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Comment by MikeUt | Hacker News Reader

I don't like those responses, because they fundamentally don't address the issue. What if the person is okay with a trustworthy government agent/system seeing them naked, or having a copy of their house key? This way they won't be embarrassed in public, or get robbed, while the government still gets what it needs to "keep them safe".

I think a better response is - what if they did have something to hide? What if they were a government or corporate whistleblower, a human rights lawyer, or a journalist? What if the government changes and suddenly their friendship with a Tibetan sympathizer becomes a liability?

What if they're none of those, but due to their carelessness, make whistleblowers stand out because they're the only ones trying to keep some privacy, making them easy to find an retaliate against?

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> what if they did have something to hide?

Or, what if something harmless becomes illegal overnight and now it's too late to hide existing links to you?

The "nothing to hide" argument relies on the assumption that governments and laws remain stable. Which is obviously far from reality. We have an example of a country getting split in half literally within one night, and right now people are still getting executed for having the wrong religion or sexuality - or, like recently in Afghanistan, because they dared to work as translator for US troops.

>Or, what if something harmless becomes illegal

So this is the actual issue then ?

Instead of resorting to hiding, should instead fix the root issue: change the law.

Does surveillance make it easier, or harder, to change unjust law, or an unjust government? Or even learn there are injustices being carried out in the first place?

Suppose the people of Hong Kong followed your advice, and had allowed surveillance infrastructure to spread through their city, mapping out everyone's social graphs and political affiliations.

Now that a hostile government is in charge of their city, there is no reason to worry the govt. has inherited all the gathered information and knows exactly who to target - if they don't like it, they should fix the root issue and change the law.

The difference with hong kong is the surveillance is one sided, goverment can surveil their citizen but the citizen can't surveil the goverment.

The surveillance/transparency has to be on both side.

Government can't just do whatever they want if they also being surveilled.

> Government can't just do whatever they want if they also being surveilled.

No? Because it seems to me if you're the one with power, you have a lot less to fear from surveillance, than if you're without. Say there's only one political party allowed (officially or unofficially) - that means it is free to organize and act as a political party, while if you were to try and start your own, you'd be jailed.

>Because it seems to me if you're the one with power,

So where does their power come from ?

Information advantage ? No, if both side has the same information

Strength in number? there are more citizen then the government people.

From organization. They can rely on the police to arrest you, you cannot rely that your arrest will be what sparks the revolution that overthrows them. Assuming many people even learn about your arrest - they might be able to find out in theory, but it's probably not going to be on the front page of major newspapers.

Citizen can organize too. Government can try to prevent that but there are much more citizen then government people. Citizens has strength in number.

>Assuming many people even learn about your arrest -

Thats why I argue for citizen to surveil the government too to level the playing field.

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