
Why Privacy Matters Even If You Have 'Nothing to Hide' (2011) - davidbarker
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if-You-Have-Nothing-to-Hide/127461/
======
athenot
Another argument is asymmetry.

I would not be opposed to having every bit of my life tracked _IF_ I could
also track and datamine every little detail about the people in power, the
governors, the local police, the algorithms used in processing my information
and the names/dates/places of people who ever see my information or a
derivation thereof.

It is time to turn that argument back on its proponents:

\- Dear local police force, if you have nothing to hide, why do you object
that people show your location in real time?

\- Dear Senator, if you have nothing to hide, why do you object we see in real
time your phone logs/emails/credit card transactions?

\- Dear Insurance Company, if you have nothing to hide, why do you object we
access you risk model?

\- etc.

~~~
dllthomas
Your focus on asymmetry of information ignores asymmetry of power.

~~~
seanflyon
Asymmetry of power does not necessitate asymmetry of privacy.

~~~
dllthomas
My point was that - since information magnifies power - symmetrically
_discarding_ privacy does not grant symmetric power but strengthens those
already in a position of power (able to _use_ the information more
effectively). This is an important dynamic that needs to be part of the
analysis. I wouldn't say it _necessitates_ anything in particular.

~~~
seanflyon
That makes sense. The reason I like symmetrically discarding privacy is that I
don't think retaining privacy is viable. I am not suggesting we discard all
privacy, just that whenever we discard privacy, we do so symmetrically. This
will still result in a power imbalance, but there will be some accountability.

~~~
dllthomas
_" The reason I like symmetrically discarding privacy is that I don't think
retaining privacy is viable."_

Absolute prevention isn't viable, but the same thing is true of myriad other
offenses. Just because we can't absolutely prevent fraud doesn't mean we
shouldn't consider it a bad thing and work to reduce the amount of it. I don't
really see why invasion of privacy is substantively different - though
certainly it could be.

 _" I am not suggesting we discard all privacy, just that whenever we discard
privacy, we do so symmetrically. This will still result in a power imbalance,
but there will be some accountability."_

"Symmetrically" might be easiest to sell, but I don't think it has anything
else going for it. Really, those with power should be expected to give up
_more_ privacy than us if they expect our cooperation. Alternatively, they
could give up other power to balance.

In any case, we are of course talking rules of thumb; any individual proposal
should be considered on its merits.

------
fragsworth
The surveillance state already has a tangible impact on political speech and
the spread of ideas. Consider heated political banter between two individuals
(who know each other fairly well) in private:

Person 1: "I really hate that Politician X lied about Y"

Person 2: "Yeah, he really deserves to die."

Person 2, though he's probably not thinking of killing Politician X, now has
to think twice about saying this if it's over any wires.

But the intent of the message is to express extreme hatred for political
hypocrisy, not to actually kill anyone.

The idea of destroying the government used to be a thing people could discuss
in private, and while it rarely panned out to anything, it helped spread
political ideas.

Now if people say these things in private, they are at serious risk of being
targeted by the NSA or other agencies that have access to their
communications.

------
stretchwithme
You may not have any to hide...from rational people. But guess what? Not
everybody is sane and respectful and waits until all the facts are in. Or are
capable of understanding all the facts.

It can be very time consuming trying to explain yourself to random people
whose opinions you really shouldn't care about. Because they don't keep those
private.

~~~
tomp
_Rational people_ is a very vague word; in particular, I assume most people
consider _themselves_ rational, but not necessarily others. Personally, I
consider people who were protesting Brendan Eich's position as CEO of Mozilla
based on some past, popular (i.e. consistent with majority opinion) non-
violent non-crime, but are not protesting Condoleza Rice's position on
Dropbox's board or Israel's attacks on Gaza, to be highly irrational. But
there seems to be a lot of them (especially in the media), and they have
proven to have huge destructive power, so it makes sense to hide stuff from
them.

------
jensen123
Many people say things like: "I'm just an average guy. I have nothing to hide.
My life is boring. I never do anything unusual."

Ironically, it is perhaps these people who have the most to lose from
surveillance?

As most of you already know, the difference between rich and poor has been
increasing since the 70s/80s. Most of the nothing-to-hiders are probably
ordinary middle class folks. What if the difference between rich and poor
continue to increase? Normally, people could protest against this sort of
thing, and get taxes on the rich raised to even things out a bit.

The surveillance-police-state that has been created in the name of fighting
terrorism and drugs, could be used for other things, too, no? Like against
protesters in favor of some income re-distribution.

I wouldn't be surprised if the nothing-to-hiders will wake up one day,
realizing that they are living in a very unpleasant society: A society where
the elite is living in luxury and the rest in squalor. A society where "those
with connections" don't get punished for crimes, but where the rest are
punished harshly. A society where those who win the lottery of birth will do
well, but where the average guy has no opportunities.

And because of the surveillance-police-state, they will not be able to change
it.

------
goodside
This article is a poor argument against "nothing to hide".

It starts with eight paragraphs attacking a strawman: "Can I see your credit
card bills for the last year?" As though anyone seriously thinks all financial
data should be public. Everyone has something to hide from _you_ , obviously,
the issue is whether they have anything to hide from the NSA.

After reflecting on the ethereality of privacy, the author argues from
fictional evidence, reminding us how evil surveillance was in Kafka and
Orwell. The proponents of "nothing to hide" do not live in a dystopia. You
don't need to convince them that surveillance is bad in North Korea, you need
to convince them that it's bad in a liberal democracy with independent press
and functioning courts.

The author explains that governments collect far more than most realize. This
is very true, but it does nothing to defeat "nothing to hide", whose
proponents should be fine with an NSA that is literally omniscient. Nobody
believes government data collection is morally justified because it is
ineffective.

He worries the government will gain an incomplete view of suspects,
persecuting innocent people who would be exonerated by details they can't see.
In the real world, law enforcement doesn't get to decide who is guilty. If
their incompetence leads to investigations of innocent people, the result is
an embarrassing defeat in court once more evidence comes to light, which they
are obviously motivated to avoid. Arguably, one way to prevent prosecution of
innocents is to ensure the government has _more_ surveillance, so law
enforcement can correctly distinguish aspiring meth manufacturers from writers
of Breaking Bad fanfics.

By the time the author gets to his strongest point, that data scooped up by
intelligence agencies might leak to the public, he does nothing to support
that such an event is likely. How many instances are there where real people
have been affected by leaks of data collected by the NSA/FBI/CIA? There may be
good reasons to worry about such leaks anyway, like known leaks from private
companies and local police departments, but none of these are presented.

Of course, the author objects to demands for the "dead bodies" of privacy
erosion: "But if this is the standard to recognize a problem, then few privacy
problems will be recognized." Yes, and that's the point: Proponents of
"nothing to hide" believe there is no actual harm to anyone who isn't guilty,
and the author presents no counterexamples to dispel this belief.

~~~
Paul-ish
>He worries the government will gain an incomplete view of suspects,
persecuting innocent people who would be exonerated by details they can't see.
In the real world, law enforcement doesn't get to decide who is guilty. If
their incompetence leads to investigations of innocent people, the result is
an embarrassing defeat in court once more evidence comes to light, which they
are obviously motivated to avoid. Arguably, one way to prevent prosecution of
innocents is to ensure the government has more surveillance, so law
enforcement can correctly distinguish aspiring meth manufacturers from writers
of Breaking Bad fanfics.

Except that the government can change your life without any trial. The
government can put you on a list that requires you to undergo extra screening
at the airport. Or you might even get put on the No Fly List. There is no way
you can contest being placed on either list. These sorts of lists may just be
confined to air travel for now, but after the next crisis, who knows how they
add "security" for our own safety?

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

~~~
goodside
The courts have already ruled in favor of the ACLU on requiring a process to
get false positives off the no-fly list: [http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-
no-fly-list-violates-rig...](http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-no-fly-list-
violates-rights-federal-ruling-20140624-story.html)

Also, it's not clear that this list would be any smaller if there were less
government surveillance. Presumably, the less the government knows about you
the more paranoid they would be about letting you on an airplane, given you
share a name with a known terrorist.

And, frankly, if the single most egregious collateral damage to result from a
spy apparatus as large as the NSA/CIA/FBI is that some people have trouble
getting on airplanes, that's really not that bad.

------
hyperion2010
My go to response for this now is to appeal to good old Cardinal Richelieu:
"Give me six lines written in the hand of the most honest man and I will see
him hanged." When you give the state total control over information and it
interpretation then it doesn't matter whether you have nothing to hide,
because the state can simply fabricate it.

~~~
chillingeffect
Exactly. It's not just the collecting of the data that's dangerous, but the
absolutely belief in it's veracity.

Consider the recent google case where they reported a guy to authorities for
child porn...

Couldn't any ISP simply insert child porn into someone's email and report
them? Doesn't that mean ISPs could go after anyone they have a personal grudge
against. Everyone will believe the evidence the ISP produces.

------
mkal_tsr
I linked my friends to his paper "I’ve Got Nothing To Hide’ and Other
Misunderstandings of Privacy" [1] when I was closing down my Facebook and
other social network sites; it does a great job of explaining multiple aspects
of privacy as well as show the absurdity of "Well if you have nothing to hide"

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

~~~
SilasX
I've noticed something strange: no one who recommends that article wants to
put the core argument in their own words.

Edit: never mind, I missed the second link, whose first comment has a good one
(assuming it's faithful to the paper):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4958033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4958033)

~~~
mkal_tsr
Well, I've tried to make the argument several times, but I usually only hit
several aspects of privacy. One of the reasons why I do recommend that paper
is it (in my mind) sufficiently breaks down and refutes the 'nothing to hide'
argument from multiple angles and exposes the fallacy for what it is, rather
than resorting to emotional appeal like, "show me your email"

I don't think it's strange at all, if you find something that you completely
agree with and is articulated better than you could phrase it yourself, why go
through the work of making the same argument with the same reasoning but in a
poorer form?

~~~
SilasX
I don't claim to understand anything until I can put it in my own words. Even
if you could only reveal something about the core argument, that would be 100x
better than "go here to find an awesome argument".

I'm pretty sure the core argument doesn't take several pages to simply
express. (The abstract fails too in that it says basically "I'm gonna make an
argument" instead of the actual argument.) One paragraph vs 50, times how many
people?

Naturally, a paragraph can't capture the full original, but it can tell people
whether the point is worthy enough to justify reading the whole thing.

~~~
mkal_tsr
> I'm pretty sure the core argument doesn't take several pages to simply
> express.

It doesn't, but to _support it_ with evidence and examples, it does. That is
what makes an argument/position robust and harder to discredit/disprove.

~~~
SilasX
You don't need to give all the evidence and examples to convey what the
argument actually is. That's why it's a summary: you don't have to be as
thorough as the original.

Once someone knows what the argument is, they can decide whether it's
something they've heard before, or already agree with, or want to know this or
that point is supported. You don't get that from "he rips apart that argument,
trust me".

~~~
mkal_tsr
Well, this discussion is just not going to go anywhere since you're ignoring
the context of it.

It was me linking to _my friends_ in _my_ sign-off post on social network
accounts and I was informing _friends_ that if they wanted a summary of what I
thought without having to contact me or listen to me rant for 30+ minutes,
they could read a paper I agreed with or talk to me directly.

Have a good day :-)

~~~
SilasX
You make your friends go through 30 pages to learn of an idea they could get
from a paragraph?

~~~
mkal_tsr
Have a good day :-)

------
IgorPartola
The biggest problem with the 'OK, let me see your credit card statements'
retort is that, well, of course they don't want _you_ to see stuff. It's all
too easy to say that the government is impartial, composed of perfect human
beings that follow the rules, and that the rules are reinforced by lots of
checks and balances. Most people don't realize that their neighbors, friends,
ex-spouses, etc. could be the ones watching them.

But even if the argument is not humans watching you, but computers, what
happens when you say "terraces" on the phone and the computer algorithm
transcribes it as "terrorists"? Or if you look up "bomb making", out of
curiosity, using Google, and get permanently flagged as a potential suspect in
every bombing from now on? You know you are not a criminal, but these systems
make it so ridiculously easy to provide evidence that any one person committed
any one crime.

------
stmfreak
"Nothing to hide" adherents have a temporal problem. They might have nothing
to hide their present government's observations and laws, but it takes little
effort to find points in history where the same people might have held
opinions or taken actions contrary to the laws of the time.

And then there are those of us who live in Countries today with very
oppressive laws or tyrants hunting down those who oppose them. Certainly there
are those with something to hide somewhere in the world whom even "nothing to
hide" adherents might sympathize with from their ivory tower, first-world
perspective.

The sword of the Tyrant is forged and sharpened during times of peace. We
would all be wise to not give our peaceful governments the tools and weapons
of our children's destruction and enslavement.

------
johngalt
Either we get a handle on the NSA or 10 years from now we find out that the
NSA was targeting X political group illegally.

What happens when we find out that the NSA was combing through data _more
thoroughly_ for democrats? IMHO this is 10x more of a 'threat to our freedom'
than any terrorist.

------
kordless
One thing cryptocurrencies bring us is is computed trust. A good blockchain
will deliver an accurate representation of the current state of trust between
entities. With privacy, you enjoy the _lack_ of that state of trust, or what I
call 'inverse trust'.

When you enjoy privacy, you trust I don't know anything about you.

It _feels_ like privacy advocates gloss over the actual cost of implementing
good privacy. Given it is related to trust, and computed trust costs
_something_ , one would assume that privacy is something you should be willing
to pay for. The correlation is that if someone wants to remove your ability to
remain private, they should have to pay an equal or greater value to do so.

------
johnvschmitt
It's a well thought out & written article.

But, we still need a much shorter retort to use in conversation, than trying
to discuss all of the points in that article.

Maybe:

"Well, if you think privacy is only for criminals, then you wouldn't mind if
me and my friends, and your boss, all ride home with you tonight, & spend the
night watching you sleep & all the stuff before that, right? Can your bathroom
fit us all? If not, please pay some taxes to support that surveillance need.
We'll be there every night from now on. See? Privacy is about "not being
watched", not about "hiding crimes".

~~~
nagrom
You don't do anything strange in the bathroom right? So I'd like to have a
camera fitted facing the pan. It's not like you do anything the rest of us
don't, and there has been a problem of people illegally flushing refuse down
the sewer. This monitoring camera can ensure that you're an upright member of
society and everything is OK.

------
jonnathanson
This is a very good and worthwhile encapsulation of the major problems with
the "nothing to hide" argument, but also with the externalities and emergent
privacy-invasions that can occur with the aggregation of seemingly innocuous
data. (See: the author's example about inferences that can be made from one's
purchase histories.)

The other thing I'd add to this discussion is the question of what you're
sharing _with whom_. The who of it all matters a great deal. Amazon collects a
lot of data about my purchase history, for instance, and while the
ramifications make me somewhat uncomfortable, I accept them. It's part of the
shopping experience, and it's part of Amazon's business model. But take that
purchase history out of context, and put it in the hands of someone looking
for a very different set of inferences about me. A healthcare provider, for
example, who can make startlingly precise inferences about my lifestyle and my
likely state of health from my Amazon purchases. This scenario seems
farfetched today. And I trust Amazon to be a reasonable steward of my
information, and to maintain some sanctity over the context in which it's
aggregated and analyzed. But I'm scattering plenty more breadcrumbs around the
internet in my digital travels. I can only imagine the novel and ingenious
ways they'll be used in the future -- for me, hopefully, but just as easily
against me. It all depends on who's looking at my data, and for what purposes.
Those people, and those purposes, might be very far removed from the people
and purposes I'd originally envisioned when I'd shared my data. In most cases
I can't really control that. That's what scares me.

Data context matters a great deal. So does the presumed aggregator of the
data, and so do the presumed consumer(s) of that aggregation.

I think it's important to make this point to the general public, because the
typical bogeymen (the NSA, Google, Facebook, etc.) don't really mean much to
most people. When you conjure up the NSA, your average layperson will shrug
and say "I have nothing to hide from them." Just mentioning the NSA brings up
a fantastical frame of reference: a frame involving terrorists, leaks, Jack
Bauer, and Edward Snowden. Most people, in that frame of reference, find it so
far removed from their daily lives as to be almost comical. This breeds
apathy. That apathy gets you the shrug and the dismissal. But conjure up a
different frame of reference -- being denied health coverage because of
purchase histories, or being turned down for a job because of image searches
-- and people seem to get the idea.

We need to do a better job educating people about a) closer-to-home
implications of privacy erosion, and b) examples of data, seemingly mundane,
that can be aggregated to powerful effect. Yes, the big stuff matters. We
should be making a big fuss about the NSA. But that's not the rhetorical
starting point that's going to get Joe Sixpack to care. In some cases, it
might even be counterproductive.

~~~
rayiner
I agree, and I think techies shoot themselves in the foot trying to thread the
needle by demonizing government data collection while justifying data
collection by tech companies. For the vast majority of people, the idea of
companies sharing private information amongst each other is a lot more scary
and concrete than invocations of 1984, etc. If you want people to be scared of
government data collection, what will do it is the prospect of that date being
shared with employers, credit card companies, etc.

~~~
dalecooper
A common logical fallacy is the false dichotomy of government vs. corporation.
In modernity, there is no meaningful difference between the two. Power is a
zero-sum game. Both groups must increase its own power by decreasing the power
of the individual it encounters. Both consume power from people in the form of
money, labor, information, abstract freedom, and civil liberties. Ultimately
both groups can become most successful by being hostile to humanity (as
opposed to "promoting human progress").

Welcome to the Kali Yuga! The age in which down is up.

~~~
pcrh
Not quite. Corporations don't have the power to imprison (or in the US,
execute) you.

~~~
rayiner
I find this unpersuasive. The typical person is justified in believing that
the government has no interest in imprisoning or executing them. They are
entirely justified in having a greater fear of private parties.

~~~
pcrh
Governments imprison people for minor perceived infractions of the law every
day of the week.

~~~
rayiner
At least in the U.S., you have to pretty clearly violate the law in order to
be imprisoned. You may think the law is stupid, but that's a different matter.
You have less margin if you're a racial or political minority, but by
definition that's not something the typical person has to worry about.[1]
Indeed, in the U.S., the law adjusts pretty rapidly to what the typical person
thinks should be acceptable. E.g. in the last couple of years we've gone from
a majority of people thinking marijuana should be illegal to a (slight)
majority thinking it should be legal ([http://www.people-
press.org/2013/04/04/majority-now-supports...](http://www.people-
press.org/2013/04/04/majority-now-supports-legalizing-marijuana)), and lo,
there has been a wave of legalization activity around the country in the same
time frame.

[1] I don't think people have the correct perception of how oppression works
in a democracy. The line between the FBI trying to get MLK to commit suicide
and the FBI imprisoning random middle-class white Americans is a lot bolder
than people assume. I think the misunderstanding stems from a failure to
appreciate the nature of oppressive government actions within a democracy.
It's not like oppression of civil rights leaders in the 1950's and 1960's was
the result of a self-contained entity within government, who could turn its
attention to ordinary people at a whim. Instead, it was a classic case of the
majority oppressing the minority, acting through government. Oppression of the
majority requires an inversion of that power dynamic, and I think is harder to
achieve than people assume.

This is all, of course, not to justify oppression of the minority. Rather,
it's to point out that your typical person is quite justified in assuming the
government has little reason to oppress him.

~~~
pcrh
I am not speaking of the effect that corporations may have on the legislative
process, but rather of the effect of local policing on the lives of local
people.

My concern is that excessive surveillance leads inevitably to excessive
perceptions of culpability.

One does not need to be formally found guilty for a run-in with the law to
lead to "temporary" detention and legal bills; and if you can't afford the
legal bills, maybe you might be forced into plea bargaining and end up with a
criminal record. Even if this scenario does not happen, a genuine harm to
one's reputation as a result of "helping the police with their enquiries"
often occurs, especially if one is a middle class corporate employee.

~~~
harryh
It's funny how fast you downgraded from governments imprisoning people to
"genuine harm to one's reputation."

~~~
pcrh
>"temporary" detention

If you can't post bail you could be in jail for months on end, with no
compensation if eventually found innocent.

------
3rd3
Earlier discussion:

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5846076](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5846076)

~~~
bostik
The first of your links has this absolutely wonderful bit on the very first
comment: _The "if you have nothing to hide..." line is predicated on the
viewer having final say about whether something is right/wrong, thus
subordinating the subject to the viewer._ [direct link to full comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105697)]

That pretty much crystallises the core of the problem. It's never about what
is right, wrong or proper - only what is approved to be more or less
appropriate at the time. (A malleable thing in itself.)

Go give your upvotes to the original poster. Read the full comment while at
it, too.

------
Xophmeister
I'm not the least bit an apologist for the UK government, but I don't believe
it's true that they have installed thousands of security cameras watching our
every move. Similarly, I have never seen an "If you've got nothing to hide,
you've got nothing to fear!" banner anywhere here; but again, I can't claim
that they don't exist. My anecdotal understanding is that almost all security
cameras in the UK are privately owned and generally passively monitored (e.g.,
if there's a break in and the recording hasn't been overwritten, then that
specific tape may be analysed).

Otherwise, of course, I stand by the sentiment that one has a right to privacy
and the 'nothing to hide' argument is spurious.

~~~
seanflyon
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-
surveilla...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-
camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-
circuit_television](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television)

It is a fact that the UK government has installed thousands of security
cameras.

------
brandonmenc
It matters because a member of government can be extorted with recordings of
their not-necessarily-illegal activities - like cheating on a spouse.

I can't think of a more concise argument than this.

------
pdkl95
Anybody who argues that they have "nothing to hide" is just announcing that
they cannot reason beyond their own self-interest.

Sometimes it's not about "you".

------
Kenji
It is surprising to me that there's even a debate about whether having privacy
is needed in a society that is based on taboos and lies.

~~~
inanutshellus
... refering to every human-managed society ever, I assume? Perk up, my
friend. The world's not so dreary as all that.

~~~
Kenji
"... refering to every human-managed society ever, I assume?"

Of course! Controlling information is an integral part of all kinds of
relationships. I didn't want to sound overly dramatic, I just thought I'd like
to call things by their name.

------
Symmetry
I can imagine a society where you could actually have "nothing to hide," but
that's not the society we live in.

