[HN Gopher] Why 'I Have Nothing to Hide' Is the Wrong Way to Thi...
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Why 'I Have Nothing to Hide' Is the Wrong Way to Think About
Surveillance (2013)
Author : thunderbong
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-07-22 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| [deleted]
| kodah wrote:
| I don't think you'll ever convince someone who doesn't believe in
| privacy of the value in privacy until they're hurt. Privacy
| touches all kinds of subjects from centralization, to corporate
| power, advertising revenue, government control, etc... and
| therefore becomes frivolous to discuss.
|
| To me the problem is that most people think they're living a
| "normal" well-to-do life until a group gets power that thinks you
| don't or didn't and wants to arrange a circus for attention.
|
| Some popular responses I've seen to pro-privacy concern:
|
| - caring about privacy is "narcissistic" because nobody would
| possibly care about Tom or John's internet search history.
|
| - privacy is just an excuse for people to avoid "consequences".
|
| - privacy people are just criminals disguised as advocates.
|
| There's commonality in these responses, but I'm not sure what it
| is.
| fsflover wrote:
| > I don't think you'll ever convince someone who doesn't
| believe in privacy of the value in privacy until they're hurt.
|
| If the person understands why the freedom of speech is
| important, you can explain that privacy is needed to protect
| whistleblowers, journalists and activists. Only when everyone
| has pivacy, it becomes hard for the government to target them.
| kodah wrote:
| Yeah, I've tried that explanation as well. I think the
| problem is that privacy as a problem is fairly abstract and
| multi-branched in both issues and logic.
| not_zxc wrote:
| Ask them to give you 100 bucks from their wallet. Then keep
| it.
|
| Cheapest privacy lesson they'll ever get.
|
| (The point: privacy about who is allowed to acquire the
| valuables. The owner is in control, _not_ someone else.
| Once they decide to give that away: fine, now it 's no
| longer under their control.)
| RIMR wrote:
| I think that the core issue here is what "privacy" means to
| people. Data about you can be hard to quantify, and in the
| digital age there are plenty of reasons to collect certain kind
| of data.
|
| For example, I wouldn't care much about my aggregate step data
| from my phone or watch being used to observe walking habits or
| popular walking routes in my city, nor would I mind much about
| my aggregate location data being used to observe store
| patronage in my city. I prefer to opt-in to these things, and
| have an understanding of the data I am sharing, and who I am
| sharing it with, but as long as it's aggregate, non-
| identifiable data, I am willing to part with it and still feel
| that my privacy has remained intact.
|
| But as you say, people don't value privacy until they're hurt,
| and I think that's a really good place to draw the line. If the
| data collected about me can be used to hurt me specifically -
| to target me or expose sensitive information about me as an
| individual - then my privacy has been violated.
|
| The recent Grindr controversy is a good example. If people opt-
| in to data sharing in the app, and the app provides clean,
| anonymized data to their partners that only reveals aggregate
| trends, then the privacy of individual users is still
| maintained. But since the data that Grindr sold was enough to
| out a clergyman and expose the specific gay businesses he was a
| patron of, then they clearly failed to preserve their users'
| privacy. The data they sold was enough to target and hurt
| someone individually.
|
| The big issue I see is that most corporate data-sharing
| agreement put some of the burden of privacy of the recipient of
| the data, with the expectation that the data be handled in good
| faith and NOT be used to target people or mine information
| about specific people. The burden should lie entirely with the
| seller of the data to ensure that no privacy-violating data
| could be inferred from the data (including if combined with
| other publicly/commercially available datasets), and if they
| cannot ensure that then they should have no legal right to sell
| it, because there's no way they can ensure that it will be
| handled in good faith.
| not_zxc wrote:
| > _I don 't think you'll ever convince someone who doesn't
| believe in privacy of the value in privacy until they're hurt._
|
| But that fundamentally doesn't matter in the least. I don't
| care what they do; but they cannot get access to my data
| without my approval. And they're definitely not getting my
| approval without some really good justification.
|
| It's my data; I have no obligation to anyone else(*) to
| disclose anything about it.
|
| (*) legal restrictions aside -- which is vastly different from
| someone who wants your data claiming they're legally entitled
| to it.
| tqi wrote:
| I don't think the majority of people are against privacy. I
| think the majority of people don't think that the level of
| privacy they give up is too high a price to pay for the
| services they receive. That seems reasonable to me?
|
| It often feels like privacy advocates start from a position
| that anyone who doesn't hold the same view as them must be
| missing some key piece of information, and are unwilling to
| accept that a person might decide that the tradeoff is actually
| worth it to them?
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| In my own experience and discussions, it isn't so much that
| people are OK with risking privacy in favor of using any
| given service/application, but rather more a sense of
| despair: "I hate it but there's nothing I can do." In some
| ways this may be the same thing, in that they desire the use
| of the service/app so much that their desire for privacy is
| weighed lower.
|
| Personally, my desire for privacy is starting to harm my
| daily life, as I am apparently unable to access Facebook
| Groups or Marketplace, both of which are heavily and almost
| exclusively used in my community for meetups and personal
| sales respectively. I know rationally that I can make a bare
| bones FB profile just to use these, but my personal (perhaps
| unjustified) paranoia currently still wins out.
|
| On that note, if anybody knows of any open source or upcoming
| alternatives to those two services, please let me know so
| that I can see about making at least a local dent in FB's
| monopoly.
| kodah wrote:
| > It often feels like privacy advocates start from a position
| that anyone who doesn't hold the same view as them must be
| missing some key piece of information, and are unwilling to
| accept that a person might decide that the tradeoff is
| actually worth it to them?
|
| That could be the case, albeit that's fairly uncharitable.
| Usually when I talk to anti-privacy people they have a strong
| bond to a particular thing that _makes_ them anti-privacy.
| That could be a bond with corporations that benefit from a
| lack of privacy or it could be some moral community that
| tells them a lack of privacy let 's them find all the "bad
| guys". Of course, that's anecdotal.
|
| Personally speaking, I don't mind decreased privacy as long
| as I have a way to opt out and data stays very anonymized.
| Providing that kind of choice, and minimal negative effects
| that negate the ability of a person to opt out, is the
| optimal choice for me.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| The commonality is "I don't think that I have anything to hide"
| or more specifically, "I don't fully understand what exactly I
| am hiding from or why I need to hide."
|
| Last I checked, most people understand privacy from other
| people at some level. I only say that because I still see
| people wearing clothes and closing the door when using the
| restroom.
|
| What they don't understand is why they need privacy from
| centralized points of failure/exploitation.
| not_zxc wrote:
| No, no, no.
|
| The reason the "nothing to hide" argument is wrong is because its
| starting point is wrong. The surveillor has to justify
| themselves, not the surveillee.
|
| Put another way: I do not have to argue why someone else should
| not get access to my information. No one else should get access
| to my information unless and until they come up with reasons --
| and I accept those reasons.
|
| You do NOT need to justify why you're not sharing data.
| glonq wrote:
| When I was younger, I held the "nothing to hide" PoV. But now I
| think about it more critically, like "how could [...will!] these
| surveillance powers be misused/abused?"
| commandlinefan wrote:
| TL;DR: "if I have nothing to hide I have nothing to fear" is
| absolutely a correct observation, but we all have or will have in
| the future something to hide so we all have something to fear.
| headShrinker wrote:
| > TL;DR: "if I have nothing to hide I have nothing to fear" is
| absolutely a correct observation
|
| False. You'll fear losing privacy and freedom to speak freely
| even if you have nothing to hide. We have seen this effect in
| real-time as governments began "secretly" monitoring
| communication in 2006 and even more so as tech companies
| started banning speech. You will self-censor even when you have
| nothing to hide.
|
| Privacy is like the bathroom door. We close it even though
| everyone knows what we are doing. It's not a secret.
|
| It's like the freedom to speak even if you have nothing to say.
|
| You wouldn't use a public bathroom stall that didn't have a
| door. You would be plenty angry and confused if I started
| arbitrarily dictating what you could and couldn't say.
|
| You have plenty to fear even when you have nothing to hide.
|
| Privacy should not be confused with secrecy. These two are
| often conflated by those who wish to compromise your privacy.
| not_zxc wrote:
| Worse: the "nothing to hide" argument is mistaking who has
| the power with who would like to have the power.
|
| You're the boss of you; no one else has a right to info about
| you.
|
| (sure, barring legal circumstances -- which should be
| challengable in a court)
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| I have never seen anybody use the "I have nothing to hide"
| argument, but I have seen many people write rebuttals to it. This
| effort seems like an enormous waste of time.
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(page generated 2021-07-22 23:03 UTC)