If you've got Nothing to Hide (2015) | Hacker News Reader

If you've got Nothing to Hide (2015)

jacquesmattheij.com

109 pointsjacquesm79 comments

If I've learned something during my early adulthood it's that, it's impossible to not be in conflict with at least some people, because even if you're the most fair and considerate person on the planet, other people will prey on you to try to encroach on your territory and steal what you have.

So the idea that you have nothing to hide is completely banal. Those who are more powerful than you won't leave you alone just because you ignore them. They will eventually come knocking to steal your wealth and your freedom.

I think that "nothing to hide" is a strawman.

No one really says that in an absolute sense, it is always in context, what it usually means is "I trust a particular institution with the data they collect", not "I will give my credit card number to everyone who asks".

For example, let's say you approve of installing security cameras monitored by police in your residence, if you say "I have nothing to hide" what you are actually meaning is "there is nothing these cameras can see that I would want to hide from the police". I think it is obvious that it doesn't mean you approve of having the same cameras installed in your bathroom.

The real question is one of trust and risk assessment. Are the risks of revealing a piece of information worth it? how much do you trust the other party? not the literal meaning of "nothing to hide".

The point is that the data you're sharing may look banal to you now, but you have no idea how it might get used in the future, and by whom. You should assume that all data you share is available to everybody. Thus everybody should prefer privacy by default.

> but you have no idea how it might get used in the future, and by whom.

This is the part a lot of people, including the idiot politicians who push for surveillance laws, do not underestand. Political regimes do not rule forever, even in the US, and what is permited/acceptable today, might not be permited/acceptable tommorrow.

Indeed. And there's risk-reward tradeoff. The debated argument says "have all my data if you want for no reason". The stronger case is, "what do I get in return"?

Often in this discussion it's about a society-wide standard. The benefit to "me" might be that e.g. the police can do their job well, hopefully protecting me from criminals, while sticking to reasonable and trusted privacy controls (e.g. intrusive data collection requires a court warrant, and I trust the courts enough to do a good job). That's very different to uploading all social media conversations logs to NSA because "nothing to hide".

Looping back to this article, it is unclear if there was ever ant good reason to record religion in Amsterdam. Nor would I exclusively blame administrative procedures on the Holocaust - though I'm sure it made matters worse.

The point of TFA is that criminals could hack into those police cameras, see when you are out of town, and burgle your house.

You don't know who is going to get access to the data you have shared.

> I think that "nothing to hide" is a strawman.

If that's all it is, it's logically sounder than what it is raised in defense against, the multifallacious "I have nothing to hide" that implies those who oppose a policy do have something to hide and sidesteps the actual question of privacy.

Everyone has some economic game going on. If some entity can see most of the cards you hold, it like putting your cards open on the table during a poker game. That is why big companies want your data, they want to peek at the cards of as much players in the game as possible.

And on a smaller scale: having a mortgage to pay is also often used as an excuse.

Yep, and marketing is the biggest game (that we can see, it's also security under the hood)

Information asymmetry could be said to be the defining problem of our age.

Information asymmetry has always been a thing, wars have been though over this.

But I think that in our age, information asymmetry is particularly low, at least in western countries. Each one of us has access to a tremendous amount of data, sure the powerful have access to more, but I have a feeling that the relative difference is shrinking.

I will always remember when a police investigator was interviewed, the context was a controversy about police files. The investigator said: "police files? not very useful, when we want to investigate someone, we browse Facebook". It means that the police doesn't have much as much of an information advantage compared to you and me.

Journalism, world events, etc... Most of the times, we have all sorts of first hand reports, photos, videos, news sources from enemy countries, etc... Not all of them reliable, and factchecking enough to see through that mess takes work, but it is possible in a way that wasn't before. A lot is available on open data platforms, plus all the shady stuff like Wikileaks, darknets, etc... that are not that hard to access either.

Should you want to, you can be your own Palantir, because most of what Palantir does is standard data analysis that can be done with open source tools, and most of the data sources are public, private data is just the cherry on top.

Of course it takes work, but it is possible with limited resources, mostly a computer, an internet connection, and time. No need to travel around the world to meet contacts and get access to paper archives.

Especially relevant today in the context of this story https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46895860

Everyone who has been helping Google/Amazon/Meta construct their digital panopticons is culpable in at least some small way for the abuse that may follow.

Secrecy is good

Privacy is good

Crime is not necessarily bad

You don't have to even go Anne Frank to make the argument.

Secrecy is not necessarily good.

Tell me your personal data, passwords, where you keep your money, and that thing you will take to your grave.

Privacy and secrecy are related concepts but they are not the same thing.

Did you not read the word "necessarily"?

There is hardly a thing in this world that is necessarily good in all cases.

For private individuals I think it probably is, not for public companies or especially governments though as they're supposed to accountable to other people.

One of my favorite bit about “if you have nothing to hide…” is asking folks if they’d be willing to take the door off their bathroom when they went to use it.

I just all for their passwords and credit card information. They never share it with me for some reason.

DIY Home builders frequently leave that kind of trim to the end.

It's more a signifier of who grew up with Puritan roots.

An interesting example, because your body is literally something you have to hide. That is, it is illegal not to.

Personally, I hide it because that's what society is telling me, especially if children are around, and I have no real reason to go against that. I mean, who wants to see what I do in the bathroom? But should the government want to, I will gladly let them as it will nicely illustrate what I think of them.

There are many things I want to hide more than my body functions. It is a social taboo, not something that has to do with personal safety and security, which is what privacy advocates usually point to. Arguably, it is the opposite problem: something you have to hide, but for personal freedom, you shouldn't have to.

random book on privacy summarized counter argument to "nothing to hide - nothing to fear" like so: unnecessary decrease in privacy unnecessarily increases the surface of attack. effectively this leads to public shaming and targeted isolation of individuals. great for getting rid of business competition

It would be good to remember the Miranda warning: "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." (emphasis mine). It doesn't say, "maybe" or, "only if".

I have no idea how people can be so shortsighted as to utter “I have nothing to hide”.

Not only that’s very rarely true as the article shows pretty nicely… what is legal changes, sometimes drastically and rapidly.

Many people are naive. They think everyone in power is benign or that you have to be guilty of something to be bothered by them.

It's not just naive. TV and movies serve as propaganda for the police state.

You might become guilty. Sometimes you might want to be guilty. Morality and law sometimes disagree. Often IMO.

I might be hitting a ideological belief of mine here, because I honestly can’t think of someone who would honestly state otherwise. Or that couldn’t be brought to agree with some explanation. Am I tripping ?

I broke up with a close friend because he had this exact view.

He was gay. Don't know how he couldn't understand this.

I’m genuinely sorry for this. That sucks

Secret agencies are good customers of data brokers or sometimes even their owners.

The data broker eco system is notoriously intransparent and dynamic.

The founding fathers hate this one weird trick: simply say the Constitution does not apply to private businesses and then create private businesses that violate the Constitution.

for my European eyes - founding fathers feels more of an annoyance, an extra hoop to jump through more than some sort of a holy cow (or whatever your patriotism has taught you)

The US uses the founding fathers in the way religions use God and the various holy texts: to argue pro or con any case. Indeed some seem to have elevated the 'founding fathers' (what a term anyway) to the stature of minor godhood. And you have to wonder: how horrified would those very founding fathers be if they saw the end result of their best of intentions?

Of course then those very people who will right now use the founding fathers' words in a weaponized way would find different sources of authority because they usually lack the moral framework to determine intent, instead they will go by the letter. It's like watching wikipedians arguing over some contribution that they want to wipe out because it doesn't mesh with their worldview. The endless rules lawyering is really tedious and tiresome to watch.

> For many years this system served well

Surely don't need to ditch the whole system then and just needs a better kill-switch.

Backups, illicit and otherwise do happen, far easier for digital archives than for paper ones. There is a version of Murphy's law for data that probably should go something like 'the data you want to get rid of lasts forever and the data you want to keep evaporates at the first inconvenience'.

You can minimise the risk, but there's a point at which you have to accept that liberal democracy functions around these institutions so dismantling them creates the kind of vacuum that fascism thrives in, which is why Libertarianism has never worked.

It's not that I have nothing to hide. It's that I have nothing I want to share.

"If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" Eric Schmidt - Google CEO in 2009

193 files for Eric Schmidt according to https://www.wired.com/story/epstein-files-tech-elites-gates-...

314 files for Larry Page

294 files for Sergey Brin

Interesting rhetoric. It's always the people you suspect the most?

> It's always the people you suspect the most?

And yet, there are always people willing to carry water for them.

In the context of the Epstein files, I think Schmidt's actual quote looks pretty good ("If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place").

The problem is that even if Schmidt didn't do anything wrong (I don't know but all the link says is he may have been invited to a dinner but probably didn't attend), he nevertheless had something to fear.

(2015)

2015, but arguably more relevant today than ever before.

Are you suggesting that the fact that I wrote it in 2015 somehow makes it 'dated'?

I could update it but I think the fact that it was written before Trump I actually makes it more powerful than less, and you're welcome to extrapolate from 2015 to 2026 and see where it's headed.

Isn’t it just an hn convention?

I agree with your comment I’m replying to completely, but the date tag doesn’t have to be an indictment (as you yourself suggest)

That's why I'm asking a question. For me the difference between then and now is then, 2015 it was still a thing that I saw hanging in the future, the OPM hack is what prompted me to write this. But if I had not written this then I would probably be writing it today on account of the ICE article currently on the front page.

All of those big tech companies have willingly given in to Trump and his band of goons and are cooperating at a scale that dwarfs anything the Germans could have ever wished for. The article shows the damage that one single field in one single file could do. Now multiply that by a couple of 1000.

The potential for an epic disaster is definitely there and even HN is apparently not immune to having its share of bootlickers and bootwearers.

(deleted)

No, I'm perfectly fine with writing what I wrote.

It's an observed fact and I honestly don't care what anybody thinks of that. It should be pretty clear that I think that seeing such excesses requires one to take a stance rather than just to pretend it isn't happening.

As you wish.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

To cast the entire HN community as composed of {X} would be against the guidelines.

To deny that the HN community contains some {X} would be blinkered.

you reference an ICE article "currently" on the front page, I think this comment would benefit from an explicit link to that discussion since it is ephemeral and I am unable to make sure I find the right one.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46895860

> All of those big tech companies have willingly given in to Trump and his band of goons and are cooperating at a scale that dwarfs anything the Germans could have ever wished for.

This is dangerously ahistorical and an offensive trivialization of the scale of human suffering inflicted by the Nazi regime. Fascism as practiced by the NSDAP involved the total integration of the state, the legal system, industry, media, and civil society into a single coercive apparatus in service of a genocidal war. German corporations were not “cooperating”; they were subordinated, aligned, and legally compelled within a one-party totalitarian state.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46897035

Yes, we substantially disagree on a contentious policy question. That does not change historical fact, nor does it make claims like “dwarfs anything the Germans could have wished for” anything other than profound historical illiteracy.

FWiW I come from a large extended family that racked up a lot of time on the pointy end of much of this; Desert Rats, Japanese PoW camps, jungle fighting, and a good deal of the post WWII ground work.

So I really do have to ask you, when you spoke of:

> The problem is the repeated use of Nazi analogies and grossly inflammatory language,

What, exactly, is up with the current US administration, Trump, Miller, clear throws to Blood Tribe language, veiled messages of racial purity and all that .. is it all "just a joke" ?

The early moves of both Stalin and Hitler, before either became the world villians we all know, was to extend their borders within their own countries so that they could sidestep "the law" of the land with their own personal squads of intesticial vagueness.

The administration is unquestionably veering unilateral and authoritarian and can no longer be trusted by allies.

> Yes, we substantially disagree on a contentious policy question.

Ours is not merely a policy disagreement, you failed to provide a reasonable case for violating the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 15th amendments. Indeed, you only seem to respond to comments when you can find a way to nitpick semantics and/or tone.

Let's just stipulate everything you said is true. You do realize that the subordination of German corporations validates the quote you're ostensibly arguing against? Given your framing, German fascists would have loved the scale of cooperation that the American fascist executive branch is receiving from corporations, rather than have to do the difficult work of subordinating them.

The German population[1] was not unwilling; your error is not recognizing that it started with cooperation and grew until all of society was subordinated to the totalitarian state.

There was massive alignment across their society. What they “achieved” would not have been possible any other way.

As someone that abhors the destructive ideologies of that era — and has spent a considerable amount of time studying the history — it’s amusing ironic to be repeatedly compared to the predominant fascist ideology (not that you personally have done this) by people echoing the behavior of the predominate destructive left-wing ideology of the day.

From a historical perspective, it’s not the right-wing that I’m worried about now. I worry about the totalizing, agency-eroding, violence normalizing, and norm-enforcing (thought terminating) “ethics” that have taken firm hold of the left’s levers of power over the past 15 years.

[1] except for the German populations that they literally wanted to murder, of course.

I definitely have worries about far-left capture if/when a power vacuum occurs after the current fascist executive and semi-fascist legislative experience the whiplash of Americans finally pushing back. But you know what? I'll start focusing on that when we get closer to that reality. It's the fascists currently in power that deserve our focus. And you seem to be willing to carry water for them. I assume you don't see it that way, but that's hard to square with some of your other comments.

history is a lie agreed upon.

the common man's task is to figure out "agreed upon by whom?"

Some, even most, were cooperating, and some others from other countries, like USA, too.

C'mon, you know it's convention to write the year of publication in a title. No agenda beyond that.

Are you suggesting that they're suggesting anything beyond what date this was written on, since we usually point that out in almost every article that has not been written in the current year for a variety of reason, including "oh, yeah, I remember I already read this without even clicking, it's not new, I might as well go read the comments directly"?

No, I'm not, hence the question.

Adding a date for older articles and posts is a very common HN convention

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46896376

ideally it should be in the submitted title, if not often someone will post it as above .. and later a mod might add it.

No biggie, as they say.

Of course I was completely unaware of that...

Yeah, TBH, I figured you knew ... I'm juggling a few things and probably put this general note in where it wasn't needed. Pax.

NP, I considered adding it but then again, I know HN tends to interpret that as 'old news' and in this case it is anything but. The rules are there for a reason, even so these are strange times and I figure the more people are aware of this the better.

I could have updated the post date but I would have considered that cheating so I purposefully posted it as it was but left out the date.

But don't worry, it'll get flagged off the homepage soon enough because way too many people find this sort of thing uncomfortable.

FWIW, you aren't alone man. Stay strong.

My apologies, I assumed that since you've been a user for a while you were aware of the reason for such a comment and the practice of indicating the post year in the submission titles.

No hard feelings, I hope.

'For a while' indeed :)

You think this is about Trump, it's happening worldwide.

I wince or sigh every time ic someone characterize policy etc. as some political actor's individual will. isn't everyone exhausted with the political theater yet??

Exactly. Especially when certain policies crop up in multiple times and places. The electronic panopticon is on the menu everywhere.

Not at all! Perhaps I’m mistaken, but my understanding was that anything not recent should get a year tag in the title (at least that’s the pattern I’ve recognized).

You're not mistaken, but that wasn't an accident.

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