The most common argument used in defense of mass surveillance is ‘If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear’. Try saying that to women in the US states where abortion has suddenly become illegal. Say it to investigative journalists in authoritarian countries. Saying ‘I have nothing to hide’ means you stop caring about anyone fighting for their freedom. And one day, you might be one of them.
I have nothing to hide
Ok, pull down your pants and hand me your unlocked phone.
The ‘hand me your unlocked phone’ has worked for me on several occasions.
To me they just say ‘I have stuff to hide from you, not from Google, Facebook, or the government.’
“And the government officials can sell this data to me. Relatively inexpensive too”.
Pornstars show us their assholes but I’m pretty sure they don’t want everybody to know where they live. Just like normal people aren’t comfortable shitting in a public toilet with the door open.
Jokes on you I’m a claustrophobic shitter!
It’s not that I have something to hide, it’s that I don’t trust your judgment
It’s not that I have something to hide. It’s that it’s none of your business!
This applies to so many things. Someone’s lifestyle might come under attack, someone’s religion might be persecuted, someone has sensitive information to share, and so on and so forth.
It literally happened in the US with period tracker app data getting subpoenaed in a state with an abortion ban.
We Americans commit (more or less) three felonies a day. It used to be at least three felonies a day when violation of a website’s TOS was a violation of the CFAA (which can land you 25 years). If you’re a little girl, the DA is probably not going to prosecute, even if you were naughty and downloaded a song illegally.
But here’s the thing: Officials (especially sheriffs lately, and their deputies) are big in coveting your land and your wife and your other liquidatable assets. Heck, if you have some loose cash lying around, all of US law enforcement is already looking to find it, locate it and confiscate it via asset forfeiture and if you get in the way of their prize, well they’re sheepdogs, and you’re now a designated wolf.
And so anything you do that might be even slightly illegal is useful to make a case before a judge why you should spend the next 10 / 25 / 75 years locked up in Rikers or Sing Sing. Even if it’s a petty violation of the CFAA, or is so vague they have to invoke conspiracy or espionage laws, which are so intentionally broad and vague that everyone is already guilty of them.
Typically, these kinds of laws are used when a company or industry wants to disappear someone into the justice system. The go to example is the Kim Dotcom raid, which happened January 18, 2012, conspicuously on the same day as the Wikipedia Blackout protesting against SOPA / PIPA (PS: They’re still wanting to lock down the internet, which is why they want to kill Section 230).
Kim Dotcom was hanging in his stately manor in New Zealand when US ICE agents raided his home with representatives of the MPAA and RIAA standing by. He was accused of a shotgun of US law violations, including conspiracy and CFAA violations. The gist of the volley of accusations was that he was enabling mass piracy of assets by big media companies, hence the dudes in suits from the trade orgs. His company MEGAupload hosted a lot of copyrighted content.
Curiously – and this informs why Dotcom is still in New Zealand – MEGAupload had been cooperating with US law enforcement in their own efforts to stop pirates, and piracy rates actually climbed after the shutdown. Similarly, when Backpage was shut down for human trafficking charges (resulting in acquittal, later), human trafficking rates would climb as the victims were forced back to the streets.
(But Then – and this does get into speculation because we don’t have docs, just a lot of evidence – Dotcom had just secured a bunch of deals with hip hop artists and was going to use MEGAupload as a music distribution service that would get singles out for free and promote tours, and the RIAA really did not like this one bit which may be the actual cause of the Dotcom raid, but we can’t absolutely say. The media industry really hates pirates even though they know they’re not that much of a threat, but legitimate competition might be actual cause to send mercenaries in the color of US law enforcement to a foreign nation to raid the home of a rich dude.)
What we can say is US law enforcement will make shit up to lock you away if someone with power thinks you have something it wants, and you might object to them taking it, and they have a long history of just searching people’s histories (online and off) to find something for which to disappear them into the federal and state penal systems. After all, the US has more people (per capita or total) in prison than any other nation in the world, and so it’s easy to get lost in there.
So yeah, you absolutely have secrets to hide.
It used to be at least three felonies a day when violation of a website’s TOS was a violation of the CFAA (which can land you 25 years).
Did that stop being the case?
conspicuously on the same day as the Wikipedia Blackout protesting against SOPA / PIPA (PS: They’re still wanting to lock down the internet, which is why they want to kill Section 230).
Yeah, they’ve also tried to ram through ACTA, CISPA and the TPP since then.
I wouldn’t disagree about lying police, authoritarian judges filling for-profit prisons, etc but what felonies do I commit every day?
I tried arguing against this, but it’s no use. I tried pointing out how something can be branded illegal retroactively, like 20 years down the line, I tried the “give me your credit card info” approach, nothing took. 90% of the time the counter-argument is usually something to the effect of “big companies know everything about me anyway”, which is just guessing on their part.
I’m just going to take care of my own privacy, because I’m clearly in the minority (present company excluded, of course). Almost everyone I know disregards online privacy completely, so I’m done trying to get a dialogue going with these people; it’s every man for himself. The only way online privacy will become a hot topic among laymen is when something nasty happens and at that point, it will have been too late.
As Doctorow points out, ‘Saying security and privacy don’t matter because you have nothing to hide is like saying freedom of speech doesn’t mater because you have nothing to say.’
It’s a very short-sighted view. Those rights will be taken from you if you don’t protect them.
That doesn’t work for the “the big companies know everything about me anyway” line though
They may know everything about you right now. But they don’t know about your future self, how you can change, how you may be an entirely different person in as little as a year. Data is useful, but it is more useful the more updated and recent it is.
Well I think it does, because they don’t know literally everything about us yet. But they will one day if we don’t fight back.
You’re missing the point. It doesn’t matter what you or I believe, if a person has accepted that a big corporation knows everything about them and use this as a reason not to take action or prevent them from knowing more, then the Doctorow quote doesn’t apply.
Just tell them unlock their phone so you can take a look of his browser history. Works quite a few time for me.
At one time I did, and to my surprise, my friend did just that! Unlocked their phone and handed it to me without a word. Welp.
So you logged into all their social media and changed their passwords and recovery emails right? I don’t just want access now, I want it in perpetuity.
deleted by creator
Nah, that would just make me a dick.
“I don’t trust you!” But they trust whatever NSA-agent looking at their private photos not to save anything for later…
Yes, family, friends trust more an outsider rather than a family member with decades of real proven knowledge in the IT/Tech field.
The reason being that AUTHORITIES have imense power of manipulation at hand rather than a single opinion of a family member…
“I don’t have anything to hide because I think I’ve done something wrong: I have something to hide because I question your judgement and motives.”
They’re fine giving you their info because they trust you. The problem is when the person seeking that information is untrustworthy – and some shithead(s) making their way into a company or government isn’t just possible, it’s likely.
Tell them to give all their sensitive personal information to someone that hates them. Credit card numbers, political beliefs, nudes, sexual preferences/fetishes, etc.
my personal response is ALWAYS “would you be fine living with a state mandated police officer, FBI agent, CIA agent, whatever, in your house 24/7 making sure you never did anything wrong?”
the answer is no, because obviously it’s no.
Finally a friend
a fren that will report all your wrong doings to big government!
Thank you very much for speaking my mind!
I would also add that the “Plandemic” WAS that nasty thing that started other nasty things happening AND still few acknowledge what you are very well talking about.
IT is not only about being able to exercise the freedom of speech, privacy or living and loving, IT IS about HUMANS and HUMANITY and those that are against it…
REAL EYES, REALISE, REAL LIES! ☝️
“plandemic” opinion discarded
Saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you don’t have anything to say.
It was Edward Snowden who said that “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
99% of people have sine private keys they need to hide
Easy: “You, the government, want me to show you all my data? Right after you show me (and everyone else) all your documents, including the “top secret” ones. Because you haven’t done anything wrong, right?”
Symmetrical transparency.
Guys, stop falling for the obvious bait in the comments.
Also: never give your government the authority over something you wouldn’t give the worst possible government.
“i have nothing to hide”
no, you are wrong, you just do not understand what other people know about you.
And how they might use that information against you, now or in the future.
Nor that the information that they use against you be necessarily true given their accepted monopoly in ‘truth’.
ah yes another classic, although this would be a timeless issue regardless of privacy, manufacturing problems is really easy, it turns out.
or yesterday, maybe a week ago, who knows when it will come back to haunt you!
- Women hide thier skin, lips, and age
- Men hide thier jawline with beards and their insecurities are buried so well, they forget it themselves as a defense mechanism hoping the mental/emotional weakness will “heal” by next confrontation
- Humans hide thier weakness,
- Thier competitive business plans
- Patents until they are published
- Who are you falling in love with at the start
- Exactly how much you are attracted to a person
- Who you have a crush on
- Your answer to a $10,000 competition
- Your lottery ticket
- The location of your gold and gun
- The location of your child when allowed online
- Whether someone is away from home for extended periods of time, you leave the lights and TV on.
- Inventions until it’s marketed
- Science Fair Project until it’s unvieled
- Presents until they are opened
- Your private parts
- Your private thoughts on your marriage
Have you ever grabbed a childs private parts? NO of course not, because you INNATELY UNDERSTAND even though you are not a parent and don’t remember being one yourself. In fact you understand it so well that if you were to do so publcally, you’re putting your life at risk.
CONCLUSION: Privacy is natural and helps give confidence and security to an individual but they want access to your weaknesses and privates anyway.
EVIDENCE: Privacy Violation is a specific tactic meant to break people …IN PRISON…since they begining of time, Gulags.
P.S. Stop showing nude baby pictures at reunions to those that did not raise or grow up with the child in the family who already saw them naked, and only while they are still a child and not a teenager, otherwise that is a serious privacy violation. In fact, just don’t take the picture, where did you even get that you lazy lubricated louse.
I agree with the first part of your comment, I don’t understand the second. Some sort of pedophilophobic rant?
Children deserve privacy like the rest of us do.
Fun fact: Most parents cannot hear/see this sentence.
Not too sure about the middle part, but the end was pointing out that baby pictures of little Sally playing in the tub are not okay to share or take in the first place.
Its a common enough situation where Ma is going through the baby album with your bride-to-be or a total stranger (mother-in-law) and there’s a bunch of photos of under-dressed children that would definetny make the wrong crowd happy to have.
pedophilophobic?
There is so many good responses to this. Here is one I just came up with:
Legal and not embarrassing are not the same thing.
This is why you don’t rig a fair system… Because your ‘rig’ may one day be used against you.
Problem is that people are essentially brainwashed to cheer in favor of oppressive policy. It should be a crime to make misleading claims or statements, but, such is the world of advertising and marketing.
