Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

> Everyone who's not terribly worried about privacy always uses the line 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about',

"Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden

View on HN

Locks on bathroom doors are for privacy, not security.

Meaning what?

The misguided who say they don’t need privacy suddenly have a dense memory of the thousands of times they’ve turned the lock on a bathroom door and consider the idea of deficating in full view as an alternative.

The meaning is to highlight the incredible silliness of the “nothing to hide” skawkers who sound like so many Soviet propagandists.

This is completely missing the point of why one needs privacy. Lack of it harms journalism and activism, making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy, it will be much easier to target them. Everyone should have privacy to protect them. Thus is what Snowden probably meant, not bathrooms.

If you think the benefit of privacy to society and individuals is limited to activists, jounrnalists and providing them cover you might have missed the point yourself. The sheer number of distinct benefits flowing from privacy make the "nothing to hide" argument utterly absurd to anyone capable of thought.

What are other benefits for people who don't really care? I could never convince such people of the importance of privacy.

Democracy depends on a secret ballot. Start there.

Then move on to the fact that not every govt employee is honest. Some will be involved in organised crime. What about your family do you not want organised crime to know? Do you trust everyone in the government who might encounter you today? Do you trust everyone who might encounter you next year? In 10 years time? 20 years? Gotta trust them all!

The rule of law exists, in part, so that the strongest does not always get their way. Do you trust your insurance company and their outsourced contractors with knowing everything about your family when they refuse to pay your legitimate claim and you have to go to court? They have vastly more resources than you already.

There's plenty more, think them through.

By the time you have it that these people who don't care, they also don't want to be naked in the street or have their children be naked in public, do want freedom and democracy rather than soviet style tyranny, and don't want to be effectively targeted by criminals... If you need to continue, it's a lost cause and you're dealing with bad faith or total un-fixable idiocy.

Thank you, good list.

Very far from exhaustive.

Snowden is comparing two things that, in fact, are not alike. Surveillance gathers information, whereas censorship suppresses expression. It might sound like clever rhetoric to people of a lower intellectual capacity, but these are fundamentally distinct concepts.

Or he was not comparing those two things to say they are the same thing but rather making an analogy based on the common factor of people in the US often wanting legal protections for both speech and privacy to draw his point that one is giving up their rights by making the excuse about not wanting privacy which they would probably not do when it comes to speech.

Thinking comparisons of two similar things are always for the purpose of saying that they are the same thing is ridiculous, don’t you think? It might sound like clever reasoning to people of a mediocre intellectual capacity but it is not logically coherent.

> Surveillance gathers information, whereas censorship suppresses expression.

Surveillance suppresses expression through chilling effects.

It only chills when the watchers are hidden. See David Brin's The Transparent Society for an example of how sousveillence ought to work.

But how do we achieve such society?

With great difficulty? The watchers don't want to be watched. I know the solution but I don't know how to get there.

EDIT: IIRC Brin addressed this in his fictional treatment of the concept in the novel Earth

> It only chills when the watchers are hidden.

How does that even help? The concern is that you're deterred from e.g. admitting that you're a lesbian under your own name because your religious grandparents wouldn't approve, or advocating for school choice because your boss is married to a public school teacher, or criticizing the government.

Knowing that they're going to see it doesn't stop them from cutting you out of their will or putting you on toilet duty or playing "show me the man and I will show you the crime".

Those things happen right now. My concern is with government and powerful corporate watchers. Ubiquitous sousveillence ends that. It answers the question of "Who's watching the watchers." You'll be watching the watchers and heaven knows they need watching.

Think cops with always-on cameras, not grandma poking around beneath your mattress.

He's comparing two rights and how giving up one right (to privacy) because you think you have nothing to hide is like giving up your right to speech, because you have nothing to say (and therefore don't have to worry that someone in power might find it offensive).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com