If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

http://jacquesmattheij.com/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide

by jacquesm • 11 years ago

658 308 11 years ago

bsbechtel• 11 years ago

Agree 100% with the point being made here, but the two examples used are also examples of the (large) weaknesses of centralized systems, which is much more abstract, often overlooked, and can be a much greater threat to our well being. A centralized system that everyone depends on will hurt everyone when it fails. A robust, decentralized system limits this exposure.

batou• 11 years ago

(or implicates everyone in certain political regimes)

A plausibly deniable system is the only real answer and so far that is word of mouth.

stretchwithme3• 11 years ago

Very true.

A single electrical grid certainly is. I'd prefer to see local co-operatives buying utilities from competing networks. The co-ops would own the last mile and could pick the combination of technology, price and robustness that suits them. And when one fails, they hook up to a competitor.

If Japan had had that arrangement, instead of having to bail out the utility monopoly that failed to prevent the Fukushima disaster, they could have just let it go bankrupt and spent only what it took to clean up the mess. And that distinct possibility might have helped prevent the disaster to begin with. They might have figured out how to move the pumps high enough above, for example. Or made provisions to bring in new pumps by helicopter.

A disciplined standing army is more vulnerable too, in some situations, than highly decentralized forces. If you can get the leaders to surrender, that's it. But those pesky insurgents never give up.

And then there's the French Navy, whose leaders refused to send them out to sea when the Nazis were invading. Churchill ending up destroying it so it wouldn't fall into enemy hands. Those ships could have been used to help the evacuation and then fight the Nazis at sea.

Centralization is becoming a problem in disaster relief now too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/us/nationalspecial/after-f...

dmvaldman• 11 years ago

"When you say I don't care about the right to privacy because I have nothing to hide, that is no different than saying I don't care about freedom of speech because I have nothing to say or freedom of the press because I have nothing to write."

- Edward Snowden

PavlovsCat5• 11 years ago

I've heard quite a lot of people that talk about post-privacy, and they talk about it in terms of feeling like, you know, it's too late, we're done for, there's just no possibility for privacy left anymore and we just have to get used to it. And this is a pretty fascinating thing, because it seems to me that you never hear a feminist say that we're post-consent because there is rape. And why is that? The reason is that it's bullshit.
We can't have a post-privacy world until we're post-privilege. So when we cave in our autonomy, then we can sort of say, "well, okay, we don't need privacy anymore, in fact we don't have privacy anymore, and I'm okay with that." Realistically though people are not comfortable with that. Because, if you only look at it from a position of privilege, like, say, white man on a stage, then yeah, maybe post-privacy works out okay for those people. But if you have ever not been, or if you are currently not, a white man with a passport from one of the five good nations in the world, it might not really work out well for you, and in fact it might be designed specifically such that it will continue to not work out well for you, because the structures themselves produce these inequalities.
So when you hear someone talk about post-privacy, I think it's really important to engage them about their own privilege in the system and what it is they are actually arguing for.

-- Jacob Appelbaum ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3h46EbqhPo&t=7m46s )

vezzy-fnord6• 11 years ago

Post-privilege is impossible by definition in any society where scarcity exists. Even if various identities are all elevated to an equal level of acceptance, the term "privilege" will simply be shifted to more nebulous concepts.

Finally, the conclusion that reaching post-privilege will result in a feasible post-privacy does not follow at all. What, is the implication here that white men "on stages" have nothing to hide? I don't get it.

Leave it to some people to turn a human rights issue into an identity politics issue.

zxcvcxz• 11 years ago

What are his ideas to 'fix' the system?

lookbothways• 11 years ago

Man, if there ever was an instance of alienating a sympathetic audience, this would be it.

How does one take a golden argument like "privacy is an inalienable right," turn it into a tired "you should be ashamed for being white, check your privilege shitlord" flamebait, and still get taken seriously?

jsingleton• 11 years ago

Well put.

The Open Rights Group regularly do briefings on things like this and one of the "Responses you might get and how to counter them" arguments is:

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear

That isn’t true. Surveillance has been used against journalists, whistleblowers and human rights activists. Most of us want to keep parts of our lives private." [0]

I've had people use the naïve "nothing to fear" argument before. Tell them that even if they wrongly believe that they don't require privacy, people working in their interest do.

[0] https://www.openrightsgroup.org/assets/files/campaign_resour...

perfTerm• 11 years ago

And even if I have nothing to hide why can't I fear for potential whistle blowers, journalists, or activists?

It's a shame that we love to boil incredibly complex issues down into simple platitudes. You find it on facebook, on the news, on twitter (although short and sweet does work well there), and every where else you look and people you talk to.

It's a shallow way to talk about things.

jedrek• 11 years ago

If they have nothing to hide, ask them for nudes.

OJFord• 11 years ago

I disagree, you can have nothing to write but still desire to read "free thoughts" of those who do have things to write. Not sure there's a parallel for privacy, if you assume self-interest.

CamperBob2• 11 years ago

Also point out that they break a couple of laws every day, just like the rest of us do here in America. The only thing that saves them, however temporarily, is that those laws don't "count."

voidz• 11 years ago

So, even if you have nothing to hide, you still have things to fear.

gambler• 11 years ago

This is the best way I'v heard anyone phrase this idea. Makes me want to watch more interviews with Snowden. Clearly, he is more than just some guy who leaked secret information. His personal take on surveilance is very interesting as well.

Sideloader2• 11 years ago

The documentary film Citizenfour is a good place to start. Or, you know, half the Internet (YouTube especially) ;)

at-fates-hands• 11 years ago

This is such an odd statement and fundamentally confuses two very different ideas.

First of all, there is no express right to privacy in the Constitution. There is however, the Bill of Rights which everybody is familiar with. It does outline protecting specific aspects of privacy which include such things as the First Amendment (freedom of religion) or the 4th Amendment, (privacy of your possessions against unlawful search and seizure).

The supreme court refuses to protect privacy beyond those issues which are directly related to the Bill of Rights even though the public believes it is their right to have a blanket type of protection against congressional overreach.

To hear Snowden confuse these things by lumping rights protected under the Constitution with a broad reaching idea of the public's right of privacy (which is does not have), and then equating them is puzzling.

TorKlingberg• 11 years ago

The concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of the press exist outside of US constitution.

mikegioia• 11 years ago

This makes no sense to me. What is Snowden "confusing" here? Is he confusing privacy rights with free-speech rights because the latter is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution while the former is only indirectly referenced? If that's the case, you do nothing to explain why it's odd, why it's puzzling to you, or what Snowden's confused about.

His analogy does not fundamentally confuse anything; he's equating privacy rights to speech rights through a weak notion that having no interest for one equates to no need for the right. Privacy in and of itself might not be a right explicitly granted by the Constitution, but the analogy is clear and an accurate description of how ludicrous it is to give up a right because you see no need for it.

effie• 11 years ago

Not puzzling at all. He is making a general analogy between man's freedom to exercise speech and freedom to exercise privacy. There is no mention of constitution or bill of rights in that statement. Courts refusing to protect freedoms are not mentioned either.

oneloop2• 11 years ago

He was not saying a "right to privacy" existed, and he certainly not saying that the rights you pointed out imply "right to privacy".

He was only pointing out that there might be other reasons to defend a right (or defend that idea that something should in the future become a right) other than me wanting to exercise that right directly.

I do care about freedom of speech even though, really, I have not much to say. Freedom of speech affects me in other ways (and arguably more important ways) than me personally being allowed to say certain things. Likewise, I do care about (an hypothetical) "right to privacy" even though I have nothing to hide.

ska• 11 years ago

I don't think it is puzzling when you recall that these concepts are larger than the US view of them and that particular encoding in the US constitution.

Particular implementation details are interesting in their own right, but they are not the conversation.

pessimizer• 11 years ago

He didn't mention the constitution, you did. These are philosophical ideas, not summaries of the legislation of a particular locality at a particular time. The fact that in the US, freedom of speech is mentioned in the Constitution (though subsequently abridged in any number of ways), the right to privacy came into existence through many court decisions, and freedom of the press doesn't exist at all in US law doesn't make them fundamentally different types of ideas.

The supreme court refuses to protect privacy beyond those issues which are directly related to the Bill of Rights

This is simply wrong.

spdustin• 11 years ago

I expect the fourth amendment to be a growing factor in SCOTUS cases related to privacy - at the time of inception, a person's self, house, papers and effects were tangible things - the idea that the other "digital effects" we all have in our "digital houses" didn't exist.

I think the argument that an email would be a "paper" under the fourth amendment is going to be the first test. I know that sort of thing has been challenged (users should've have an expectation of privacy, etc.) but it's my belief that the argument "users have no expectation of privacy when it comes to emails" is a misdirection. Our citizens have rights whether or not they expect those rights to be respected by those in power.

DasIch• 11 years ago

The US constitution doesn't hold a monopoly on defining human rights.

While that may be surprising to some Americans there are indeed other people and countries on this planet, that have their own constitutions that define human rights that the US constitution does not, privacy among them.

The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as unenforceabl as it unfortunately is, also defines privacy as a human right.

Sideloader2• 11 years ago

“What people used to call liberty and freedom we now call privacy. And we say, in the same breath, that privacy is dead.”

— Jacob Appelbaum

thedragonaut• 11 years ago

"I hope someone submits (one of) the OPM dataset(s) to @wikileaks. Would be a nice addition to ICWatch: https://icwatch.wikileaks.org/ "

-- Jacob Appelbaum

https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/609622195434819584

hammock• 11 years ago

Or I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have a gun

stefantalpalaru2• 11 years ago

Or I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have a gun

You're doing it wrong. If you want to paraphrase one of the two affirmations in that quote, you need to write something like: "Or I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have anything to shoot at".

The second part of that structure is showing a use case for that freedom (speaking, publishing, shooting). Simple possession is not enough.

So concentrate more the next time you feel like entertaining this fantasy that civilians need to be able to freely shoot at stuff, just like they need to freely speak and publish.

rorykoehler9• 11 years ago

What I don't understand about the want to have freedom to bare arms (aside from moral arguments about what high levels of gun ownership does to society, but let's not go there) is that the only time I can imagine needing a gun in life is during a time of civil war or some similar sort of uprising. It would not make any difference to me what the law was in this regard if lawlessness had already broken out and I feared for my life.

spiritplumber2• 11 years ago

I consider myself too easily distracted to own a gun, but support your right to do so. Nobody's making me not buy or not build a gun, I choose not to.

imglorp• 11 years ago

It's also crucial to civilization that everyone _else_ has these rights, not just you. You can't take internet, roads, and telephones away just because bad guys sometimes use them.

I want my neighbor to have all rights, even if he is doing wrong with them.

joshuak• 11 years ago

Also the argument is framed backwards.

The question isn't, 'why do I need my privacy'. The question is, 'why do you need to take it'.

bmurphy1976• 11 years ago

Well, that's not helpful. They already have an answer and it clearly works: because of the terrorists trying to take our land and take away our God!! Think of the children!!

I fail to see how reframing the argument is going to change anything. What we need is WAY more transparency. If there's transparency, then the abuses will be obvious, and once people see the abuses they will say "enough is enough."

That ultimately is why they want to keep this hidden. It's not because the "terrorists" will find out, it's because WE will find out and we won't like what we see.

Tit for Tat. If you want to take away our privacy, then we MUST have complete transparency in return.

JoshTriplett• 11 years ago

That's unfortunately a question they have an answer to. It's a bad answer, and one that needs dismissing as quickly and decisively as possible, but there are people who think some concern they have trumps other people's rights.

The more important question is, "what gives you the right to try to take it, no matter what concern you're professing?".

LoSboccacc• 11 years ago

Even that is naive and falling for their trick: accepting that privacy is about hiding.

Better explained here by Schneier https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2006/05/the_eternal...

reagency4• 11 years ago

That statement has 0 persuasive value to the target audience. Of course they see these equivalently. Try feel normal and they don't care about fringe people.

jotm• 11 years ago

Oh, so that's who said it (shouldn't be a surprise). I like that quote.

MCRed6• 11 years ago

GAYS

====

In the time after WWI, Germany was a relatively liberal country in some respects. The salon society was popular in Berlin and Gays and Lesbians were able to live their lives in relative freedom- not the freedom we have now in the USA, but not the level of persecution they would experience elsewhere. There were magazines that catered specifically to this population as well as private clubs for them to congregate.

Of course these organizations were then easily used by the Nazis to find all of the gays and lesbians in germany...

One thing that makes me really angry about most popular accounts of that regime is the convenient forgetting that Gays and Lesbians were part of the holocaust and were very likely to be straight up slaughtered rather than sent to camps. And while there were fewer gays killed than jews (smaller part of the population) there are other groups as well that are often forgotten... in fact I can only think of the Roma. Shouldn't we all know all the groups the Nazis systematically murdered?

GUNS

====

The important operational part of this is that the data was collected at a time when it seemed innocent and then the regime changed and the data was used to kill people. The nazis are, of course, a very extreme example, but regimes change all the time. For instance, a persecuted group in the USA right now are gun owners. (Yes, I know that guns are used wrongly, over 30 years nearly 600 people have been killed in mass shootings-- of course that doesn't compare to the 10,000 people killed each year by drunk drivers.)

Increasingly, one of the tactics used to go after gun owners is "registration". After all, if you're law abiding, why should you fear registering your guns? There is a massive program right now that causes "FBI Background Checks" for every gun purchase--and by this nature this is registration of firearms and firearms owners.

GERMS

=====

So maybe you hate guns and gun owners so you see nothing wrong with keeping track of them. The thing is, when you live long enough (Say into your 40s) you start to see how attitudes change. Some for the better-- gays are less persecuted now, and I'm grateful for that (being not exactly heterosexual myself). But you also see other groups being persecuted. This starts out seemingly innocently enough. Lets take Muslims. They have been linked to real crimes and that has been used to smear a whole group. (There are other groups getting the same treatment right now- gamers, men, christians, etc.)

The germ, which becomes an infection and spreads, is thinking that because a person of type X committed a crime (A jew in germany charged too much? a boy at college committed rape? a muslim killed people in a terrorist act?) ... that the whole group can be painted with the brush of prejudice.

That prejudice becomes systematic and eventually it can become oppression. Often it becomes the situation where those who think they are oppressed justify oppressing others because they claim their victims are oppressing them. (You see this now with the more extreme elements of feminism. No, not all men are rapists! Really. Some of them are gay!)

This is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany where the county had been victimized by the treaty that ended WWII and humiliated and felt widespread victimhood.

So, beware of victimhood being used to justify prejudice!

That's one lesson people don't seem to learn from this era-- its the mechanism by which a peaceful, tolerant society (as germany had) becomes fascist.

After all, germans are not genetically predisposed to fascism, any more than americans are.

lamby• 11 years ago

(Almost a perfect Jared Diamond reference..)

MCRed6• 11 years ago

This is a substantive riff on the original article that provides food for thought. When it only talked about the fact that gays were killed in the holocaust it was accruing upvotes. But now that it also talks about he mechanism by which groups are smeared it is rapidly accruing down votes. I'm guessing because of the defense of gun owners. If HN is a place where substantial discussion is warranted, I've given ammunition to a substantial discussion. IF HN is a filter bubble, where only politically correct perspectives are tolerated, then my post will fade into nothingness as I am silenced for the crime of critical thinking. Why should I invest time in a community if only certain thoughts are tolerated by that community?

Oh, and this whole idea of "thought crime" is a mechanism by which prejudice is fostered and spread-- you saw it in Germany, Orwell wrote about it. We have it in action here in the USA... and on this site.

Surely you know where this will lead. In fact, anecdotally it already looks like this site has lost %80 of its participation... it used to be you needed hundreds of uproots to get to the front page, now only 10 will do it.

vezzy-fnord6• 11 years ago

I downvoted you because I frankly think implying that gun owners, men, Christians and gamers are persecuted in the United States (which was the implication) makes you just as laughable as the same radical feminists you claim to oppose.

vacri6• 11 years ago

as I am silenced for the crime of critical thinking

I love this sort of "If I lose, I called it, so I'm actually right!" hedging.

The implication is, of course, that rather than you perhaps being wrong, that your unpopular opinion is actually 'critical thinking' and your opponents are all incapable of it.

dalke8• 11 years ago

"a persecuted group in the USA right now are gun owners."

Pardon?

That stretched the meaning of 'persecution' past the breaking point and into the realm of meaninglessness. Every driver needs a license, and the car needs to be registered and with a license plate. Car licenses are used for taxation purposes and to help the authorities identify the owner of a vehicles.

Watch out! Come the next revolution, when the cyclists, skateboards, and horseback riders take over, all you murder machine operators will be the first against the wall, and they'll use your driver's license to track you down! Slowly!

(Hint: in general, persecuted groups don't tend to have majority of the government, with full legislative control, a president who goes skeet shooting and a vice president that says 'if you want to protect yourself, get a double barrel shotgun'.)

joesmo3• 11 years ago

It really depends on the state. Making blanket statements about guns in the US is simply ignorant and stupid.

In NJ, for example, it's not even safe to move your guns when changing residences, let alone taking them out of the house at any other time for any other purpose (taking a handgun off your property is equal to committing robbery with it in the eyes of the law for example). There are some protections under the law, but those only apply after you've been arrested, charged, and had your life ruined--if you're lucky to have a judge who lets you bring them up, that is. With hollow point bullets, you can't even legally move them when you change residences, and have to leave them at your old residence (which might also be illegal). To even own a gun, you have to be a legal expert. NY, MA, CA, have similar, though perhaps slightly less draconian laws. You won't be able to get a carry permit (concealed or otherwise) even if you prove you have multiple stalkers who intend to do you harm or kill you.

NJ especially, I assume, is a model the anti-gun lobby wants for the whole country. There are no guns (especially handguns) legal outside one's home or place of business. We have such a peaceful state with no gun violence at all. I guess it's a small price to pay for persecuting all those gun owners.

PavlovsCat5• 11 years ago

there are other groups as well that are often forgotten... in fact I can only think of the Roma. Shouldn't we all know all the groups the Nazis systematically murdered?

The Jehova's Witnesses come to mind, too. This is probably not complete, but it does give an indicator at least: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Kennzeichen_f%C3%BCr_Sch...

Top row, from left to right:

"Political", "Professional Criminal", "Emigrant", "Jehovas' Witness", "Homosexual", and "Antisocial"

Left column, top to bottom:

"basic color", "badge for repeat offenders", "prisoners of the punitive regiment", "Jews".

Then there are some more badges listed, for special cases if you will :/

That's one lesson people don't seem to learn from this era-- its the mechanism by which a peaceful, tolerant society (as germany had) becomes fascist.

Having read Sebastian Haffner's autobiographical book about the time from 1914 to 1933, I have a somewhat different picture, in which both WW1 and the inflation played a huge role in fertilizing the soil for craving adventure and outside stimuli (that craving for example expressed in the sports craze in the 20s). The Nazis didn't have to transform all of society -- they just needed enough people willing to be brutal enough on their behalf, that's what they had and that's how they took over. I would say the Nazis chiseled more than they transformed, and then the others either rationalized and became willing Nazis, or were unwillingly in their power. But by the time resistance seemed like a good idea, it was pretty much too late, people could only save their souls by standing up, or save their lives by fleeing, but not really change the course of things. When that was still possible, people just looked on and hoped for the best. Seems familiar, huh?

Maybe my impression is totally wrong, but that's my impression. Here are some quotes form said book (the English title is "Defying Hitler")

A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.

[..]

To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.

and:

Indeed, behind these questions are some very peculiar, very revealing, mental processes and experiences, whose historical significance cannot yet be fully gauged These are what I want to write about. You cannot get to grips with them if you do not track them down to the place where they happen: the private lives, emotions, and thoughts of individual Germans…There, in private, the fight is taking place in Germany. You will search for it in vain in the political landscape, even with the most powerful telescope. Today the political struggle is expressed by the choice of what a person eats and drinks, whom he loves, what he does in his spare time, whose company he seeks, whether he smiles or frowns, what pictures he hangs on his walls. It is here that the battles of the next world war are being decided in advance. That may sound grotesque, but it is the truth.

vacri6• 11 years ago

It's really weird to see a suggestion that the solution to Muslim persecution in the US is for them to take up arms and be seen to be doing so. I can't see how that is going to help their current social situation.

caseysoftware2• 11 years ago

And it's the same line of reasoning that opposes a central gun registry.

doomrobo• 11 years ago

The open question that the article didn't touch upon (probably because it's much more complicated) is where to draw the line between what is and isn't the government's business. There are many who don't buy into the "nothing to hide" argument and would nonetheless advocate for the use of a central gun registry. It's not mutually exclusive, it's just a matter of where a person draws their line of privacy. I'd imagine that libertarians are on the far "nothing is anybody's business" end of the spectrum.

caseysoftware2• 11 years ago

That's one of many "it doesn't apply to me, so it doesn't matter" scenarios.

As the OPM "hack" has demonstrated, the government has no interest and little culpability in protecting the vital and dangerous information it has collected. If it shows this much disregard for the important information, how much less protection will they apply to the unimportant things?

* I hate calling it a "hack" since it's been determined that OPM gave them access to everything. I covered that over three weeks ago too: http://caseysoftware.com/blog/opm-background-check-hack-a-di...

_bfhp• 11 years ago

Everybody already understands that those who claim to "have nothing to hide" are always those found in some intersection of sets representing those arbitrarily constructed classes of people which were invented and exist to extract resources from all those outside of the set. We have set in stone the history of Jews in Europe as containing the premise of "yes they were definitely outside of the class at the time" but that's about the only admission in the world of any sort of thing like that which has been universally adopted in any region.

The processes of resource extraction in which Class Men and Class White have been and are engaged in is obvious from the historical record. But the incentive is to just work around the possibility of asserting this as a premise to any degree, so you don't get screamed at or worse. The form and content of much of the thinkpieces you've read has been modified by these kind of incentives. Yet many seem to sincerely believe that everything they read is an honest translation of the author's deepest thoughts, feelings, and beliefs into human language, when in reality most writers on topics like this are, to some degree, scared or cowardly.

redwood2• 11 years ago

I've read it a few times but am not sure I follow what you're saying. Is this high context writing? If so what is the background?

nitrogen3• 11 years ago

I think it's saying "Insiders exploit outsiders. Only insiders say they have nothing to hide."

jorgeleo• 11 years ago

I wouldn't be surprise if this robot writting. Remember that there are several organizations that create fake usernames and personalities, then is easy to taint group opinions by looking like multiple different people saying d The same thing. The post is correct English but the argument lacks of public context, or make many assumptions to make sense to the casual reader. So probably a robot sticking phrases together or a human that cannot pass the Eliza test

gizmo• 11 years ago

It's a bit of an academic critique, but perfectly legible (if you know the jargon).

Rough translation:

Only people in privileged groups can comfortably claim to have nothing to hide, because they don't get persecuted for who they are. It's not just Jews who got persecuted, it's minorities everywhere, but only in that case is the persecution widely acknowledged. Otherwise we disavow individual acts (of bigotry/racism/sexism/etc) but we don't look for the root causes.

It's obvious that (the class of people labeled) white men have disproportionately benefited from exploitation all throughout history, and continue to benefit to this day. However, people who bring this up in thinkpieces or the media get screamed at or worse. Most writers understand this, and water down their critique so it's easier to swallow and the backlash will be minimal. This is cowardly.

michaelpinto• 11 years ago

Something that people in silicon valley just don't get is that that the above argument also applies to tech corporations like Google who collect personal data for living and then say "trust us, we'll do no evil". The industry is upset about Snowden because it cost them sales in China, but for the most part while it talks the talk it doesn't walk the walk.

* If we're going to talk about WWII a good example would be IBM and their role in the holocaust:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

leoc• 11 years ago

Why restrict it to the past? Let's talk about Cisco and Falun Gong http://business-humanrights.org/en/cisco-systems-lawsuits-re... .

higherpurpose2• 11 years ago

I agree, and I think Cisco, for example, is almost as bad as IBM was then, by being the architects of the "lawful intercept" [1] (backdoor [2]) protocol for their routers in China and elsewhere, which then facilitates the government's catching, torturing or killing of the dissidents. At the very least Cisco is as bad as the Hacking Team.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3924

[2] https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-dc-10/Cross_Tom/Bl...

There are other, much more loved, tech companies that do similar things, too. They know who they are. I just hope history won't be kind to them.

MichaelGG• 11 years ago

No. It's important to separate technology creators and users. Physicists should bear no blame for the use of atomic weapons. Cisco, IBM and others are, likewise, just technology providers. Google, OTOH, actively uses its technology.

stretchwithme3• 11 years ago

Its certainly true if private companies have to disclose what they collect to the government. If the government doesn't have any records about who's collecting what, its a bit more difficult to make them turn it over.

Of course, we are taking about business people, so they'll always be some who will sell it for the right price.

chestnut-tree• 11 years ago

"...tech corporations like Google who collect personal data for living"

I agree. The largest and potentially most-revealing information about you is captured by technology companies like Google and Facebook.

The Amsterdam registry recorded "Name, Date of birth, Address, Marital Status, Parents, Profession, Religion, Previous Addresses and Date of Death"

Create a Google account and you are asked to provide: Name, Gender, Date of birth, Location, Mobile phone number.

This is some of your most private and personal information and it's tied to your actual behaviour on the web. Google's ability to track you across the web and across devices is simply unprecedented.

Google omits basic facts in their privacy policy about the data they collect about you. Things like: how long they keep your data (presumably forever), whether the data is anonymised, whether your searches or activity are disassociated from your identity, and who sees your data inside the company.

Does Google use your mobile number solely for two-factor authentication and absolutely nothing else? Google doesn't tell you. Do they really need your date-of-birth? And is it only used for age verification? Could they simply ask if you're 16 or over? Sure they could, but date of birth tied to your online activity is so much more valuable when it comes to crunching all that big data on user behaviour.

The amount of information that Google captures about you is gargantuan. They know more about your online (and possibly offline) behaviour than you know about yourself. Just to be clear, I don't believe Google does anything nefarious with your data. But even if you trust them, why is it considered perfectly acceptable for them to track you to such a relentless degree?

noir_lord2• 11 years ago

They also are really insidious about how they get you to sign up more of your data.

View a YouTube link on a fresh Android phone it puts you on the sign-in screen, hit back the video plays, they make it look like you have to sign in to watch the video hence make it easier to follow what you watch.

Run Chrome for the first on an android phone, the sign-in button is bigger and clearer, the skip button is small and greyed out.

Chrome history can only be suspended, accidentally enable it and it's on forever again, no warning.

Login from one google account and then accidentally login in from another and it tries to join them (this is so bad I new hit incognito mode before signing into anything google makes).

All of these things in isolation seem relatively minor but the goal is clearly an all encompassing pervasive monitoring of everything you do (so much so that my next phone will not be Android, I'm seriously considering a dumb phone and using my tablet).

I don't trust Google and tbh as a company I don't like them very much.

Buge2• 11 years ago

The real reason they ask for mobile number is to stop spammers creating a ton of accounts.

return0• 11 years ago

They literally know more about you than yourself, because they can predict your future behavior.

rhaps0dy• 11 years ago

And imagine if they get pwned. Not fun.

x3n0ph3n3• 11 years ago

The fact that Google doesn't have the power to throw you in prison or kill you makes a lot of difference. Governments maintain a de jure monopoly on force and therefore we are at more risk from a government's ability to suppress us using our information than Google's ability to effectively influence people's purchases.

pdkl95• 11 years ago

https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...

It's not a popular topic here on HN, but I strongly recommend Aral Balkan's talk about the actual business of Google, Facebook, and far too much of silicon valley.

superuser23• 11 years ago

why is it considered perfectly acceptable for them to track you to such a relentless degree?

Throwing around "tracking" as a dirty word made sense when the Internet was a brochure. Paper doesn't normally remember that you looked at it, and HTTP pretended to be a way of looking at a piece of paper, instead of what it is, an interaction.

Tracking is integral to all interactions. Taking sensory data from two different points in time, and deciding that both are representations of this thing called a person that's standing over there, and that said person comes with all these characteristics that are fixed, and all these characteristics that are mutable over time, and that I have all these previous experiences with that person, and a mental model of how they might react to certain things, and a mental model of their hidden internal state like mood or sleepiness, that is the essence of tracking. Friendship is sort of its ultimate form, so it makes sense that an electronic medium for friendship is the heaviest "tracker" on the internet. We humans can absolutely consent to and facilitate tracking that we want, or else we wouldn't associate with each other.

Google's suite of services and the tracking it performs make it more useful to me. When I search for an English word that has a special meaning in programming, it knows I mean it in the software engineering sense. When I open Google Maps I can tap two keys instead of 20 to get directions home. I have the agency to accept that.

The privacy issues of the modern world, to me, have little to do with tracking: rather, they are a violation of expectations, of confidence. You might think, when you send a "private" message on Facebook, that it will only be read by the named recipient. But it may just as well be read by an anonymous NSA analyst. That's where the evil lies. Or, you may think, when you're on a site other than Facebook, that Facebook has no idea you're there. But the "Like" button is watching you, associating that visit with your Facebook profile. That's what's fucked up.

oneloop2• 11 years ago

I was gonna say that at least in the tech world if you don't like a company you can just not use their products. But then it occurred to me that if you don't like a country you can just move...

Sir_Cmpwn• 11 years ago

Moving to a different country is an expensive luxury that's not available to some people. Also, US politics has a clear role in world politics, and these policies will be universal if we don't make it clear that they are not okay.

polymatter• 11 years ago

if you don't like a country you can just move...

you know many many people risk their lives under extreme conditions to do exactly that. See Latin Americans trying to get to US or Africans into Europe.

Hell I am in the process of emigrating from one Western country to another, and its an incredibly stressful process with no guarantee of success for me.

boyaka• 11 years ago

Or you can work to purge the scum that is ruining the country your ancestors worked to make great, and that you were born and raised in.

agumonkey• 11 years ago

I recently learned that French national ID cards were put in place during WWII / Vichy regime. Weird.

AgentME• 11 years ago

I agree, but the government can collect your data by force, and there's discussions to increase that force (banning of encryption), so in my mind that makes it a more pressing issue.

mverwijs• 11 years ago

Relevant IBM ad from those days: http://philosecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/hollerit...

amelius• 11 years ago

Anybody who says this, is probably not a friend you can trust with a secret.

higherpurpose2• 11 years ago

Something important to note in the OPM data breach: 1.1 million fingerprints were stolen [1], and it would've been a lot more if say this happened 10 years later, and the US, just like Estonia, India and I think a few other countries, started asking their citizens for their fingerprints and stored them in their own databases.

When the governments start telling people "Hey, you already love using your fingerprint on that iPhone of yours - so why not give us your fingerprint, too? We'll make your life so much easier!", forgetting to mention that there's a drastic difference between the iPhone keeping a local "template" of the fingerprint, while the governments are likely keeping the fingerprint data directly and on their own servers - fight it as much as possible.

Remember you only have so many fingerprints, and even fewer of them you'll probably consider "practical" for authentication to devices and whatnot. Don't let companies or governments lure you into asking for your fingerprint and storing it for you on their servers "for your convenience".

[1] https://www.opm.gov/cybersecurity/#WhatHappened

MCRed6• 11 years ago

If a full fingerprint image is captured, it can easily be replicated at crime scenes to frame you. While people think that this would be unlikely to happen, we have had nothing but scandal after scandal the past decade from Forensic labs-- literally faking evidence to get convictions or making up whole areas of "science" to get them (The recent FBI Hair Lab is an example of that latter.)

noir_lord2• 11 years ago

Biometrics are fundamentally flawed as they can't be revoked.

I've never understood why people feel they are a good solution, my bank gave me a little card gizmo, I put my code in it generates a cryptographically secure response.

If it's stolen or lost I just ring them up and they invalidate it.

raarts• 11 years ago

Don't let companies or governments lure you into asking for your fingerprint and storing it for you on their servers "for your convenience".

This is hard. Any entry to the USA for example requires every alien to have their fingerprints taken, and if more and more countries require this there isn't anywhere to go. Another way is needed to stop this practice.

tim3332• 11 years ago

I'm not sure about cause and effect with logging data and genocides. Ok it made the Nazis job easier in Holland but they killed a lot of people elsewhere. Since those times the amount of data stored on everyone had rocketed and the amount of genocide going on has plummeted - see the graph from Pinker's book - http://i.imgur.com/rFWzUOd.png

junto• 11 years ago

It is important enough to the Germans that your data (I.e. that required for your identity card) has strict rules concerning a central storage system.

The system works per state, hence if I move from one state to another than my data has to be moved from one state to the next.

I have a friend that works on this system that moves this data over web services.

Matt3o12_• 11 years ago

Are you kidding me? Of course, they found jews people in all the invaded countries and Germany, but they had a harder time finding jewish people. In the Netherlands, they basically knew who were jewish, and if the data had not been destroyed, 100% of the jewish people have had died because of it. Without the data, some people had the chance to escape or hide their true identify (there are plenty of jewish who could convince law officers that they were in fact not jewish). With that information, they had absolutely no chance

tim3332• 11 years ago

My point was that the data was not the cause of the genocide. If you look at modern genocides eg. Rwanda a few years ago or Southern Sudan as we speak they are mostly characterised by a lack of internet connectivity or data about people. The places where everyone is on Facebook and G+ are not where they happen. Indeed in the Sudan case if there was a lack of privacy about who exactly had slaughtered who's family I suspect it would make the perpetrators much less likely to do it.

stretchwithme3• 11 years ago

Well said, Jacques.

arh68• 11 years ago

Sure, the Chinese have got the info, but could they sell it to American companies? Might a US employer be interested in that dataset? How much might they be willing to pay?

Could I set up a Private Investigation firm and charge $10/file for access? Would an American pay to see their ex-husband/ex-wife's polygraph results? I could even take payment in Bitcoin.

I think the television news emphasizes the possibility of identity theft & espionage but discounts the likelihood of this data making its way back to the US.

charonn0• 11 years ago

I think the major security concern is over blackmail, considering the stolen data concerned people with US government security clearances.

sgs1370• 11 years ago

Yes, blackmail is probably the primary concern. But anyone who has your SSN, DOB, employment history, and every address you've lived at... they can convince banks, cc companies, etc., that they are you, because those phone calls usually involve questions about where you've lived and worked.

ovi256• 11 years ago

I think the term data-laundering will come into use. It will describe the practice of taking illegally obtained data (such as this OPM leak) and selling it and plausible deniability that it comes from a clean source to willing buyers who would not otherwise have touched it because of legal liability.

I an utopia, a forbidden-fruit doctrine would develop and be enforced. Data from an illegal leak would be illegal to touch. In practice, who knows.

maxerickson4• 11 years ago

This essay doesn't really say anything new (there's literally a Wikipedia article on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument and the religious registry being put to evil use has more or less reached classic status when it comes to discussions of it).

A more interesting essay might analyze the beliefs and attitudes that lead to people agreeing with the statement, and (perhaps) why they are problematic.

(It's actually quite difficult to figure out why people are comfortable saying they have nothing to hide, it's masked by the sea of text explaining they are wrong)

xyzzy123• 11 years ago

If you are a real freedom fighter you should support the idea of destroying records full stop. There is no actual middle ground. It just needs to go, but of course it is very hard because it is obviously valuable user data.

It sucks and I am not sure what a good man should do.

tzs• 11 years ago

A person who has nothing to fear is dangerous, and that is then something to hide.

blinkingled• 11 years ago

That still leaves open the question about what qualifies as worth hiding and what doesn't - who gets to decide that and is that going to be a thing everyone lives by forever or will that be a function of time and other circumstances? (Spectacles - not worth hiding but think of the Pol Pot era and you had to hide them if you wanted to survive.)

rogozov• 11 years ago

Regarding his statement: "It doesn’t require much of an imagination to see how this information could be abused." Rogozov answers: Yes it does! In fact, that is the whole point of the blog entry, and it's completely skipped over. Their was a lot of writing, but the whole point of the article was left as an exercise for the reader. Why be so lazy? There needs to be a set of concrete examples of how these information breeches actually hurt real people. Saying, "their privacy has been violated in a pretty drastic manner leading to death, identity theft or embarrassment" isn't specific enough, and as a reader, I don't buy that the Nazis are going to take over in America someday so they can eradicate all the Jews in the employment of the United States government.

Rogozov believes in his main point -- but we need specific examples that people (who actually vote) can relate to this.

datashovel• 11 years ago

The beginning the post discusses Nazis and the slaughter of Jews in Amsterdam. Then toward the end, when discussing "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" he fails to mention...

"are you willing to publish your pin code, a high resolution scan of your signature, your passport... Are you ok with your entire family being murdered for their religious affiliation?". If you’re willing to do all of that then congratulations, you really have nothing to hide and the word ‘privacy’ means nothing to you.

Privacy is not just privacy from reasonable people, but unreasonable people as well.

Chattered2• 11 years ago

In terms of things I want hidden, the first thing that springs to mind is my medical records, which I'd like to keep between me and my doctor(s). My understanding is that, historically, governments and just about everyone have respected that.

ams61103• 11 years ago

You might want to read more history.

Chattered2• 11 years ago

I'm thinking of this line from the Hippocratic Oath, which I understand to be quite historical:

"Whatever, in the course of my practice, I may see or hear (even when not invited), whatever I may happen to obtain knowledge of, if it be not proper to repeat it, I will keep sacred and secret within my own breast."

The point is that this isn't being challenged in the latest privacy wars, even though it flies straight in the face of the completely nonsense mantra of "if you've nothing to hide...."

twoodfin• 11 years ago

And if you’re not content with living in a world where all of that data is public then you’d better stop repeating that silly mantra ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide then you’ve got nothing to fear’...

Serious question: Who's making this argument? I don't hear it articulated by anyone, frankly. I'm sure there are people who hold this position and have argued for it, but are any of them in a position to make policy? Have any of our dozen+ presidential candidates made this claim?

vehementi• 11 years ago

I see it frequently in these discussions. And it affects public opinion & the crawl of culture. So in a perhaps roundabout and very-hard-to-measure way, the people unthinkingly repeating that sound byte (not so much putting that forth as the spearhead of their argument on this topic) are making the world a worse place.

steve_mcqueen• 11 years ago

Google CEO (at the time) Eric Schmidt:

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid...

Senator Trent Lott:

"What are people worried about? What is the problem?" asked Lott, a former majority leader. "Are you doing something you're not supposed to?"

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/15/bellsouth.nsa/

Senator Lindsay Graham

"I don’t think you're talking to the terrorists. I know you're not. I know I'm not, so we don't have anything to worry about..."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/lindsey-graham-nsa_...

maxerickson4• 11 years ago

Schmidt wasn't making a strong argument against privacy, he was discussing the relationship between using an online search engine and privacy. He was asked People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?

And responded with your quote, and a bit more. The context is harder to ridicule:

I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities.

isaacremuant3• 11 years ago

As an exercise. Talk to non-tech people. Listen to politicians on the matter (not those advocating for privacy, of course, those who talk about stopping terrorism and the war on drugs, hackers, etc).

brandon2722• 11 years ago

It's what's implied when a gigantic portion of the population says, "Sure, no problem!" when things like the Patriot Act are created because it "helps them stop terrorists".

I'm too lazy at the moment to grab the data for what support was for the Patriot Act when it was first created, but in 2005, support to extend it was at 59%.

CyberDildonics• 11 years ago

Then why is our government so secretive?

vonklaus• 11 years ago

I flagged a thread a week or so ago that was an opinion piece about women in tech advocating hiring women. At the end of article the author compiled a huge list of women in tech from github, linkedin and other available resources and linked to it in a spreadsheet.

Leaving aside that hiring a female engineer from google would not add more women into the ecosystem, it is poor form to take a bunch of personal data and use it to compile a list without consent. From memory, the list had full names, position and links to public profiles. This was essentially a massive doxx dump of female engineers.

I assume most of the listed individuals weren't "hiding" their employment position, but this list could be used to target them, spam recruit them, make it appear as if they were shopping employment offers etc.

kungfooman• 11 years ago

I've got nothing to hide besides: - my public opinion not in line with US foreign policy - my genitals to not shock the frigid society - my wage to keep sure that everybody is happy with his slave money and cannot compare

jbrooksuk• 11 years ago

A friend of mine once put it this way to some guy that was trying to proclaim that he has nothing to worry about:

Of course you have something to hide. It's not bad to hide things from others. For instance, do you mind if we talk about your sex life? Heck, can I watch you and your wife next time? Sex is natural, we all do it, there is nothing to hide!"

dimino• 11 years ago

This is a terrible argument, mostly because it allows for the persecution of minorities. "You're a filthy commie?!? Isn't that something you want to hide!?!"

Freedom of speech (the human right, not the legal right) should allow you to have as many harebrained ideas as you'd like, and be as vocal as you'd like. You should be able to talk about your sex life, and you should be allowed to let other people watch you have sex (which you are, on both counts -- your friends examples kind of suck).

CHY872• 11 years ago

I could swear that I've read this exact article before...

ExploitsforFun• 11 years ago

Great argument for privacy. A someday hostile government cannot use information it doesn't have

jwatte• 11 years ago

Privacy is gone; it's a chimera. Let's focus on building a society where we use openness for the common good instead! E.g. don't let some people still try to hide because they consider themselves "special." Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

tariqali34• 11 years ago

I agree. If governments can't protect their private information from being leaked by hackers and whistleblowers, what hope do the average person have? Adapt to changing circumstances rather than hold onto outdated concepts.

alan_cx• 11 years ago

The title alone is misleading. It presupposes that its wrong to have something to hide. I have plenty I'd prefer to be hidden, none of it illegal.

Whats so damned wrong with having things to hide? Discretion used to be a virtue. What happened?

bbcbasic• 11 years ago

The title is intentional. I dare say it is designed to stir things up and get you to read the article. Did you read it?

aarongray• 11 years ago

Very timely words.

melipone• 11 years ago

I like that the article mentioned the difference between privacy and secrecy. I've been struggling with that for a while. What is private is secret but what is secret (a secret recipe, for example) is not necessarily private. But in some cases, a secret can be considered private (a secret love affair, for example). I'm confused...

frenchies• 11 years ago

The fuss is that even if you have absolutely nothing to hide the ‘privacy is dead’ crowd seems to miss out on the fact that privacy by itself is considered important enough to make it into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12

Ive seen this mentioned twice now.

When did `a piece of paper says X` become a leading argument?

tomaskafka• 11 years ago

Let's not forget likes and tweets - whenever an angry pitchfork mob will look for people to hang on the lampposts, victims (including photos and addresses) will be one Facebook Graph search away.

copsarebastards• 11 years ago

If you have nothing to hide, sure. But we aren't in an accepting enough world where that's the case for almost anyone. Have you had sex outside of marriage? Smoked marijuana? Are you gay or trans? All of these are things that in many contexts could be used against you, and as such it's pretty reasonable to want to keep those things secret from people you don't know and trust.

Just because you have something to hide doesn't mean you've done something wrong and deserve to have it exposed.

joering2• 11 years ago

The last part of this sentence has a false premise. You do have plenty to fear, because any government has made errors in their judgments many times before. In fact, any lawsuit brought against GOV that has been won, as well as any won appeal, is indeed a living proof government makes mistakes as well.

Ergo, it is not that I shouldn't have anything to hide because I shouldn't fear the government, it is rather that I fear that the government can misinterpret whatever it is that I'am hiding. (I strongly suggest watching movie "Brasil").

Government, after all, is about masses and implementing rules "for all", not "for individuals". A simple example is me being a long term photographer. I enjoy indoor photos. How the light is formed, aperture used, shots being taken, angles, etc. I browse Anne Geddes photos of almost naked children on secure Tor from a local starbucks on a Wifi dongle that I don't use for anything else (public wifis collect and store MAC data) not because I'm a pedophile (something Gov can assume), but rather because I have no idea how Gov could stretch this information, and I am unsure if I could be financially able to pick up my lawyers tab to get a chance to prove to the judge few months into the lawsuit that I am actually a long-term photographer hobbyist, no some twisted kiddie pron lover.

My second answer to this is a "gimme your password" test. Just few weeks ago I was pulled over in a shady neighborhood because my friend is broke and cannot afford anything better. The cop immediately wanted to search my car. I responded I have nothing to hide here. He replied "well, in this case if you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn't have anything against my search, Sir". To what I reached out for a pen and my notepad, opened it on an empty page and handed it to the police officer. He asked me "what is this?". I said: "kindly please give me your email address and password to it". He didn't laugh but clearly didn't want to get suck in. I quickly added: "I mean after all, if you have nothing to hide in your mailbox, then you shouldn't be concerned of me having access it, do you?". He responded "have a good day" and let me on my way.

spiritplumber2• 11 years ago

"I have nothing to hide. You have me to fear."

hippich• 11 years ago

Unrelated, but in the light of all recent data leaks, I was thinking that privacy is just another advantage (business, political, relationship, etc.) If somehow all people's lives, businesses, politicians were completely transparent, there were no need to have privacy to begin with. This is utopical of course, but just a thought.

Evolved• 11 years ago

All rights are worth fighting for even if they don't affect your life. The reasoning behind this should be pretty clear in that the individual rights tend to help protect the others much like chainmail. Maybe each individual link is not particularly strong but together they can fend off quite an attack but the hole that's left if a single link is compromised is why we should fight for all rights.

thelastguy• 11 years ago

"If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear."

I agreed. Which is why I propose that for the safety of everyone, we station a cop inside everyone's home. After all, you never know when a burglary is gonna happen. With a cop inside everyone's home, you are guarantee safe when a burglary does happen.

Also, just to make sure you don't do anything illegal in the bathroom (like doing drugs), I propose that the cop must also be present with in the bathroom anytime anyone need to use the bathroom. After all, if you got nothing to hide, and you're not doing anything illegal in the bathroom, then you should not fear the cop being in the bathroom with you.

markman• 11 years ago

That is a true statement. Yet privacy is a freedom that must be held onto with white knuckles. Who is to say that tomorrow your private poems about butterflies doesn't associate you with some extremist sect and a tyrannical government wont detain you indefinitely because of it?

If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

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