Why privacy is important, and having "nothing to hide" is irrelevant (2016)

I think most people who say &quot;I have nothing to hide&quot; are just mimicking a slogan they no doubt heard someone they respect or at least think talks well say<p>Another common refrain, especially since Snowden, is just glib defeatism (&quot;they already have all my info anyway&quot;) which is also a poor way to think about policy (and to make personal choices, but I won&#x27;t argue those with most people)<p>I really think the main reason people are complacent is more often that the spying is abstract to them. They wouldn&#x27;t like it if someone were pointing a big camera through their window, but data being aggregated through their phone and smart home gadgets and computer and CCTVs in public places and leaks on distant websites doesn&#x27;t register in their actual attention, so it doesn&#x27;t emotionally feel like a big deal to them

Many &quot;nothing to hide&quot; proponents implicitly assume the only problem involves fact-based investigation by mostly-principled agents of a non-corrupt regime that has the same values people are comfy with today. However that&#x27;s nowhere near the whole issue.<p>We should also be scared of cases where some investigator or agency goes: &quot;We need to make an example of <i>somebody</i> and That Dude is close enough.&quot;<p>Or where regime changes and suddenly everything you didn&#x27;t care about is dangerous and <i>does</i> need to be hidden, like where volunteering in a pro-democracy group or having an abortion retroactively becomes a sentence to the reeducation gulag.<p>&gt; Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn&#x27;t like the phrase &#x27;The innocent have nothing to fear&#x27;, believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like &#x27;The innocent have nothing to fear&#x27;.<p>-- <i>Snuff</i> by Terry Pratchett

&gt; If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear.<p>I&#x27;ve always taken issues with this phrase as many people would be lead to believe the opposite as well: If you have something to hide, you have something to fear.<p>Which further suggests that as soon as there&#x27;s anything you want to hide, that has to be something criminal.<p>Of course, this is utter garbage. People _do_ have things to hide, and it is rarely criminal &#x2F; unlawful.

When people say, “I have nothing to hide.” I remind them that they have a door on their bathroom and curtains over their windows for perfectly innocent yet no less valid reasons.

Governments will always seek more surveillance of citizens - it&#x27;s like crack to them. If we don&#x27;t push back and work hard to protect our freedoms and privacy then we will end up in something like Orwell&#x27;s 1984.<p>See what&#x27;s happening in China. The surveillance and oppression are particularly severe in the Xinjiang region, where authorities have implemented a multi-layered system of monitoring and control. This includes facial recognition cameras, mobile police checkpoints, and the collection of biometric data. See also [1]<p>We must demand transparency and accountability from those in power, whilst supporting organizations that work to protect our privacy.<p>Similarly, private sector business will always seek more of our personal data in order to make more money, and the tech industry is enabling more intrusive government surveillance.<p>It requires activism to protect our freedom.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;digital-surveillance-is-omnipresent-in-china-heres-how-citizens-are-coping-225628" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;digital-surveillance-is-omnipres...</a>

Privacy is not about secrets.<p>Privacy is the right to sovereignty over one&#x27;s personal&#x2F;intimate sphere - whether it&#x27;s insight to information about oneself or physical contact. The right to consent, for instance, would be a component of the right to privacy.<p>It&#x27;s about power. And by extension it&#x27;s about the power balance between the people and any intruder of their private sphere, whether it&#x27;s a friend, a stranger, the public, the state, the law and so on.<p>In other words, the less privacy there is the less effective power both the individual as well as the entire people have.<p>That&#x27;s why it&#x27;s a basic human right.

<i>you self-censor as a result, the rest of us lose your perspective, and the development of further ideas is stifled.</i><p>This component of privacy reminds me of “Preference Falsification,” a phenomenon described by Taimur Kuran. Although Kuran’s examples are often of Eastern Europe, this essay puts it in terms of US politics of 50 years ago.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econlib.org&#x2F;how-timur-kuran-changed-my-thinking&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econlib.org&#x2F;how-timur-kuran-changed-my-thinking&#x2F;</a><p>Important paper to recommend as always, Soloave’s “ &#x27;I&#x27;ve Got Nothing to Hide&#x27; and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy” written after the article but by a thinker who is cited in it.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;papers.ssrn.com&#x2F;sol3&#x2F;papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;papers.ssrn.com&#x2F;sol3&#x2F;papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565</a><p>And also “Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;papers.ssrn.com&#x2F;sol3&#x2F;papers.cfm?abstract_id=2203713" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;papers.ssrn.com&#x2F;sol3&#x2F;papers.cfm?abstract_id=2203713</a>

Common way of thinking:<p>- &quot;I have nothing to hide&quot;<p>- &quot;they already have all my info anyway&quot;<p>The problem is that people have not seen it directly. They have not seen that someone used their data against them especially. It is done mostly &#x27;behind the scenes&#x27;.<p>However it is easy to dismantle these thoughts:<p>- With system of surveillance every politician can be &#x27;under foreign surveillance&#x27;, which is not a good thought<p>- There were some cases about somebody not receiving insurance due to surveillance. What if you will not receive social money, or benefits. You may even not know why you were treated by government in certain way<p>- You do not know if your data were sold, or trained for AI, or for robot dogs, or for war, or to China (Facebook sold data to china)<p>- Your data can be used against you potentially during your whole life. What if your DM comment might lead to problems with your employment in the future?<p>- Governments change with times. What if some nasty figure, nazi like, becomes a president of let&#x27;s say for example America. How you can be sure your data will be treated with care, and that it will not be misused, or used against you?

If you have nothing to hide, here is simple and quick to do list:<p>1. Post all your personal information online is a public place on the internet. This should include all your personal records, your bank accounts, your drivers license, job history. Also include a list of all websites you have visited, the user names and passwords for all online accounts.<p>2. List the same information for your spouse or partner, children and parents.<p>3. Take your car keys, house keys, credit cards and such object and leave them in a public place with a note showing where someone can find the information you posted in item #1 and #2.<p>Congratulations! You have provided conclusive proof that those of us you who protect our privacy are completely silly people. You have won the argument and demonstrated that without a doubt you &quot;have nothing to hide&quot;.<p>Please get back to us in a couple of months and let us know how it is going so we foolish people can join you. [edit: people and join you =&gt; people can join you.

The problem with privacy isn’t the rhetoric. This is just crap we, <i>HN</i> visitors who are already of one mind, entertain ourselves with.<p>The problem is the overlap between those who prioritise it and political nihilism. If you want to have fun, argue with a totem. If you want to be effective, find an argument that will motivate making voting and calling electeds a habit. Particularly those who think both are a farce.

&gt; I have nothing to hide<p>&gt; <i>Because no one is trying to hurt you</i><p>From <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keybase.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;keybase-exploding-messages" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keybase.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;keybase-exploding-messages</a> (2018) (discussed at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17357992">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17357992</a>)

Another argument I hear often is that &quot;they have no reason to surveil boring ordinary individuals.&quot; Sure nobody might have bothered to look into your private exchanges past aggregable metadata until half a decade or so ago, but with recent advancements in LLMs it takes mere moments to summarize or search through large batches of messages.

A better argument is &quot;I choose to sacrifice my privacy for the convenience&quot; which I honestly think is a fine attitude.<p>And by &quot;convenience&quot; it doesn&#x27;t have to be something substantial. Sometimes, it&#x27;s just that &quot;I&#x27;m too busy with my life already so I choose to not think about the privacy implication and wish the odds are in my favor&quot;.

freedom is so often the shadow of privacy, thinking of being “secure in your papers against search” in the 1700s makes me imagine the authors didn’t want the government to easily know private things such as my income which back then required a lot more physical access<p>Oh and on that note the reason for a warrant is to show YOU that the government has invoked the law IN ADVANCE, it’s not for anyone else but YOU, “no-knock warrants” take a very important aspect of why we require a warrant out of the equation, it’s absurd

Let&#x27;s turn the tables around. I care about free speech but I have nothing to say. Most people don&#x27;t have much to say but when they do, they need to be able to play their free speech card.<p>Similarly, I think most people don&#x27;t have much to hide, but when they want their legitimate privacy, they should have all the tools and rights to it.

&quot;Saying you don&#x27;t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don&#x27;t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.&quot;<p>Ed Snowden

Something people never seem to understand is data leaks and&#x2F;or mishandling of your info. Even if you have &quot;nothing to hide&quot;, companies that hold your data, and subsequently sell it&#x2F;abuse it&#x2F;get it leaked somehow, can be a powerful tool used to take advantage of people, and <i>manipulated</i> leaked data is frequently blindly trusted, which could easily be used to frame someone for a crime for example.<p>The only way to keep your privacy is to not let those companies have your data in the first place, so in that sense everyone <i>should</i> care about privacy even if they don&#x27;t inherently do anything wrong in the moment.<p>Another related quote I like to share is &quot;if you have nothing to hide, then pull down your pants and hand me your unlocked phone.&quot;

“If you’re doing nothing wrong, what is there to fear?” “I’m fearing your definition of wrong.” - Mon Mothma (Andor, 2022)<p>I think this sums it up perfectly.

Imagine this scenario: When I was 18, I openly expressed my hatred for gay people and even reported someone to the police just because they were gay. Now, 60 years later, I’m 78. Society’s values have changed a lot, and those views are now illegal and widely condemned. If someone were to find an old paper where I wrote those hateful things, I could face legal trouble and social backlash for something I once openly believed.<p>The point I want to make is that even if you don&#x27;t have something to hide today does not mean that you won&#x27;t be convicted tomorrow.<p>Edit: Someone else gave an example with the abortions, and that they are now illegal in many places.

The title summarizes it perfectly well.<p>And all people have things to hide -especially those who say they have nothing to hide.

People who believe &quot;I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear&quot; have poor judgement about their own vulnerability in the modern world. They are not fit to make policy decisions about the privacy of others.<p>These people should be told this in no uncertain terms.

My go to reply when this topic comes up IRL and someone has &quot;nothing to hide&quot; that can I have a look at the photos on their phone and the messages? No one ever unlocked their phone for me and they realized they had &quot;things to hide&quot;

Criminals have something to hide. Subjects have nothing to hide. Men have everything to hide.

You put that close to Discord&#x27;s office, a bunch of bats fly out from the windows...

Great text. Even if you have nothing to hide, that doesn&#x27;t mind we can be ok with constant peeking into our privacy.

So, suggestions on how to combat this?

I&#x27;m not sold on the lack of privacy affecting free speech. If you care strongly enough about a topic or an issue that you want to speak your mind and share your opinion, you accept that your position and words will become public knowledge.<p>The real issue, I would argue, is that of governments becoming repressive and using force or threats against those who assert their right to free speech and civil disobedience. The first issue does not imply the second and I found that they were often confounded in comments, making it sound like they both go hand in hand.<p>I don&#x27;t believe that to be the case. I&#x27;d like to think we can have a healthy democracy while living with increasing surveillance.<p>Let&#x27;s keep pushing back on governments when they actually infringe on free speech. Like when they start firing people or limiting their rights based on political affiliation or beliefs.<p>Do we still have curfews or vaccine passports? No, people pushed back. Does the government know who got the shot and who didn&#x27;t and what their stance is around it? I imagine they do.

Privacy also allows rich people to hide their wealth and avoid taxes, it allows secret government agencies and other powerful organizations to publish anonymously and influence public life in illegitimate ways, and other bad things. Finally, privacy is inherently anti-&quot;information wants to be free&quot;.

* privacy IS important<p>* lists gmail address in footer

&quot;It&#x27;s not that I have something to hide it&#x27;s that I have nothing I want to show you&quot;

I&#x27;ll admit I&#x27;m someone who has always said &quot;I have nothing to hide.&quot; Do I want someone physically recording me outside my window while changing clothes? No. But the majority of the time, we&#x27;re just talking about targeted advertisements (which I actually prefer over random crap). Or a system that listens to keywords on phone calls that may identify and deter a terrorist threat. I don&#x27;t see how this relates to &quot;freedoms of expression.&quot; Before the downvotes, please give me an example of where I should be scared. I&#x27;m open to learning.

Secrets are real (and hard to keep), but privacy is just the politeness of your neighbours.<p>We should never confuse the two - people seem to think that a right to privacy means a right to secrecy. It does not and never can. People have behaved badly enough with so called online anonymity.<p>We will have our entire lives stripped bare and laid out on a digital plate - this will enable an incredible outpouring of new lessons, psychological, criminal, mental health and happiness - if we treat it right. If we give individuals control over who can use their information, if we ensure PII is treated like a lawyer treats their clients confessions, that epidemiology can get what advertisers never can, we shall find that it’s not “no-one can ever know” but “health researchers can know, but I would rather my employer does not and I hope my friends understand”<p>We spend 20 years training children as to what is and is not acceptable in polite society - and it’s going to take a generation to figure this new set of etiquette out - but I am betting the juice is worth the squeeze<p>Edit: in short, it’s not the data that’s collected, it’s who uses it and how. Focus on that.