If you truly have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to lose.
This is literally the most important qualification for every privacy evangelist. We must have a convincing counter-argument ready to go when the Nothing To Hide line comes up. Everything else is secondary.
Online privacy is synonymous with security. Leaked private data, including passwords, banking and medical information, which has already occurred on multiple occasions, demonstrates this axiom.
Many of these 4598 Fakebook friends may surely be interested that your home is empty because you are on vacation in this wonderful beach hotel.
I usually shut those “I have nothing to hide” arguments by asking the person what’s more creepy: you closing your curtains trying to get privacy, or your neighbor trying to peek in, asking you “why do you need curtains? You’ve got nothing to hide right?”
That usually gets the point across…
Have a look at this analysis. The author shows that this is a very weak response to the deeper underpinnings of the “nothing to hide” argument. After all, you cannot argue people’s personal preferences.
I think one of the ways to go, with everything happening right now, is that Meta can infer who is gay and/or had aborted a pregnancy and hand these predictions over to an ultranationalist secret service. So, your personal indifference to privacy amounts to a genocidal police state for your fellow citizens.
Bold of you to assume they care about the welfare of their fellow citizens.
Well, then them part of the problem, aren’t they.
Yup. And it’s tough getting them to recognize and accept that.
Ye the explanation I presented is something I say to simple minded people as a way for me to tell them that the act of wanting privacy isn’t criminal, and that it is wayyy creepier when some stranger is trying to actively breach said privacy.
I want to belive that this entire breach of privacy thing will form a sort of bubble that’ll burst and people will wake up and realize that “hey this is kinda creepy”, but this does seem to trend towards a dystopian cyberpunk future
I say something similar when people say, “But your phone tracks you! Why are you worried about [privacy issue here]?”
“Well, I’m just going to go to your place and fuck your wife. Why are you worried? You’re already fucking her. What’s the difference?”
Consent. Consent is the difference.
Hi rotten
Good article
My main counter argument on “I have nothing to hide In did not wrong” is always: It is not the hiding I am worried about, it is more worrying about who defines “the wrong”, this can change over time and it is not the citizen defining that
a great piece and the related paper is also a cracking read: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 (linked in the piece also)
Very good paper indeed. Some of the arguments made (eg risks from data aggregation) can be found in more mature form in legal analyses of the EU’s GDPR.
if you have nothing to hide why do you close the bathroom door?
Focus. I need to focus on the misson.
Apologies. Henceforth we shall install a live feed into your bathroom to make sure you focus on the mission instead of wasting time browsing memes.
I don’t like that question because a dismissive but valid argument is “to contain the smells after taking a shit”.
