
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' (2011) - ekm2
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/
======
vy8vWJlco
The "nothing to hide -> nothing to fear" sophistry is about shifting the basis
of judgement from "innocent until proven guilty" to "guilty until proven
innocent," replacing reason with superstition. It's McCarthyism; it's an
inquisition. An individual has no rights over the hysterical "consensus" of
the mob.

Unfortunately, there is no piece of evidence that can exonerate a person in
such a context; one cannot "establish innocence," the best one can hope for is
to plead tirelessley in an endless popularity contest.

The right to privacy is nothing less than the right to keep an individual
mind... To own a body. If you value your own life, the right to privacy - to
be left alone - is your beginning and your end, if not kept.

(Edited an error/reversal.)

~~~
Already__Taken
That's very poignant, are these your words or some quote of some such.

~~~
vy8vWJlco
No quote, just thinking out loud (so, as another comment asked, I can't really
offer any recommended reading... Other than maybe this classic episode of TNG:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8WpjLGh3wg&list=PLB579CFA383...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8WpjLGh3wg&list=PLB579CFA383430858)
).

------
InclinedPlane
One fundamental problem with the "nothing to hide" argument is that it makes
several casual assumptions which should not be made. An alternate formulation
of the saying is "why fear the truth if you have done nothing wrong", which is
generally the sentiment of the "nothing to hide" sayings as well. However, the
proper form of that saying should be "why fear the truth if you have done
nothing the government dislikes". And this is on a much different stance than
the others. The issue is not right or wrong, the government is not an absolute
arbiter of morality, the issue is government power.

Consider how often and how recently in our own history there have been
activities which have been illegal and yet not "morally wrong" as considered
today. Aiding escaped slaves. Homosexuality. Inter-racial marriage. Abortion.
And so forth.

Also note how I said "nothing the government dislikes" rather than "nothing
illegal". And that's because when a government has broad sweeping powers,
especially of surveillance, government agents can easily punish people and
ruin people's lives regardless of whether their activities are illegal.

Our system of governance has been designed at its core to limit the powers of
government. This is very much intentional because it is designed to allow
government to enforce the laws only with the cooperation with the public at
large. A government that can enforce laws independent of the will of the
people is a government poised for the transition to tyranny.

There is a reason why the term "police state" is so reviled even though in
itself it contains merely mechanical descriptions. And that is because even if
a "benign police state" could exist the danger is far too great that the reins
of power would be usurped by those seeking their own ends and their own
advantages. And the most forceful way to avoid such a catastrophe is again to
limit the power of the state.

~~~
bloaf
Indeed. Consider someone is planning on going to an Occupy Wall Street
protest. Say that the government is monitoring that persons emails and finds
that the person wrote to a fellow protester: "man, fuck corporations, I can't
wait to try and bring them down on xday." Now the people reading that private
email decide that this message constitutes enough of a threat to act on. They
send the police over to that guy's place on the day of the protest and have
the police detain him for the rest of the day. They let him go once the
protests wind down without incident.

Now I don't think anyone actually committed a crime in that scenario, but it
is easy to see how such powers could be used to seriously hinder the
democratic process.

------
samstave
Read /u/161719's amazing post on reddit on this topic:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_belie...](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_believe_the_government_should_be_allowed_to/caeb3pl?context=3)

~~~
darxius
I just finished writing a post about pretty much about the same thing
([http://maxmackie.com/2013/06/08/We-have-a-very-important-
dec...](http://maxmackie.com/2013/06/08/We-have-a-very-important-decision-
ahead-of-us/)).

(I tried submitting my link but I'm getting a "Please try again" error every
time, so I gave up. Feel free to post it yourself.)

Thing is, we have the ability to take action right now. The author of the post
on reddit is right: things like this already happen in other parts of the
world. We have ways of protecting ourselves at our disposal. They're even
accessible to non-techy people. People just need to recognize the events of
the past couple days as an actual threat.

~~~
jjsz
What was the point of linking that article, it is misleading- he didn't
provide solutions.

~~~
angersock
Not everything in life is as simple as checking Stack Exchange.

------
jerf
Do you fully support the current party in control of the government? If not,
you have something to hide.

Do you fully support the party that will be in control of the government in
five years? If not, you have something to hide.

You think I'm being silly? Six months ago you might have been able to float
that argument, but with an openly partisan IRS, go ahead, tell me why that's
wrong.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
I agree with your message, however was the IRS really being partisan or is it
that tea party groups in particular(and those that seek to fund them) are more
actively exploiting the "social welfare organization" loophole?

~~~
jerf
The IRS was being partisan. I consider this fairly well established at this
point. The only remaining question is _exactly_ where the idea to be
aggressively partisan came from.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Yet there is evidence they investigated "liberal" groups for the same sort of
thing.

~~~
jerf
Applying correct amounts of scrutiny to one set of people, and abusive amounts
of scrutiny to another, is still being partisan. Don't let them hide behind
that.

Seriously. It's extraordinarily dangerous to our way of life to try to defend
the IRS on this one because, I presume, you don't like the Tea Party. This
isn't bad news for Tea Party or conservative groups. This is bad news for
anyone subject to IRS jurisdiction. Who's going to be in control of the IRS in
four years? (We're a ways out, but certainly decent odds it ain't gonna be
someone with a (D) after their name.)

------
dnautics
this article also misses 'falsification'. If the government is collecting
data, there is an implicit level of truthfulness in this data, which someone
malicious working in the government could use to frame you for a crime or
cause other less severe harm to you (financial, social, whatever).

This person need not be accountable, say, to the voter (it could be a low-
level bureaucrat with a petty axe to grind), and although presumably there is
'accountability', what if the harm done to you is significant enough to make
your life miserable, but not significant enough to the monolithic agency
(which remember is only accountable indirectly, to elected officials who may
care about stupid stuff like political wedge issues) to justify the
expenditure and effort to root out the malicious actor.

------
TomaszZielinski
Most of those articles are missing one important point.

"I have nothing to hide because I don't do anything wrong."

What does "wrong" mean in this context? Against the law.

So - how many torts or crimes are there on the books? How may ways of
interpreting them are there - both already writted down and possible in the
future? Are they interpreted by flawless machines or emotional humans? Etc.
etc.

~~~
foobarian
Another point I was not seeing is reciprocity. Even if I really do not have
anything to hide--and I might even not mind the naked picture thing, because
will anyone actually care?--then I should be able to see everybody else as
well, especially the rich and powerful including those who are running the
surveillance system.

------
joeldidit
Why would you need to have something to hide to want privacy? What bothers me
about being watched or spied on is everyone having their nose in my business.
I also see it as an insult, as you are essentially degrading me and treating
me as though I _am_ hiding something, when I'm not. My business is none of
your business; keep out of it.

------
betterunix
"Retorts to the nothing-to-hide argument about exposing people's naked bodies
... are relevant only if the government is likely to gather this kind of
information"

Yes, because it is crazy to suggest that the US government might be collecting
images of people's naked bodies...

(To be clear, I do agree with the article. I just couldn't help but laugh a
bit at the idea that the government taking nude photographs of people is
depicted as "extreme.")

------
konstruktor
If I have nothing to hide, i.e. am doing nothing illegal, you don't have any
reason to be watching me.

------
belorn
A good and very comprehensive article on the subject. The only area I wish the
article would also include is how society is today built on top of the
assumption that privacy exist, and what happens when that assumption is found
to be wrong.

To take an example, the court system assumes that judge and jury members
private life is not known. When one side in a trial knows the judge or juries
dreams, aspirations, deep secrets or just plain biases, that party has
suddenly gained an huge unfair advantage. Since we can now start to grasp the
amount of information gathered by the state, Google or Facebook, can a trail
involving either one of them still be claimed to be fair and just if the other
party do not has similar inside knowledge of the judges or juries lives?

------
csears
The real question is: When do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy,
either online or IRL?

Yes, I have curtains, but unless I close them, I don't expect privacy. If I'm
using mainstream social media sites, I don't expect privacy either. The
problem is that most people don't think about the "curtains" being open by
default when they're online.

I think we do have a right to privacy and obviously most people have something
to hide, but that privacy should require intentional effort to enable (eg
closing the curtains, TOR + VPN).

~~~
np422
The problem comes when "they" start to peek in everywhere. They being the guys
in uniform who has guns and the authority to put you in jail.

"First reasonable suspicion, then limited surveillance" have served us well in
the past. I don't see how that changes if the communication channel is semi-
public.

You never had any privacy in a downtown coffee shop, but if they wanted to
listen they had to send someone to follow you around, which kind of limited
how much surveillance we had to put up with.

Electronic communication is a game changer, now we have the option to read
everyone’s mail, all the time.

Unlimited surveillance will lead to unreasonable suspicion - how many honest
people may be flagged and get on the no-fly list, perhaps getting their
job/visa applications rejected for no obvious reasons so you can _feel_
secure?.

I don't fancy having to watch my words so they don't get misinterpreted by the
guys with guns in uniform.

We are the people, we make the laws. And IMHO the law should be very clear ...
Gentlemen don't read each others mail - unless there is a very valid reason to
do so.

~~~
csears
I agree that the law should be more clear, but I also think a lot of people
are overreacting to this case and not applying a consistant standard of
privacy outrage.

Google constantly reads my email to display ads in GMail. That's a tradeoff
I'm willing to make for free email service. There are many Google advertisers
that I trust less than the NSA, and yet I continue to use GMail.

The big difference is that I didn't have a chance to evaluate the
security/privacy tradeoff in the case of PRISM, but if I had, I think I would
still choose to use the services of the companies involved with the program.

~~~
np422
When google are watching and you are careless with your words you may get an
inappropriate ad displayed.

When the government is listening you may get on the no-fly list, or worse ...

Not a small difference IMHO.

------
b2spirit
"nothing to hide -> nothing to fear" is a misdirection. It gets the enemy to
waste time arguing against something that is obvioulsy stupid.

------
ownagefool
There is no such thing as 'Nothing to Hide' unless you have an extremely naive
view of the world. If you feel that way, you just need to remember that out
there, somewhere, are those who'll judge you harshly for being you.

Sure, you may not be ashamed of it. You're probably not be breaking any laws
that you're aware of, at least none that really matter. You're pretty sure you
live in a country that you're free from persecution. All should be OK, right?

Sadly, whether that's true or not, that only works for today. Tomorrow, well
it would seem those with enough bile and hate to judge you, seem to be one of
the few sets of people who actually want to seek out power and privledge over
you.

You sure you're really that free today? You sure you'll really be that free
tomorrow. Your sure it'll be the same for your kids? If there is any
hesitation, any hesitation at all, then it's probably not a brilliant idea to
sit idly by and accept Government creating profiles on you and the future
you's.

Dead god, won't anyone think of the children? :P

------
jokoon
> "What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of
> activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you
> the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions
> look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts?"

That's a lot of ifs. I don't think it really has anything to do about privacy
issues. Privacy issues created those "ifs". That's a paranoid state, not a
state of law and rights. Those are issues created by society unable to sort
its things. I doubt a government can really forbid things based on
information, and if so, it already existed before.

Of privacy issues make things worse, but those issues were the mix of a
digital age and terrorism. Nobody can escape the fact congress will vote laws
and agencies will want to work on things.

------
Symmetry
In pre-urban times with smaller houses people used to have far less privacy
from their families and their neighbours than they do today, but of course
back then the lack of privacy was symmetric. I think I would like to live in a
society with less privacy, but only if it was something that everybody had to
endure. I certainly don't want some person unknown to me spying on me without
being able to spy back, that creates a very dangerous power differential.

And of course a big part of the problem nowadays is that everybody does things
that are illegal regularly, there are so many laws that how could we not?
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse", just the fact that you're not aware of
having committed any felonies doesn't in any way guarantee you haven't
committed one.

------
shurcooL
Pretty sure I've read with this exact or a very similarly titled article.

Unfortunately, I can't help but find it very unconvincing, despite that I'd
like to be convinced. There are lots of words but few strong arguments (or any
kind of arguments).

~~~
waleedka
Agreed. I read it hoping to be convinced (wanting to be convinced), but it was
too wordy and lacked a compelling argument. I do believe privacy is important
and we should all care about it. But I also want to read a strong well-written
argument to support that position.

------
lightknight
The fundamental problem with that saying is that it for it to be formed, for
it to even exist, as a thought, the reality in which you are currently
cohabiting must be terribly skewed off the truth axis. Black must be white, up
must be down, and good must be evil.

I mean, look at our society...just look at it. So much of its energy is
devoted to ruling people. Judges, courts, bailiffs, clerks, kings, police,
lawyers, etc. It's madness. Most people can't even imagine any other way of
living...when they write about alien societies, the aliens have laws as well,
and clerks as well, and laws as well.

------
stretchwithme
Of course privacy matters, even if you are doing nothing wrong. Without it,
we'd continually have to explain our actions and prove our innocence to people
who don't understand our situation.

And that's a lot of work. And they really aren't motivated to understand.

And its a lot of work trying to understand everyone else's situation. I
certainly don't want to.

So nature gave us a need for privacy and the means to respect the privacy of
others. And even the sense to often pretend that we don't see many things.

~~~
vy8vWJlco
I have often thought that any successful attempt at AI would have to reproduce
the behaviors associated with fear/paranoia and _lying_. (Or maybe I'm just
taking _The Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy_ too literally.)

~~~
jlgreco
I would say that there is a difference between artificial intelligence and
artificial _human_ intelligence.

Then again, I also prefer the terminology "synthetic" to "artificial".

------
sneak
"So the government is spying on me. So what?"

[http://pastebin.com/7SRmFpFH](http://pastebin.com/7SRmFpFH)

~~~
e3pi
Anyone without a Facebook account of `median person' content and traffic will
be flagged ORANGE for further investigation. Of course this includes the
homeless and off-grid.

New phone app opportunity:

Chaff-bot of expected `median person' content and traffic into their's and
your own Facebook account.

------
damaja
Regarding the original Veriz court order.. Answer me this: Does your phone
number, or the fact that your particular string of numbers is a phone number,
somehow exist in the universe with some sort of innate privacy apart from you?
Nope. What exactly does a phone number, absent a name, address, billing info,
or other customer info, mean to anyone, even the NSA.

~~~
waterphone
The fact is that if you have someone's phone number, you generally have access
to all that other information because linking it to a name and thus everything
else is fairly trivial, even for ordinary people not affiliated with the NSA.
Claiming it's somehow okay and protecting privacy because they have the phone
numbers without names is ridiculous.

------
Julianhearn
Basically, knowledge is power. The more knowledge the government have the more
power they have over you. We all do something wrong, do drugs, be unfaithful,
avoid taxes, bend rules/laws, say things against friends/family/employer, etc,
etc, all this can be used to blackmail and control us. We all have something
we want to hide from someone.

------
gambomb
Although I agree the "nothing to hide" argument is fundamentally flawed, I
have yet to read a solid rebuttal to it. This article has not broken that
trend. While it has given me some food for thought, I feel it resorts to a
weak slippery slope argument, not quite capturing what feels truly wrong about
universal monitoring.

\--garbled by my mobile

------
marcodena
Very related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5848540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5848540)

------
j2kun
I think there's a big difference between privacy of information about you and
privacy of your physical self, which is a bit jumbled in this article.

------
jkn
For once, an article that defends privacy while recognizing the non-
obviousness of the issue. That makes it unusually convincing, but there is
still one part I find weak:

 _Investigating the nothing-to-hide argument a little more deeply, we find
that it looks for a singular and visceral kind of injury. Ironically, this
underlying conception of injury is sometimes shared by those advocating for
greater privacy protections. For example, the University of South Carolina law
professor Ann Bartow argues that in order to have a real resonance, privacy
problems must "negatively impact the lives of living, breathing human beings
beyond simply provoking feelings of unease." She says that privacy needs more
"dead bodies," and that privacy's "lack of blood and death, or at least of
broken bones and buckets of money, distances privacy harms from other [types
of harm]."_

 _Bartow 's objection is actually consistent with the nothing-to-hide
argument. Those advancing the nothing-to-hide argument have in mind a
particular kind of appalling privacy harm, one in which privacy is violated
only when something deeply embarrassing or discrediting is revealed. Like
Bartow, proponents of the nothing-to-hide argument demand a dead-bodies type
of harm._

 _Bartow is certainly right that people respond much more strongly to blood
and death than to more-abstract concerns. But if this is the standard to
recognize a problem, then few privacy problems will be recognized. Privacy is
not a horror movie, most privacy problems don 't result in dead bodies, and
demanding evidence of palpable harms will be difficult in many cases._

The author dismisses the "need for blood" as too extreme, but that is not
convincing. For example, consider the most compelling argument in the article,
which is that government data collection creates a Kafkaesque world in which
the opacity of the procedures renders the individuals powerless:

 _Government information-gathering programs are problematic even if no
information that people want to hide is uncovered. In The Trial, the problem
is not inhibited behavior but rather a suffocating powerlessness and
vulnerability created by the court system 's use of personal data and its
denial to the protagonist of any knowledge of or participation in the process.
The harms are bureaucratic ones—indifference, error, abuse, frustration, and
lack of transparency and accountability._

This is a powerful argument, but it is not going to convince a majority of
people unless you can show real harm. Not blood or broken bones, but actual
cases where good guys (as perceived by the majority) were harmed by government
surveillance, e.g. harassed or put to jail. Why would people feel a
"suffocating powerlessness and vulnerability" if the Kafkaesque bureaucracy
does not eventually bring actual harm? (The case of Aaron Swartz is not an
example: the problem lied with the CFAA rather than government surveillance).

I'm still optimistic: the process will work as usual. Government powers will
be abused. There will be scandals. In the long term, laws will be improved and
transparency will increase. What reasons do I have to think otherwise?

------
someaccounthere
The whole argument is premised on the idea that the laws are all moral and
just and government is some noble protector, watching over us. The reality is
that the government is a monopolistic protection racquet and I pretty much
want to hide everything from them. Surveillance is a mechanism by which they
control their subjects.

The more they know about me the more they can steal off me and the more liable
I am to be attacked for disobeying one of their edicts. If I want to do
something that the government arbitrarily decides it "wrong", then I've got
something to hide.

So yeah, I have everything to hide from a criminal gang.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
So the government does nothing worthwhile? Public roads? The FAA? The park
service? The EPA? GPS?

Should all of that be privatized, where there is absolutely no control
available to the public? These are services that are by nature a monopoly, we
can't really vote with our money.

