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Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about', but my line of thi

Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about', but my line of thinking is not 'do i trust the government' it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data' Given how fast and lose I've seen the DODGE folks play with the data they have, absolutely not. I still shudder over the fact that my OPM data was hacked years ago

alpple 7mo ago
if you're not doing anything wrong, a government that is doing something wrong may not like it
- EGreg 7mo ago
  This, exactly. And governments are always doing something wrong...
dylan604 7mo ago
DOGE != DODGE They may have dodged, ducked, dodged the rules while they DOGE'd their way through the government, but not sure if they used RAM trucks while they did it
briffle 7mo ago
I have seen what happens with garbage-in/garbage-out in databases, so this kind of stuff terrifies me. I often think of a case where we had a person listed twice in our database, with same address, birthday, etc, only thing different was gender, and last 2 digits of SSN were transposed.. After we 'fixed' the issue a few times, they BOTH showed up to our office. Both Named Leslie, born on same day, a few small towns apart, same last name and home phone since they had been married. Back then, SSN were handed out by region sequentially, so one had the last two digits 12 and the other 21.
- quesera 7mo ago
  That's funny as a human, amazing as a developer, and terrifying as a data processor. All at the same time. I'll bet that pair has stories to tell.
  - Ancapistani 7mo ago
    I'm a man in my 40s. My eldest daughter is 17. We have the same first name (spelled differently, at least) and have had many cases where medical records have gotten confused. We always double-check dosages for medications before taking them.
    - dboreham 7mo ago
      Wait until you live in the same zip code with another person that has the same first name, last name and date of birth!
      - projektfu 7mo ago
        This was a story I found amusing when I read it: "Letter from Chicago. Confusion oriented medical records." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1605484/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1605484/
      - Intermernet 7mo ago
        When I was 18 I got called up for jury duty along with someone with the same name and age. It was confusing. They started referring to us by the suburb we lived in. Luckily both of us got passed over.
  - briffle 7mo ago
    They both showed up in person, because that was NOT the first time that had happened.
- cestith 7mo ago
  My uncle married a woman with the same first and middle name as one of his sisters. My new aunt chose to use her husband’s name as her married name, without hyphenation or anything. His sister, my aunt, never married. One was an RN and the other is an LPN. They were born in different years. Their SSNs were not close. For one of them the name was her maiden name. For the other, a married name. They went to different colleges and had different credentials. They did live in the same town. When my aunt died, all the credit companies and collections companies tried one of two recovery tactics. Some tried to make her brother pay the debts as her surviving spouse. The others tried to assert that the debts were incurred by his wife and that the mismatch of other data in their own databases was evidence of fraud.
quickthrowman 7mo ago
> but my line of thinking is not 'do i trust the government' it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data' This is how I view privacy as well. You never know who will be in power and who will access that information in the future with ill intent. This line of thinking kept me away from the Mpls ICE protests. All of the people that protested had their face, phone, and license plate recorded and documented. I’m not even afraid of being persecuted by the current administration, it’s the possibility of a much worse administration in the future that gave me pause.
- EGreg 7mo ago
  Not even future governments. There's also this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/salt-typhoon-hack-shows-theres-no-security-backdoor-thats-only-good-guys https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/salt-typhoon-hack-show...
- CamperBob2 7mo ago
  I’m not even afraid of being persecuted by the current administration, it’s the possibility of a much worse administration in the future that gave me pause. Unfortunately, your (entirely understandable) position is exactly what will enable such an administration to come to power. What you are doing in 2026 is what you would have done in 1936.
  - deleted 7mo ago
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  - deleted 7mo ago
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- hollywood_court 7mo ago
  This is why I deleted all of my social media when it began to look like Trump was going to win his second term. I had already suffered enough harassment and death threats from the Nextdoor app and a bit of the same from Facebook. I know I'm already on some GOP list somewhere, but I figured I'd do whatever I could do to protect myself and my family from the local MAGAs in my area.
kasey_junk 7mo ago
Does anyone ever actually use that line? Most people will argue that the trade off in privacy is worth it for security. That is, if you frame your argument such that you believe people don’t understand the trade off it allows you to not engage with the fact they just disagree with your conclusion.
- fragmede 7mo ago
  The mistake would be reading Hacker News and walking away with the conclusion that because people don't post that reasoning here that it doesn't exist (and even then, you do find that does come up here on occasion). People with "nothing to hide" do actually believe that, and while they may not post it to HN for vigorous debate. The easy counterexample from history is the list of Jews kept by the Netherlands which was later used against them after they were conquered by Nazi Germany, but you'd have to interested in history to buy that reason. Some people simply shrug at the "if you don't have anything to hide then you won't mind me filming your bedroom" scenario as you being the creep in the equation. Some people just don't want the trouble and are fine with being surveiled because the powers that be are doing it.
  - smcin 7mo ago
    To correct the mangling of history, there was no "list of Jews kept by the Netherlands [pre-occupation]". There were only pre-existing Dutch population registries of all people, where the personal details collected by the Dutch had included religion, not for any ill purpose. (The Nazis subsequently compiled a list, post-occupation, but that's not what you asserted.)
    - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
      So, the Netherlands kept a list of everyone, and they specifically marked out all the Jews, but that doesn't constitute keeping a list of Jews?
      - magicalhippo 7mo ago
tomwheeler 7mo ago
> it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data' And even this assumes that the government can and will protect the data from the various bad actors who want it, something they have absolutely failed to do on multiple occasions.
- rurban 7mo ago
  You forgot that your government is the bad actor. For them the laws do not apply
CamperBob2 7mo ago
Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about' The people who say "I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide" simply don't understand that it's not their call.
themafia 7mo ago
"If you have money in your pocket you always have something to worry about."
capricio_one 7mo ago
[flagged]
the_af 7mo ago
> Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about' The right way to reply to that is: not everything that's legal must be public. You probably don't want the rest of the world to see you poop, or pick your nose, or listen to every word you say. Almost everyone has things they'd be embarrassed to disclose to other people. And this can be weaponized against you should any rival gain access to it.
AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
> Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about', "Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden
- pardon_me 7mo ago
  Locks on bathroom doors are for privacy, not security.
  - classified 7mo ago
    Meaning what?
    - harry8 7mo ago
      The misguided who say they don’t need privacy suddenly have a dense memory of the thousands of times they’ve turned the lock on a bathroom door and consider the idea of deficating in full view as an alternative. The meaning is to highlight the incredible silliness of the “nothing to hide” skawkers who sound like so many Soviet propagandists.
      - fsflover 7mo ago
        This is completely missing the point of why one needs privacy. Lack of it harms journalism and activism, making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy, it will be much easier to target them. Everyone should have privacy to protect them. Thus is what Snowden probably meant, not bathrooms.
        harry8 7mo ago
        If you think the benefit of privacy to society and individuals is limited to activists, jounrnalists and providing them cover you might have missed the point yourself. The sheer number of distinct benefits flowing from privacy make the "nothing to hide" argument utterly absurd to anyone capable of thought.
jasomill 7mo ago
I'd go further and say that checks on police and intelligence agencies exist to protect both the innocent and the guilty from abuse of power. If I'm doing something wrong, the onus is on the government to prove this within the rules established to prevent such abuse (and on the people, their elected representatives, and the judiciary to ensure these rules are sufficient to accommodate the interests of all parties involved).
- halJordan 7mo ago
  So, in theory, you do agree with the current fisa setup and were just haggling over details.
kjs3 7mo ago
It's not "if you're not doing anything wrong" you need to worry about, it's "what will they make wrong down the road to trip me up" you need to consider.
hedora 7mo ago
"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."
roenxi 7mo ago
And if we're talking about 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about' - the other irony is they probably are doing something wrong. There are a lot of rules out there. The only reason it isn't being bought up in the conversation is because the person has a certain level of privacy. One of the interesting things the Epstein drama has kicked up is legal or not, the powerful get up to some wild things at parties. And in their business dealings just based on the background number of scandals. If there is an organised group of people allowed to look there is just endless blackmail material which is going to get used, just like LOVEINT.
PetriCasserole 7mo ago
People who are paying attention see that the government is changing rules daily. Feel safe today? Wait until tomorrow when Trump decides he wants to do something that you're in the way of.
tim333 7mo ago
As someone not very worried about privacy I don't use that line but think it's worth while using some reasoning as to the likelihood of bad stuff happening. Cambodia 1975 - terrible data but chances of genocide very high. Google knowing what I'm up to now, very likely but probable harm beyond seeing an ad, very low. I think sometimes people worry about the wrong things on that kind of basis. Re the current US government I'd be more worried about their cruelty as illustrated by ICE, DOGE etc.
anonzzzies 7mo ago
But with ICE arrests of people who did their best to make that craphole their home that line of thought must be wearing thin yeah? Nice for making a lot of money faster than mostly (china can be faster but chinese know they have to leave asap after they did instead of be proud to sit in it) anywhere else but outside that? (I am from the EU, lived in US and China and am rich because of both, would not live in either ever again)

alpple 7mo ago

if you're not doing anything wrong, a government that is doing something wrong may not like it

EGreg 7mo ago
This, exactly. And governments are always doing something wrong...

dylan604 7mo ago

DOGE != DODGE They may have dodged, ducked, dodged the rules while they DOGE'd their way through the government, but not sure if they used RAM trucks while they did it

briffle 7mo ago

I have seen what happens with garbage-in/garbage-out in databases, so this kind of stuff terrifies me. I often think of a case where we had a person listed twice in our database, with same address, birthday, etc, only thing different was gender, and last 2 digits of SSN were transposed.. After we 'fixed' the issue a few times, they BOTH showed up to our office. Both Named Leslie, born on same day, a few small towns apart, same last name and home phone since they had been married. Back then, SSN were handed out by region sequentially, so one had the last two digits 12 and the other 21.

quesera 7mo ago
That's funny as a human, amazing as a developer, and terrifying as a data processor. All at the same time. I'll bet that pair has stories to tell.
- Ancapistani 7mo ago
  I'm a man in my 40s. My eldest daughter is 17. We have the same first name (spelled differently, at least) and have had many cases where medical records have gotten confused. We always double-check dosages for medications before taking them.
  - dboreham 7mo ago
    Wait until you live in the same zip code with another person that has the same first name, last name and date of birth!
    - projektfu 7mo ago
      This was a story I found amusing when I read it: "Letter from Chicago. Confusion oriented medical records." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1605484/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1605484/
    - Intermernet 7mo ago
      When I was 18 I got called up for jury duty along with someone with the same name and age. It was confusing. They started referring to us by the suburb we lived in. Luckily both of us got passed over.
- briffle 7mo ago
  They both showed up in person, because that was NOT the first time that had happened.
cestith 7mo ago
My uncle married a woman with the same first and middle name as one of his sisters. My new aunt chose to use her husband’s name as her married name, without hyphenation or anything. His sister, my aunt, never married. One was an RN and the other is an LPN. They were born in different years. Their SSNs were not close. For one of them the name was her maiden name. For the other, a married name. They went to different colleges and had different credentials. They did live in the same town. When my aunt died, all the credit companies and collections companies tried one of two recovery tactics. Some tried to make her brother pay the debts as her surviving spouse. The others tried to assert that the debts were incurred by his wife and that the mismatch of other data in their own databases was evidence of fraud.

quickthrowman 7mo ago

> but my line of thinking is not 'do i trust the government' it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data' This is how I view privacy as well. You never know who will be in power and who will access that information in the future with ill intent. This line of thinking kept me away from the Mpls ICE protests. All of the people that protested had their face, phone, and license plate recorded and documented. I’m not even afraid of being persecuted by the current administration, it’s the possibility of a much worse administration in the future that gave me pause.

EGreg 7mo ago
Not even future governments. There's also this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/salt-typhoon-hack-shows-theres-no-security-backdoor-thats-only-good-guys https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/salt-typhoon-hack-show...
CamperBob2 7mo ago
I’m not even afraid of being persecuted by the current administration, it’s the possibility of a much worse administration in the future that gave me pause. Unfortunately, your (entirely understandable) position is exactly what will enable such an administration to come to power. What you are doing in 2026 is what you would have done in 1936.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
hollywood_court 7mo ago
This is why I deleted all of my social media when it began to look like Trump was going to win his second term. I had already suffered enough harassment and death threats from the Nextdoor app and a bit of the same from Facebook. I know I'm already on some GOP list somewhere, but I figured I'd do whatever I could do to protect myself and my family from the local MAGAs in my area.

kasey_junk 7mo ago

Does anyone ever actually use that line? Most people will argue that the trade off in privacy is worth it for security. That is, if you frame your argument such that you believe people don’t understand the trade off it allows you to not engage with the fact they just disagree with your conclusion.

fragmede 7mo ago
The mistake would be reading Hacker News and walking away with the conclusion that because people don't post that reasoning here that it doesn't exist (and even then, you do find that does come up here on occasion). People with "nothing to hide" do actually believe that, and while they may not post it to HN for vigorous debate. The easy counterexample from history is the list of Jews kept by the Netherlands which was later used against them after they were conquered by Nazi Germany, but you'd have to interested in history to buy that reason. Some people simply shrug at the "if you don't have anything to hide then you won't mind me filming your bedroom" scenario as you being the creep in the equation. Some people just don't want the trouble and are fine with being surveiled because the powers that be are doing it.
- smcin 7mo ago
  To correct the mangling of history, there was no "list of Jews kept by the Netherlands [pre-occupation]". There were only pre-existing Dutch population registries of all people, where the personal details collected by the Dutch had included religion, not for any ill purpose. (The Nazis subsequently compiled a list, post-occupation, but that's not what you asserted.)
  - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
    So, the Netherlands kept a list of everyone, and they specifically marked out all the Jews, but that doesn't constitute keeping a list of Jews?
    - magicalhippo 7mo ago

tomwheeler 7mo ago

> it's 'do I have faith in all future forms of government who will have access to this data' And even this assumes that the government can and will protect the data from the various bad actors who want it, something they have absolutely failed to do on multiple occasions.

rurban 7mo ago
You forgot that your government is the bad actor. For them the laws do not apply

CamperBob2 7mo ago

Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about' The people who say "I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide" simply don't understand that it's not their call.

themafia 7mo ago

"If you have money in your pocket you always have something to worry about."

capricio_one 7mo ago

[flagged]

the_af 7mo ago

> Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about' The right way to reply to that is: not everything that's legal must be public. You probably don't want the rest of the world to see you poop, or pick your nose, or listen to every word you say. Almost everyone has things they'd be embarrassed to disclose to other people. And this can be weaponized against you should any rival gain access to it.

AnthonyMouse 7mo ago

> Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about', "Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden

pardon_me 7mo ago
Locks on bathroom doors are for privacy, not security.
- classified 7mo ago
  Meaning what?
  - harry8 7mo ago
    The misguided who say they don’t need privacy suddenly have a dense memory of the thousands of times they’ve turned the lock on a bathroom door and consider the idea of deficating in full view as an alternative. The meaning is to highlight the incredible silliness of the “nothing to hide” skawkers who sound like so many Soviet propagandists.
    - fsflover 7mo ago
      This is completely missing the point of why one needs privacy. Lack of it harms journalism and activism, making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy, it will be much easier to target them. Everyone should have privacy to protect them. Thus is what Snowden probably meant, not bathrooms.
      - harry8 7mo ago
        If you think the benefit of privacy to society and individuals is limited to activists, jounrnalists and providing them cover you might have missed the point yourself. The sheer number of distinct benefits flowing from privacy make the "nothing to hide" argument utterly absurd to anyone capable of thought.

jasomill 7mo ago

I'd go further and say that checks on police and intelligence agencies exist to protect both the innocent and the guilty from abuse of power. If I'm doing something wrong, the onus is on the government to prove this within the rules established to prevent such abuse (and on the people, their elected representatives, and the judiciary to ensure these rules are sufficient to accommodate the interests of all parties involved).

halJordan 7mo ago
So, in theory, you do agree with the current fisa setup and were just haggling over details.

kjs3 7mo ago

It's not "if you're not doing anything wrong" you need to worry about, it's "what will they make wrong down the road to trip me up" you need to consider.

hedora 7mo ago

"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."

roenxi 7mo ago

And if we're talking about 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about' - the other irony is they probably are doing something wrong. There are a lot of rules out there. The only reason it isn't being bought up in the conversation is because the person has a certain level of privacy. One of the interesting things the Epstein drama has kicked up is legal or not, the powerful get up to some wild things at parties. And in their business dealings just based on the background number of scandals. If there is an organised group of people allowed to look there is just endless blackmail material which is going to get used, just like LOVEINT.

PetriCasserole 7mo ago

People who are paying attention see that the government is changing rules daily. Feel safe today? Wait until tomorrow when Trump decides he wants to do something that you're in the way of.

tim333 7mo ago

As someone not very worried about privacy I don't use that line but think it's worth while using some reasoning as to the likelihood of bad stuff happening. Cambodia 1975 - terrible data but chances of genocide very high. Google knowing what I'm up to now, very likely but probable harm beyond seeing an ad, very low. I think sometimes people worry about the wrong things on that kind of basis. Re the current US government I'd be more worried about their cruelty as illustrated by ICE, DOGE etc.

anonzzzies 7mo ago

But with ICE arrests of people who did their best to make that craphole their home that line of thought must be wearing thin yeah? Nice for making a lot of money faster than mostly (china can be faster but chinese know they have to leave asap after they did instead of be proud to sit in it) anywhere else but outside that? (I am from the EU, lived in US and China and am rich because of both, would not live in either ever again)