6 ms·

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 boo

by blaze33 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
    > Ice agents are deporting people in the US that are here illegally. How would anybody know that if they aren't allowed hearings?
    - throwaway290 10mo ago
      I saw that comment before it was flagged and thanks to that I now have this argument that you supplied. if I arrived a couple minutes later I wouldn't know it. (I browsed logged out) I disagree with that guy but I don't know it should be flagged
      - mindslight 10mo ago
        The HN dead dynamic has been increasingly throwing babies out with the bathwater, and logging in (even to a throwaway account) with showdead=yes is the right call these days. But for this particular comment, I assume it was flagged because at this point continuing to cheerlead for the fascists/destructionists with nonsense talking points is just basic flamebait. As GP said, the assertion that only illegal immigrants are being harassed/abducted/disappeared is completely unfounded - the government is not operating with transparency to demonstrate this, nor accountability for the collateral harm that we do know they have caused.
        throwaway290 10mo ago
        This is not basic flamebait. if you have any serious conversation outside of your political bubble this is THE argument that people who get deported are never US citizens. and it is a valid argument unless you can find examples of citizens deported. I can't there are so many shorts of right wing "influencers" cornering liberals who can't give a suitable reply to this question. so the argument about hearings is important. and killing this discussion took it away from public. this of course is very useful to the maga machine which is so friendly to big tech so I'm not surprised.
        10mo ago
- slaugh 10mo ago
  The hardcore supporters of the current U.S. administration (e.g. those that go to the rallies, give to the NRA, participate in some militant group), had been very distrustful of government in-general, and I suspect they still are. You may feel that you’re supporting some radical left-wing group you think is cool that just wants people to let everyone be free to think and act how they want, but privacy / hiding communication goes both ways. You may also be supporting terrorists that would rather be spitting on you and bombing your family and friends than reading your manifesto on the right to watch freaky crap.
  - estearum 10mo ago
    What?
  - tdeck 10mo ago
    > had been very distrustful of government in-general, and I suspect they still are. They were never really distrustful of the government. People who really don't trust the government want to downsize the parts that can kick down your door and point a gun at you. These people have demonstrated time and again that they want more of that, because they actually trust that institutions of state violence will be on their side and uphold their interests. Instead what they oppose are parts of the government they suspect are helping people and groups they dislike. This is what the American right reliably can't stand, for all the flavor of the month posturing they might engage in to keep things from getting stale.
    - mindslight 10mo ago
      It comes out in some pretty glaring self-contradictory ways, too. Big talk about the second amendment - personal freedom, from my cold dead hands, etc. Then Kenneth Walker straightforwardly exercises his second amendment right to lawful night time home defense, the government jackboot assailants murder Breonna Taylor in retaliation, and the supposed "freedom lovers" then chime in with support for the jackboots while twisting themselves in knots to justify how the victims of state violence deserved it. As long as I can remember, the Republican party has been full of hypocrisy and ignorant denial. But this sheer ability of Dear Leader's to make people dance to his tune of outright harming themselves has taken it to another level (I guess there is a reason why he was (is) a really successful con artist). At this point anybody earnestly caring about personal liberty should consider the whole Republican party a sick joke. We need some real opposition ("Libertarian" party isn't well poised for that either), and some real voting systems that break a duopoly (eg Ranked Pairs). But first we really just need to take our country back from these fascists who have completely lost the plot of American ideals.
ajb 10mo ago
It's older than 1832; for example: "He who trembles at this moment is guilty. For innocence never trembles before public vigilance." Maximilien Robespierre, July 26 (8 Thermidor), 1794 (translated - the original would be in French). When it is used by surveillance advocates, they don't use the exact words. Incidentally here is that quote, with Ian Richardson as Robespierre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOW6OfeOW10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOW6OfeOW10
- blaze33 10mo ago
  Ah nice to know! In my defense I only searched for the English version. That being said, Robespierre was a key participant of 'La Terreur' where tens of thousands of people where hastily judged and executed and he himself ended up executed 4 months after that speech. [1] [1] https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discours_lors_de_la_s%C3%A9ance_de_la_Convention_du_11_germinal_an_II https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discours_lors_de_la_s%C3%A9an... (French version)
  - ajb 10mo ago
    Indeed. "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" has always contained implicit threat.
rightbyte 10mo ago
> "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. Also note how it is some sort of goal not a statement on not having something to hide. I guess in line with "may the one without sin throw the first stone".
- fasbiner 10mo ago
  I think you're being reductionist here.
  - rightbyte 10mo ago
    Heh ... you. Is it reductionist to make something more specific and less general though?
jwitchel 10mo ago
AI slop for all its banality may give us enough noise in the signal to accomplish exactly what the author is asking for. As the dead web continues to emerge, content looks less like apples on a tree and more like sand on the beach. And the act of looking for a misshapen grain of sand becomes absurd.
DalekBaldwin 10mo ago
Right, I don't think I've ever actually seen anybody make the "nothing to hide" argument. Maybe it was used more commonly in the past, but I only ever see people pre-emptively attack it without prompting. It seems to be a special case of a straw-man argument: a no-man argument. It's not the only such example, but it seems to appear without fail in the top comments in any discussion of privacy issues.
- grindermaster 10mo ago
  People around me make the nothing to hide argument all the time
  - simulator5g 10mo ago
    It’s the obvious response to what seems like paranoia to the uneducated.
- jdpage 10mo ago
  I have had many people use it when I try to either push for a private option ("please message me on Signal") or explain why I won't use a service.
- LexiMax 10mo ago
  I found somebody making this argument just the other day on Hacker News in regard to license plate tracking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46250556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46250556 > In practice I'm not even getting "tracked". No one is likely to be looking up my license plate and looking at my movements, because I don't do anything that would warrant that kind of attention
jordwest 10mo ago
> - this argument may well be stuck in the collective unconscious of lots of people (albeit in the religious context) Another example of such a belief is that "humans are inherently evil" which seems to have been planted in Western society by the concept of original sin. Interestingly the idea that sin was about our inherent badness didn't really arise until the struggle against Gnosticism [1] hundreds of years after Jesus died. Now the belief is pervasive in secular society thanks to stories like "Lord of the Flies". It's fascinating how even though we can call ourselves non religious we can still carry these beliefs around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin
- defrost 10mo ago
  Cheer up. If you're still in Sydney I'd argue that large numbers of people paddled out off of Bondi Beach because of a pervasive Australian belief that there's always a few arseholes but most people are fundamentally good and community support is better than nothing. You likely saw a couple of extremists repeatedly tackled and then dropped by the public and police, and near real time running in to help victims. That's somewhat contra to the bleak of "humans are inherently evil". Maybe the message of Lord of the Flies was that nuclear weapons and the Cold War depressed at least one author and that boys need mentors. Maybe it's an issue in general with the On the Beach genre, from Shute to Winton: https://theshovel.com.au/2025/08/20/tim-winton-wonders-why-nobody-at-book-week-is-dressed-as-a-youngster-living-in-an-isolated-coastal-town-struggling-to-find-their-identity/ https://theshovel.com.au/2025/08/20/tim-winton-wonders-why-n...:
  - jordwest 10mo ago
    Don't get me wrong, I don't think humans are inherently evil. In fact in times of crisis (like the one you mention) we do tend to come together and I think that's evidence that the belief is incorrect. I just had a discussion the other day with somebody who outright told me that they think humans are inherently evil and must be managed under a system to keep in order. I don't think it's an uncommon belief and nor do I think it's a bleak world because that belief exists, it's just a mistaken belief. I would argue that you see the belief raise its head far more when people are interacting with others who they don't consider in their "in-group".

by blaze33 10mo ago

estearum 10mo 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 10mo ago
[flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
  > Ice agents are deporting people in the US that are here illegally. How would anybody know that if they aren't allowed hearings?
  - throwaway290 10mo ago
    I saw that comment before it was flagged and thanks to that I now have this argument that you supplied. if I arrived a couple minutes later I wouldn't know it. (I browsed logged out) I disagree with that guy but I don't know it should be flagged
    - mindslight 10mo ago
      The HN dead dynamic has been increasingly throwing babies out with the bathwater, and logging in (even to a throwaway account) with showdead=yes is the right call these days. But for this particular comment, I assume it was flagged because at this point continuing to cheerlead for the fascists/destructionists with nonsense talking points is just basic flamebait. As GP said, the assertion that only illegal immigrants are being harassed/abducted/disappeared is completely unfounded - the government is not operating with transparency to demonstrate this, nor accountability for the collateral harm that we do know they have caused.
      - throwaway290 10mo ago
        This is not basic flamebait. if you have any serious conversation outside of your political bubble this is THE argument that people who get deported are never US citizens. and it is a valid argument unless you can find examples of citizens deported. I can't there are so many shorts of right wing "influencers" cornering liberals who can't give a suitable reply to this question. so the argument about hearings is important. and killing this discussion took it away from public. this of course is very useful to the maga machine which is so friendly to big tech so I'm not surprised.
        10mo ago
slaugh 10mo ago
The hardcore supporters of the current U.S. administration (e.g. those that go to the rallies, give to the NRA, participate in some militant group), had been very distrustful of government in-general, and I suspect they still are. You may feel that you’re supporting some radical left-wing group you think is cool that just wants people to let everyone be free to think and act how they want, but privacy / hiding communication goes both ways. You may also be supporting terrorists that would rather be spitting on you and bombing your family and friends than reading your manifesto on the right to watch freaky crap.
- estearum 10mo ago
  What?
- tdeck 10mo ago
  > had been very distrustful of government in-general, and I suspect they still are. They were never really distrustful of the government. People who really don't trust the government want to downsize the parts that can kick down your door and point a gun at you. These people have demonstrated time and again that they want more of that, because they actually trust that institutions of state violence will be on their side and uphold their interests. Instead what they oppose are parts of the government they suspect are helping people and groups they dislike. This is what the American right reliably can't stand, for all the flavor of the month posturing they might engage in to keep things from getting stale.
  - mindslight 10mo ago
    It comes out in some pretty glaring self-contradictory ways, too. Big talk about the second amendment - personal freedom, from my cold dead hands, etc. Then Kenneth Walker straightforwardly exercises his second amendment right to lawful night time home defense, the government jackboot assailants murder Breonna Taylor in retaliation, and the supposed "freedom lovers" then chime in with support for the jackboots while twisting themselves in knots to justify how the victims of state violence deserved it. As long as I can remember, the Republican party has been full of hypocrisy and ignorant denial. But this sheer ability of Dear Leader's to make people dance to his tune of outright harming themselves has taken it to another level (I guess there is a reason why he was (is) a really successful con artist). At this point anybody earnestly caring about personal liberty should consider the whole Republican party a sick joke. We need some real opposition ("Libertarian" party isn't well poised for that either), and some real voting systems that break a duopoly (eg Ranked Pairs). But first we really just need to take our country back from these fascists who have completely lost the plot of American ideals.

ajb 10mo ago

It's older than 1832; for example: "He who trembles at this moment is guilty. For innocence never trembles before public vigilance." Maximilien Robespierre, July 26 (8 Thermidor), 1794 (translated - the original would be in French). When it is used by surveillance advocates, they don't use the exact words. Incidentally here is that quote, with Ian Richardson as Robespierre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOW6OfeOW10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOW6OfeOW10

blaze33 10mo ago
Ah nice to know! In my defense I only searched for the English version. That being said, Robespierre was a key participant of 'La Terreur' where tens of thousands of people where hastily judged and executed and he himself ended up executed 4 months after that speech. [1] [1] https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discours_lors_de_la_s%C3%A9ance_de_la_Convention_du_11_germinal_an_II https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discours_lors_de_la_s%C3%A9an... (French version)
- ajb 10mo ago
  Indeed. "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" has always contained implicit threat.

rightbyte 10mo ago

> "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. Also note how it is some sort of goal not a statement on not having something to hide. I guess in line with "may the one without sin throw the first stone".

fasbiner 10mo ago
I think you're being reductionist here.
- rightbyte 10mo ago
  Heh ... you. Is it reductionist to make something more specific and less general though?

jwitchel 10mo ago

AI slop for all its banality may give us enough noise in the signal to accomplish exactly what the author is asking for. As the dead web continues to emerge, content looks less like apples on a tree and more like sand on the beach. And the act of looking for a misshapen grain of sand becomes absurd.

DalekBaldwin 10mo ago

Right, I don't think I've ever actually seen anybody make the "nothing to hide" argument. Maybe it was used more commonly in the past, but I only ever see people pre-emptively attack it without prompting. It seems to be a special case of a straw-man argument: a no-man argument. It's not the only such example, but it seems to appear without fail in the top comments in any discussion of privacy issues.

grindermaster 10mo ago
People around me make the nothing to hide argument all the time
- simulator5g 10mo ago
  It’s the obvious response to what seems like paranoia to the uneducated.
jdpage 10mo ago
I have had many people use it when I try to either push for a private option ("please message me on Signal") or explain why I won't use a service.
LexiMax 10mo ago
I found somebody making this argument just the other day on Hacker News in regard to license plate tracking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46250556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46250556 > In practice I'm not even getting "tracked". No one is likely to be looking up my license plate and looking at my movements, because I don't do anything that would warrant that kind of attention

jordwest 10mo ago

> - this argument may well be stuck in the collective unconscious of lots of people (albeit in the religious context) Another example of such a belief is that "humans are inherently evil" which seems to have been planted in Western society by the concept of original sin. Interestingly the idea that sin was about our inherent badness didn't really arise until the struggle against Gnosticism [1] hundreds of years after Jesus died. Now the belief is pervasive in secular society thanks to stories like "Lord of the Flies". It's fascinating how even though we can call ourselves non religious we can still carry these beliefs around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin

defrost 10mo ago
Cheer up. If you're still in Sydney I'd argue that large numbers of people paddled out off of Bondi Beach because of a pervasive Australian belief that there's always a few arseholes but most people are fundamentally good and community support is better than nothing. You likely saw a couple of extremists repeatedly tackled and then dropped by the public and police, and near real time running in to help victims. That's somewhat contra to the bleak of "humans are inherently evil". Maybe the message of Lord of the Flies was that nuclear weapons and the Cold War depressed at least one author and that boys need mentors. Maybe it's an issue in general with the On the Beach genre, from Shute to Winton: https://theshovel.com.au/2025/08/20/tim-winton-wonders-why-nobody-at-book-week-is-dressed-as-a-youngster-living-in-an-isolated-coastal-town-struggling-to-find-their-identity/ https://theshovel.com.au/2025/08/20/tim-winton-wonders-why-n...:
- jordwest 10mo ago
  Don't get me wrong, I don't think humans are inherently evil. In fact in times of crisis (like the one you mention) we do tend to come together and I think that's evidence that the belief is incorrect. I just had a discussion the other day with somebody who outright told me that they think humans are inherently evil and must be managed under a system to keep in order. I don't think it's an uncommon belief and nor do I think it's a bleak world because that belief exists, it's just a mistaken belief. I would argue that you see the belief raise its head far more when people are interacting with others who they don't consider in their "in-group".