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Comment by nerdponx | Hacker News Reader

The "I don't mind, I have nothing to hide" people are cheering this on. They don't know or care about any of the things you just said.

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Do you have cause to believe "nothing to hide" is a partisan position? I'd expect that half of such people are on the left and are critical by default of the new administration. Seems to be supported by the second chart here: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/10/18/how-american...

It’s a position held by extremists on both sides and the natural ally of extermists, the lazy.

I also find this a bit suspect- the more extreme you are, the more likely you are to have something to hide. The extreme left is well aware of the way communists and hippies were treated through the 20th century, while the extreme right has been subject to a lesser version in the 21st and are very skeptical of intelligence agencies. Moderates seem much more likely to trust institutions and accept the status quo.

I have no idea how to investigate this empirically, though.

I don't really think it correlates with political spectrum at all. Similar to how "hard on crime" has a pretty weak correlation woth partisanship. It really comes down to upbringing, influences, and education on how you perceive data privacy.

In real life, I hear people of all political stripes embracing positions between "nothing to hide" and "the govt can find out my personal info anyway, so why not email it directly to nameless scammers overseas?"

Online it works like most things. Everybody pretends it's a partisan food fight, even if they have to lie.

They will care when they personally get badly screwed.

They will not know that theyre screwed because media will tell them theyre doing great

Best angle with that crowd is that insurance companies are going to screw them over with all the data.

I'm not so sure there is complete overlap, there were plenty of pro national security democrats.

You can be pro national security and pro privacy.

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