

‘I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ - Misunderstandings of Privacy [PDF 2008] - panarky
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1098449_code249137.pdf?abstractid=998565&mirid=5

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cduan
I've always thought that the best response to "Privacy is less important
because I've got nothing to hide" is what I call the "privacy lets you pick
your nose" argument. There are plenty of things that we like to do in private,
that are not illegal, but which, if revealed publicly, would cause substantial
embarrassment. For example, picking your nose, watching porn, lip-syncing to
cheesy music in the bathtub.

All of these things create individual pleasure, and thus overall societal
utility and value. (That is, they make people happy.) To effectively deny
people these individual pleasures by forcing them out into the open would be
to reduce overall societal utility. Thus, privacy benefits society by enabling
people to engage in legal, but potentially embarrassing, behavior.

(I happen to like Dan Solove's work a lot, and I think he is ultimately coming
to the same conclusion as me, but his argument seems to rely on accepting his
definition of privacy, while I think that the above argument simply attacks
the "I've got nothing to hide" argument head on.)

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Skalman
I don't get that impression at all, after having read his essay (which I find
very insightful indeed). What you're saying is only part of the reasons;
privacy is not only about embarrassing things.

 _The people monitoring need to be accountable_ (that's what warrants are for)

\- What does the process look like today?

\- How long is data kept? (can we trust future use?)

 _We need to be able to control our information and trust those in which we
confide_

\- If we expect companies not to give our information away, and they do, we'll
loose trust in that company. It becomes a structural problem if we cannot
trust any company.

\- If that company gives the information away, we don't know how it is used
any more.

There are probably a few more things that I missed, but from now on I'll have
a much more open view on privacy.

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tgrisfal
You'd think that "the internet is forever" and "machine learning exists" would
be sufficient to make people much more interested in safeguarding their
privacy.

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bumbledraven
Agreed. It won't be long before Google can link up any writing you've done
under your real name with all the things you thought you posted anonymously. A
writer's <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writeprint> is hard to disguise without
ruining the message.

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wrrice
Google Docs preview -
[http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdl.dropbox.co...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdl.dropbox.com%2Fu%2F570404%2FSSRN-
id998565.pdf)

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RockyMcNuts
If you've got nothing to hide, maybe you need to get a life.

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maeon3
Many species in the animal kingdom camouflage themselves, so they won't be
eaten by predators. I wonder if you could convince one of these animals to
stop camouflaging themselves with an argument that the predators won't hurt
you so long as you stop doing anything that might attract the predator.

~~~
stretchwithme
When I first read your comment, I was thinking "Man, that ain't even the same
thing."

But then it hit me that this is exactly the case socially. As Congressman
Weiner is finding out, the predators will use what you reveal to feed on you.

We do need to feel free to take care of personal business without the overhead
of always trying to guess what others will do with the info.

