I get my gas and electricity from Scottish Power. Recently a rival company, Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute. The front line of defence against this kind of dispute is that the bills give the serial numbers of the meters. The bill from Scottish Power gives the same meter serial numbers that are embossed on the front of my meters, and is therefore valid. The bill from Ovo Energy gives different serial numbers and is therefore in error.
Picture though the internal processes in Ovo Energy. A second clerk is tasked with attending to the problem. He has a choice. He can change the address to agree with the meter serial numbers, correcting the error. Or he can change the meter serial numbers to those for my address, compounding the error.
Since the meter serial numbers are confidential, to me and Scottish Power, Ovo Energy does not have the second option; they do not know the serial numbers (which are long, like a credit card number, not just 1,2,3,...). Thus the clerical error gets corrected, or just left, but not compounded.
My guess is that confidential information, (such as meter serial numbers, credit card numbers, and account numbers), are the front like of defence against both clerical error and fraud based on impersonation. It is a rather weak defence, but it is light weight, and seems to how much of billing and billing disputes work.
We all have lots to hide: the confidential information that the system needs us to keep confidential to stop clerical errors from compounding.
Partially "slamming" where agents would try to get folks to switch to a different billing provider, and get paid a commission. So some fraudulently "sign up" random addresses they were supposed to visit.
The other case has been miscommunication over phone or email to someone actually requesting to change billing provider. Or error on the part of the potential customer.
I've had a bill from some random billing provider. In my case it is common for folks newly arriving in the block of flats to get the digits of the address transposed. Due to them using the common English convention, whereas the part of Scotland I'm in uses a different convention.
OP said "Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute."
I don't see what a company in that situation hopes they can accomplish without a contract for providing the service. Even if they knew OP's meter number.
telco guy comes in at point x in past, takes a pic of your meters while you don't attend. privacy fucked. but obscuring stuff like that behind temper proof (mwemphasis on proof) the glitter?
Your first sentence: That could happen, but they'd have to send someone, which is an expensive process. It would also cross the into deliberate fraud. In the larger picture, privacy protections are not bulletproof. They don't have to be. They just have to be good enough that they (plus laws against violation) restrain most people from violating them.
Your second sentence is incomprehensible. What are you trying to say?
sorry. the second sentence asks whether it's viable to temper proof all data in your home that might be exploited.
some people go through trash, find bills or other stuff that should have been shredded or burned. others even make use of magazines one has read, which is a measure in social engineering and that thing creeps do in chats which is one step beyond that line where kids tell others boat loads of stuff on discord.
then there is even the kind that takes out trash specific to you and drops it somewhere along the way where you walk your dog. just to get you paranoid enough for the next steps.
there's a guy who uses glue and glitter to seal screws and stuff. the glitter creates a pattern that cannot be reproduced. manufacturers do similar things with special stickers. it's really clever but will get you only so far.
it's mostly beyond the scope of the topic, sorry for wasting your time. pointless stuff happened to me and I remember stories and people, whose lives have been ruined and their characters FUBARed, from the past every time I read "nothing to hide".
it's 2025, corporations have completely normalized (the verb as it is used in military contexts, leveled) privacy and turned anonymity upside down, as have social and classic media, both small and big. it's incredibly strange to me that so few regard the consequences as an aggregation of transgressions rather than just violations at points in time.
"whatever bad thing we do, makes the next one so much easier."
Aggregation comes with exponential growth. Why is the law not aware of how badly their ignorance will backfire? Just because, apparently, which is why it's almost pointless to temper proof anything because if you are "hit". nothing and nobody can or will adequately compensate for the loss.
Having to spend a bit of time on mails and phone calls is nothing compared to the consequences of what can and does happen.
One lifetime and there were civilizations and "Empires", or rather colonies before, all with potential and it's because of small "levels" of deliberate ignorance, not the selectivity bias kind of our brains, that leads to civil conflicts, rises in crime, first small, then violence, rape, murder rates explode.
Software and Web Engineers are especially ignorant, I noticed in the last few years. And people think it's a result of demand, or rather a lack thereof and that the cycle that creates an "I don't care" mindset can't be fiddled with for the positive, even though engineers are literally the switch.
There's an inverted spotlight effect at play here, a maximized bystander effect and inverted egocentric bias.
Engineers and intelligent academics believe they matter less than they actually do, which results in learned irrelevance, and culminates in the tendency to rationalize and defend existing power structures and "systems" even when they harm pretty much everybody up- and downstream.
I keep getting reminded of Pinker's "Better Angels of Our Nature" where he attempts to show with data over time how everything is getting better, and I think he hints at the nature of spikes and such but he completely failed to account for the aggregation of all these spikes, which there is no data for because law makers and enforcers are, apparently not willing to do the required work now vs leave it for later when the shit hits the fan.
But maybe that's just the reason why human colonies die.
This is a valid story and I’m sorry to hear that you went through this. However, it’s a strawman for the current argument from the blog post, which is that living life in the open and acting normal is setting things up for failure, and I don’t believe that it is.
Having nothing to hide is fine. Nothing to hide and doing nothing wrong is least likely to cause trouble.
The blog post’s argument that someone would be more likely to get watched if they start hiding after not hiding is not valid. ALL encrypted and unencrypted communication is a valid target for analysis, but ANY encrypted traffic is obviously more of a concern, just like one person walking into a store brandishing a gun is as alarming as 5 brandishing guns, and it doesn’t matter whether they used to not carry guns into the store.
> Ultimately, 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.
Your framing suggests that hiding personal messages is akin to carrying a gun into a store, and it's exactly that parallel that the blog post is railing against. Encrypting messages needs to be normal and expected.
This statement completely fails to engage with the post.
In fact, the parent's whole "argument" ignores the prevalence of encrypted communications in the modern world. To use their (absurd) gun analogy, the modern internet is close to an open-carry state. (Europeans: this means everyone can carry a gun visibly.)
Everyone uses https by default. Phone communications and texts are the least secure by far.
PS There is nothing wrong with the GP's anecdote. It is an excellent argument, understandable argument for casual importance of privacy.
the name fits the post. I have a different take on "nothing to hide" I think it's a shame that you have nothing to hide. Interesting minds have things to hide. It can be new ideas that are revolutionary and need hidden work to develop into a strong idea. It can be things that challenge the status quo in a dangerous way (for the status quo). It might be gaining freedom from stifling sexual norms. It could be information about your status (rich or poor).
If you have nothing to hide, please walk around naked. Never close your curtains. Carry a screen with all your assets and bank accounts. Please carry all your passwords in plain text in your pocket or tattooed on your arm. Keep your address visible on a post-it note on your forehead.
Its just absurd to think you have nothing to hide. If it's not from the state, then it is from other people that mean you harm. That will take advantage of the information you are broadcasting.
If there were 1 brandishing a gun, I’d be very alarmed.
If there were 5, I’d be even more alarmed.
If everyone in the store and outside the store were always brandishing guns, then it would be a very dangerous place.
Speaking of dangerous places- how about the U.S.?
The U.S. gun death rate is approximately 13.7 per 100,000 people, while the UK rate is roughly 0.04 per 100,000—making the U.S. rate over 300 times higher. This is likely because of UK’s stringent gun laws.
So, if everyone hid their internet traffic, does that mean there would be a 300% increase in hacker crime and convictions? And wouldn’t governments and companies be more likely to develop and use tools for spying on their citizens and employees?
Ok so this "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument is so recurrent I once went looking where it came from.
The oldest account I found is in a religious book from 1832 [1]: "We must have nothing to hide, nothing to fear", but, and this is the important bit, this is in the context of your relationship with Christ.
Later accounts are mostly from judicial documents like "well tell us what happened, if you have nothing to hide, you'll have nothing to fear".
And later on we start to see the current form of the argument related to privacy, except now this argument is never directly used to erode it. It will always be in some form of "ok now we have to do this collective thing because of criminals, because of terrorism, because of protect the children, etc.".
If you search "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" 100% of the results are about how it is a logical fallacy, nobody at all seems to defend the argument and yet, here we are!
Food for thought:
- this argument may well be stuck in the collective unconscious of lots of people (albeit in the religious context)
- many governments, organizations and in any case the people in position of power and authority can develop a god complex (power corrupts etc.)
So unless I end up dealing with an all-loving and all-forgiving entity I could fully trust, I'd like to keep my right to privacy, thank you very much!
It's older than 1832; for example: "He who trembles at this moment is guilty. For innocence never trembles before public vigilance." Maximilien Robespierre, July 26 (8 Thermidor), 1794 (translated - the original would be in French). When it is used by surveillance advocates, they don't use the exact words.
Ah nice to know! In my defense I only searched for the English version.
That being said, Robespierre was a key participant of 'La Terreur' where tens of thousands of people where hastily judged and executed and he himself ended up executed 4 months after that speech. [1]
Just because you don't see it written verbatim "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" doesn't mean it's not the argument being made.
Right now you have half the country downright giddy about federal agents terrorizing broad swaths of Americans, driving recklessly down their freeways, waving guns around their neighborhoods, bodyslamming random passersby, all fundamentally because half the country believes the only reason someone could not be giddy about this is because they "have something to hide."
I saw that comment before it was flagged and thanks to that I now have this argument that you supplied. if I arrived a couple minutes later I wouldn't know it. (I browsed logged out)
I disagree with that guy but I don't know it should be flagged
The HN dead dynamic has been increasingly throwing babies out with the bathwater, and logging in (even to a throwaway account) with showdead=yes is the right call these days.
But for this particular comment, I assume it was flagged because at this point continuing to cheerlead for the fascists/destructionists with nonsense talking points is just basic flamebait. As GP said, the assertion that only illegal immigrants are being harassed/abducted/disappeared is completely unfounded - the government is not operating with transparency to demonstrate this, nor accountability for the collateral harm that we do know they have caused.
This is not basic flamebait. if you have any serious conversation outside of your political bubble this is THE argument that people who get deported are never US citizens. and it is a valid argument unless you can find examples of citizens deported. I can't
there are so many shorts of right wing "influencers" cornering liberals who can't give a suitable reply to this question.
so the argument about hearings is important. and killing this discussion took it away from public. this of course is very useful to the maga machine which is so friendly to big tech so I'm not surprised.
> THE argument that people who get deported are never US citizens. and it is a valid argument unless you can find examples of citizens deported (I can't).
It might be a valid argument in a dictatorship, but not in the US - rather it's hopeium that completely relies on preconceived assumptions. An assertion that everyone deported/disappeared must be a non-citizen (... because otherwise why would they have been deported?) is bog standard fallacy that the government/computer/bureaucracy] is always correct.
The entire foundation of Constitutionally limited government responsible to the People is that it is the government's job to justify its actions. That's the goal of open legal process, professional representation, the incarcerated's communication with the outside world, etc. A strongman wannabe-dictator asserting "trust me" but hiding all of the details, and for what we do know about engaging in wanton criminality, is nowhere near any level of good-faith executing the laws of a Constitutionally-limited government.
Personally I'd say people still thinking any of this is about "immigration reform" are being taken for a ride, just as they have been for the past thirty years.
Nope. It is a valid argument in US in the eyes of US citizens who make it. You don't get to just say "it's not a valid argument" and think that will convince people
and actually you know it too. That's why you give the rest of the explanation. which will not be seen because the conversation was killed.
What I mean is that it's not a legitimate argument in the context of good-faith discussion getting to the truths of matters, which is the ethos of this site.
I didn't address the social aspects you brought up, and I really should have. Yes, there are many people repeating these arguments, despite them being trivially debunked. That is a big part of The Problem, right? "Flood the zone with shit" to overwhelm people's attention and get them to succumb to repeated feel-good talking points that confirm their biases. But if people were more generally intellectually honest, then we wouldn't be staring down fascism to begin with.
There are also many people arguing against this tripe, but using the lamest arguments themselves, because once again confirming their preconceived biases feels good. When I go to protests, the sheer number of signs preaching to the choir saddens me - propagating the fascists' paradigm wherein the main issue here is illegal immigration is not going to win anyone over! The way I see it, we should be able to disagree on policy and solutions, but yet still reject the fascism together.
But back to the comment flagging - when the bulk of political discourse revolves around flamebait, then it's not terribly surprising the popular arguments get flagged on forums that are looking for something more than flame war. FWIW the whole conversation wasn't outright killed, rather it's hidden in a tree you can click to expand (it says [10 more] meaning 10 comments below it to expand). Personally, I usually click those, but I understand having to do so detracts from engagement.
> What I mean is that it's not a legitimate argument in the context of good-faith discussion getting to the truths of matters, which is the ethos of this site.
it's only not a legitimate argument if you are in a specific bubble. How do I know? Because I talk to people outside of it. Talk to some right-wing conservatives and you'll find out I promise you.
> Yes, there are many people repeating these arguments, despite them being trivially debunked.
No, they are not trivially debunked. Actually "no hearings" argumetn is trivially debunked by right wingers: "hearings take too long and we have too many immigrants committing crimes". However it's still a good argument to know. And killing this conversation makes sure people don't know it.
> confirming their preconceived biases feels good
Do you have enough introspection power to ask if you are doing that yourself right here?
> when the bulk of political discourse revolves around flamebait
Just because people don't understand how the legal system works, even though it has been explained to them, doesn't mean we should listen to their intentionally ignorant arguments.
They won't understand until somebody they know falls to the machine, then they'll say "oh I thought it would only happen to people I don't like."
So out there in social media some americans who don't understand how legal system works defeat in arguments other americans who don't understand how legal system works.
Do you think all americans on HN are definitely smart and understand now legal system works and if they are on the fence then they are malicious fascists? If yes then sure that post deserved to be flagged.
You need to stop sitting on the fence and thinking that the fascists' arguments are being made in good faith.
I'd say what's driving the grassroots is closer to pure anger, demanding solutions of "someone do something" for how they've been disenfranchised, for which this specter of "illegal immigrants" are being used as a scapegoat. You're not going to convince them of anything by pointing out that this strawman they just want to beat is entitled to Constitutional rights and due process. It's simply hindbrain tribal crap being stirred up by con man Trump and the fascist media bubble.
> Do you have enough introspection power to ask if you are doing that yourself right here?
I'm a libertarian who was both-sidesing up through Covid even. I had still thought there was a good chance Trump would come around to actually leading through June of 2020. Nope!
I still do occasionally ponder thoughts like - lets say I forget about the great amount of human suffering currently being created, and try on going with the flow and loving big brother - do I see any good economic outcomes from these policies here? And my answer still comes around to settling on no - they are continuing to destroy the core fabric of our country based around individual liberty and self determination, in favor of a strong man dictatorship. Trumpism is sold as some radical reset required to restore freedom, but it's merely the continued destruction of it.
>> when the bulk of political discourse revolves around flamebait
>This is not flamebait for the reasons I explained
You have not explained how it is not flamebait. Being popular does not mean something is not flamebait. If you respond to these right-wing "conservative" (aka fascist, actual conservatives were called RINOs and kicked out of the Party), you get back a flood of more half-baked arguments and you're off to the races, right? That's a flamewar, even if you keep your tempers. The only ways that conversation is going to end is to agree to disagree, the topic gets changed, or in anger and frustration.
(fwiw I'd say this dynamic of radical flamebait as common discourse applies to parts of the Democratic party as well)
> thinking that the fascists' arguments are being made in good faith.
> If you respond to these right-wing "conservative" (aka fascist, actual conservatives were called RINOs and kicked out of the Party), you get back a flood of more half-baked arguments and you're off to the races, right?
I argue about it with people I know who are center right. they sometimes make some good points and as non american it's hard to defeat them. maybe their arguments are stupid to you but not so stupid to me.
So this is informative to me to know the counter arguments.
also, it seems that there is a majority of people who voted right in US, if you believe the last election. just calling then fascists doesn't help convince them. but facts can
Their argument is that only non citizens who committed some crime get deported. Which is basically normal in many countries except maybe EU. I for sure know of people who got deported after committing crimes or even just administrative wrongdoings while being on legal visas
What you can say US should hold itself to higher standard and how trump does it is absolutely wrong... Then I agree
Yoo can also say that right wingers move goalposts by first saying "only illegal migrants get deported" then saying "even legal migrants pending citizenship can get deported if they commit a crime" then "any non citizen can get deported because nothing in constitution prevents it" which happens but it's usually hard to get somebody for moving goalposts in a real life argument.
But saying "whether someone is a citizen or not" is irrelevant is wrong because for US citizens is very relevant
> Their argument is that only non citizens who committed some crime get deported
This has always been true in the US, and is increasingly not true now. The data is extremely clear on this.
> any non citizen can get deported because nothing in constitution prevents it
This is only true with an asterisk which makes it not applicable to the current situation. In the US, even non-citizens (even the subset of illegal non-citizens) have due process rights, which the Trump admin is systematically violating.
"Whether someone is a citizen or not" is actually completely irrelevant for the question of whether they have due process rights under our Constitution.
Show the data then. Seriously. I couldn't find examples of deports of US citizens OR non citizens who did not commit crime or administrative wrongdoing.
> non-citizens have due process rights
Yes, so now you said US should hold itself to higher standard. And I already said I agree with it.
> "Whether someone is a citizen or not" is actually completely irrelevant for the question of whether they have due process rights under our Constitution.
If true then this looks like another great point that is lost into the abyss because the whole thread was killed. which part of constitution?
Almost none of the recent detainees have serious criminal convictions.
The vast majority of detainees have no criminal conviction at all (spoiler alert: because you already get fucking deported when you commit a crime in the US if you're here illegally... OBVIOUSLY.)
Nearly half don't even have pending criminal charges.
It's hard to know how many don't have administrative violations, but we do know they're routinely arresting people who are literally at the administrative proceedings to manage their immigration status. Such people are almost by definition following the law. We also know the Trump administration has cancelled hundreds of thousands (millions now?) of legal immigration statuses and declared previously legal people to be illegal overnight.
Every set of handcuffs and every seat on a plane for a non-criminal is one removed from the alleged hordes of violent illegal criminals who are overrunning our cities. We already saw during the first Trump administration that his "aggressive" immigration posture actually increased the processing time for actually dangerous/violent people because it stuffed the processing queues with all sorts of people who were causing no trouble to begin with.
> which part of constitution [gives due process rights to non-citizens]
The same part that gives it to citizens: The 5th Amendment.
> No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
The writers knew that "no person" was a different scope than "no citizen," because in other parts of the document they identify citizens and non-citizens, where appropriate.
In fact it obviously functionally makes no sense to limit due process to citizens, because otherwise an autocrat could eliminate a citizen's due process rights (and all other Constitutional rights) simply be declaring them to be illegal and precluding them from a hearing to determine otherwise.
I'm sorry to be pedantic but your article points out that x% have convictions, xx% have no convictions, and does not take into account who of them are illegal (undocumented).
I don't ask for much, is there a specific story of ONE case where somebody was deported (not detained) who is
- US citizen or
- legal document immigrant with no crimes and violations?
if you give me that then I will use this next time when arguing with right wing ppl I know. thanks
Sure: Andy Hernandez Romero, who is among hundreds and perhaps thousands of completely rule-following asylum seekers who have been deported without due process in violation of our own Constitution and asylum laws.
Regardless of the legality (which I can’t comment on being on the other side of the pond) - masked anonymous people snatching people from the street and disappearing them in unmarked vehicles sounds A LOT like what the nazi party did in my country. I know it’s a tired trope by this point but the parallels are definitely there.
And you know how the saying goes: first they came for xyz, by the time they came for me nobody was left to speak out for me.
US America was always a place for me to look up to, for free speech and a humane society that welcomes everyone — even if that was always an unreal ideal but at least it was something most US citizens took seriously; really sad to see it being dismantled so quickly in the years after 9/11 leading up to the situation now
Can you state specifically what you think "isn't happening" so I can respond to it?
> Ice agents are [only] deporting people in the US that are here illegally.
Not only is this not true, but it's irrelevant to my point. I'm not talking about deportation. I'm talking about ICE's actions here in the streets of American cities.
The hardcore supporters of the current U.S. administration (e.g. those that go to the rallies, give to the NRA, participate in some militant group), had been very distrustful of government in-general, and I suspect they still are.
You may feel that you’re supporting some radical left-wing group you think is cool that just wants people to let everyone be free to think and act how they want, but privacy / hiding communication goes both ways.
You may also be supporting terrorists that would rather be spitting on you and bombing your family and friends than reading your manifesto on the right to watch freaky crap.
> had been very distrustful of government in-general, and I suspect they still are.
They were never really distrustful of the government. People who really don't trust the government want to downsize the parts that can kick down your door and point a gun at you. These people have demonstrated time and again that they want more of that, because they actually trust that institutions of state violence will be on their side and uphold their interests.
Instead what they oppose are parts of the government they suspect are helping people and groups they dislike. This is what the American right reliably can't stand, for all the flavor of the month posturing they might engage in to keep things from getting stale.
It comes out in some pretty glaring self-contradictory ways, too. Big talk about the second amendment - personal freedom, from my cold dead hands, etc. Then Kenneth Walker straightforwardly exercises his second amendment right to lawful night time home defense, the government jackboot assailants murder Breonna Taylor in retaliation, and the supposed "freedom lovers" then chime in with support for the jackboots while twisting themselves in knots to justify how the victims of state violence deserved it.
As long as I can remember, the Republican party has been full of hypocrisy and ignorant denial. But this sheer ability of Dear Leader's to make people dance to his tune of outright harming themselves has taken it to another level (I guess there is a reason why he was (is) a really successful con artist). At this point anybody earnestly caring about personal liberty should consider the whole Republican party a sick joke. We need some real opposition ("Libertarian" party isn't well poised for that either), and some real voting systems that break a duopoly (eg Ranked Pairs). But first we really just need to take our country back from these fascists who have completely lost the plot of American ideals.
Are you saying that anonymity is bad because there are trump supporters that like anonymity?
Or are you saying that anonymity is not "cool" because radical left-wingers like it and that lets rightwingers do it as well?
Are you saying that advocating for anonymity is not nice because terrorists (who? I dont know many of them) will spit on you (do terrorists do that? does that make someone a terrorist?) and bomb not only you but you family and friends and not read my manifesto on anonymity, while insinuating that the only reason anybody wants anonymity is because they want to watch freaky "crap"?
Pardon, my french, but you sound like a troll from some intelligence agency. It just doesnt make a lot of sense.
> "We must have nothing to hide, nothing to fear", but, and this is the important bit, this is in the context of your relationship with Christ.
Also note how it is some sort of goal not a statement on not having something to hide. I guess in line with "may the one without sin throw the first stone".
> - this argument may well be stuck in the collective unconscious of lots of people (albeit in the religious context)
Another example of such a belief is that "humans are inherently evil" which seems to have been planted in Western society by the concept of original sin. Interestingly the idea that sin was about our inherent badness didn't really arise until the struggle against Gnosticism [1] hundreds of years after Jesus died.
Now the belief is pervasive in secular society thanks to stories like "Lord of the Flies".
It's fascinating how even though we can call ourselves non religious we can still carry these beliefs around.
If you're still in Sydney I'd argue that large numbers of people paddled out off of Bondi Beach because of a pervasive Australian belief that there's always a few arseholes but most people are fundamentally good and community support is better than nothing.
You likely saw a couple of extremists repeatedly tackled and then dropped by the public and police, and near real time running in to help victims.
That's somewhat contra to the bleak of "humans are inherently evil".
Maybe the message of Lord of the Flies was that nuclear weapons and the Cold War depressed at least one author and that boys need mentors.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think humans are inherently evil. In fact in times of crisis (like the one you mention) we do tend to come together and I think that's evidence that the belief is incorrect.
I just had a discussion the other day with somebody who outright told me that they think humans are inherently evil and must be managed under a system to keep in order. I don't think it's an uncommon belief and nor do I think it's a bleak world because that belief exists, it's just a mistaken belief.
I would argue that you see the belief raise its head far more when people are interacting with others who they don't consider in their "in-group".
Right, I don't think I've ever actually seen anybody make the "nothing to hide" argument. Maybe it was used more commonly in the past, but I only ever see people pre-emptively attack it without prompting. It seems to be a special case of a straw-man argument: a no-man argument. It's not the only such example, but it seems to appear without fail in the top comments in any discussion of privacy issues.
> In practice I'm not even getting "tracked". No one is likely to be looking up my license plate and looking at my movements, because I don't do anything that would warrant that kind of attention
I feel that I have nothing to hide, but I do my darnedest to ensure that it costs a maximal amount of time and effort to find that out.
If a random stranger (law enforcement or otherwise) wants to know shit about me, then I'm immediately creeped out and the last thing I want to do is make (online) stalking of me an easy task. The harder it is, the more likely they'll give up and move on to someone else (pending their reasons).
As it should be for everyone.
Edited to add:
One thing I can tell you from experience: law enforcement only look for things that will confirm their suspicions. They do not look for counter evidence, no matter how obvious it is or how easy it is to find - even within government records to which they would already have access.
As such, beware what trail you leave, if it suits the right (wrong) agenda, it will be used to point in the worst possible direction.
Though you made the right determination later on, this is what you need to correct first. You don't have to be a murderer to have something to hide. Everyone does, no matter how innocent you are.
Imagine that you're a young girl. Is it safe to expose the GPS tracks of your daily commutes? Let's cut to the other end of the spectrum. Imagine that you're the chief of a law enforcement agency. How about exposing your GPS tracks now? Even information about newborn babies should be kept private.
Always be aware of the consequences of sharing your information, when you must do so. The narrative 'I have nothing to hide' actively discourages such concerns and precautions, even if it's just a feeling. It encourages bad security practices at an individual level throughout the society. That's why this article is so pertinent. It's justifiably hostile towards that claim.
When people say they have nothing to hide I like to remind them about fraud and criminals.
All law abiding citizens have data that they want to hide from fraudsters.
Fraudsters often get their hands on government data through breeches and bribery.
Also fraudsters pretend to be government agents to get data from big tech companies. So any channel that governments use to get data from tech companies is abused by fraudsters to commit crime.
Fraud is a very big deal. The UK economy loses 219 billion per year to fraud. Our national deficit payment is 93 billion per year and we spend 188 billion on the NHS.
If we improved privacy of all of our citizens then the savings from fraud reduction would cover our entire government deficit
> All law abiding citizens have data that they want to hide from fraudsters.
Nobody is completely law avoiding when the books of laws and regulations get thick enough. Especially if the government decides to take an interest in you.
You don‘t need fraudsters just a run of the mill bully is enough. I remember a phase in my life where I had to do some high visibility reporting. I showed all underlying facts, methodology and conclusions and every week the bully tore into a minor detail devaluing my work and distracting from vital tasks. Only when I started shielding data and my reasoning as private and just delivering high level summary results I was able to put an end to it.
Not wishing to join the bully's side, but I think making something private to prevent discussion/criticism has a bad smell about it. It's possible (to someone who knows neither you nor the bully) that the bully had some valid suggestions and that you became over defensive in allowing that to become a distraction rather than saying something like "okay, but can you make these suggestions after the meeting and we can work through them later".
Personally, I don't like the idea of someone hiding data and methodology just because of not wanting feedback.
Well, it's a judgment call. Is this critic operating in good faith, or not? The reporter is not necessarily in the best position to judge. On the other hand, they have the best grasp of all the details of the interaction with this (alleged) bully.
"You don't want continuing abuse" is quite different from "you don't want feedback".
Quite - I fully admit that I know nothing about that particular situation.
However, I have personally seen people get overly defensive when someone has pointed out a major error in their methodology and they have then gone on to hide their working rather than trying to fix the issue. Often it's because they are not particularly expert in that field and don't really understand the issue that needs to be fixed.
I've also seen plenty of bullies in the workplace too.
To anyone who says "I have nothing to hide" I respond with "Unfortunately, you are not the one who gets to decide whether what you have is worth hiding."
(I think I first might have come across this beautifully succinct and unfortunately very true counter in a Reddit AMA with Edward Snowden way back when, but I might be misremembering.)
Both of these are not good responses and are easily discounted by most people ("I don't take nude photos"/"I never tell anyone my pin").
Average people see zero equivalence between sending nudes or their bank pin to a specific stranger and Google keeping a record of every website they've ever visited.
Surely the "I never tell anyone my pin" is just an admission that they do have something to hide?
The point is that there are many things that should be kept private/secret and often the need for that secrecy isn't obvious to people who have never been in particular situations. A woman trying to escape from an abusive relationship may need to keep her location secret to avoid being murdered by her ex, but your typical white male who declares "nothing to hide" may have difficulty in understanding that, whereas they may be able to grasp why their PIN should be kept secret.
I understand the point, but you're taking their statement "I have nothing to hide" way too literally, and these sorts of arguments based on literal interpretations rarely convince anyone. Has anyone actually ever been convinced to take privacy more seriously by this "insight"?
It's not so much a method to convince people to take privacy more seriously, but demonstrating that people who say "I have nothing to hide" haven't really thought about it and how it's such a ridiculous statement.
My aim would be to get people to understand that everyone has stuff that should be kept secret and that it varies according to their circumstances.
I was thinking a little about it lately. Not the saying itself, but the positioning to the general public. The annoying reality is that for most of the things that I consider important enough to voice discontent over ( and maybe even suppress need for convenience for ) are not always easy to 'present'. Note that it is not even always easy here either, but we do, by design, give one another a charitable read.
Hell, look at me, I care and I accepted some of it as price to pay for house peace.
yeah, it's a cascade. maybe you are not a threat to gov or corp but locally there's people who are like the people in clubs who spike you because they want you out or because they want your girls or the girls you will steal from them. info can be power. rumors, gossip, your browsing history, what you draw, what you code in your free time, what you talk to your kids about, what they do with that when they visit "friends" who already had info that you decided wasn't worth hiding ... from your kids ...
all can and will be used to induce stress or to divert attention of the young ones.
governments used to build massive societies and create rules and order and kaizen infrastructures that would get us as far away from the dark ages as possible ... but here we are closing that gap again. Go VCs! Go Agents! Go Puppies of Wall Street! Go work for LLM companies instead of using those big capable brains of yours for something other than personalized copypastable copypastacopypasta ...
"the other girls and kids made it through, and so will you, just let it happen, let it be" and so it goes ...
A police officer walked into the office where I was stationed as a security guard for a high rise condo, and demanded the keys to a particular apartment. I declined and he got angry. So I turned the matter over to my boss, the manager, who lived in the building. He immediately gave up the keys, no questions asked.
The cop left and the manager turned to me and said, "just do whatever they say, we have nothing to hide." I thought "but what about Mrs. Crenshaw in unit 566?" I didn't say it, but the manager seemed to think his argument covered that too.
"I have nothing to hide" only makes sense if privacy and disclosure are treated as a binary. In reality, both exist on a spectrum: privacy is controlled disclosure, shaped by what is shared, with whom, at what level of detail, and under what power asymmetry.
Large surveillance systems inevitably build baselines. They don't just detect crimes; they detect patterns and anomalies relative to whatever becomes "normal".
The problem with "nothing to hide" is that it defaults to maximal disclosure. Data is persistent, aggregatable, and reinterpretable as norms and regimes change. The data doesn't.
This isn't purely individual. Your disclosures can expose others through contact graphs and inference, regardless of intent. And it doesn't matter whether the collector is the state or a company; aggregation and reuse work the same way.
Whilst there's some valid responses to "I've got nothing to hide" such as "drop your pants", "what's your bank PIN?" etc., there's a lot of people missing out far more insidious examples where privacy is required. e.g. A woman escaping from an abusive relationship will often be in direct danger if her location is given out. Also, consider a whistleblower leaking essential information about wrong-doings at an organisation - they should be able to do so anonymously if their livelihood would be in danger for performing such a public service.
It's a position of privilege to be able to state "nothing to hide" and depends on other people not being racist/sexist/classist etc. It's such a blinkered and sheltered view to hold.
> And then comes the part they can't (or won't) fathom. The context shifts. The political winds change. The Overton window slams shut on a belief they once held. A book they read is declared subversive. A group they donated to is re-classified as extremist. A joke they told is now evidence of a thoughtcrime.
There are at least some people who would respond by (still) saying "I have nothing to hide." They are proud of their moral choices and confident in their convictions. Arrest them if you dare.
I wonder if the author still has contempt for them?
I think the author is trying to say in today's world we face a sort of moral/societal vacuum of privacy. The more we try to remain private, whether by being an open book or by some type of digital way, it's basically futile or will eventually be broken.
My spin, as a recovering perfectionist, is when you've done everything you can to be "innocent" and the political or whatever wind changes, the pit of despair is a real and devastating thing. When this happens, sometimes the decisions that are made are desperate.
In many moral frameworks, inconsistency isn't the only wrong someone can commit. The argument constructed in this article is essentially utilitarian, making the claim that the mechanisms of surveillance and privacy make this behavior harmful to others, regardless of their intentions or internal sense of morality. In fact, the author doesn't mention hating these people at all, although I suppose that's not a completely unreasonable thing to infer. From the perspective of this argument, this only lacks the harm the "deviancy signal" would itself do to the individual, though in the oppressive regime proposed they would perhaps take greater risk by openly deviating
> In fact, the author doesn't mention hating these people at all
The article opens with:
>> There's a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, "I have nothing to hide."
Which isn't literally saying "I hate them" but I'm not sure how else to interpret "a special kind of contempt." Regardless, I've edited my original post.
I didn't do it consciously. When I wrote my original post, I'd hallucinated that the author had used the term "hate".
When Advael responded "the author doesn't mention hating these people at all", I went back to the article and checked. Advael was right, but I can understand where my hallucination came from. The first three sentences read:
> There's a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, "I have nothing to hide." It's not the gentle pity you'd have for the naive. It's the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator.
A "special kind of contempt" mixed with "cold, hard anger" really seems like hatred to me.
(Anyway, this really isn't the point I was trying to make.)
It is very interesting, in our polarized times, what people read into a statement, and if they interpret it charitably or in the worst possible way. Like you, I find contempt and hate very different.
The author clarifies a couple sentences later that the contempt they feel is "the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator" - "collaborator" apparently meaning something like the very bad WWII kind of collaborator, rather than the benign artistic co-author kind. So, despite the implicit acknowledgement that there are multiple types of contempt, this particular contempt does sound fairly close to hatred.
Look up the definition of "hate". How is "cold, hard anger" like one might feel toward a N*zi collaborator not adjacent to that? Why quibble over this?
Geez, what an insane semantic debate. The author clearly has strong, negative emotions towards the people this article is about. Folks who want to nitpick the technicality of these terms are just misunderstanding how language works.
Here in the USA, exculpatory evidence can be ignored or suppressed, and innocent but snarky comments can put you in jail. Be careful what you publish. Be careful what FOSS you create. Don't be fooled by the now-defunct Bill of Rights; there's an entire apparatus devoted to using your casual and innocent behavior against you.
Pre-WW2 census in Germany was conducted by IBM and included religion and other family origin related questions.
Fast forward a few years and the Nazi regime used census results to go after every family that was undesirable for them using the census data they bought from IBM.
Privacy and anonymity are not needed until they are desperately required.
This can be read as if IBM did this unknowingly and only before WW2.
But IBM knew what they were assisting with, and even pre-WW2 was already assisting the Nazi regime of 1933-1939. And they didn't stop come WW2, if anything IBM opened new subsidiaries and continued throughout the second world war.
"(...) IBM leased, rather than sold, its machines. The company retained control of punch-card supply and provided service through subsidiaries. Each set of cards was custom-designed to Nazi requirements. He later wrote that the IBM headquarters in New York oversaw these arrangements through subsidiaries across Europe"
"(...) IBM New York created a subsidiary in Poland, Watson Business Machines, after the 1939 invasion. The firm managed railway traffic in the General Government and ran a punch-card printing shop near the Warsaw Ghetto. He stated that this subsidiary reported through Geneva to IBM New York, and revenues were transferred accordingly."
It was authorized by the CEO, Thomas J. Watson Sr., who apparently had a "soft spot" for the Nazis. Hitler decorated him: https://www.nytimes.com/1937/07/02/archives/thomas-j-watson-... and it took the occupation of France and the Low Countries three years later for Watson to decide to return the medal.
I think the bigger issue is allowing such corruption to split and divide people. Religion can often be hidden, but if the Nazi regime decided to depict people with ginger hair as being evil/undesirable, then the census wouldn't have even been relevant.
Well, I think the hair color would’ve been on the census if it was something people had a preference for which is a prerequisite for building such plans.
All I’m trying to say is that the amount of information being collected for each person can be used very nefariously and targeted as individuals we wouldn’t have any chance to resist this dystopian future.
The author is a bit uncharitable. "I have nothing to hide" usually is a shorthand for "it would be imprudent and inconvenient to dedicate my limited time and resources to an abstract good like privacy. This would not be the case if I had something illegal or reputation-ruining to hide." Nobody denies the value of privacy, but practicality beats purity in the eyes of a person who doesn't have a particular ideological conviction.
It can also mean: I prefer the police catching murderers. I'm fine when wife cheaters get caught in the drag net.
Privacy advocates never admit that there is not only a "next" government abusing surveillance, but also a "current" one, which uses surveillance for beneficial purposes.
I am a privacy advocate, and also am disappointed at how narrow minded some of the arguments of privacy advocates are.
"Banning encrypted chat will just mean the bad people moved to banned platforms". Perhaps, but some bad people have to operate where victims are (Facebook stalkers, eBay cons, ...)
"Police should be forced to just do... actual police work."
It's pretty reasonably for police to want to increase the chances and speed of resolution.
We should champion and defend privacy, in spite of the good reasons to weaken it. There's no need to strawmen.
Right, but that practicality is predicated on the ability to switch to a more privacy-focused posture later on. And the point of the blog post is, when you need it, it won't be there when you reach for it.
Not arguing with that specific claim, but the author claims to hold a "special kind of contempt" for ordinary people making practical day-to-day choices. That attitude is much more hostile.
"nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is trivially disproved.
Humans arrive at conclusions about other humans based on information. Sometimes these conclusions are incorrect because humans aren't perfect at reasoning and this happens more often with some kinds of information.
Therefore, it's perfectly rational to hide/not-disclose/obscure some information to lessen the chance that others take action based on faulty conclusions.
> A joke they told is now evidence of a thoughtcrime. Suddenly, for the first time, they have something to hide.
That's a decent list, but the real list is even broader. Are you a lawyer litigating against a multinational company? Or planning to? Imagine if the company knew exactly who you, and every potential litigant, talked to. Or maybe you're trying to start a new political party. Or looking for a new job without alerting your employer. There were stories (unfortunately I can't find them at the moment) of nurses getting worse salary offers if they were in debt, on the logic that the desperate will settle for less. DoorDash would steal tips and use them to pay salary [1], something impossible with private, cash-based tips. And retailers will use every bit of data they have on you to price discriminate (without telling you, of course) [2].
Surveillance harms you in every way, from the most significant to the most trivial. You're always better off hiding, even if you think you don't have to. Knowledge is power, and knowledge of you is power over you.
“Nothing to Hide” is more akin to a fundamental truth than a deviancy.
If you wish to hide something, why have you leaked it in the first place?
Why not ask the other question? Why are you trying to hide public information to begin with? Why are you introducing encryption on top of an underlying public interface.
This is intentionally different from are there things one would generally not be to be widely accessible or generally public.
There is nothing to hide if it is already public, because it is already public, you can't hide it even if you want to, you're only making it more difficult for a general member of the public to access that data. Even if you consider that "hiding", the source is still public.
ok, as a privacy enthusiast, some people just dont get it, and they never will. what you need to do is not discuss anything you dont want broadcast with them... ever. im even thinking of using edge or chrome so i look like a normie in a sea of normies. i mean i really dont have anything to hide but i dont want anyone to know that.
Doesn't mean you or anyone else has a right to know what it is and it doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong either. We should all admit that we have lots we want to hide from other people and that's just fine and normal.
Reminds me of this lecture: “Don’t talk to Police”, Law Professor James Duane.
The argument goes, there are a lot of laws and there are virtually an infinite variety of possible circumstances which could trigger a possible violation making it impossible for anyone to know if their statements might appear relevant to a prosecutor.
Of course, if you don’t have time to watch that excellent presentation, just crib this one: National Lawyer’s Guild of Detroit, MI: “When the cops come calling, what do you do? SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
"How much do you trust a human, despite being your favourite?".....
We need to learn about 'trust' and its role in our lives!
Information is power! And 'trust' me, you don't want to give it to anyone over you!
The upcoming era of transparency will come in the form of compliances (or, chains) you will never withdraw yourself from! Surely facility and security will baited for this!
Also, with the rise in the fields of biotech and nano-tech, infused with A.I., they are preparing us to be their 'lab rats', and they don't need our consents! We shouldn't be ignoring this at all!
If you attend any “public” meeting of a government or quasi-state entity in the US (library board, energy regulation board, county board,…) it becomes clear that the state seeks to hide and shift accountability at every turn and is willing to bring in armed force to squash even the slightest demand for transparency.
Living in actually existing fascism requires adoption of anonymity & privacy preservation processes. You have so much worth protecting because you have everything to lose.
This guy looks like to have a good mindset, I hope that fellow HNers living there will vite for him to give us a little bit of hope in the current very sad world!
He's running for governor of California. He's apparently having trouble getting 6,000 signatures or $5000 to get on the ballot, so he's probably not a serious candidate.
> He's running for governor of California. He's apparently having trouble getting 6,000 signatures or $5000 to get on the ballot, so he's probably not a serious candidate.
The popular, well funded politicians haven't exactly served their constituents well in the privacy domain...
Post your full name, address, social security number, date of birth, mothers maiden name and other security questions, list of active logins and passwords and URLs, your full body scan nudes, sexual fantasies, diary/journal, your ashamed moments in your life, sly or trickster things you've done to others, sordid family secrets, and more.
Oh, that was a no? I guess you DO have something to hide.
There's a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, "I have nothing to hide." It's not the gentle pity you'd have for the naive. It's the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator. Because these people aren't just surrendering their own liberty. They're instead actively forging the chains for the rest of us. They are a threat, and I think it's time they were told so.
Their argument is a "pathology of the present tense," a failure of imagination so profound it borders on a moral crime. What they fail to understand is that by living as an open book, they are creating the most dangerous weapon imaginable: a baseline of "normalcy." They are steadily creating a data profile for the State's machine, teaching its algorithms what a "good, transparent citizen" looks like. Every unencrypted text, every thoughtless search, every location-tagged post is another brick in the wall of their own cage.
And then comes the part they can't (or won't) fathom. The context shifts. The political winds change. The Overton window slams shut on a belief they once held. A book they read is declared subversive. A group they donated to is re-classified as extremist. A joke they told is now evidence of a thoughtcrime. Suddenly, for the first time, they have something to hide.
So they reach for the tools of privacy. They download the encrypted messenger. They fire up the VPN. They start to cover their tracks.
And in that single act, they trigger the Deviancy Signal.
Their first attempt at privacy, set against their own self-created history of total transparency, is a screaming alarm to the grown surveillance machine. It's the poker player with a perfect tell, or the nocturnal animal suddenly walking in daylight. Their very attempt to become private is the most public and suspicious act they could possibly commit. They have not built an effective shield, as they have painted a target on their own back. By the time they need privacy, their own history has made seeking it an admission of guilt.
But the damage doesn't end with your own self-incrimination. It radiates outward, undoing the careful work of everyone around you. Think of your friend who has practiced perfect operational security, who has spent years building a private life to ensure they have no baseline for the state to analyze. They are a ghost in the machine. Then they talk to you. Your unshielded phone becomes the listening device they never consented to. You take their disciplined effort to stay invisible and you shout it into a government microphone, tying their identity to yours in a permanent, searchable log. You don't just contrast with their diligence; you actively dismantle it.
On a societal scale, this inaction becomes a collective betrayal. The power of the Deviancy Signal is directly proportional to the number of people who live transparently. Every person who refuses to practice privacy adds another gallon of clean, clear water to the state's pool, making any ripple of dissent ... any deviation ... starkly visible. This is not a passive choice. By refusing to help create a chaotic, noisy baseline of universal privacy, you are actively making the system more effective. You are failing to do your part to make the baseline all deviant, and in doing so, you make us all more vulnerable.
There is only one way to disarm this weapon: we must destroy its premise. We must obliterate the baseline. The task is not merely to hide, but to make privacy the default, to make encryption a reflex, to make anonymity a universal right. We must create so much noise that a signal is impossible to find. Our collective goal must be to make a "normal" profile so rare that the watchers have nothing to compare us to. We must all become deviations.
Hannah Arendt in her most famous television interview after the Eichman process said what shocked her in 1933 when the Nazis came to power wasn't that the Nazis came to power, it was how many of the people she preceived as friends and allies, especially in the intellectual space would convince themselves with fantastical theories about why Hitler being in power might be a good thing actually.
The truth is that many people are cowards and even more people are just small-minded. The problem of the "I have nothing to hide"-excuse is that it shows thst this person has no concept about how their small personal ideas would affect the world once you roll them out in scale. Not only that but it shows that they haven't understood how power is organized in their democratic societies.
Let's say we would have nothing to hide and we give up our rights to the people we as the voters are meant to hold accountable. Even if it is a benevolent government filled with honest actors, large scale surveillance has the problem that there will be false positives. Surveil 360 million people each day and with an totally utopic accuracy of 99% and you still get 3.6 million false positives a day. In reality however these processes are much less accurate and the people who use those powers much less benevolent and honest, e.g. it is not uncommon that police look up their exes, spouses, people they personally hate etc.
The biggest problem however is that we have a division of power for a reason in democracies, and the people who vote giving up power in order to give more to a government is bad actually. Democracies need to be designed in such way they can survive one or two governments that try to abolish that system. Giving them a "spy on everybody" -power coupled with let's say secret courts is a good way to risk that form of government for generations who then have to fight bloody civil wars and revolutions to get the power back.
You’re correct on all things in principle, but hiding one’s subversive thoughts (or what may be catalogued by any given regime as subversive) only plays into the regime’s hands, because it atomizes any chance of real resistance. It is much more valuable to bring the fight out in the open, yes, while still playing by the regime’s rules in a way, but out in the open, because that still keeps open the possibility of a community of resistance. Being able to hide stuff only generates conspirators, but keeping (even if heavily camouflaged) resistance out in the open has bigger chances of eventually toppling any given regime, because people power consists in numbers, and you can’t have numbers if the default setting is “hide behind a VPN”.
The best argument in my opinion against "nothing to hide" is that you don't get to decide that. The accuser does. If that doesn't scare you then you didn't think it through fully.
A change in regieme is a downright terrifying variant of Pascal's Wager - where you are judged for heresies against ideologies that were obscure or didn't even exist yet.
The Khmer Rogue made being an intellectual or wearing glasses something to hide. All sorts of absurd ideological hypotheticals become terrifying.
Protecting your anonymity isn't a sign that you're hiding something because you have done something wrong. It is because you're cautious. Even the most benign information can be use against you. European Jews in the early 1900s gave census takers the info yhat they were Jews. Decades later that info was collated with punch card machines by the Nazis to build family trees to hunt them down. This is an example of how "innocent" info can be weaponized in ways you would never dream of.
This is also happening right now with ICE combing through the various federal databases that they previously didn't have access to.
But the worst thing is that the sheer amounts of compute available to even fairly small organizations, never mind governments, means that it's so easy to data mine stuff like that. And now there's AI to do the same with unstructured data. And meanwhile our corporate overlords are happy to profit from it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46349281
I think there is an error of omission in the article. Organized crime syndicates can inflict harm just as well as a corrupted government can, and usually with less recourse. To advocate total privacy for everyone has nontrivial costs in addition to the nontrivial benefits.
I believe the entire western world is sleep walking into totalitarianism. It's soft glove right now, but mass surveillance, no matter what the original purpose, only needs concentration of power to turn into something truly inhumane. We've seen it already and that was well before technology pushed the boundaries of what is now possible.
I just want to remind everyone that the technology and the police and all of that crap utterly failed to prevent the attacks at Brown and MIT. Total and complete failure. The only thing that mattered was some burned out genius that the world forgot who was illegally living the basement of the engineering building because he had literally nowhere else to go. And then they didn't even catch the killer, he controlled all the events and killed himself two entire days before he was found.
Mass surveillance is a false god as are background checks and pretty much every other measure human take to try and feel safer because there is no safety and never was.
Weird example. The redditor only identified the perpetrator of the shooting because the police pulled video surveillance from all across campus and widely distributed it. He wouldn’t have been able to associate the vehicle with the suspect without those images.
Am I the only one who doesn't take this statement literally and immediately extrapolate it to all aspects of an individual's existence? "I have nothing to hide" is a broad statement that clearly encompasses "everything", but it's often said in the context of a specific thing that a person doesn't care about.
Those of you who would ask someone for financial information after they say this, would you also say "it's hot out side" if they described something as cool during the summer?
Ultimately, given the complexity of security, expecting there to be some cultural shift on privacy is silly unless it's made trivially easy. We can't get people to eat right, exercise, or control their screen time and social media use and all of those have more immediate and tangible consequences.
I appreciate the message, but I don't think the call to action is practical.
Protecting your anonymity isn't a sign that you're hiding something because you have done something wrong. It is because you're cautious. Benign information can be used against you. European Jews in the early 1900s gave census takers the info they were Jews. Decades later that info was collated with punch card machines by the Nazis to build family trees to hunt them down. This is an example of how "innocent" info can be weaponized in ways you would never dream of.
Speak softly and carry a big stick. Im a fairly private person. Id also end my life in defense of freedom and autonomy... I read posts like this and I cant imagine what an extremist like this is trying
to protect? To continue living a life in shadow? Well, when the time comes that his giant "machine" the governments all poorly maintain and utilize finally awakens and results in concentration camps... you better forget all you knew about dumb technology, hope you have a big stick.
To think, "no presence" = no problems. If I were a dumb machine, I just might decide to pick up all citizens with birth certs that are also internet ghosts. What was the point then?
Certainly there are many who use privacy to safely be opposed to things. Being in a database having some characteristic means you are selectable for that and therefore targetable for it. And there is a herd immunity in that if everyone is in a database but you, being absent from it is as good as being in it with the characteristic of “opted out of this information” and therefore everyone being private protects the ones who most need privacy. All of this is sound.
In many ways, I have lived my life in a way opposite to this. My genome is public, many of my life affairs are public[0], and I have had a child in a manner[1] that many people[2] have expressed antipathy for. It is entirely possible, perhaps even likely that my family and I will face consequences for this. I won’t pretend I have nothing to fear.
So why do it? Perhaps it’s worth looking at others who have done the same. Being gay in America was a great risk once. The mechanism of defence in that society was for homosexual people to operate in what we now call the “don’t ask; don’t tell” environment. By having a general taboo about discussing sexual identity in certain contexts it was possible for gay people to not be threatened. If you didn’t know anyone’s sexual identity how could you harm the homosexuals among them?
Why then did gay people decide to abandon the safety of privacy and push for public acceptance? Do they regret this new world where many gay people are known to be gay? I think that as a whole, those who are gay prefer to live in this society of open acceptance than that society of private tolerance.
I won’t pretend that all places in the world are like this. I would be much more hesitant to do this in the country of my birth: India. And even California’s checkered history with gay marriage is outmatched by, say, the Netherlands.
So it’s not risk-free to be public, but sometimes it’s worth it. In our case, I think humanity stands to benefit greatly from modern biotechnology. I think many people who would previously struggle to have children or who may fear passing on some disease can now safely have children. I think this is very important.
And I think I would rather we defend the medicine required for this in law and legislation (like GINA) than that we silently and privately tolerate it. My wife and I are normal people. My daughter so far is healthy and I pray she grows up and lives as such. I want you to know that this is what this technology is for: normal people to increase the chance they will have healthy children.
That’s why I’m public. Not because I have nothing to hide. But that I think it’s sometimes worthwhile to say “I could have hidden this but I would prefer for it to be publicly accepted”.
0: on my blog you will see a pregnancy log, and an IVF log, and pre-implantation screening results
1: we sequenced every embryo and chose one unaffected by the condition we share
2: from right wing non-profits to members of this forum or normal people reading the news, examples to follow
What really matters is judiciary due process and the legitimacy of a government.
Companies are the ones gathering data, it's not the government doing it.
Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens.
The internet makes it more difficult for the government to catch criminals and fraudsters.
If you live in Russia or China or under Trump's administration, there are good reasons to hide.
If you live in a country where freedoms and due process are respected, there is no point in hiding, UNLESS you can really argue that due process and freedoms are eroding, but that's a different debate.
> If you live in a country where freedoms and due process are respected, there is no point in hiding, UNLESS you can really argue that due process and freedoms are eroding, but that's a different debate.
This assumes usage of collected data stays the same forever. But regime changes do happen, and once the data has been allowed to be collected, you have no power. I think Trumpland was once considered a state where freedoms and due process were once respected.
For example data of your period, if you're female...
Considering the reckless lawlessness of the current regime of "the shining beacon of democracy", I wonder if they could retroactively convict "murders of unborn babies" and find them by trawling to online health data and looking back at gaps of female periods.
It was once considered that, but it was never actually that. Ever since it was founded it was locking up or killing the people with different skin colours, over and over and over and over and over!
Once your data is out there it's too late. If the hypothetical country you live in - where freedom & due process is respected - suddenly has an authoritarian change of direction, you're done.
It's my understanding that, organically or under external influences, many democratic countries in EU are at the emerging risk of going full fascists. I see that in France, Le Pen & friends don't hide the fact that they'd make a new constitution.
Richest guy in the world has vowed to use his propaganda power to make this happen for the sake of cancelling the EU, fun times
governments have always collected "data*", and use it for power/controll, any company doing so is actualy hoping that the government like's the stink of there particular shit, but now as forever, false positives/negatives will undermine and destroy a career.
The true "nothing to hide" good honest decent folks, will almost certainly leave a convoluted trail of there meandering through life that can and will lead anywhere, but as the author points out, that other relentlessly "perfect" demographic is likely to be dangerous competition, rather than a general danger, and so will be assesed as to potential threat/uses, almost like a job interview...potentialy usefull idiots
> Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens.
Indeed, and there were some notorious examples of how that was abused for large scale oppression (with Holocaust being the pinnacle), so why would we want them to have even more data.
My "importance of privacy" story:
I get my gas and electricity from Scottish Power. Recently a rival company, Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute. The front line of defence against this kind of dispute is that the bills give the serial numbers of the meters. The bill from Scottish Power gives the same meter serial numbers that are embossed on the front of my meters, and is therefore valid. The bill from Ovo Energy gives different serial numbers and is therefore in error.
Picture though the internal processes in Ovo Energy. A second clerk is tasked with attending to the problem. He has a choice. He can change the address to agree with the meter serial numbers, correcting the error. Or he can change the meter serial numbers to those for my address, compounding the error.
Since the meter serial numbers are confidential, to me and Scottish Power, Ovo Energy does not have the second option; they do not know the serial numbers (which are long, like a credit card number, not just 1,2,3,...). Thus the clerical error gets corrected, or just left, but not compounded.
My guess is that confidential information, (such as meter serial numbers, credit card numbers, and account numbers), are the front like of defence against both clerical error and fraud based on impersonation. It is a rather weak defence, but it is light weight, and seems to how much of billing and billing disputes work.
We all have lots to hide: the confidential information that the system needs us to keep confidential to stop clerical errors from compounding.
Where is your contract with Ovo Energy? Companies cannot just go charge random people willy-nilly like that.
You just read a story of a company doing just that
You have missed the point of the story. GP is not a customer of Ovo energy. They sent him a bill in error.
“Companies cannot just go charge random people”
And yet they do. Anyone can send anyone a bill.
Partially "slamming" where agents would try to get folks to switch to a different billing provider, and get paid a commission. So some fraudulently "sign up" random addresses they were supposed to visit.
The other case has been miscommunication over phone or email to someone actually requesting to change billing provider. Or error on the part of the potential customer.
I've had a bill from some random billing provider. In my case it is common for folks newly arriving in the block of flats to get the digits of the address transposed. Due to them using the common English convention, whereas the part of Scotland I'm in uses a different convention.
OP said "Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute." I don't see what a company in that situation hopes they can accomplish without a contract for providing the service. Even if they knew OP's meter number.
Anyone can send a bill but you can just throw it in the trash without even responding if there is not contract...
telco guy comes in at point x in past, takes a pic of your meters while you don't attend. privacy fucked. but obscuring stuff like that behind temper proof (mwemphasis on proof) the glitter?
Your first sentence: That could happen, but they'd have to send someone, which is an expensive process. It would also cross the into deliberate fraud. In the larger picture, privacy protections are not bulletproof. They don't have to be. They just have to be good enough that they (plus laws against violation) restrain most people from violating them.
Your second sentence is incomprehensible. What are you trying to say?
sorry. the second sentence asks whether it's viable to temper proof all data in your home that might be exploited.
some people go through trash, find bills or other stuff that should have been shredded or burned. others even make use of magazines one has read, which is a measure in social engineering and that thing creeps do in chats which is one step beyond that line where kids tell others boat loads of stuff on discord.
then there is even the kind that takes out trash specific to you and drops it somewhere along the way where you walk your dog. just to get you paranoid enough for the next steps.
there's a guy who uses glue and glitter to seal screws and stuff. the glitter creates a pattern that cannot be reproduced. manufacturers do similar things with special stickers. it's really clever but will get you only so far.
it's mostly beyond the scope of the topic, sorry for wasting your time. pointless stuff happened to me and I remember stories and people, whose lives have been ruined and their characters FUBARed, from the past every time I read "nothing to hide".
it's 2025, corporations have completely normalized (the verb as it is used in military contexts, leveled) privacy and turned anonymity upside down, as have social and classic media, both small and big. it's incredibly strange to me that so few regard the consequences as an aggregation of transgressions rather than just violations at points in time.
"whatever bad thing we do, makes the next one so much easier."
Aggregation comes with exponential growth. Why is the law not aware of how badly their ignorance will backfire? Just because, apparently, which is why it's almost pointless to temper proof anything because if you are "hit". nothing and nobody can or will adequately compensate for the loss.
Having to spend a bit of time on mails and phone calls is nothing compared to the consequences of what can and does happen.
One lifetime and there were civilizations and "Empires", or rather colonies before, all with potential and it's because of small "levels" of deliberate ignorance, not the selectivity bias kind of our brains, that leads to civil conflicts, rises in crime, first small, then violence, rape, murder rates explode.
Software and Web Engineers are especially ignorant, I noticed in the last few years. And people think it's a result of demand, or rather a lack thereof and that the cycle that creates an "I don't care" mindset can't be fiddled with for the positive, even though engineers are literally the switch.
There's an inverted spotlight effect at play here, a maximized bystander effect and inverted egocentric bias. Engineers and intelligent academics believe they matter less than they actually do, which results in learned irrelevance, and culminates in the tendency to rationalize and defend existing power structures and "systems" even when they harm pretty much everybody up- and downstream.
I keep getting reminded of Pinker's "Better Angels of Our Nature" where he attempts to show with data over time how everything is getting better, and I think he hints at the nature of spikes and such but he completely failed to account for the aggregation of all these spikes, which there is no data for because law makers and enforcers are, apparently not willing to do the required work now vs leave it for later when the shit hits the fan.
But maybe that's just the reason why human colonies die.
This is a valid story and I’m sorry to hear that you went through this. However, it’s a strawman for the current argument from the blog post, which is that living life in the open and acting normal is setting things up for failure, and I don’t believe that it is.
Having nothing to hide is fine. Nothing to hide and doing nothing wrong is least likely to cause trouble.
The blog post’s argument that someone would be more likely to get watched if they start hiding after not hiding is not valid. ALL encrypted and unencrypted communication is a valid target for analysis, but ANY encrypted traffic is obviously more of a concern, just like one person walking into a store brandishing a gun is as alarming as 5 brandishing guns, and it doesn’t matter whether they used to not carry guns into the store.
I think Snowden put it well:
> Ultimately, 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.
Your framing suggests that hiding personal messages is akin to carrying a gun into a store, and it's exactly that parallel that the blog post is railing against. Encrypting messages needs to be normal and expected.
> Having nothing to hide is fine.
This statement completely fails to engage with the post.
In fact, the parent's whole "argument" ignores the prevalence of encrypted communications in the modern world. To use their (absurd) gun analogy, the modern internet is close to an open-carry state. (Europeans: this means everyone can carry a gun visibly.)
Everyone uses https by default. Phone communications and texts are the least secure by far.
PS There is nothing wrong with the GP's anecdote. It is an excellent argument, understandable argument for casual importance of privacy.
the name fits the post. I have a different take on "nothing to hide" I think it's a shame that you have nothing to hide. Interesting minds have things to hide. It can be new ideas that are revolutionary and need hidden work to develop into a strong idea. It can be things that challenge the status quo in a dangerous way (for the status quo). It might be gaining freedom from stifling sexual norms. It could be information about your status (rich or poor). If you have nothing to hide, please walk around naked. Never close your curtains. Carry a screen with all your assets and bank accounts. Please carry all your passwords in plain text in your pocket or tattooed on your arm. Keep your address visible on a post-it note on your forehead.
Its just absurd to think you have nothing to hide. If it's not from the state, then it is from other people that mean you harm. That will take advantage of the information you are broadcasting.
If there were 1 brandishing a gun, I’d be very alarmed.
If there were 5, I’d be even more alarmed.
If everyone in the store and outside the store were always brandishing guns, then it would be a very dangerous place.
Speaking of dangerous places- how about the U.S.?
The U.S. gun death rate is approximately 13.7 per 100,000 people, while the UK rate is roughly 0.04 per 100,000—making the U.S. rate over 300 times higher. This is likely because of UK’s stringent gun laws.
So, if everyone hid their internet traffic, does that mean there would be a 300% increase in hacker crime and convictions? And wouldn’t governments and companies be more likely to develop and use tools for spying on their citizens and employees?
Ok so this "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument is so recurrent I once went looking where it came from.
The oldest account I found is in a religious book from 1832 [1]: "We must have nothing to hide, nothing to fear", but, and this is the important bit, this is in the context of your relationship with Christ.
Later accounts are mostly from judicial documents like "well tell us what happened, if you have nothing to hide, you'll have nothing to fear".
And later on we start to see the current form of the argument related to privacy, except now this argument is never directly used to erode it. It will always be in some form of "ok now we have to do this collective thing because of criminals, because of terrorism, because of protect the children, etc.". If you search "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" 100% of the results are about how it is a logical fallacy, nobody at all seems to defend the argument and yet, here we are!
Food for thought:
- this argument may well be stuck in the collective unconscious of lots of people (albeit in the religious context)
- many governments, organizations and in any case the people in position of power and authority can develop a god complex (power corrupts etc.)
So unless I end up dealing with an all-loving and all-forgiving entity I could fully trust, I'd like to keep my right to privacy, thank you very much!
[1] https://www.google.fr/books/edition/Sermons_on_the_Spiritual...
It's older than 1832; for example: "He who trembles at this moment is guilty. For innocence never trembles before public vigilance." Maximilien Robespierre, July 26 (8 Thermidor), 1794 (translated - the original would be in French). When it is used by surveillance advocates, they don't use the exact words.
Incidentally here is that quote, with Ian Richardson as Robespierre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOW6OfeOW10
Ah nice to know! In my defense I only searched for the English version.
That being said, Robespierre was a key participant of 'La Terreur' where tens of thousands of people where hastily judged and executed and he himself ended up executed 4 months after that speech. [1]
[1] https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discours_lors_de_la_s%C3%A9an... (French version)
Indeed. "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" has always contained implicit threat.
Just because you don't see it written verbatim "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" doesn't mean it's not the argument being made.
Right now you have half the country downright giddy about federal agents terrorizing broad swaths of Americans, driving recklessly down their freeways, waving guns around their neighborhoods, bodyslamming random passersby, all fundamentally because half the country believes the only reason someone could not be giddy about this is because they "have something to hide."
[flagged]
> Ice agents are deporting people in the US that are here illegally.
How would anybody know that if they aren't allowed hearings?
I saw that comment before it was flagged and thanks to that I now have this argument that you supplied. if I arrived a couple minutes later I wouldn't know it. (I browsed logged out)
I disagree with that guy but I don't know it should be flagged
The HN dead dynamic has been increasingly throwing babies out with the bathwater, and logging in (even to a throwaway account) with showdead=yes is the right call these days.
But for this particular comment, I assume it was flagged because at this point continuing to cheerlead for the fascists/destructionists with nonsense talking points is just basic flamebait. As GP said, the assertion that only illegal immigrants are being harassed/abducted/disappeared is completely unfounded - the government is not operating with transparency to demonstrate this, nor accountability for the collateral harm that we do know they have caused.
This is not basic flamebait. if you have any serious conversation outside of your political bubble this is THE argument that people who get deported are never US citizens. and it is a valid argument unless you can find examples of citizens deported. I can't
there are so many shorts of right wing "influencers" cornering liberals who can't give a suitable reply to this question.
so the argument about hearings is important. and killing this discussion took it away from public. this of course is very useful to the maga machine which is so friendly to big tech so I'm not surprised.
> THE argument that people who get deported are never US citizens. and it is a valid argument unless you can find examples of citizens deported (I can't).
It might be a valid argument in a dictatorship, but not in the US - rather it's hopeium that completely relies on preconceived assumptions. An assertion that everyone deported/disappeared must be a non-citizen (... because otherwise why would they have been deported?) is bog standard fallacy that the government/computer/bureaucracy] is always correct.
The entire foundation of Constitutionally limited government responsible to the People is that it is the government's job to justify its actions. That's the goal of open legal process, professional representation, the incarcerated's communication with the outside world, etc. A strongman wannabe-dictator asserting "trust me" but hiding all of the details, and for what we do know about engaging in wanton criminality, is nowhere near any level of good-faith executing the laws of a Constitutionally-limited government.
Personally I'd say people still thinking any of this is about "immigration reform" are being taken for a ride, just as they have been for the past thirty years.
Nope. It is a valid argument in US in the eyes of US citizens who make it. You don't get to just say "it's not a valid argument" and think that will convince people
and actually you know it too. That's why you give the rest of the explanation. which will not be seen because the conversation was killed.
What I mean is that it's not a legitimate argument in the context of good-faith discussion getting to the truths of matters, which is the ethos of this site.
I didn't address the social aspects you brought up, and I really should have. Yes, there are many people repeating these arguments, despite them being trivially debunked. That is a big part of The Problem, right? "Flood the zone with shit" to overwhelm people's attention and get them to succumb to repeated feel-good talking points that confirm their biases. But if people were more generally intellectually honest, then we wouldn't be staring down fascism to begin with.
There are also many people arguing against this tripe, but using the lamest arguments themselves, because once again confirming their preconceived biases feels good. When I go to protests, the sheer number of signs preaching to the choir saddens me - propagating the fascists' paradigm wherein the main issue here is illegal immigration is not going to win anyone over! The way I see it, we should be able to disagree on policy and solutions, but yet still reject the fascism together.
But back to the comment flagging - when the bulk of political discourse revolves around flamebait, then it's not terribly surprising the popular arguments get flagged on forums that are looking for something more than flame war. FWIW the whole conversation wasn't outright killed, rather it's hidden in a tree you can click to expand (it says [10 more] meaning 10 comments below it to expand). Personally, I usually click those, but I understand having to do so detracts from engagement.
> What I mean is that it's not a legitimate argument in the context of good-faith discussion getting to the truths of matters, which is the ethos of this site.
it's only not a legitimate argument if you are in a specific bubble. How do I know? Because I talk to people outside of it. Talk to some right-wing conservatives and you'll find out I promise you.
> Yes, there are many people repeating these arguments, despite them being trivially debunked.
No, they are not trivially debunked. Actually "no hearings" argumetn is trivially debunked by right wingers: "hearings take too long and we have too many immigrants committing crimes". However it's still a good argument to know. And killing this conversation makes sure people don't know it.
> confirming their preconceived biases feels good
Do you have enough introspection power to ask if you are doing that yourself right here?
> when the bulk of political discourse revolves around flamebait
This is not flamebait for the reasons I explained
Just because people don't understand how the legal system works, even though it has been explained to them, doesn't mean we should listen to their intentionally ignorant arguments.
They won't understand until somebody they know falls to the machine, then they'll say "oh I thought it would only happen to people I don't like."
So out there in social media some americans who don't understand how legal system works defeat in arguments other americans who don't understand how legal system works.
Do you think all americans on HN are definitely smart and understand now legal system works and if they are on the fence then they are malicious fascists? If yes then sure that post deserved to be flagged.
You need to stop sitting on the fence and thinking that the fascists' arguments are being made in good faith.
I'd say what's driving the grassroots is closer to pure anger, demanding solutions of "someone do something" for how they've been disenfranchised, for which this specter of "illegal immigrants" are being used as a scapegoat. You're not going to convince them of anything by pointing out that this strawman they just want to beat is entitled to Constitutional rights and due process. It's simply hindbrain tribal crap being stirred up by con man Trump and the fascist media bubble.
> Do you have enough introspection power to ask if you are doing that yourself right here?
I'm a libertarian who was both-sidesing up through Covid even. I had still thought there was a good chance Trump would come around to actually leading through June of 2020. Nope!
I still do occasionally ponder thoughts like - lets say I forget about the great amount of human suffering currently being created, and try on going with the flow and loving big brother - do I see any good economic outcomes from these policies here? And my answer still comes around to settling on no - they are continuing to destroy the core fabric of our country based around individual liberty and self determination, in favor of a strong man dictatorship. Trumpism is sold as some radical reset required to restore freedom, but it's merely the continued destruction of it.
>> when the bulk of political discourse revolves around flamebait
>This is not flamebait for the reasons I explained
You have not explained how it is not flamebait. Being popular does not mean something is not flamebait. If you respond to these right-wing "conservative" (aka fascist, actual conservatives were called RINOs and kicked out of the Party), you get back a flood of more half-baked arguments and you're off to the races, right? That's a flamewar, even if you keep your tempers. The only ways that conversation is going to end is to agree to disagree, the topic gets changed, or in anger and frustration.
(fwiw I'd say this dynamic of radical flamebait as common discourse applies to parts of the Democratic party as well)
> thinking that the fascists' arguments are being made in good faith.
> If you respond to these right-wing "conservative" (aka fascist, actual conservatives were called RINOs and kicked out of the Party), you get back a flood of more half-baked arguments and you're off to the races, right?
I argue about it with people I know who are center right. they sometimes make some good points and as non american it's hard to defeat them. maybe their arguments are stupid to you but not so stupid to me.
So this is informative to me to know the counter arguments.
also, it seems that there is a majority of people who voted right in US, if you believe the last election. just calling then fascists doesn't help convince them. but facts can
Whether or not someone is a citizen is a complete red herring. Plenty of non citizens are in the US legally. Why even bring that talking point up?
Their argument is that only non citizens who committed some crime get deported. Which is basically normal in many countries except maybe EU. I for sure know of people who got deported after committing crimes or even just administrative wrongdoings while being on legal visas
What you can say US should hold itself to higher standard and how trump does it is absolutely wrong... Then I agree
Yoo can also say that right wingers move goalposts by first saying "only illegal migrants get deported" then saying "even legal migrants pending citizenship can get deported if they commit a crime" then "any non citizen can get deported because nothing in constitution prevents it" which happens but it's usually hard to get somebody for moving goalposts in a real life argument.
But saying "whether someone is a citizen or not" is irrelevant is wrong because for US citizens is very relevant
> Their argument is that only non citizens who committed some crime get deported
This has always been true in the US, and is increasingly not true now. The data is extremely clear on this.
> any non citizen can get deported because nothing in constitution prevents it
This is only true with an asterisk which makes it not applicable to the current situation. In the US, even non-citizens (even the subset of illegal non-citizens) have due process rights, which the Trump admin is systematically violating.
"Whether someone is a citizen or not" is actually completely irrelevant for the question of whether they have due process rights under our Constitution.
Show the data then. Seriously. I couldn't find examples of deports of US citizens OR non citizens who did not commit crime or administrative wrongdoing.
> non-citizens have due process rights
Yes, so now you said US should hold itself to higher standard. And I already said I agree with it.
> "Whether someone is a citizen or not" is actually completely irrelevant for the question of whether they have due process rights under our Constitution.
If true then this looks like another great point that is lost into the abyss because the whole thread was killed. which part of constitution?
The fifth amendment. Everybody is allowed due process. Only a judge or jury can decide whether someone has violated the law.
Thank you
Almost none of the recent detainees have serious criminal convictions.
The vast majority of detainees have no criminal conviction at all (spoiler alert: because you already get fucking deported when you commit a crime in the US if you're here illegally... OBVIOUSLY.)
Nearly half don't even have pending criminal charges.
https://www.cato.org/blog/5-ice-detainees-have-violent-convi...
It's hard to know how many don't have administrative violations, but we do know they're routinely arresting people who are literally at the administrative proceedings to manage their immigration status. Such people are almost by definition following the law. We also know the Trump administration has cancelled hundreds of thousands (millions now?) of legal immigration statuses and declared previously legal people to be illegal overnight.
Every set of handcuffs and every seat on a plane for a non-criminal is one removed from the alleged hordes of violent illegal criminals who are overrunning our cities. We already saw during the first Trump administration that his "aggressive" immigration posture actually increased the processing time for actually dangerous/violent people because it stuffed the processing queues with all sorts of people who were causing no trouble to begin with.
> which part of constitution [gives due process rights to non-citizens]
The same part that gives it to citizens: The 5th Amendment.
> No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
The writers knew that "no person" was a different scope than "no citizen," because in other parts of the document they identify citizens and non-citizens, where appropriate.
In fact it obviously functionally makes no sense to limit due process to citizens, because otherwise an autocrat could eliminate a citizen's due process rights (and all other Constitutional rights) simply be declaring them to be illegal and precluding them from a hearing to determine otherwise.
I'm sorry to be pedantic but your article points out that x% have convictions, xx% have no convictions, and does not take into account who of them are illegal (undocumented).
I don't ask for much, is there a specific story of ONE case where somebody was deported (not detained) who is - US citizen or - legal document immigrant with no crimes and violations?
if you give me that then I will use this next time when arguing with right wing ppl I know. thanks
Sure: Andy Hernandez Romero, who is among hundreds and perhaps thousands of completely rule-following asylum seekers who have been deported without due process in violation of our own Constitution and asylum laws.
Regardless of the legality (which I can’t comment on being on the other side of the pond) - masked anonymous people snatching people from the street and disappearing them in unmarked vehicles sounds A LOT like what the nazi party did in my country. I know it’s a tired trope by this point but the parallels are definitely there.
And you know how the saying goes: first they came for xyz, by the time they came for me nobody was left to speak out for me.
US America was always a place for me to look up to, for free speech and a humane society that welcomes everyone — even if that was always an unreal ideal but at least it was something most US citizens took seriously; really sad to see it being dismantled so quickly in the years after 9/11 leading up to the situation now
In terms of armoring the argument, I try to add a time component: "That's exactly what the Nazis in $YEAR."
Granted, this won't work on people who don't know or care about history, but that was probably a lost cause anyway.
Can you state specifically what you think "isn't happening" so I can respond to it?
> Ice agents are [only] deporting people in the US that are here illegally.
Not only is this not true, but it's irrelevant to my point. I'm not talking about deportation. I'm talking about ICE's actions here in the streets of American cities.
As for the rest of your comment: lol, lmao even
The hardcore supporters of the current U.S. administration (e.g. those that go to the rallies, give to the NRA, participate in some militant group), had been very distrustful of government in-general, and I suspect they still are.
You may feel that you’re supporting some radical left-wing group you think is cool that just wants people to let everyone be free to think and act how they want, but privacy / hiding communication goes both ways.
You may also be supporting terrorists that would rather be spitting on you and bombing your family and friends than reading your manifesto on the right to watch freaky crap.
> had been very distrustful of government in-general, and I suspect they still are.
They were never really distrustful of the government. People who really don't trust the government want to downsize the parts that can kick down your door and point a gun at you. These people have demonstrated time and again that they want more of that, because they actually trust that institutions of state violence will be on their side and uphold their interests.
Instead what they oppose are parts of the government they suspect are helping people and groups they dislike. This is what the American right reliably can't stand, for all the flavor of the month posturing they might engage in to keep things from getting stale.
It comes out in some pretty glaring self-contradictory ways, too. Big talk about the second amendment - personal freedom, from my cold dead hands, etc. Then Kenneth Walker straightforwardly exercises his second amendment right to lawful night time home defense, the government jackboot assailants murder Breonna Taylor in retaliation, and the supposed "freedom lovers" then chime in with support for the jackboots while twisting themselves in knots to justify how the victims of state violence deserved it.
As long as I can remember, the Republican party has been full of hypocrisy and ignorant denial. But this sheer ability of Dear Leader's to make people dance to his tune of outright harming themselves has taken it to another level (I guess there is a reason why he was (is) a really successful con artist). At this point anybody earnestly caring about personal liberty should consider the whole Republican party a sick joke. We need some real opposition ("Libertarian" party isn't well poised for that either), and some real voting systems that break a duopoly (eg Ranked Pairs). But first we really just need to take our country back from these fascists who have completely lost the plot of American ideals.
Are you saying that anonymity is bad because there are trump supporters that like anonymity?
Or are you saying that anonymity is not "cool" because radical left-wingers like it and that lets rightwingers do it as well?
Are you saying that advocating for anonymity is not nice because terrorists (who? I dont know many of them) will spit on you (do terrorists do that? does that make someone a terrorist?) and bomb not only you but you family and friends and not read my manifesto on anonymity, while insinuating that the only reason anybody wants anonymity is because they want to watch freaky "crap"?
Pardon, my french, but you sound like a troll from some intelligence agency. It just doesnt make a lot of sense.
What?
> "We must have nothing to hide, nothing to fear", but, and this is the important bit, this is in the context of your relationship with Christ.
Also note how it is some sort of goal not a statement on not having something to hide. I guess in line with "may the one without sin throw the first stone".
I think you're being reductionist here.
Heh ... you. Is it reductionist to make something more specific and less general though?
> - this argument may well be stuck in the collective unconscious of lots of people (albeit in the religious context)
Another example of such a belief is that "humans are inherently evil" which seems to have been planted in Western society by the concept of original sin. Interestingly the idea that sin was about our inherent badness didn't really arise until the struggle against Gnosticism [1] hundreds of years after Jesus died.
Now the belief is pervasive in secular society thanks to stories like "Lord of the Flies".
It's fascinating how even though we can call ourselves non religious we can still carry these beliefs around.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin
Cheer up.
If you're still in Sydney I'd argue that large numbers of people paddled out off of Bondi Beach because of a pervasive Australian belief that there's always a few arseholes but most people are fundamentally good and community support is better than nothing.
You likely saw a couple of extremists repeatedly tackled and then dropped by the public and police, and near real time running in to help victims.
That's somewhat contra to the bleak of "humans are inherently evil".
Maybe the message of Lord of the Flies was that nuclear weapons and the Cold War depressed at least one author and that boys need mentors.
Maybe it's an issue in general with the On the Beach genre, from Shute to Winton: https://theshovel.com.au/2025/08/20/tim-winton-wonders-why-n...:
Don't get me wrong, I don't think humans are inherently evil. In fact in times of crisis (like the one you mention) we do tend to come together and I think that's evidence that the belief is incorrect.
I just had a discussion the other day with somebody who outright told me that they think humans are inherently evil and must be managed under a system to keep in order. I don't think it's an uncommon belief and nor do I think it's a bleak world because that belief exists, it's just a mistaken belief.
I would argue that you see the belief raise its head far more when people are interacting with others who they don't consider in their "in-group".
AI slop for all its banality may give us enough noise in the signal to accomplish exactly what the author is asking for.
As the dead web continues to emerge, content looks less like apples on a tree and more like sand on the beach.
And the act of looking for a misshapen grain of sand becomes absurd.
Right, I don't think I've ever actually seen anybody make the "nothing to hide" argument. Maybe it was used more commonly in the past, but I only ever see people pre-emptively attack it without prompting. It seems to be a special case of a straw-man argument: a no-man argument. It's not the only such example, but it seems to appear without fail in the top comments in any discussion of privacy issues.
I found somebody making this argument just the other day on Hacker News in regard to license plate tracking.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46250556
> In practice I'm not even getting "tracked". No one is likely to be looking up my license plate and looking at my movements, because I don't do anything that would warrant that kind of attention
People around me make the nothing to hide argument all the time
It’s the obvious response to what seems like paranoia to the uneducated.
I have had many people use it when I try to either push for a private option ("please message me on Signal") or explain why I won't use a service.
> We must all become deviations
Already there friend.
I feel that I have nothing to hide, but I do my darnedest to ensure that it costs a maximal amount of time and effort to find that out.
If a random stranger (law enforcement or otherwise) wants to know shit about me, then I'm immediately creeped out and the last thing I want to do is make (online) stalking of me an easy task. The harder it is, the more likely they'll give up and move on to someone else (pending their reasons).
As it should be for everyone.
Edited to add: One thing I can tell you from experience: law enforcement only look for things that will confirm their suspicions. They do not look for counter evidence, no matter how obvious it is or how easy it is to find - even within government records to which they would already have access.
As such, beware what trail you leave, if it suits the right (wrong) agenda, it will be used to point in the worst possible direction.
> I feel that I have nothing to hide
Though you made the right determination later on, this is what you need to correct first. You don't have to be a murderer to have something to hide. Everyone does, no matter how innocent you are.
Imagine that you're a young girl. Is it safe to expose the GPS tracks of your daily commutes? Let's cut to the other end of the spectrum. Imagine that you're the chief of a law enforcement agency. How about exposing your GPS tracks now? Even information about newborn babies should be kept private.
Always be aware of the consequences of sharing your information, when you must do so. The narrative 'I have nothing to hide' actively discourages such concerns and precautions, even if it's just a feeling. It encourages bad security practices at an individual level throughout the society. That's why this article is so pertinent. It's justifiably hostile towards that claim.
Perhaps: "I'm not yet aware of the current and future forces I will have a desperate and very-moral reason to hide from."
Something to hide often occurs retroactively, when evil people gain power today they didn't have yesterday.
When people say they have nothing to hide I like to remind them about fraud and criminals.
All law abiding citizens have data that they want to hide from fraudsters.
Fraudsters often get their hands on government data through breeches and bribery.
Also fraudsters pretend to be government agents to get data from big tech companies. So any channel that governments use to get data from tech companies is abused by fraudsters to commit crime.
Fraud is a very big deal. The UK economy loses 219 billion per year to fraud. Our national deficit payment is 93 billion per year and we spend 188 billion on the NHS.
If we improved privacy of all of our citizens then the savings from fraud reduction would cover our entire government deficit
> All law abiding citizens have data that they want to hide from fraudsters.
Nobody is completely law avoiding when the books of laws and regulations get thick enough. Especially if the government decides to take an interest in you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5860250
You don‘t need fraudsters just a run of the mill bully is enough. I remember a phase in my life where I had to do some high visibility reporting. I showed all underlying facts, methodology and conclusions and every week the bully tore into a minor detail devaluing my work and distracting from vital tasks. Only when I started shielding data and my reasoning as private and just delivering high level summary results I was able to put an end to it.
Not wishing to join the bully's side, but I think making something private to prevent discussion/criticism has a bad smell about it. It's possible (to someone who knows neither you nor the bully) that the bully had some valid suggestions and that you became over defensive in allowing that to become a distraction rather than saying something like "okay, but can you make these suggestions after the meeting and we can work through them later".
Personally, I don't like the idea of someone hiding data and methodology just because of not wanting feedback.
Well, it's a judgment call. Is this critic operating in good faith, or not? The reporter is not necessarily in the best position to judge. On the other hand, they have the best grasp of all the details of the interaction with this (alleged) bully.
"You don't want continuing abuse" is quite different from "you don't want feedback".
Quite - I fully admit that I know nothing about that particular situation.
However, I have personally seen people get overly defensive when someone has pointed out a major error in their methodology and they have then gone on to hide their working rather than trying to fix the issue. Often it's because they are not particularly expert in that field and don't really understand the issue that needs to be fixed.
I've also seen plenty of bullies in the workplace too.
If we have nothing to hide, then I want every politician to have every bit of communication publicly available and searchable.
We are stopping corruption here, so only corrupt people could oppose such decision and they should be immediately investigated.
To anyone who says "I have nothing to hide" I respond with "Unfortunately, you are not the one who gets to decide whether what you have is worth hiding."
(I think I first might have come across this beautifully succinct and unfortunately very true counter in a Reddit AMA with Edward Snowden way back when, but I might be misremembering.)
I prefer short and snarky "then drop your pants". Shuts up most.
Maybe "give me your bank PIN" for those that have been waiting for an excuse to drop their pants.
Both of these are not good responses and are easily discounted by most people ("I don't take nude photos"/"I never tell anyone my pin").
Average people see zero equivalence between sending nudes or their bank pin to a specific stranger and Google keeping a record of every website they've ever visited.
Surely the "I never tell anyone my pin" is just an admission that they do have something to hide?
The point is that there are many things that should be kept private/secret and often the need for that secrecy isn't obvious to people who have never been in particular situations. A woman trying to escape from an abusive relationship may need to keep her location secret to avoid being murdered by her ex, but your typical white male who declares "nothing to hide" may have difficulty in understanding that, whereas they may be able to grasp why their PIN should be kept secret.
I understand the point, but you're taking their statement "I have nothing to hide" way too literally, and these sorts of arguments based on literal interpretations rarely convince anyone. Has anyone actually ever been convinced to take privacy more seriously by this "insight"?
It's not so much a method to convince people to take privacy more seriously, but demonstrating that people who say "I have nothing to hide" haven't really thought about it and how it's such a ridiculous statement.
My aim would be to get people to understand that everyone has stuff that should be kept secret and that it varies according to their circumstances.
I was using "surely you won't mind public webcam in your bedroom then?" too
I was thinking a little about it lately. Not the saying itself, but the positioning to the general public. The annoying reality is that for most of the things that I consider important enough to voice discontent over ( and maybe even suppress need for convenience for ) are not always easy to 'present'. Note that it is not even always easy here either, but we do, by design, give one another a charitable read.
Hell, look at me, I care and I accepted some of it as price to pay for house peace.
yeah, it's a cascade. maybe you are not a threat to gov or corp but locally there's people who are like the people in clubs who spike you because they want you out or because they want your girls or the girls you will steal from them. info can be power. rumors, gossip, your browsing history, what you draw, what you code in your free time, what you talk to your kids about, what they do with that when they visit "friends" who already had info that you decided wasn't worth hiding ... from your kids ...
all can and will be used to induce stress or to divert attention of the young ones.
governments used to build massive societies and create rules and order and kaizen infrastructures that would get us as far away from the dark ages as possible ... but here we are closing that gap again. Go VCs! Go Agents! Go Puppies of Wall Street! Go work for LLM companies instead of using those big capable brains of yours for something other than personalized copypastable copypastacopypasta ...
"the other girls and kids made it through, and so will you, just let it happen, let it be" and so it goes ...
A police officer walked into the office where I was stationed as a security guard for a high rise condo, and demanded the keys to a particular apartment. I declined and he got angry. So I turned the matter over to my boss, the manager, who lived in the building. He immediately gave up the keys, no questions asked.
The cop left and the manager turned to me and said, "just do whatever they say, we have nothing to hide." I thought "but what about Mrs. Crenshaw in unit 566?" I didn't say it, but the manager seemed to think his argument covered that too.
"I have nothing to hide" only makes sense if privacy and disclosure are treated as a binary. In reality, both exist on a spectrum: privacy is controlled disclosure, shaped by what is shared, with whom, at what level of detail, and under what power asymmetry.
Large surveillance systems inevitably build baselines. They don't just detect crimes; they detect patterns and anomalies relative to whatever becomes "normal".
The problem with "nothing to hide" is that it defaults to maximal disclosure. Data is persistent, aggregatable, and reinterpretable as norms and regimes change. The data doesn't.
This isn't purely individual. Your disclosures can expose others through contact graphs and inference, regardless of intent. And it doesn't matter whether the collector is the state or a company; aggregation and reuse work the same way.
Yes. In that realm, absence, too, is a signal; perpaps stronger one than just random chatter.
Whilst there's some valid responses to "I've got nothing to hide" such as "drop your pants", "what's your bank PIN?" etc., there's a lot of people missing out far more insidious examples where privacy is required. e.g. A woman escaping from an abusive relationship will often be in direct danger if her location is given out. Also, consider a whistleblower leaking essential information about wrong-doings at an organisation - they should be able to do so anonymously if their livelihood would be in danger for performing such a public service.
It's a position of privilege to be able to state "nothing to hide" and depends on other people not being racist/sexist/classist etc. It's such a blinkered and sheltered view to hold.
> And then comes the part they can't (or won't) fathom. The context shifts. The political winds change. The Overton window slams shut on a belief they once held. A book they read is declared subversive. A group they donated to is re-classified as extremist. A joke they told is now evidence of a thoughtcrime.
There are at least some people who would respond by (still) saying "I have nothing to hide." They are proud of their moral choices and confident in their convictions. Arrest them if you dare.
I wonder if the author still has contempt for them?
I think the author is trying to say in today's world we face a sort of moral/societal vacuum of privacy. The more we try to remain private, whether by being an open book or by some type of digital way, it's basically futile or will eventually be broken.
My spin, as a recovering perfectionist, is when you've done everything you can to be "innocent" and the political or whatever wind changes, the pit of despair is a real and devastating thing. When this happens, sometimes the decisions that are made are desperate.
In many moral frameworks, inconsistency isn't the only wrong someone can commit. The argument constructed in this article is essentially utilitarian, making the claim that the mechanisms of surveillance and privacy make this behavior harmful to others, regardless of their intentions or internal sense of morality. In fact, the author doesn't mention hating these people at all, although I suppose that's not a completely unreasonable thing to infer. From the perspective of this argument, this only lacks the harm the "deviancy signal" would itself do to the individual, though in the oppressive regime proposed they would perhaps take greater risk by openly deviating
> In fact, the author doesn't mention hating these people at all
The article opens with:
>> There's a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, "I have nothing to hide."
Which isn't literally saying "I hate them" but I'm not sure how else to interpret "a special kind of contempt." Regardless, I've edited my original post.
Why not interpret contempt as “contempt”, which is not “hate”?
I didn't do it consciously. When I wrote my original post, I'd hallucinated that the author had used the term "hate".
When Advael responded "the author doesn't mention hating these people at all", I went back to the article and checked. Advael was right, but I can understand where my hallucination came from. The first three sentences read:
> There's a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, "I have nothing to hide." It's not the gentle pity you'd have for the naive. It's the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator.
A "special kind of contempt" mixed with "cold, hard anger" really seems like hatred to me.
(Anyway, this really isn't the point I was trying to make.)
Contempt is very different to hate.
It is very interesting, in our polarized times, what people read into a statement, and if they interpret it charitably or in the worst possible way. Like you, I find contempt and hate very different.
The author clarifies a couple sentences later that the contempt they feel is "the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator" - "collaborator" apparently meaning something like the very bad WWII kind of collaborator, rather than the benign artistic co-author kind. So, despite the implicit acknowledgement that there are multiple types of contempt, this particular contempt does sound fairly close to hatred.
No, it sounds like contempt and anger, which is why I suspect the author used those words.
Look up the definition of "hate". How is "cold, hard anger" like one might feel toward a N*zi collaborator not adjacent to that? Why quibble over this?
Geez, what an insane semantic debate. The author clearly has strong, negative emotions towards the people this article is about. Folks who want to nitpick the technicality of these terms are just misunderstanding how language works.
What’s important to hide is always changing. So even if you have nothing to hide now, you may wish you had hidden it in the future.
Here in the USA, exculpatory evidence can be ignored or suppressed, and innocent but snarky comments can put you in jail. Be careful what you publish. Be careful what FOSS you create. Don't be fooled by the now-defunct Bill of Rights; there's an entire apparatus devoted to using your casual and innocent behavior against you.
Here's a software engineer who was incarcerated into the worst jail in the country, yesterday: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keonne_Rodriguez
He Built a Privacy Tool. Now He’s Going to Prison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fshsk8MCAf4
Pre-WW2 census in Germany was conducted by IBM and included religion and other family origin related questions.
Fast forward a few years and the Nazi regime used census results to go after every family that was undesirable for them using the census data they bought from IBM.
Privacy and anonymity are not needed until they are desperately required.
This can be read as if IBM did this unknowingly and only before WW2.
But IBM knew what they were assisting with, and even pre-WW2 was already assisting the Nazi regime of 1933-1939. And they didn't stop come WW2, if anything IBM opened new subsidiaries and continued throughout the second world war.
"(...) IBM leased, rather than sold, its machines. The company retained control of punch-card supply and provided service through subsidiaries. Each set of cards was custom-designed to Nazi requirements. He later wrote that the IBM headquarters in New York oversaw these arrangements through subsidiaries across Europe"
"(...) IBM New York created a subsidiary in Poland, Watson Business Machines, after the 1939 invasion. The firm managed railway traffic in the General Government and ran a punch-card printing shop near the Warsaw Ghetto. He stated that this subsidiary reported through Geneva to IBM New York, and revenues were transferred accordingly."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
Meanwhile, today:
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-palantir-ai-enterp...
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/us-technology-leaders-ai-facto...
It was authorized by the CEO, Thomas J. Watson Sr., who apparently had a "soft spot" for the Nazis. Hitler decorated him: https://www.nytimes.com/1937/07/02/archives/thomas-j-watson-... and it took the occupation of France and the Low Countries three years later for Watson to decide to return the medal.
I think the bigger issue is allowing such corruption to split and divide people. Religion can often be hidden, but if the Nazi regime decided to depict people with ginger hair as being evil/undesirable, then the census wouldn't have even been relevant.
Well, I think the hair color would’ve been on the census if it was something people had a preference for which is a prerequisite for building such plans.
All I’m trying to say is that the amount of information being collected for each person can be used very nefariously and targeted as individuals we wouldn’t have any chance to resist this dystopian future.
It's so difficult to get people to think that way, it's like they feel like they have plot armor like in a movie.
The author is a bit uncharitable. "I have nothing to hide" usually is a shorthand for "it would be imprudent and inconvenient to dedicate my limited time and resources to an abstract good like privacy. This would not be the case if I had something illegal or reputation-ruining to hide." Nobody denies the value of privacy, but practicality beats purity in the eyes of a person who doesn't have a particular ideological conviction.
It can also mean: I prefer the police catching murderers. I'm fine when wife cheaters get caught in the drag net.
Privacy advocates never admit that there is not only a "next" government abusing surveillance, but also a "current" one, which uses surveillance for beneficial purposes.
I am a privacy advocate, and also am disappointed at how narrow minded some of the arguments of privacy advocates are.
"Banning encrypted chat will just mean the bad people moved to banned platforms". Perhaps, but some bad people have to operate where victims are (Facebook stalkers, eBay cons, ...)
"Police should be forced to just do... actual police work."
It's pretty reasonably for police to want to increase the chances and speed of resolution.
We should champion and defend privacy, in spite of the good reasons to weaken it. There's no need to strawmen.
Fair point.
Right, but that practicality is predicated on the ability to switch to a more privacy-focused posture later on. And the point of the blog post is, when you need it, it won't be there when you reach for it.
Not arguing with that specific claim, but the author claims to hold a "special kind of contempt" for ordinary people making practical day-to-day choices. That attitude is much more hostile.
"nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is trivially disproved.
Humans arrive at conclusions about other humans based on information. Sometimes these conclusions are incorrect because humans aren't perfect at reasoning and this happens more often with some kinds of information.
Therefore, it's perfectly rational to hide/not-disclose/obscure some information to lessen the chance that others take action based on faulty conclusions.
Famous quotes from an inquisitior in the 16th century:
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
2013 called: https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to...
> A joke they told is now evidence of a thoughtcrime. Suddenly, for the first time, they have something to hide.
That's a decent list, but the real list is even broader. Are you a lawyer litigating against a multinational company? Or planning to? Imagine if the company knew exactly who you, and every potential litigant, talked to. Or maybe you're trying to start a new political party. Or looking for a new job without alerting your employer. There were stories (unfortunately I can't find them at the moment) of nurses getting worse salary offers if they were in debt, on the logic that the desperate will settle for less. DoorDash would steal tips and use them to pay salary [1], something impossible with private, cash-based tips. And retailers will use every bit of data they have on you to price discriminate (without telling you, of course) [2].
Surveillance harms you in every way, from the most significant to the most trivial. You're always better off hiding, even if you think you don't have to. Knowledge is power, and knowledge of you is power over you.
[1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/02/25/doordash-sett...
[2] https://spyboy.blog/2024/11/24/unfair-pricing-tactics-target...
“Nothing to Hide” is more akin to a fundamental truth than a deviancy.
If you wish to hide something, why have you leaked it in the first place?
Why not ask the other question? Why are you trying to hide public information to begin with? Why are you introducing encryption on top of an underlying public interface.
This is intentionally different from are there things one would generally not be to be widely accessible or generally public.
There is nothing to hide if it is already public, because it is already public, you can't hide it even if you want to, you're only making it more difficult for a general member of the public to access that data. Even if you consider that "hiding", the source is still public.
ok, as a privacy enthusiast, some people just dont get it, and they never will. what you need to do is not discuss anything you dont want broadcast with them... ever. im even thinking of using edge or chrome so i look like a normie in a sea of normies. i mean i really dont have anything to hide but i dont want anyone to know that.
I've got lots to hide.
Doesn't mean you or anyone else has a right to know what it is and it doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong either. We should all admit that we have lots we want to hide from other people and that's just fine and normal.
Reminds me of this lecture: “Don’t talk to Police”, Law Professor James Duane.
The argument goes, there are a lot of laws and there are virtually an infinite variety of possible circumstances which could trigger a possible violation making it impossible for anyone to know if their statements might appear relevant to a prosecutor.
https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?si=9ZYuVSlPsfEgQyc9
Of course, if you don’t have time to watch that excellent presentation, just crib this one: National Lawyer’s Guild of Detroit, MI: “When the cops come calling, what do you do? SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
https://youtu.be/nWEpW6KOZDs?si=eobu1fTfSMTwbXME
"You hide from those whom you don't trust!"
so now comes the question...
"How much do you trust a human, despite being your favourite?".....
We need to learn about 'trust' and its role in our lives!
Information is power! And 'trust' me, you don't want to give it to anyone over you!
The upcoming era of transparency will come in the form of compliances (or, chains) you will never withdraw yourself from! Surely facility and security will baited for this!
Also, with the rise in the fields of biotech and nano-tech, infused with A.I., they are preparing us to be their 'lab rats', and they don't need our consents! We shouldn't be ignoring this at all!
If you attend any “public” meeting of a government or quasi-state entity in the US (library board, energy regulation board, county board,…) it becomes clear that the state seeks to hide and shift accountability at every turn and is willing to bring in armed force to squash even the slightest demand for transparency.
Living in actually existing fascism requires adoption of anonymity & privacy preservation processes. You have so much worth protecting because you have everything to lose.
This guy looks like to have a good mindset, I hope that fellow HNers living there will vite for him to give us a little bit of hope in the current very sad world!
He's running for governor of California. He's apparently having trouble getting 6,000 signatures or $5000 to get on the ballot, so he's probably not a serious candidate.
> He's running for governor of California. He's apparently having trouble getting 6,000 signatures or $5000 to get on the ballot, so he's probably not a serious candidate.
The popular, well funded politicians haven't exactly served their constituents well in the privacy domain...
Regardless, the points made are valid.
Signature collection legally started only two days ago ;)
If you have nothing to hide...
Post your full name, address, social security number, date of birth, mothers maiden name and other security questions, list of active logins and passwords and URLs, your full body scan nudes, sexual fantasies, diary/journal, your ashamed moments in your life, sly or trickster things you've done to others, sordid family secrets, and more.
Oh, that was a no? I guess you DO have something to hide.
- I have nothing to hide.
- Sure, but why are you closing the door when taking sh*? Is your sh*ing somehow special?
[dead]
There's a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, "I have nothing to hide." It's not the gentle pity you'd have for the naive. It's the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator. Because these people aren't just surrendering their own liberty. They're instead actively forging the chains for the rest of us. They are a threat, and I think it's time they were told so.
Their argument is a "pathology of the present tense," a failure of imagination so profound it borders on a moral crime. What they fail to understand is that by living as an open book, they are creating the most dangerous weapon imaginable: a baseline of "normalcy." They are steadily creating a data profile for the State's machine, teaching its algorithms what a "good, transparent citizen" looks like. Every unencrypted text, every thoughtless search, every location-tagged post is another brick in the wall of their own cage.
And then comes the part they can't (or won't) fathom. The context shifts. The political winds change. The Overton window slams shut on a belief they once held. A book they read is declared subversive. A group they donated to is re-classified as extremist. A joke they told is now evidence of a thoughtcrime. Suddenly, for the first time, they have something to hide.
So they reach for the tools of privacy. They download the encrypted messenger. They fire up the VPN. They start to cover their tracks.
And in that single act, they trigger the Deviancy Signal.
Their first attempt at privacy, set against their own self-created history of total transparency, is a screaming alarm to the grown surveillance machine. It's the poker player with a perfect tell, or the nocturnal animal suddenly walking in daylight. Their very attempt to become private is the most public and suspicious act they could possibly commit. They have not built an effective shield, as they have painted a target on their own back. By the time they need privacy, their own history has made seeking it an admission of guilt.
But the damage doesn't end with your own self-incrimination. It radiates outward, undoing the careful work of everyone around you. Think of your friend who has practiced perfect operational security, who has spent years building a private life to ensure they have no baseline for the state to analyze. They are a ghost in the machine. Then they talk to you. Your unshielded phone becomes the listening device they never consented to. You take their disciplined effort to stay invisible and you shout it into a government microphone, tying their identity to yours in a permanent, searchable log. You don't just contrast with their diligence; you actively dismantle it.
On a societal scale, this inaction becomes a collective betrayal. The power of the Deviancy Signal is directly proportional to the number of people who live transparently. Every person who refuses to practice privacy adds another gallon of clean, clear water to the state's pool, making any ripple of dissent ... any deviation ... starkly visible. This is not a passive choice. By refusing to help create a chaotic, noisy baseline of universal privacy, you are actively making the system more effective. You are failing to do your part to make the baseline all deviant, and in doing so, you make us all more vulnerable.
There is only one way to disarm this weapon: we must destroy its premise. We must obliterate the baseline. The task is not merely to hide, but to make privacy the default, to make encryption a reflex, to make anonymity a universal right. We must create so much noise that a signal is impossible to find. Our collective goal must be to make a "normal" profile so rare that the watchers have nothing to compare us to. We must all become deviations.
Hannah Arendt in her most famous television interview after the Eichman process said what shocked her in 1933 when the Nazis came to power wasn't that the Nazis came to power, it was how many of the people she preceived as friends and allies, especially in the intellectual space would convince themselves with fantastical theories about why Hitler being in power might be a good thing actually.
The truth is that many people are cowards and even more people are just small-minded. The problem of the "I have nothing to hide"-excuse is that it shows thst this person has no concept about how their small personal ideas would affect the world once you roll them out in scale. Not only that but it shows that they haven't understood how power is organized in their democratic societies.
Let's say we would have nothing to hide and we give up our rights to the people we as the voters are meant to hold accountable. Even if it is a benevolent government filled with honest actors, large scale surveillance has the problem that there will be false positives. Surveil 360 million people each day and with an totally utopic accuracy of 99% and you still get 3.6 million false positives a day. In reality however these processes are much less accurate and the people who use those powers much less benevolent and honest, e.g. it is not uncommon that police look up their exes, spouses, people they personally hate etc.
The biggest problem however is that we have a division of power for a reason in democracies, and the people who vote giving up power in order to give more to a government is bad actually. Democracies need to be designed in such way they can survive one or two governments that try to abolish that system. Giving them a "spy on everybody" -power coupled with let's say secret courts is a good way to risk that form of government for generations who then have to fight bloody civil wars and revolutions to get the power back.
Excellent work.
You’re correct on all things in principle, but hiding one’s subversive thoughts (or what may be catalogued by any given regime as subversive) only plays into the regime’s hands, because it atomizes any chance of real resistance. It is much more valuable to bring the fight out in the open, yes, while still playing by the regime’s rules in a way, but out in the open, because that still keeps open the possibility of a community of resistance. Being able to hide stuff only generates conspirators, but keeping (even if heavily camouflaged) resistance out in the open has bigger chances of eventually toppling any given regime, because people power consists in numbers, and you can’t have numbers if the default setting is “hide behind a VPN”.
The best argument in my opinion against "nothing to hide" is that you don't get to decide that. The accuser does. If that doesn't scare you then you didn't think it through fully.
A change in regieme is a downright terrifying variant of Pascal's Wager - where you are judged for heresies against ideologies that were obscure or didn't even exist yet.
The Khmer Rogue made being an intellectual or wearing glasses something to hide. All sorts of absurd ideological hypotheticals become terrifying.
Protecting your anonymity isn't a sign that you're hiding something because you have done something wrong. It is because you're cautious. Even the most benign information can be use against you. European Jews in the early 1900s gave census takers the info yhat they were Jews. Decades later that info was collated with punch card machines by the Nazis to build family trees to hunt them down. This is an example of how "innocent" info can be weaponized in ways you would never dream of.
Unfortunately similar to US census data being used to intern Japanese during the war.
This is also happening right now with ICE combing through the various federal databases that they previously didn't have access to.
But the worst thing is that the sheer amounts of compute available to even fairly small organizations, never mind governments, means that it's so easy to data mine stuff like that. And now there's AI to do the same with unstructured data. And meanwhile our corporate overlords are happy to profit from it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46349281
It depends on what you fears are. You can also generate chaotic signals and learn what happens then make it public.
Like a journalist.
I think there is an error of omission in the article. Organized crime syndicates can inflict harm just as well as a corrupted government can, and usually with less recourse. To advocate total privacy for everyone has nontrivial costs in addition to the nontrivial benefits.
I am trying to burn my bridges well enough not to be accepted to the clan of complacent narcissists.
I'm well aware of the possible and even unavoidable consequences of the current trajectory.
But this is a conscious decision to try to shape the norm so that the current dystopian zillionaire future would not happen fully.
My reasoning is most likely the humanely typical post-hoc rationalization and strategic reasoning, but I try to think good old MLK quote fits it.
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends"
I was meaning to write complicit but complacent autocorrupt fits surprisingly well.
I believe the entire western world is sleep walking into totalitarianism. It's soft glove right now, but mass surveillance, no matter what the original purpose, only needs concentration of power to turn into something truly inhumane. We've seen it already and that was well before technology pushed the boundaries of what is now possible.
I just want to remind everyone that the technology and the police and all of that crap utterly failed to prevent the attacks at Brown and MIT. Total and complete failure. The only thing that mattered was some burned out genius that the world forgot who was illegally living the basement of the engineering building because he had literally nowhere else to go. And then they didn't even catch the killer, he controlled all the events and killed himself two entire days before he was found.
Mass surveillance is a false god as are background checks and pretty much every other measure human take to try and feel safer because there is no safety and never was.
Weird example. The redditor only identified the perpetrator of the shooting because the police pulled video surveillance from all across campus and widely distributed it. He wouldn’t have been able to associate the vehicle with the suspect without those images.
Am I the only one who doesn't take this statement literally and immediately extrapolate it to all aspects of an individual's existence? "I have nothing to hide" is a broad statement that clearly encompasses "everything", but it's often said in the context of a specific thing that a person doesn't care about.
Those of you who would ask someone for financial information after they say this, would you also say "it's hot out side" if they described something as cool during the summer?
Ultimately, given the complexity of security, expecting there to be some cultural shift on privacy is silly unless it's made trivially easy. We can't get people to eat right, exercise, or control their screen time and social media use and all of those have more immediate and tangible consequences.
I appreciate the message, but I don't think the call to action is practical.
Protecting your anonymity isn't a sign that you're hiding something because you have done something wrong. It is because you're cautious. Benign information can be used against you. European Jews in the early 1900s gave census takers the info they were Jews. Decades later that info was collated with punch card machines by the Nazis to build family trees to hunt them down. This is an example of how "innocent" info can be weaponized in ways you would never dream of.
Speak softly and carry a big stick. Im a fairly private person. Id also end my life in defense of freedom and autonomy... I read posts like this and I cant imagine what an extremist like this is trying to protect? To continue living a life in shadow? Well, when the time comes that his giant "machine" the governments all poorly maintain and utilize finally awakens and results in concentration camps... you better forget all you knew about dumb technology, hope you have a big stick.
To think, "no presence" = no problems. If I were a dumb machine, I just might decide to pick up all citizens with birth certs that are also internet ghosts. What was the point then?
What is your big stick? Governments and large corporations are unfathomably powerful these days.
Them: "I have nothing to hide!"
Me: "What is your salary? Can I see your medical records?"
Them: "Oh wait"
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I’d try to take this seriously, but:
https://thompson2026.com/declaration_of_war/
Umm- not sure we’re playing with a full deck here.
You should take it seriously.
We are not playing. At all.
It's all hands on deck, is what the (would-be) Captain is saying.
Be there or be square.
Going all the way then?
Not sure if the world can handle anonympotus.
Just taking it for a ride?
I wonder if, in the libertarian worldview, privacy legislation is viewed as a force for good preserving liberty or evil stifling free enterprise.
Certainly there are many who use privacy to safely be opposed to things. Being in a database having some characteristic means you are selectable for that and therefore targetable for it. And there is a herd immunity in that if everyone is in a database but you, being absent from it is as good as being in it with the characteristic of “opted out of this information” and therefore everyone being private protects the ones who most need privacy. All of this is sound.
In many ways, I have lived my life in a way opposite to this. My genome is public, many of my life affairs are public[0], and I have had a child in a manner[1] that many people[2] have expressed antipathy for. It is entirely possible, perhaps even likely that my family and I will face consequences for this. I won’t pretend I have nothing to fear.
So why do it? Perhaps it’s worth looking at others who have done the same. Being gay in America was a great risk once. The mechanism of defence in that society was for homosexual people to operate in what we now call the “don’t ask; don’t tell” environment. By having a general taboo about discussing sexual identity in certain contexts it was possible for gay people to not be threatened. If you didn’t know anyone’s sexual identity how could you harm the homosexuals among them?
Why then did gay people decide to abandon the safety of privacy and push for public acceptance? Do they regret this new world where many gay people are known to be gay? I think that as a whole, those who are gay prefer to live in this society of open acceptance than that society of private tolerance.
I won’t pretend that all places in the world are like this. I would be much more hesitant to do this in the country of my birth: India. And even California’s checkered history with gay marriage is outmatched by, say, the Netherlands.
So it’s not risk-free to be public, but sometimes it’s worth it. In our case, I think humanity stands to benefit greatly from modern biotechnology. I think many people who would previously struggle to have children or who may fear passing on some disease can now safely have children. I think this is very important.
And I think I would rather we defend the medicine required for this in law and legislation (like GINA) than that we silently and privately tolerate it. My wife and I are normal people. My daughter so far is healthy and I pray she grows up and lives as such. I want you to know that this is what this technology is for: normal people to increase the chance they will have healthy children.
That’s why I’m public. Not because I have nothing to hide. But that I think it’s sometimes worthwhile to say “I could have hidden this but I would prefer for it to be publicly accepted”.
0: on my blog you will see a pregnancy log, and an IVF log, and pre-implantation screening results
1: we sequenced every embryo and chose one unaffected by the condition we share
2: from right wing non-profits to members of this forum or normal people reading the news, examples to follow
https://www.liveaction.org/news/reproductive-startup-sequenc... (Inaccurate accusation here - the third was aneuploid)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/16/orchid-... (Scroll down to see us - click comments to see the overwhelming opposition but with gratifyingly some support)
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I disagree
What really matters is judiciary due process and the legitimacy of a government.
Companies are the ones gathering data, it's not the government doing it.
Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens.
The internet makes it more difficult for the government to catch criminals and fraudsters.
If you live in Russia or China or under Trump's administration, there are good reasons to hide.
If you live in a country where freedoms and due process are respected, there is no point in hiding, UNLESS you can really argue that due process and freedoms are eroding, but that's a different debate.
> If you live in a country where freedoms and due process are respected
History and current events show that this is not a static fact you can rely on in the slightest.
> If you live in a country where freedoms and due process are respected, there is no point in hiding, UNLESS you can really argue that due process and freedoms are eroding, but that's a different debate.
This assumes usage of collected data stays the same forever. But regime changes do happen, and once the data has been allowed to be collected, you have no power. I think Trumpland was once considered a state where freedoms and due process were once respected.
For example data of your period, if you're female...
Considering the reckless lawlessness of the current regime of "the shining beacon of democracy", I wonder if they could retroactively convict "murders of unborn babies" and find them by trawling to online health data and looking back at gaps of female periods.
It was once considered that, but it was never actually that. Ever since it was founded it was locking up or killing the people with different skin colours, over and over and over and over and over!
Any country can turn to a dictatorship in three years. We just had a fine demostration.
Once your data is out there it's too late. If the hypothetical country you live in - where freedom & due process is respected - suddenly has an authoritarian change of direction, you're done.
It's my understanding that, organically or under external influences, many democratic countries in EU are at the emerging risk of going full fascists. I see that in France, Le Pen & friends don't hide the fact that they'd make a new constitution.
Richest guy in the world has vowed to use his propaganda power to make this happen for the sake of cancelling the EU, fun times
governments have always collected "data*", and use it for power/controll, any company doing so is actualy hoping that the government like's the stink of there particular shit, but now as forever, false positives/negatives will undermine and destroy a career. The true "nothing to hide" good honest decent folks, will almost certainly leave a convoluted trail of there meandering through life that can and will lead anywhere, but as the author points out, that other relentlessly "perfect" demographic is likely to be dangerous competition, rather than a general danger, and so will be assesed as to potential threat/uses, almost like a job interview...potentialy usefull idiots
Could you post your internet browsing history there, please? Don't be short on details.
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> Before the internet, governments already had data on their citizens.
Indeed, and there were some notorious examples of how that was abused for large scale oppression (with Holocaust being the pinnacle), so why would we want them to have even more data.