, sly or trickster things you've done to others, sordid family secrets, and more. Oh, that was a no? I guess you DO have something to hide.

athulbc 11mo ago

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scoofy 11mo ago

I think there is an error of omission in the article. Organized crime syndicates can inflict harm just as well as a corrupted government can, and usually with less recourse. To advocate total privacy for everyone has nontrivial costs in addition to the nontrivial benefits.

Nasrudith 11mo ago

The best argument in my opinion against "nothing to hide" is that you don't get to decide that. The accuser does. If that doesn't scare you then you didn't think it through fully. A change in regieme is a downright terrifying variant of Pascal's Wager - where you are judged for heresies against ideologies that were obscure or didn't even exist yet. The Khmer Rogue made being an intellectual or wearing glasses something to hide. All sorts of absurd ideological hypotheticals become terrifying.

Ongyten 11mo ago

Protecting your anonymity isn't a sign that you're hiding something because you have done something wrong. It is because you're cautious. Benign information can be used against you. European Jews in the early 1900s gave census takers the info they were Jews. Decades later that info was collated with punch card machines by the Nazis to build family trees to hunt them down. This is an example of how "innocent" info can be weaponized in ways you would never dream of.

ongytenes 11mo ago

Protecting your anonymity isn't a sign that you're hiding something because you have done something wrong. It is because you're cautious. Even the most benign information can be use against you. European Jews in the early 1900s gave census takers the info yhat they were Jews. Decades later that info was collated with punch card machines by the Nazis to build family trees to hunt them down. This is an example of how "innocent" info can be weaponized in ways you would never dream of.

delichon 11mo ago
Unfortunately similar to US census data being used to intern Japanese during the war.
- int_19h 11mo ago
  This is also happening right now with ICE combing through the various federal databases that they previously didn't have access to. But the worst thing is that the sheer amounts of compute available to even fairly small organizations, never mind governments, means that it's so easy to data mine stuff like that. And now there's AI to do the same with unstructured data. And meanwhile our corporate overlords are happy to profit from it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46349281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46349281

eadwu 11mo ago

“Nothing to Hide” is more akin to a fundamental truth than a deviancy. If you wish to hide something, why have you leaked it in the first place? Why not ask the other question? Why are you trying to hide public information to begin with? Why are you introducing encryption on top of an underlying public interface. This is intentionally different from are there things one would generally not be to be widely accessible or generally public. There is nothing to hide if it is already public, because it is already public, you can't hide it even if you want to, you're only making it more difficult for a general member of the public to access that data. Even if you consider that "hiding", the source is still public.

greatgib 11mo ago

This guy looks like to have a good mindset, I hope that fellow HNers living there will vite for him to give us a little bit of hope in the current very sad world!