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(I don't know enough French to discuss this matter, let's stick to English) All the people I have met who resort to the "nothing to hide" paradigm were older t

(I don't know enough French to discuss this matter, let's stick to English) All the people I have met who resort to the "nothing to hide" paradigm were older than 65.these people don't have Facebook or smartphones, and they don't realize that their cars, insurance records and financial transactions are all being tracked. They do not understand the sensitivity of meta data or social graphs, nor do they care. They have their life in order, and surveillance doesn't take anything away from them. The fear of terrorism is a lot more substantial at their points in life. I don't know about discourse in France - I can imagine that hell just broke loose after the recent attacks. Here in Germany, it's very much a generation problem. Those who care about civil rights and an active democracy are young, and young educated people are a minority. Old people are heavily catered to by the governing parties, and they all seem to love surveillance, most being lucky enough to never have experienced the downsides. This fight feels a lot like the gay rights movement. Preconceptions are impossible to overcome, all you can do is wait for twenty years until you have a sizeable part of the population behind you, and then start an uproar. In the meantime, it doesn't help to, say, explain how small the aids propagation rate is. Nobody cares.

pjc50 12y ago
most being lucky enough to never have experienced the downsides In Germany, or just in West Germany? Have people forgotten the Stasi already?
- thissideup 12y ago
  Yes. We are two generations out. The memory is long gone.
  - thissideup 12y ago
    As a worthy aside, Kundera described totalitarianism as the process of depriving people of memory to transform them into children.
robmcm 12y ago
I often wonder what my generation won't care about in 35 years that the younger population see as outrageous. My most obvious guess is more rights to non humans, AI/Animals/Environment etc.
- undersuit 12y ago
  Meats seem to be on the chopping block.
js-coder 12y ago
I'm German and I'd argue the complete opposite way. Older people here are totally more privacy aware than young people / my generation that haven't witnessed the Stasi.
- _jomo 12y ago
  I'm a software developer in training from west Germany. We discussed this "nothing to hide" topic in our class (ages about 17 - 30) and about half of them didn't care or even appreciated surveillance.
- gambiting 12y ago
  I'm from Poland, living in UK. In Poland, older people value privacy a lot, because they remember communism, secret police and censorship, while young people don't care as much. In UK, I've heard multiple times from older people that they don't care about privacy and that they trust the government 100%, while young people are more privacy conscious.
- HCIdivision17 12y ago
  I wonder if you and hengheng are on opposite sides of the country? My favorite physicist I've worked with had a fascinating viewpoint on how his life changed when the wall fell.
fit2rule 12y ago
Own and run a business that competes with an American/British/Canadian/Australian/Kiwi business? You have something to hide. Got a strong viewpoint about a religion you don't like? You have something to hide. Like to travel around the world and see new places, do new things? You have something to hide. People need to understand the use-case for pervasive surveillance is not stopping terrorism. Its controlling civilization ..
kbart 12y ago
That depends on geographical and historical context. In my country (ex-Soviet Union), the opposite is true. Older people, who have experienced what totalitarianism and mass surveillance is (thanks to KGB), are very pro-privacy. My grandmother still tears up every single letter to the small pieces before dumping it, even though that's a casual utility bill. On the other hand, youth, that are used to share all their life details on Facebook, Twitter and whatnot, are mostly of "I have nothing to hide" attitude. Only minority of young people (usually more technically literate) understand how important privacy is and how powerful information can be. EDIT: grammar.
jpfr 12y ago
Hell did not break loose in France after Charlie Hebdo. They had huge rallies in support of freedom of speech. And they were joined by all religions and political factions. All in all, democracy and societal harmony prevailed. By the way, you are German and think the older generation has no problem with surveillance? What about the experiences made in Eastern Germany? 1989 is not far into the past, you know.
- conradfr 12y ago
  Ah, free speech in France. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/world/europe/amedy-coulibaly-paris-gunman-france.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/world/europe/amedy-couliba... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-23/industrial-espionage-seahawks-intellectual-property http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-23/industrial... http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/01/29/world/europe/ap-eu-france-defending-terrorism.html http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/01/29/world/europe/ap-e...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- fit2rule 12y ago
  Alas, old western Germans are not as sensitive to the Stasi in this day and age as their counterparts in the East may appear to be - although Germany likes to think of itself an open culture, there is much that is still very insular about the German body politic. And then there's the fact that the German people have been living in a society dominated by a non-sovereign intelligence agency since the end of WW2, a fact which won't change any time soon. The USA actually runs German intelligence agencies; if anything, Germany is the testing ground for new forms of societal control that the American TLA's can implement in their own realm. Slowly, over a period of time unnoticeable by the average bourgeoisie...
- guyzmo 12y ago
  sadly enough, my own mother is facebook addict, sharing everything personal on iCloud, gmail or Facebook. When I warn her about that she even gave the "got nothing to hide" argument, with the "if they got money/time to loose on me sharing pics of my cats, good for them!"... whereas she fled away from the Romanian/soviet dictatorship of Ceaușescu, having the Securitate secret police torture and deport parents and friends. And though not that far, she's under that "65 y/o". But I won't give up repeating that argument that all that is wrong!
LLWM 12y ago
What makes you think the youth will be on your side? This generation is growing up with twitter and facebook as facts of life.
- Udo 12y ago
  Somewhat paradoxically, I don't believe the use of social networks is an indicator that a person doesn't care about privacy. Mostly, they want to communicate with their friends but still keep others out, such as parents and authorities. I have seen this point being made several times now, that we simply don't deserve privacy or freedom from surveillance because we're using social media. In my opinion, this is wrong. Just because the data is technically available doesn't mean we're implicitly OK with large organizations gathering it all in one place in order to use it against us.
  - LLWM 12y ago
    That's not my point at all. Unlike you, I don't presume to predict the behavior of people I don't understand so confidently. I never said that they don't care about privacy. I suspect all humans care. I just expect them to have a different interpretation of it than you do, and I think it's quite arrogant of you to assume that they will naturally agree with you when their backgrounds are so different from yours. Everyone who is convinced in the rightness of their own views believes "time is on my side", but at least one side is always wrong to do so.
    - Udo 12y ago
      > That's not my point at all. It feels really weird to tell you this, but I do believe that was indeed your point. The original statement was "Those who care about civil rights and an active democracy are young" to which you replied "What makes you think the youth will be on your side? This generation is growing up with twitter and facebook as facts of life." to which I replied "I don't believe the use of social networks is an indicator that a person doesn't care about privacy." to which you replied with a stream of insults. I admit I do have trouble seeing where you're coming from. If I misunderstood you in any way, I apologize.
miguelrochefort 12y ago
I'm in the "nothing to hide" camp, and I'm not even 25. Unlike many, I don't see lack of privacy as a compromise, nor do I see it as a security feature (i.e., against terrorism). Unlike many, I do understand the sensitivity of meta data and social graphs, and I deeply care about it. It is obvious to me that transparency has all the benefits over privacy. It's a simpler way to think about and understand the world, it's easier to implement and maintain, and it's much more efficient. Transparency is the way it should be. Privacy is just a band-aid, a patch, a set of arbitrary workarounds that in no way fights the underlying problems, if any there are. If anything, privacy only contributes to the increasing reliance on privacy that's expected of us. By keeping information secret, you encourage others to think it should be, and some people eventually are lead to believe that some things should inherently be secretive, without understanding why that is. Do you really want to live in a world where you must constantly worry about your every steps, your every words, your every interactions? Do you believe it is sustainable to build systems that are 100 times more complex and inefficient as they should be just because you want to remain anonymous? Do you embrace the fact that people who are better manipulators/liers will always have an edge in a society that encourages privacy, since they can control what they decide to show the world? Do you realize that a system that's based on the assumption that secrets are kept secrets is much more fragile than one that's not, as secrets are becoming increasingly more difficult to keep? Do you not realize how much value and opportunities we miss now that people were tricked into believing that privacy is necessary? Bitcoin, Google Glass, geo-tracking anything, health record analysis, etc. I don't want to hide anymore. I don't want to compete with liers, or be tricked by them. I don't want to password-protect all the things. I don't want to browse behind 7 proxies. I don't want to be explicit about everything that could be implicitly inferred through tracking. I don't want to keep secrets anymore. Fortunately, I soon won't have to. Transparency will thrive, and privacy will die. My only worry is, how far and deep will people like you go into making society rely on and expect privacy. The deeper you go, the more brutal the transition will be the day the choice is no longer yours.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Assuming that transparency will end lies and manipulations is just fanciful. That said, I don't expect our privacy will last, either. Like you said, efficiency - the current economic fetish - will be used as an excuse to kill it soon enough. For some, that is. Like free markets, transparency will be forced on the poor and avoided by the rich, eliminating most of the potential benefits it could have brought.

pjc50 12y ago

most being lucky enough to never have experienced the downsides In Germany, or just in West Germany? Have people forgotten the Stasi already?

thissideup 12y ago
Yes. We are two generations out. The memory is long gone.
- thissideup 12y ago
  As a worthy aside, Kundera described totalitarianism as the process of depriving people of memory to transform them into children.

robmcm 12y ago

I often wonder what my generation won't care about in 35 years that the younger population see as outrageous. My most obvious guess is more rights to non humans, AI/Animals/Environment etc.

undersuit 12y ago
Meats seem to be on the chopping block.

js-coder 12y ago

I'm German and I'd argue the complete opposite way. Older people here are totally more privacy aware than young people / my generation that haven't witnessed the Stasi.

_jomo 12y ago
I'm a software developer in training from west Germany. We discussed this "nothing to hide" topic in our class (ages about 17 - 30) and about half of them didn't care or even appreciated surveillance.
gambiting 12y ago
I'm from Poland, living in UK. In Poland, older people value privacy a lot, because they remember communism, secret police and censorship, while young people don't care as much. In UK, I've heard multiple times from older people that they don't care about privacy and that they trust the government 100%, while young people are more privacy conscious.
HCIdivision17 12y ago
I wonder if you and hengheng are on opposite sides of the country? My favorite physicist I've worked with had a fascinating viewpoint on how his life changed when the wall fell.

fit2rule 12y ago

Own and run a business that competes with an American/British/Canadian/Australian/Kiwi business? You have something to hide. Got a strong viewpoint about a religion you don't like? You have something to hide. Like to travel around the world and see new places, do new things? You have something to hide. People need to understand the use-case for pervasive surveillance is not stopping terrorism. Its controlling civilization ..

kbart 12y ago

That depends on geographical and historical context. In my country (ex-Soviet Union), the opposite is true. Older people, who have experienced what totalitarianism and mass surveillance is (thanks to KGB), are very pro-privacy. My grandmother still tears up every single letter to the small pieces before dumping it, even though that's a casual utility bill. On the other hand, youth, that are used to share all their life details on Facebook, Twitter and whatnot, are mostly of "I have nothing to hide" attitude. Only minority of young people (usually more technically literate) understand how important privacy is and how powerful information can be. EDIT: grammar.

jpfr 12y ago

Hell did not break loose in France after Charlie Hebdo. They had huge rallies in support of freedom of speech. And they were joined by all religions and political factions. All in all, democracy and societal harmony prevailed. By the way, you are German and think the older generation has no problem with surveillance? What about the experiences made in Eastern Germany? 1989 is not far into the past, you know.

conradfr 12y ago
Ah, free speech in France. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/world/europe/amedy-coulibaly-paris-gunman-france.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/world/europe/amedy-couliba... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-23/industrial-espionage-seahawks-intellectual-property http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-23/industrial... http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/01/29/world/europe/ap-eu-france-defending-terrorism.html http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/01/29/world/europe/ap-e...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
fit2rule 12y ago
Alas, old western Germans are not as sensitive to the Stasi in this day and age as their counterparts in the East may appear to be - although Germany likes to think of itself an open culture, there is much that is still very insular about the German body politic. And then there's the fact that the German people have been living in a society dominated by a non-sovereign intelligence agency since the end of WW2, a fact which won't change any time soon. The USA actually runs German intelligence agencies; if anything, Germany is the testing ground for new forms of societal control that the American TLA's can implement in their own realm. Slowly, over a period of time unnoticeable by the average bourgeoisie...
guyzmo 12y ago
sadly enough, my own mother is facebook addict, sharing everything personal on iCloud, gmail or Facebook. When I warn her about that she even gave the "got nothing to hide" argument, with the "if they got money/time to loose on me sharing pics of my cats, good for them!"... whereas she fled away from the Romanian/soviet dictatorship of Ceaușescu, having the Securitate secret police torture and deport parents and friends. And though not that far, she's under that "65 y/o". But I won't give up repeating that argument that all that is wrong!

LLWM 12y ago

What makes you think the youth will be on your side? This generation is growing up with twitter and facebook as facts of life.

Udo 12y ago
Somewhat paradoxically, I don't believe the use of social networks is an indicator that a person doesn't care about privacy. Mostly, they want to communicate with their friends but still keep others out, such as parents and authorities. I have seen this point being made several times now, that we simply don't deserve privacy or freedom from surveillance because we're using social media. In my opinion, this is wrong. Just because the data is technically available doesn't mean we're implicitly OK with large organizations gathering it all in one place in order to use it against us.
- LLWM 12y ago
  That's not my point at all. Unlike you, I don't presume to predict the behavior of people I don't understand so confidently. I never said that they don't care about privacy. I suspect all humans care. I just expect them to have a different interpretation of it than you do, and I think it's quite arrogant of you to assume that they will naturally agree with you when their backgrounds are so different from yours. Everyone who is convinced in the rightness of their own views believes "time is on my side", but at least one side is always wrong to do so.
  - Udo 12y ago
    > That's not my point at all. It feels really weird to tell you this, but I do believe that was indeed your point. The original statement was "Those who care about civil rights and an active democracy are young" to which you replied "What makes you think the youth will be on your side? This generation is growing up with twitter and facebook as facts of life." to which I replied "I don't believe the use of social networks is an indicator that a person doesn't care about privacy." to which you replied with a stream of insults. I admit I do have trouble seeing where you're coming from. If I misunderstood you in any way, I apologize.

miguelrochefort 12y ago

I'm in the "nothing to hide" camp, and I'm not even 25. Unlike many, I don't see lack of privacy as a compromise, nor do I see it as a security feature (i.e., against terrorism). Unlike many, I do understand the sensitivity of meta data and social graphs, and I deeply care about it. It is obvious to me that transparency has all the benefits over privacy. It's a simpler way to think about and understand the world, it's easier to implement and maintain, and it's much more efficient. Transparency is the way it should be. Privacy is just a band-aid, a patch, a set of arbitrary workarounds that in no way fights the underlying problems, if any there are. If anything, privacy only contributes to the increasing reliance on privacy that's expected of us. By keeping information secret, you encourage others to think it should be, and some people eventually are lead to believe that some things should inherently be secretive, without understanding why that is. Do you really want to live in a world where you must constantly worry about your every steps, your every words, your every interactions? Do you believe it is sustainable to build systems that are 100 times more complex and inefficient as they should be just because you want to remain anonymous? Do you embrace the fact that people who are better manipulators/liers will always have an edge in a society that encourages privacy, since they can control what they decide to show the world? Do you realize that a system that's based on the assumption that secrets are kept secrets is much more fragile than one that's not, as secrets are becoming increasingly more difficult to keep? Do you not realize how much value and opportunities we miss now that people were tricked into believing that privacy is necessary? Bitcoin, Google Glass, geo-tracking anything, health record analysis, etc. I don't want to hide anymore. I don't want to compete with liers, or be tricked by them. I don't want to password-protect all the things. I don't want to browse behind 7 proxies. I don't want to be explicit about everything that could be implicitly inferred through tracking. I don't want to keep secrets anymore. Fortunately, I soon won't have to. Transparency will thrive, and privacy will die. My only worry is, how far and deep will people like you go into making society rely on and expect privacy. The deeper you go, the more brutal the transition will be the day the choice is no longer yours.

icebraining 12y ago
Assuming that transparency will end lies and manipulations is just fanciful. That said, I don't expect our privacy will last, either. Like you said, efficiency - the current economic fetish - will be used as an excuse to kill it soon enough. For some, that is. Like free markets, transparency will be forced on the poor and avoided by the rich, eliminating most of the potential benefits it could have brought.