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Comment by cortic | Hacker News Reader

Posted this five months ago, but its still relevant: My nothing to hide argument;

Nothing to hide is an incomplete sentence. Nothing to hide from who? Surly you want to hide your children from abusers and predators? Don't you want to hide your banking details from con artists and fraudsters? Your identity from identity thieves.. Your location from burglars, your car keys from car thieves or your blood type from some rich mobsters with kidney problems..

we don't know who are any of these things. So we should protect ourselves from all of them, in effect we have everything to hide from someone, and no idea who someone is.

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I tend to go into a different direction: "Sure, you don't have anything to hide today. But what about tomorrow? Or next year?"

Did you know that law enforcement and justice can request and will try to gain access to data you share with any company?

"Oh, but I have done nothing wrong."

The definition of "nothing wrong" isn't set in stone. It's always up for interpretation. You might feel you're doing nothing wrong, but that doesn't mean authorities will always see it that way.

Remember, in some countries, authorities use your social media to monitor against tax fraud. [1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2018/11/11/tax...

There's always that probability of a change of political or judicial direction towards more invasive measures in your personal life using the data you share with third parties. You can't predict with certainty that in 10 years time you won't be earmarked as a "subversive element" as a result of mass data mining of the same data you happily share on line. Never assume "it won't happen to me."

That SHOULD be a powerful argument, too. Unfortunately, most people tend to roll their eyes when you start suggesting that the government might use such powers against them in the future.

They ultimately just "trust the government" to do the "right thing" no matter how flawed that thinking is. This is partially the fault of the education system and them not "knowing their history" that well.

It's only when such abuses of privacy happen to them personally that they become ultra-privacy activists. We've seen this even with politicians that fought to expand mass surveillance powers and then did an 180 when they saw those powers were used against them, too (who would've thought?!).

My personal philosophy is that no matter what mobile OS or search engine or email server or VPN subscription or whatever I use, if the federal government really wants to know something about me or my behavior, they will be able to find out.

Therefore, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to make all sorts of trade-offs in the name of privacy. There's not much to gain.

> if the federal government really wants to know something about me or my behavior, they will be able to find out

If you've been specifically targeted by a state actor, you're going to have a much harder time than if your goal is to resist general dragnet surveillance.

> There's not much to gain.

This ignores whether you've been specifically targeted.

The "But I've done nothing wrong" response always reminds me of this talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Exactly. You know inside that you have done nothing wrong, but nobody else knows that. They can only look at the available evidence and if they're talking to you it's because the evidence is spotty.

So, now you're gambling with whether or not the spotty evidence is spotty enough to make you look innocent or guilty. Therefore, everyone has something to hide because the whole truth will not always be evident and some partial truths can make you look guilty (ex. your cell phone location was very close to a murder scene. You didn't kill anyone, you walked by the spot a few minutes before it happened).

If we had incontrovertible evidence of every abuse, every predation, every theft attempt via privileged information, misuse of identity information, every inappropriate property action, et cetera... Now include tools for reversing reversable illegal activities (if not identifying them before they are committed). Add real time knowledge of the location and status of all people. What effect would you expect this shift to have on the expected value of illegal behaviors? How long would such practices last? What if rapid response teams would immediately go into motion to end assaults and other risks to health and well-being?

There are great reasons we maintain privacy in our society's current configuration. A shift can sound like a perfect tool for authoritarians and many stories suggest that result but it might also be a perfect tool for exposing them early and suppressing their rise while facilitating greater safety and efficiency in society. We will certainly have to adjust our societal agreements and expectations.

Even a generally liberal western government would be tempted to extend this sort of monitoring towards "victimless crimes". Either to boost some arbitrary "effectiveness" numbers, or to boost profit from fines.

I think that a society that is too scared to break every little law or regulation even when it doesn't make sense would eventually tend to becoming conformist -and a stagnant, conformist society is worse than one with the rate of serious crimes that the traditional methods of enforcement leave.

I have stopped arguing about it. I just cynically observe the people who keep insisting that they have nothing to hide, and then watch them suffer the consequences of their own decisions.

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