
Why Privacy Matters Even If You Have 'Nothing to Hide' (2011) - xmpir
https://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/
======
diafygi
I've always liked using the social good argument from the same author's
previous work[1].

"I don't mind giving up some privacy for safety. I've got nothing to hide."

"Well privacy isn't something you can just give up. It's a right given to
society by our framers, not individuals. A smoothly functioning democracy
depends on dissent, which requires privacy to allow alternate points of view
to gain traction. So privacy is a social good, not a personal right, and if we
reduce privacy, we are reducing our democracy. The Soviets didn't have
privacy. Free countries must."

That last part is usually what does the trick.

[1]: [http://tehlug.org/files/solove.pdf](http://tehlug.org/files/solove.pdf)

~~~
karmacondon
Dissent is much more effect when it's done out in the open. Right now anyone
can stand on a street corner and state whatever views they hold, start a
website, hand out flyers or express any idea using any number of methods.
That's the key to democracy, not whispers from secret sources who refuse to
name themselves. We reduce democracy when we force dissenters to use privacy
as a shield instead of allowing them to use the first amendment as a weapon.

It doesn't matter what the soviets or any other country did. Democracy is and
has always been about the right to open expression. If we lose our right to
publicly discuss unpopular ideas then privacy is the least of our concerns.
Private communication matters in a state that is already telling people what
to say and what not to say. We should all be willing to make great sacrifices
to make sure that never happens where we live, not planning for what happens
when it does.

~~~
natdempk
I don't think the matter at hand here is using privacy as a shield, but rather
having the ability to voice dissenting opinions because of privacy. Privacy is
a means of preventing oppression/coercion against those holding dissenting
views. It ensures that those in power do not have the ability to suppress
dissenting views, rather than forcing dissenters to use it as a shield. We
still have the first amendment, but privacy helps protect it and mitigates the
social pressures related to the first amendment.

~~~
csandreasen
There's a difference between privacy and anonymity. Privacy keeps people from
seeing the stuff that you don't want others to see. It has little to do with
freedom of speech. Anonymity is putting stuff out in the public without them
knowing who said it. Yes, it's freedom of speech, but it's also freedom from
accountability.

In a fully functioning democracy, you should be free to say whatever you want
openly without being threatened. If you can't make an argument openly, I would
immediately question why: is it because society is unjust, or because you
can't stand behind the argument?

~~~
daemin
I would argue that you would still need privacy, in so far as to allow an
amount of time in which you could form your dissenting thoughts in private,
write them down, iterate them before you go to the street corner and announce
them to the world.

If everything was in the public space or monitored then people with dissenting
ideas may not have the will or motivation to iterate on them as is necessary
to create a well reasoned thesis, and hence they would fall flat or be cast
out as just another nut job.

~~~
csandreasen
Oh, no - I'm not trying to downplay the need for privacy. I'm saying that
privacy and anonymity are two separate things and people too often mistake one
for the other. Privacy is everyone's right, but it has nothing to do with
dissent. Blasting your opinions out into public while shielding yourself with
a pseudonym isn't privacy.

~~~
mirimir
I consider that anonymity and pseudonymity are aspects of privacy. What's
private there are the associations between activity and identity. We need
"privacy for the weak and transparency for the powerful" (see _Cypherpunks:
Freedom and the Future of the Internet_ by Julian Assange et alia).

------
mkr-hn
There's a building right down the street where they preached hatred for people
like me not that long ago. I had something to hide (came out a year ago), and
it was effectively a felony as recently as 2003.

If the US ever plunges into theocracy, I'm as good as dead. I don't hide it
since I live in a relatively liberal and progressive part of a socially
conservative region. I'm a little concerned about backlash from a favorable
SCOTUS ruling, but it's too late to go back. Maybe the Presbyterian church
next door will send someone over to help them adjust.

~~~
Jdoemk2
>If the US ever plunges into theocracy, I'm as good as dead.

This is obviously (and thankfully) not going to happen.

~~~
mkr-hn
You have more faith in the strength of our secular democracy than I do. This
is a fluke of history, and I'm not sure it can last.

~~~
Jdoemk2
I don't think it's a fluke of history, theocracies have been increasingly hard
to come by in the past 1000 years (especially in the Western world). The US
has never been a theocracy.

Religious organisations are not growing in power.

Even if the US were to become a theocracy, that =/= you're as good as dead.

So there are a few reasons why you shouldn't feel threatened. Not saying it
can't happen, but as I said it's extremely unlikely. Thankfully(!).

~~~
mkr-hn
> _Even if the US were to become a theocracy, that = /= you're as good as
> dead._

All it takes is someone like Scott Lively getting a little power. His views
are not as rare as you probably think. Like I said, I'm surrounded by people
who think I'm an abomination. They're deadly serious about it.

------
a3n
Anything you say today, however innocent, is potential "evidence" against you
by a later government. "Your Honor, the accursed is on record, and _admits_ ,
that he regularly voted for the Repugnicratic party. Why, he even admits to
giving them money!"

Any personal fact collected and stored, however politically or criminally
innocuous, is potentially retrievable by criminals breaching the storage
system.

It doesn't matter how pure of heart today's collectors may be; if it's not
observed or collected today then it can't be abused tomorrow.

~~~
SaltyMaia
If there isn't anything inherently wrong with collecting, and future abuse is
the only thing you are worried about, then you should probably worry about
protecting against abuses, not collecting. Especially if you have no other
point to be had for privacy, when the opposition claims unobjected that giving
it up can and does save lives.

That said, I think the criminal breach argument is a valid one but the one
that really nails it is one already mentioned above:

"privacy isn't something you can just give up. It's a right given to society
by our framers, not individuals. A smoothly functioning democracy depends on
dissent, which requires privacy to allow alternate points of view to gain
traction. So privacy is a social good, not a personal right, and if we reduce
privacy, we are reducing our democracy. The Soviets didn't have privacy. Free
countries must."

Sans the soviet part, in my opinion... Seems useless and even fallaciously
counter-productive to mention it, I don't get why it's even there

edit: What I mean by the first paragraph, in case it's not clear, is that most
technologies can and probably will be abused, which doesn't go a long way to
say that they should be forbidden right at the start, if there is good to be
had in them. You just have to be careful not to allow abuses (which by your
post I figured you don't think are happening at this moment)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> What I mean by the first paragraph, in case it's not clear, is that most
> technologies can and probably will be abused, which doesn't go a long way to
> say that they should be forbidden right at the start, if there is good to be
> had in them. You just have to be careful not to allow abuses (which by your
> post I figured you don't think are happening at this moment)

Collecting data isn't a technology, it's a use of a technology. And preventing
mass data collection is _how_ you disallow abuse.

The vast majority of the productive use of e.g. location tracking data is
possible when you have the data on yourself and nobody has mass data on
everyone. The things that are only possible with bulk data collection are
almost universally bad.

------
cryoshon
Well, the hardest pulling argument I have for privacy is the following:

1\. The government claims it must violate everyone's privacy in order to look
for a few individuals, planning terrorist act X.

2\. Though I wasn't involved in X before, I now go out of my way to avoid
appearing sympathetic to X or involved in Y, which, while different from X, is
adjacent to X, and therefore suspect in the eyes of the government who are
hunting X. By a broad and ridiculous interpretation of X, X and Y come to be
equal in the eyes of the government.

3\. Discussions of or relating to X and Y are squelched sans privacy for fear
of backlash; Z is next on the chopping block because it is adjacent to Y. At
the start of this chain of events, discussion of Z was probably not quite
mainstream, but it was certainly not equated to X, which was never acceptable
by anyone. Thus, the slide from X to Z is complete, and the fallout from
whatever is after Z can begin.

Dissent is treated like treason in the USA.

Anyone with an opinion that differs from the government has their speech
targeted by reductions in privacy, and their speech will likely be chilled the
more the government pushes the dissent-as-terrorism angle that they've shown
to be keen for. They've already pulled "journalism", "privacy", "aiding or
abetting by making youtube videos", "protesting", "whistleblowing" and
"terrorism" into the same perverted continuum.

~~~
happyscrappy
>Dissent is treated like treason in the USA.

Hyperbole undermines your credibility. Also your arguments are to complicated.

~~~
nijiko
TL;DR It might be legal or scrutinized today, but tomorrow is not set in
stone.

------
natch
This article misses a huge thing everyone does have to hide, and that is the
private information they have about their own family and friends.

My Facebook, my contacts list, my emails, my messages, my call history... all
of these have private information about friends and family, and this private
information should not be shared with others without the full consent of
everyone involved.

~~~
nthcolumn
I never viewed the internet as private. I hid my tracks not because I'd done
anything wrong but because there are 'crazies out there', I have plenty to
hide and why take a chance? Then 'wow' forums - I could say controversial
things, play devil's advocate, really push the discussion farther than IRL
with little fear of reprisal or even rebuke. Which was great for me because
I'm the guy who parks the other way round in the car lot. I have always been a
natural dissenter. Then my friends joined facebook - early days before it was
humungous. It raided their contacts and my little cell was exposed. I had not
used a separate email address for each person I had ever met. Silly me. Then
Zuck said 'privacy is dead' and I remembered that even before that in college
he had said 'I can't believe these idiots are trusting me with all this
information' \- or something like that I can't really recall - and I knew he
was right. I wish it weren't so. We speak more guardedly now. Still get
downvoted.

------
DontBeADick
"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."

~~~
0942v8653
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu#Disputed](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu#Disputed)

------
lectrick
Also see Martin Fowler's great essay "Privacy Protects Bothersome People":

[http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-
privacy.html](http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html)

If you look over the course of history, what was considered "blasphemous,"
"treason", "illegal" and the like has changed A LOT.

------
Retric
Whenever I think of this topic I think of a simple comedy skit done as a
commercial.

EX: We at _the all seeing eye_ believe in transparency. From our naked policy
(Queue lots of fat and somewhat blurry people), our computers (no cases) or
our bathrooms (no stalls), we have no problems with you watching us watch you.
(All Seeing Eye logo.)

PS: I can easily see a long list of really creapy skits in this vein.

EX2: At work (Moving all seeing eye coffie mugs) at play (kids tossing an all
seeing eye ball) in sickness (All seeing stethoscope) and in health (pool
lined with all seeing eyes) we are watching you (queue logo).

~~~
icebraining
Maybe it could use The Police's song as the background track. I'm still amazed
at how many people fail to see how creepy the lyrics really are. Thankfully
for my sanity, the author does:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Breath_You_Take#Origins_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Breath_You_Take#Origins_and_songwriting)

------
jnorthrop
Privacy matters at this moment in time for few reasons. There is little risk
to an individual's rights due to profiling based on available information
(which is the result of no or limited privacy). That doesn't mean there is no
risk, but for most of us the risk is negligible.

However, in the not-so-distant future it will be a much bigger deal. As data
about our personal lives becomes more accessible and prolific, especially with
the growth of IoT devices, and we get better at those big data profiling
techniques we will see wider uses of profiling beyond nation security and
marketing purposes. It is not hard to imagine a future where universities
profile potential students based on available data and eliminate those deemed
unfit (without ever looking at an application). Or employers doing similar
things. Or insurance companies basing rates on profiling information.

Reasonable scenarios become easy to imagine with the end result that
discrimination becomes commonplace. Discrimination for those that listen to a
certain type of music, or use a certain type of grammar, or view certain
websites. That is a dangerous future and we are heading down that path. We, as
a society, need to figure out how to address this before it is a problem, and
paramount to successfully thwarting that type of future is to ensure we
maintain our privacy. That is why privacy matters.

~~~
mrfusion
So I realized you're describing GATTICA but based on private information
instead of DNA.

~~~
mkr-hn
> _private information instead of DNA._

The distinction gets blurrier every year.

------
threatofrain
Here's a potentially new argument to bring to the table, in addition to the
usual: putting aside criminal or embarrassing issues, saying that you have
nothing to hide is saying that your data is worth nothing.

Someone might find connections about you that you didn't know, like the fact
that you are more willing to pay higher prices for the same product when you
and your partner are trying to have a baby (just saying hypothetically). I
don't think that information should be free. At the very least, I'd want to
charge.

Someone might find out information about your children in indirect but
legitimate ways. Perhaps your son is more likely to nag you to buy some
product based on some controllable factor. I'd at least sell that kind of
information for no less than $500. That's an iPad.

------
Torgo
"I have nothing to hide" really means "I don't care, stop talking to me about
it".

------
baumbart
Nice article! One of the authors points was that people are not effected in
their daily life through privacy problems (or at least that's what I read
between the lines during that "dead bodies" metaphor).

So here's my idea: I'll place a warning in my email signature, that people
should take care what they write to me because my email account is spied on
and everything is recorded.

There are two points in this; first, it is quite accurate to reality, my (and
everyone else's) email IS scanned for suspicious content for example. Second,
it will shift the focus of people writing their text to this fact, that they
are being monitored. This in turn should raise their awareness of the problem
and put some effect on their life that they can easily perceive.

~~~
syntern
Interesting suggestion. I hope you will share your experiences with it.

------
brandonmenc
Few seem to be acknowledging the obvious:

It's a bad thing that records will exist documenting the sexual proclivities
of those with their fingers on the nuclear launch button. When senators,
presidents, and generals can be blackmailed, we've got a problem. The largest
levers of power will be moved by the most trivial information.

The scenarios will range from invading countries to who gets that city
building permit. All because someone is cheating on their spouse.

It's not strictly "government officials versus us." Government officials will
_also_ be spied on. _That_ , imo, is the _real_ problem. Even people who have
nothing to hide don't want to live in a world like that.

------
jfoutz
The thing that bugs me most is the asymmetry. I don't think the location of
every person everywhere being public is really that scary. But that means lots
of things. For one, the spouse fleeing from the abusive partner - scary
situation, but full tracking enables actually enforcing "stay this far away"
court orders.

it's easier to rob banks when you know how long it will take for the police to
get there, it's impossible to deny you were at the bank at the time.

I realize it's risky to tell our enemies where our generals, senators and
president are, but if the accessibility isn't total the information pretty
much instantly becomes a tool for tyranny.

------
spirit1988
Nothing to hide?

Hey, can you set a Gmail filter redirecting a copy of all your emails to my
account? Do it, you have nothing to hide :)

Or better, just use a public Twitter account for all your communications so we
all can see what you are doing.

------
byjess
I wish there was a gmail plugin that would make the users email publicly
accessible, but read only. This would clearly test their "I have nothing to
hide" argument.

~~~
Karunamon
This is a strawman or reduction to the absurd (I can't decide which) and it is
_throughly_ unhelpful to convincing anyone of anything - I'm getting rather
tired of seeing it.

There is a huge difference between refusing to have a lock on your front door
and being okay with advertising to pay for a free service.

There is also a huge difference between _publicly broadcasting your email_ and
only the government having access to it.

Here's a hint: The NSA is not the general public.

(This comment should absolutely not be construed as acceptance of spying)

------
csours
I've seen this article several times now, and every time it has been equally
impenetrable. I think one of the major flaws is that this sentence appears in
the 10th paragraph:

"To evaluate the nothing-to-hide argument, we should begin by looking at how
its adherents understand privacy"

Why do we only begin to evaluate the argument in the 10th paragraph?

This article has gravely serious implications, but it is needlessly long.

I'm not from the TL;DR crowd, but this is TL;NC (Not Cogent)

------
rndn
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105485](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105485)

Even more:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Why%20Privacy%20Matters%20even...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Why%20Privacy%20Matters%20even%20if%20you%20have&type=story&dateRange=all&prefix&page=0&sort=byPopularity)

------
Tangokat
I really like Moxie Marlinspike's Wired article on this [1]. Especially
relevant to those of you in the US.

[1]: [http://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-
is-t...](http://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-the-wrong-
way-to-think-about-surveillance/)

------
jwatte
The only real solution is to build a culture where nobody (private our public)
expects or gets privacy. There are lots of things people "would rather not
share," that don't matter if we all know that people are people.

Besides, for capitalism to work, we need rational actors with /perfect
information/.

------
aburan28
I'm afraid that our political system is non-responsive to the mainstream
opinion of the public. This privacy battle is unfortunately going to only
change when something like all of Facebook's private messages end up on
torrents

------
Alex3917
If you look at all the top privacy theorists, one of the standard arguments
for privacy is that it protects minorities and other people whose opinions are
currently unpopular for whatever reason. But if you look at a lot of the
recent writing coming from the feminist movement, over the last year there
have been a ton of folks arguing that privacy mainly protects men and those
currently in power, and actually oppresses women and minorities. Not sure
what's going on here, but it's certainly something worth keeping an eye on.

~~~
gpcz
I did some searches for (all without the quotes) "privacy patriarchy",
"privacy protects men", and "privacy feminism," but I mostly found old
articles from the 80s and 90s about how Roe vs. Wade should not have been
argued from a privacy standpoint and arguments about how drawing a line where
family is "private life" can enable domestic violence and inequality due to
the state being reluctant to interfere with people's private lives. Can you
provide some examples from the last year of the trend you're describing?

~~~
Alex3917
> Can you provide some examples from the last year of the trend you're
> describing?

I don't remember any specific articles, but they've mostly revolved around
campus sexual assault and domestic violence.

The Newsweek article from yesterday, What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women, was
also complaining about a tech CEO who received a relatively lenient sentence
for a domestic violence incident, which happened because the main evidence
against him was thrown out due to being seized without a warrant. I'm not
saying the author of the piece was definitely coming out against the 4th
amendment in this instance, but that is more or less the general sentiment.

edit: Here is one clear example:

[http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-
welcome...](http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-
internet-72170)

Also, here is a similar article on free speech.

[http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/the-
unsa...](http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/the-unsafety-net-
how-social-media-turned-against-women/381261/)

"Under the banner of free speech, companies like Facebook, Twitter, and
YouTube have been host to rape videos and revenge porn — which makes female
users feel anything but free."

I say similar because the right to free speech has also traditionally been
seen as protecting the rights of minorities, whereas recently we've seen an
uptick in folks claiming that free speech mostly protects those with power.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> And similarly, the right to free speech has traditionally been seen as
> protecting the rights of minorities, whereas recently we've seen an uptick
> in folks claiming that free speech mostly protects those with power.

This seems like a self-refuting argument. You want privacy if you need to be
protected from those in power. You want someone else to not have privacy if
you want those in power to protect you from them. But those in power being
against you is practically the definition of a persecuted minority.

Think about the phrase "women and minorities." The reason women have to be
mentioned separately is that they're actually a slight _majority_ of the
population, but not (always) an ideological majority of the power base. What
matters is who has the majority of the power, not who has the majority of the
population.

But then that goes the other way too. There are specific issues on which a
demographic minority (or women) have the support of the majority of power. In
that case the "minority" consists of e.g. falsely accused defendants.

Which means that when you hear some historical minorities saying they don't
want privacy, what you're really hearing is that in some cases they are no
longer ideological minorities. Which I suppose you could call progress, but
that doesn't make the new majority any more right than the old majority about
what what the minority needs.

------
cyphunk

        Then the government might start monitoring some phone calls. 
        "It's just a few phone calls, nothing more." The government 
        might install more video cameras in public places. "So what?
        Some more cameras watching in a few more places. No big deal."
    

What I've learned from the privacy debate culture over the past years is that
even amongst many privacy advocates the "So what?" mentality is prevalent.
Their actions, not words, reveal this. While everyone rushes to use Threema,
TextSecure, Telegram, OTR, GPG nearly no one bothers to check key
fingerprints. That leads me to believe that the majority of people in this
scene are using privacy technology as a means to simply feel better about
themselves. To feel morally satisfied with themselves. It's not entirely
dissimilar to the "support the troops" yellow ribbon, fight cancer
"livestrong" wrist bands, or support the fight against AIDS red iPod. What we
see is that people, even people that believe this is an important "fight",
actually wind up with the same behavioural pattern of the "So what"'s. Both
they and the "nothing to hide"'s reveal that this fight is actually not a
fight at all but a window into the changing definitions of self and identity.

Privacy is a deeper topic than government surveillance. I suppose the article
attempted to get slightly past that but not far enough imho. The change of
this social contract has little to do with the NSA scandal. The focus on
government intrusion of privacy is actually a distraction from the more
existentialist issue at hand. That being we have and are changing.

The importance of secrecy is actually a great point from which to understand
how the social contract of privacy is and will change. Philosopher George
Simmel (born 1858) describes the importance of secrecy as:

    
    
        You are only an individual to the extent at which 
        you are NOT transparent. 
    

(shout out to philosopher Alice Lagaay for her work on the topic) But Simmel,
other dead philosophers, dead poets or dead "founding fathers", were products
of their time. In retrospect it is clear that, with the latency created by the
physicality of their world, they lived in a transparency surplus. For this
reason I argue that the debate surrounding this social contract lay not in
post-privacy but in the understanding of post-existentialism (a relook at
existentialist thought from the understanding of the networked-self --
identity increasingly built on relationships and extroversion).

The majority of people arguing "I have nothing to hide" aren't doing so
because, as at one point this article argues, they feel the security value
outweighs their concern for privacy. They are doing so because the networked
self is creating very relevant non-security values to individuality. Something
induced by the change from the physical self to self of the network. They are
individuals that are focused on just living a better life, not some moralist
agenda for a better life that used to be. If you hear "I have nothing to hide"
and are inclined to enforce your moral understanding then you're missing the
opportunity to understand these changes that are happening.

If you do want to argue it, regardless, the best argument I've heard is from
the Privacy Extremists:

    
    
        Because I value many things, therefor I hide many things
    

[http://shadowlife.cc/2012/11/the-treasure-which-is-
privacy/](http://shadowlife.cc/2012/11/the-treasure-which-is-privacy/)

------
Eleutheria
When you fight evil, you hide your moves so they don't move first. Evil will
try by all means not letting you hide your moves by asking you, telling you,
imposing you there is nothing to hide. Now you know where evil exactly is, and
you hide even more, you mutate, you dissapear from the eyes of evil. That's
the only way you fight them.

------
totemizer
privacy is a myth

