
'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy (2007) - freddyym
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565&
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dang
Discussed 6 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21416115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21416115)

(The cutoff for reposts is a year or so:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html))

Also, a thread from 2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5899784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5899784)

and from 2012:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4957864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4957864)

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copperx
The quip "if you've got nothing to hide, then why don't you write all your
letters on postcards?" got people thinking about privacy back in the day.
Unfortunately, people don't use regular mail anymore. And what's even sadder
is that we ultimately ended up writing all of our letters on postcards with
email.

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umvi
Seems like there should be some middle ground. Everyone agrees that people
should be entitled to _some_ privacy under certain circumstances. But the camp
advocating absolute privacy by-default 24/7/365 is too extreme, imo.

There are many societal illnesses that both emerge and are difficult to solve
when everyone is untracably anonymous. Lack of privacy provides a feedback
mechanism by which corrective action can be taken.

~~~
bmn__
What a magnificent piece of misdirection and mind manipulation. You should not
try to pull a fast one with cheap propaganda tricks on HN readers, that won't
work most of the time.

> there should be some middle ground

argumentum ad temperantiam fallacy

> the camp advocating absolute privacy by-default 24/7/365 is too extreme

People who speak in favour of exercising a basic human rights are labelled
extremists.

> everyone is untracably anonymous

Shifting of the goal-post: privacy is not the same as anonymity.

~~~
twelve40
> People who speak in favour of exercising a basic human rights are labelled
> extremists.

No, not extremists, more like the Patriot Act has been in place since 2001 and
other things like Facebook running most people's lives (maybe not you, but 1+
billion other people) are a fact of life now, and has been for decades. If
someone says we must have privacy, I'd say sure, but that's not how it's been
for decades now, and there is no realistic solution in sight, only keeps
getting worse. Hence the calls for some middle ground.

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greypowerOz
apple just posted data showing phone location activity in the context of
"shelter in place" breaking up.

google maps shows me live traffic based on phone locations.

IE the war on "personal privacy" has already been lost.

I installed the Australian govt covid tracing app this weekend, since the
ability to trace and track new outbreaks is critical to easing lockdown.

Google and apple already know where my phone is. Might as well admit that and
use it as a public health tool.

~~~
kootling
Honestly I'm somewhat okay with companies collecting user data. They should
just make it easy to opt-out of data collection and to delete all my data
(i.e., "right to be forgotten").

~~~
Ididntdothis
And also not connect useful features to this opt out. For example Google Maps
allows you to store locations only if you have location history enabled. I
can't think of any reason for this besides an attempt to bully people into
allow location history.

~~~
sullyj3
It seems plausible to me that it's just a consequence of some contingent
aspect of the design of the location system, and there's not a compelling
reason to refactor.

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bryan_w
I think an important consideration about the I've got nothing to hide camp is
that they don't need absolute privacy.

The argument about handing over passwords or writing letters on postcards
falls flat because the person who's "losing" privacy can agree that a medium
isn't private and respond according.

Not everyone needs 100% privacy all the time.

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wnmurphy
I've always felt that anyone who says "I don't care, I have nothing to hide,"
was committing to the position that privacy is not intrinsically valuable in
itself, and thus should have no problem agreeing to install a webcam in front
of their toilet.

~~~
code_duck
Also, I think the set of people who proclaim that has a strong overlap with
people who believe that transgender people going into the bathrooms of their
choice is extremely alarming due to privacy concerns.

