
This Man Has Nothing to Hide – Not Even His Email Password - ForHackernews
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/this-man-has-nothing-to-hide/379041/?single_page=true
======
tolmasky
> "And having been transparent with his coreligionists about his loss of faith
> and with his ex-wife about his lost willingness to be monogamous, he
> gradually came to this life philosophy: Society would be better if no one
> had any secrets."

Spoken like someone blessed to have been born a white heterosexual male in
21st century America. I wonder if he'd feel the same way if he was a
homosexual in an incredibly homophobic town.

He also seems to have reversed cause and effect here. Its not necessarily
asymmetrical information that gives people power, but rather power that
results in asymmetrical information. There's no magic switch to reveal all
information in the universe, so its going to be government thats better at
keeping secrets than you in a society that expects defacto transparency. Have
fun trying to prosecute the government for keeping secrets when they have
every detail on your life catalogued. You can't base a life philosophy around
"if everyone magically did the right thing then..."

~~~
adwf
I'm reminded of an example of this - read the Lethal Car Decorating:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear:_US_Special](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear:_US_Special)

If you can't get hold of the episode, they essentially paint pro-homosexuality
slogans on the side of their vehicles and drive through an Alabama town.

It's scary to think that even in this day and age there are people who will
react in such a fashion. And if you think this is bad, driving through the
town... imagine living there as a gay man.

PS: I'm aware that Top Gear is an entertainment show and not everything may be
exactly as it appears, but I believe this was legit in this case.

~~~
thieving_magpie
That episode, entirely, is fake. The rednecks throwing things, all of it.

I'm not trying to be rude or spoil your Weltanschauung or something.

~~~
adwf
[http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/extra-top-gear-in-
alabama/](http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/extra-top-gear-in-alabama/)

[http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2009/10/05/richard-
the...](http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2009/10/05/richard-the-rednecks-
were-real/)

They seem to be pretty serious when claiming that it wasn't fake. They've
admitted in the past when their sketches are faked, with absolutely no qualms
about it. It seems odd that they would specifically claim that this one was
definitely _not_ fake.

I don't doubt that they dramatised the footage to make it seem like it was a
lot more scary than perhaps the actual events were. But that doesn't mean the
events didn't happen.

Anyway, judging by the responses, I can see this is a bit of a touchy subject
so I'm going to take a pass on this thread from now on. No judgement on
right/wrong, just going to bed ;)

------
aric
Lack of privacy seems like a good way to encourage cultural genocide. Total
transparency for individuals would make it easier for prevailing thought-
leaders to suppress minority groups. Culture could be eliminated before it has
a chance to coalesce to the point of daring to enter public acceptance. To
think otherwise is to believe that cultural tyranny (thus legal tyranny)
wouldn't exist in a world where no one may hide. That's foolish. Tyranny bred
in complete openness is possibly _more_ insidious. It's harder to escape.

The author, perhaps, isn't bothered by the many reasons why other people
unlike himself want privacy and have wanted privacy throughout history. Maybe
the plight of others will never be good enough for him to change his advocacy.
There's irony in his case. Not so long ago, and to this day in many parts of
the world, revealing oneself as an atheist would have made one subject to
extreme persecution, if not quicker death. It was through a long course of
secrecy, over a gradual shift in public perception, which was rapidly
accelerated by the soft _veil_ of the internet, that more people began to feel
safe enough to 'come out' as atheists. (Granted, that history didn't have a
complete lack of privacy. Yet, if it had, I'd wager that the world today would
have even fewer "heretics" upon whose shoulders others may rest their
unpopular thoughts.)

Transparency should be a growing expectation people have toward all
governments and institutions that wage force over people. I agree with that
part.

------
CocaKoala
Reading this reminded me of the adage, "Character is who you are when nobody
is watching".

Can you imagine being this guy's child and reading him talk about how "Yeah,
maybe if people were watching me then I would have tried harder to spend time
with my kids last summer". It's not that he wants to spend time with them,
he's just worried about how it looks to other people.

The truth hurts, but that doesn't mean that the truth is an excuse to be
hurtful. This project seems pretty gross; he gets some respect for taking a
position and committing to it, but it's not really kind or respectful or fair
to anybody he interacts with to commit them to the same position indirectly.

~~~
Mz
It gets better: His "transparency" includes being open and honest with the
world that he has had several affairs with married women _where the husbands
did not know._

So, is that some kind of loophole? How does he justify that in his twisted
logic? Everyone else knows, so it's okay?

------
TheBiv
> "He is now a divorced professor at a technical college with no credit cards
> and extremely uninteresting finances, largely because the bulk of his
> paychecks are directly deposited, per his preference, in the account of his
> ex-wife."

That just about sums up how he is able to be so flippant with his privacy,
even if he has nothing to hide!

~~~
notahacker
The other reason he can be so flippant is that he's an ex-Mormon who walked
out on his family and church because he'd taken up sleeping around and
atheism, so from his point of view the worst damage to his social standing has
already been inflicted.

~~~
prawn
Do you really "take up atheism" or do you just not go to church, etc? I don't
feel like I've taken it up, it's just not something I worry about or act on.

Rest of your point stands, obviously.

~~~
gridspy
If you simply don't believe in god, you're agnostic. If you actively believe
that there is no god, you're atheist.

~~~
collyw
Actively believing there is no god, without proof of his/her/it's non
existence is as evidence based as religion.

~~~
nitrogen
Not believing in Santa Claus, Zeus, Imhotep, Peter Pan, or The Green Lantern
without proof of their non-existence is etc. etc.?

The burden of proof lies with the claim of existence. In the absence of any
evidence, nonexistence is the default assumption. Yet disbelief in all of
these things _is_ based on evidence, since we have looked in the places people
used to believe they lived and/or domains they were believed to control,
andand they weren't there.

~~~
mmalone
How are you defining God? Have we looked for God in all of the places that
people believe God lives / controls?

The universe either came from somewhere or has always existed... If I define
God as a "the thing that created the universe" how would you prove or disprove
God's existence?

~~~
nitrogen
_If I define God as a "the thing that created the universe"..._

...then you would have to justify that definition before expecting anyone to
accept, prove, or disprove it.

FWIW I was once a believer and frequently associate with believers, so I have
some experience in the matter and have given it considerable thought.

~~~
mmalone
I have to justify that that's what I mean when I say "god," or I have to
justify that God created the universe? It is a common definition, so I figured
you'd accept it.

The point is I'm not talking about a specific God or assuming anything about
the nature of God like many religions do. Once you remove all that baggage God
is just a term that means "the thing that created the universe." So to deny
the existence of God you must deny that the universe was created by something.
I don't see how you can make such a claim without any evidence. Last I checked
there was no scientific explanation for the creation of the universe.

~~~
prawn
Might help not to capitalise the G. I think that implies something more than
it doesn't.

~~~
mmalone
Not implying anything other than that it's a proper name. Meh.

------
rabbyte
> "secrets exist to prevent other people from acting as they would if they had
> complete information"

And? I don't understand why the reader must assume it would be good for people
to act with complete information. Privacy is required where trust is absent
because people in the abstract are not responsible or empathetic enough to
warrant the risk. Ask any celebrity if privacy is a barrier to equality. This
isn't pessimism either; I could see privacy not be needed but only if the
protection from harm is replaced by other protections embedded in the culture
or environment.

~~~
mmalone
Eh... I don't get it? Why is privacy required where there is no trust? I see
how the two are related but I see it kind of differently... it's hard not to
trust someone when you know they're not hiding anything.

In a totally utopian sense I believe that privacy is bad. Practically it's
probably impossible to implement society without privacy. I wouldn't share my
email password because we're not living in a utopia and that information
asymmetry would hurt me. However, if privacy went away social norms would have
to change -- there would be a lot less hypocrisy -- and the things I'm keeping
private right now wouldn't need to be private any longer.

Really privacy just facilitates lying.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
So what amazing sort of philosophical argument are you using to arrive at the
value judgment that "privacy is bad?" I don't think it is good enough to just
have this tacit idea "no privacy is inherently good but obviously we don't
live in a Utopia;" I think that is a flawed concept entirely.

In fact, I think your position is entirely immoral. You want to find some kind
of technology to force me to give up my privacy to you, and absent such a
technology, you think it is unfortunate because that would be Utopia ...
That's just hard to take seriously.

~~~
mmalone
The argument is that privacy serves no purpose aside from facilitating lies,
and lies are bad. One challenge that has been presented is that there's a
difference between "lying" and "not telling the whole truth" but I believe
both are "moral bads" and I don't really want to get into that regardless (the
distinction between passive and active moral decisions has been debated
endlessly by philosophers already -- google "killing vs. letting die," for
instance).

I don't think it's infeasible to find a technology. I think it's infeasible to
change our culture to be more accepting of the sorts of things that people
choose to keep private. As long as people are persecuted for their completely
normal beliefs and actions privacy has a place and keeping things private is
justifiable. But if I were designing a utopia I think I'd try one with no
privacy at all (everyone has access to the same set of facts about everyone /
everything else) and see how things go.

Why do you think my position is immoral? How is it a flawed concept? You
haven't presented a logical argument for your position -- that privacy is
good. I'd love to hear one that doesn't include a clause where "some bad actor
does something immoral because of lack of privacy."

Maybe P = NP, then we won't have a choice :)

Edit: spelling.

------
dskang
For anyone who's curious what a world in which everyone is forced to throw
away their privacy and embrace complete transparency might look like, Dave
Eggers wrote a fantastic book called The Circle ([http://www.amazon.com/The-
Circle-Dave-Eggers/dp/0385351399](http://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-Dave-
Eggers/dp/0385351399)) that explores that very concept. Highly recommended.

~~~
deskglass
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check that book out.

Once, in thread similar to this one, I saw another recommendation for The
Light of Other Days ([http://smile.amazon.com/Light-Other-Days-Arthur-Clarke-
ebook...](http://smile.amazon.com/Light-Other-Days-Arthur-Clarke-
ebook/dp/B003CTEFLG). It explores a world where everyone can see and hear
everyone else at any (past and present) time. While I did not always find the
plot compelling, I still enjoyed reading it because it explores some cool
ideas.

~~~
infectoid
What I found most interesting about the story was when a character was
confronted by the factual truth of a past event that didn't agree with what
she strongly believed to be true. There is no room for objection as you can
view all past (and present) events as they really happened.

But your comments are accurate. While, not always compelling, the concepts are
pretty cool to indulge in.

------
Mz
Excerpt:

 _" In most societies, we [recognize] the right of people to keep secrets. But
really, there’s only one purpose for keeping secrets: secrets exist to prevent
other people from acting as they would if they had complete information,"_

Yeah, that's because most people cannot be completely trusted with your
welfare. Der. They don't usually have your best interest at heart, even in
cases where their intent is not specifically malicious.

Also:

 _He thinks most of us would live more ethically too._

I doubt that. They would just get better at appearing to be ethical, which
really isn't the same thing.

~~~
kijin
> _They would just get better at appearing to be ethical, which really isn 't
> the same thing._

There's a long and hard-to-kill tradition of thought, both in the West and in
other cultures, that says something along the lines of "If you try hard enough
to look like you care about X for a long time, you'll end up actually caring
about X."

It's the idea behind every educational system that requires students to wear
uniforms: "Make them dress like ladies and gentlemen for several years, and
they'll actually become ladies and gentlemen." It has also been the idea
behind many state religions, both ancient and modern: "Make them participate
in religious rituals from birth to death, and they'll actually come to have
faith in our god(s)." What's scary is that this often works. It's an extremely
powerful tool of social manipulation.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Those are different things. Unless you think the anti-privacy technology will
enter our thoughts or something, you may "try hard," meaning to deceive those
around you, this is not the same thing as "if you want to be a charitable
person, start giving to charities and you will become charitable" or whatever.
The parent is just noting the obvious that you will not be fundamentally
turning people into ethical people or whatever, they will simply try to find
ways to exploit the system.

------
miguelrochefort
I totally agree with that guy, and I've been looking for likeminded people for
months.

Beside social stigma, the most important barrier to living a transparent life
is our reliance on secrets for identification. That includes Social Security
numbers, Credit Card numbers, bank account passwords/nips, all details about
physical keys and locks, etc.

You might say that public access to the above information is only a problem in
conjunction with private property rights. But even if nobody owns anything,
secret/public keys are currently some of the best way to identify people and
track trust/reputation/opinions. Without some kind of alternative, anybody
could claim anything in my name. That's problematic.

We need a way to accurately track and identify people, without the need to
rely on secrets. Beside having billions of independent cameras/trackers
everywhere and cross-validate their measurements, I don't know how we're going
to achieve that.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Really? I don't want to brow beat you but I really if you agree with this
person, I can't help but think you need to wake up to reality. This is just
utter nonsense.

Privacy/secrecy as it relates to identification or ownership is just one facet
of the world. You realize people are not actually robots or play-things in a
Dystopian novel right? People have complex lives, desires, strategies for
achieving their goals, feelings, etc.

~~~
mkal_tsr
Most people here only see $ unfortunately.

------
Renaud
I can't help to think that this man's views are very short sighted.

They remind me of what happens when people decide not to lie any more. Works
great in theory until you start hurting other people.

I'm still fundamentally in favour of strong privacy laws. That some choose not
to exercise their rights is their own decision to make. They are however, not
entitled to make these decisions for others.

A simple example of why strong protection is needed is when you have to travel
to countries that, if privacy in your own country was weak, would gain access
to more information than you'd want them to.

So you're a gay atheist who likes to smoke pot from time to time? Please
follow this nice man with the rifle.

~~~
nsajko
s/untitled/entitled/

------
justinlloyd
The people who declare "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"
never grew up in a parochial village that persecuted anything that was
different. I was interested in books, SciFi, computers, electronics.

Because I did not subscribe to the populist viewpoint of all that mattered was
sports, sports, and more sports, getting blackout drunk on Friday and Saturday
night, fishing and torturing small furry animals "just for fun" I suffered
more than my fair share of persecution, beatings (lots and lots of beatings)
and ostracism.

The idiots that declare "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" are privileged
minority, usually white, male and middle class.

------
Double_Cast
> _All the world 's a stage,_

> _And all the men and women merely players._

I think one benefit of privacy is the ability to maintain multiple identities.
Not just "secret" identities, but also the ability to play different roles
depending on the context. I'm not sure how to explain it exactly, but I feel
like a loss of privacy would bestow upon me a pretty heavy cognitive burden.
Even if my behavior isn't embarrassing or self-sabotaging, I have better
things to do than justify my every waking moment and tailor a consistent &
comprehensive identity. It would be the equivalent of spaghetti code.

And in keeping with the information asymmetry theme, I can't see how this
could be feasibly implemented. If everyone agreed to an entirely transparent
society, it only takes a single agent to exploit the system by keeping secrets
anyway. There would have to be absurdly harsh disincentives for defecting in
order to keep the system pareto optimal.

------
kghose
Sounds like the person is an exhibitionist. My best take away from the article
is the insightful statement by the author:

"Every one of us is entrusted with information that our family, friends,
colleagues, and acquaintances would rather that we kept private."

~~~
seagreen
This is a great point. Fundamentally, how well I uphold the trust of my
friends is connected to the _security of my computing environment_. You damn
well bet I want more secure software.

------
wamatt
FYI, he's doing a Kickstarter to raise awareness and funding:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/noahdyer/a-year-
without...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/noahdyer/a-year-without-
privacy-noahdyertv)

Philosophically speaking, the idea of a society where every actioned is
monitored, recorded and made available, is a potentially interesting thought
experiment.

That said, I find it rather difficult to feel too excited, for this specific
campaign.

~~~
CocaKoala
>What about the privacy of your kids? >My kids don't have anything to hide.

Did his kids say that, or is he saying that for them?

------
kazinator
The premise of the article is a fallacy of equivocation over the word
"nothing".

"I have nothing to hide" is used as an argument meaning "I have nothing to
hide for which I might be wanted by the authorities"; it does not literally
mean "nothing at all".

"I have nothing to hide" is an argument used against the advocacy of tools for
anonymity and cryptography, and in particular tools that use strong
cryptography and are free of back doors.

The counter argument "you have your personal privacy to hide" to hide makes a
strawman out of "I have nothing to hide" around the interpretation of the word
"nothing".

The nothing-to-hide argument, in its strongest form, is specifically limited
as an argument against the advocacy of tools that make governments nervous,
not against fig leaves and coconuts. That part of it is plausible, in fact:
basic privacy arguably does not need strong anonymity and crypto tools that
are free of back doors.

You can be investigated by a government in ways that actually "respect" your
privacy, so to speak. By this I mean that they get into into your accounts
(using exploits or deliberately planted back doors), don't find what they're
looking for, and then move on. Nothing private of yours has become public, and
you don't even know.

I'm not saying I agree with any of this, just that you have to take the "I
have nothing to hide" argument more seriously: the taunt "so open your e-mail
to everyone" is not really an effective response.

Those who use the "I have nothing to hide" argument are statists and
conformists; they really mean "I am willing to open all aspects of my life to
the authorities in cooperation with any investigation", not "I'm willing to
open my life to the public". (The tacit implication is "those who are not
willing to unconditionally cooperate with the authorities to the extent that I
am are not merely advocates of liberty: they likely have something to hide,
whether it be links to terrorist organizations, child porn, or evidence of
crime. Unlike me, the advocates of those tools and systems are not so
confident that nothing will be found.")

~~~
kazinator
The argument against "nothing to hide" is this:

1\. So you agree with every single law there is, and every single prohibition
against any activity or posession of anything?

2\. Even if you don't violate any law or prohibition yourself, but your best
friend or a family member is investigated for such a thing, you're willing to
open up everything to help provide evidence to throw that friend under the
proverbial bus, in the name of conformity to the state?

3\. Are you okay with doing away with wiretap laws and search warrants?

4\. Are you okay with any citizen being arrested and given "truth serum" drugs
so they truthfully divulge everything they believe to be true on any topic? If
they have nothing to hide, why should anyone object?

------
coldtea
Was thinking about this line in some comment: "if you have nothing to worry
about, you shouldn't mind if the government reads your emails".

Besides the obvious flaws, shouldn't it also go the other way?

The government hides tons of things, from classified documents to internal
memos. What about that?

------
conradfr
1/ I don't trust extremists like him. It seems to me they are usually the ones
who moves from cause to cause way too easily leaving everyone behind, or fight
their "daemons" by putting the blame and the burden on the whole society.

2/ "Zero is still the amount of times I've killed someone, robbed someone,
raped someone, taken illicit drugs, or even had alcohol or other substances,"

So that what being virtuous is for him, not society as a whole.

3/ "He thinks most of us would live more ethically too."

That paragraph is scary. He needs people to watch him to behave better ? While
telling us that becoming a non-believer felt liberating regarding his
sexuality ?

4/ Reducing privacy to a power tool for the elite is ludicrous. He confuses
transparency with no privacy. He also ignores lots of things about human
psychology and sociology.

5/ I was disappointed that the reporter didn't checked his Google search
history.

6/ You don't need $300,000 and a crew. You only need webcams, Gopro and Google
Glasses.

------
panzi
I'm sure the mafia would love the end of the witness protection program. And
fundamentalists of any religion would like to know who exactly is breaking
which one of their arbitrary rules and where they live, when their kids go to
school etc. Pedophile offenders would like to know when which child is home
alone etc.

Privacy has a purpose, damn it!

These are extreme cases, but they still are about the privacy of people. The
article mentioned good less extreme examples.

Just who you are voting for is already something you have to hide (in
general). If you wouldn't have a right for secret elections you could be
forced to vote for a certain candidate or your vote could be bought.

Yes, the governments keep things secret that shouldn't be secret (e.g.
contracts/agreements with other countries, i.e. how the big countries fuck the
little ones). There is a saying: use public data, protect private data. In
German: Öffentliche Daten nützen, private Daten schützen. (it rhymes)

~~~
munin
> I'm sure the mafia would love the end of the witness protection program.

if there was truly no privacy, then the Mafia would cease to exist.

think this through.

~~~
panzi
The mafia wouldn't care about laws. So the mafia would keep secrets but law
abiding citizens wouldn't. So there is a fundamental asymmetry.

------
Xcelerate
"... he then married, had four children [...] that a polyamorous lifestyle
was, in fact, for him [...] "I really wanted to have sex with other people"
[...] now a divorced professor"

How convenient for him. I'm supposed to take life lessons from some guy that
put his own selfish needs above his wife's and children's just because he got
bored of having sex with one person? That's sickening.

~~~
DarqWebster
Hang on, as much as I disagree with the man, this is not why.

The man realised, during the course of his relationship, that he was unhappy
with his life. So he made a change that made him happier. At the same time he
deposits the bulk of his paycheck into his wife's account and considers it his
ethical duty to see his kids three to four times a week. All things
considered, the man made the change in a rather respectable manner.

The alternative is to remain in the relationship, discontent, for the rest of
his life. Is that what is expected of people? In the best case, one person is
miserable. In the worst case, his unhappiness manifests in the relationships
with his wife and kids. It seems reasonable that he steps aside before that
can happen, leaving him and his family to pursue happiness elsewhere.

I disagree with him because of his premise that complete information creates a
level playing field between people. Rather, the people who fall closer to the
perceived "normal" gain power over those who are closer to the tails of the
bell-curve.

~~~
Xcelerate
> The alternative is to remain in the relationship, discontent, for the rest
> of his life. Is that what is expected of people?

Yes, absolutely. I would expect no less of myself.

------
dinkumthinkum
This is about the silliest thing I've read in awhile. All right so he wants to
do this dumb PR stunt where he films his life and he wants to raise money on
Kickstarters. OK, I will just wait for him to raise the money, log in to his
Kickstarter or his bank account, take all his money and voila I have won the
game. I mean this is extraordinarily ridiculous and I don't know how this is
making any intelligible point about society or how we shouldn't care about
privacy.

So without privacy politicians would work to build a Utopia or something? This
is not worth the time of The Atlantic, or what I thought that institution was
about. The idea that people will act more ethically because of privacy is
something out of a Dystopian novel, but he actually sees this as Utopian; this
makes me wonder if this is a prank.

Let us wonder, if we give up all privacy, I imagine this applies to
institutions. So, when Google gives me their Secret key, or wait, no one will
ever use encryption because there will be no secrets, what stops someone from
firing a nuclear weapon because of course we will not have secrets like the
"launch codes." I realize in such a Utopia we won't need nuclear weapons but
let's Utopia will start tomorrow, before we get rid of these weapons ...
What's to stop some mentally ill person from using the free knowledge to
destroy the world of all new-found anti-privacy advocates?

Oh, you may say "we won't share those secrets." OK, where does this end
because I don't know see how you get Utopia without everyone following this
silly idea. I mean, it may come as a surprise, but humans are (relatively)
intelligent self-interested agents and will not always follow such noble
ideals as no-privacy, particularly if they will have grey area sorts of cases,
such as keep launch codes secret. It's just such a farce. I never thought
anyone could make Zuckerberg seem like someone that has intelligent thoughts
about privacy but here we are.

~~~
mmalone
In a hypothetical world with no privacy and perfect information I'd just make
my nuclear launch system (which also has perfect information) only launch when
the right people ask them too. You can't pretend to be those people because
you can't lie because the launch system would know because there's no privacy.

I don't know of any way to actually implement this in practice -- there
probably isn't one -- but it's an interesting thought experiment. It's
possible that privacy isn't a moral right and perhaps isn't necessary at all.
The argument for privacy seems to be predicated on other people being immoral.
If you could identify immoral people 100% accurately then perhaps the need for
privacy goes away. In fact, if that were the status quo you might claim that
keeping something private is immoral.

------
mikehall314
I'm reminded of the Ricky Gervais movie The Invention of Lying, and how easily
his character is able to manipulate the society he is part of because he lies
and no-one else does.

In Dyer's privacy-less utopia, it just takes one person to break the rules, to
keep things to themselves, to create a power disparity.

------
vacri
It's an impressive story, but there is a notable difference between sending
your details to a person you know the name of, who you can directly implore
not to be a bastard, and just opening things up completely. This is noted in
the article near the end: " _In fairness, Dyer hardly shared his private
communications with the whole world._ ".

We already know from other experiences that public display of financial
account numbers results in bad actors taking advantage of them (eg Jeremy
Clarkson's stunt, or the disaster relief credit card pictured in a story on
Hurricane Katrina). One chosen individual is unlikely to be a bad actor. The
general public does however contain them - opening up to one individual is
quite different to a wide demographic.

------
corobo
The problem with no privacy is context. I have no idea the context of this
Facebook status, just grabbed it as the first thing that caught my eye.

[http://i.imgur.com/zUh8qfn.png](http://i.imgur.com/zUh8qfn.png)

> Suppose, hypothetically, I wanted to meet a beautiful "little person."
> Where, in your opinion, would one go to most reliably be acquainted with
> such a treasure? — feeling determined.

Is he making a joke, is he someone that treats people as objects? There's no
context, his ideals don't work.

------
yuhong
Personally I tend to focus on reducing the need for anonymity on the Internet,
though I know eliminating the need completely will probably never be possible.
I still remember this for example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7809766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7809766)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7816839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7816839)

------
snarfy
New technologies like Google Glass are going to make this guy's dream a
reality. I suspect people with glass will behave differently when wearing them
than when not.

~~~
rdrey
I think you're overestimating the effect of Glass, since taking pictures and
recording video is still a conscious decision. (Except when someone publishes
the inevitable life-blogging app that captures a shot every few minutes. Even
then sharing with the public (via Google) is still a conscious decision -
sharing with Google & the NSA isn't of course. Luckily batteries are still a
limiting factor.)

~~~
snarfy
True, but I can see the trend. Maybe 10 generations of glass later, when the
glass/smartphone/tricorder device is ubiquitous, we'll see memes happen in
society similar to the OPs feelings of 'share everything'.

But maybe not. Maybe we'll get videos of people dumping water buckets on
themselves.

------
bronbron
> Society would be better if no one had any secrets.

Maybe, except that because information asymmetry provides an advantage, and
sometimes a huge one, there will always be an incredibly strong incentive for
each individual to keep secrets. An overwhelmingly strong incentive, I posit.

Enforcing total transparency would basically require us to read everyone's
thoughts.

------
lifeisstillgood
Tl;dr guy thinks privacy is dead and so sets up a project to be completely
transparent (public access to emails, video of daily life etc). He is a
divorced Ex Mormon also, not relevant but a good story hook

I like it btw - I agree that dealin with loss of privacy means asymmetry in
knowledge unless we make things transparent.

------
headgasket
1.Accept no privacy in exchange for access to all feeds

2.implement and roll out fail proof reporting tech

3.Restrict access to feeds

4.8.9.1 is what you'll see in the oblong mirror (bonus if you get to call the
tech telescreen)

------
lquist
Incidentally, this article is paid for by Metlife.

~~~
sp332
I wouldn't be surprised, but how do you know that?

~~~
lquist
It was shown next to the byline, but has now disappeared!?

------
elwell
I don't _have_ to hide my email password either: I use 2-factor auth.

------
Vhejdhchehd
The "nothing to hide" argument is fundamentally wrong just like how shedding
other rights because you don't personally need them is wrong.

>I don't need a fair trial: I'm not a criminal!

>I don't need free speech: I'm not a radical!

>I don't need a free press: there's no corruption!

Just like what Orwell discussed in 1984, words such as "liberty" and "freedom"
are only propagandaspeak used to rally the population behind a vague sense of
patriotism. The actual concepts behind these phrases have been systematically
eliminated.

