What is a good comeback or argument towards people who say “But I have nothing to hide” when you try to information them that privacy is important?
Had that conversation at a bar with a smart wise friend. Basically went like this :
- Bob : privacy is important
- Alice : sure, but I have nothing to hide
- Bob : OK, so what’s your salary
- Alice : I don’t mind telling you
- Bob : cool, do you mind if I tell that random stranger?
- Alice : hmmm OK, no problem
- Bob : now do you mind if I sell that information to a stranger?
- Alice : well…
- Bob : and how about I sell it to them but I do not share any of that with you?
- Alice : no, that’s not fair.
TL;DR: privacy, or lack of, isn’t really what triggers people, what does is the abuse of it.
My HR told me that: “but I have nothing to hide”, so I asked her to log into her bank account and to show me how much she has in each account, how much she is paid and what she bought in the last 6 months.
She refused, and I reply “but why not?”
That was the end of it.
Saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
Absolutely this! Oh man, this is goood.
"Your wife has nothing to hide in the shower if she’s a law abiding citizen, which is why I’ll be livestreaming her showers.
Unless…she’s a terrorist?"
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What’s not worth hiding today may very well change tomorrow. You never know what moronic laws may come to pass. US example, the war on pregnant women.
My spouse didn’t get it until she watched Meredith Whittaker’s SXSW talk. I just wasn’t eloquent enough. She admitted I had made the same points, but not as well. Show people that video. https://www.youtube.com/live/AyH7zoP-JOg
Then why do they have a lock on their phone? Their house? Why do they wear pants? They already won’t give their phone number or email address to anyone who asks. They already practice privacy.
It’s not about having something to hide, it’s about protecting what you share against misuse. Think identity theft.
I’ve had this discussion with friends because I’m the crazy “privacy” person in my peer group. I always have trouble putting it into words, so this might not make the most sense, but I’ll try.
The most fundamental right that we have as humans is the right to present to the world the person that we want to present to the world.
Everybody has something about themselves that, if it were known, would change the way other people look at them. Maybe it’s something silly and stupid like you’re afraid of spiders. Maybe you’re into some really freaky porn. But whatever it is, if you don’t want people to know about it, that’s your right and it’s sacrosanct.
People will say, “who cares if people know that you’re afraid of spiders, it’s a small price to pay if it means that we also catch the people with something illegal to hide, like CSAM or other stuff.”
But what about the battered wife who has been secretly searching for support and planning her escape from the situation on the internet. But she shares a computer with her abusive husband and google, knowing her search history, starts showing him ads about furniture and moving companies?
What about the scared teenager who has realized that he is gay and have parents who would disown him if they found out. When he’s searching for support and fellowship online, the only place where he can feel like he belongs, he can be as careful as he wants, but his search history will eventually betray him before he’s ready to come out himself.
Maybe what you don’t want people to know about is just that you’re afraid of spiders, sure. But what if it’s something far more important.
I ask why they lock the door on the toilet.
They usually splutter about social norms etc and I point out that it’s a social norm they mind their own fucking business about my affairs
I close the door when I poop.
It’s no secret, and I’m not doing anything wrong, but it’s MY business and nobody else’s.
Have you ever considered pooping with an open door? Bathroom doors aren’t real and are merely a social construct everyone had to blindly agree to without questioning.
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Nothing to hide doesn’t mean everything to share. When it comes to id verification specifically talk about:
- how storing millions of IDs will be a tempting honeypot for hackers, making data breaches much more likely and much more common.
- how these companies will become a digital playground for traffickers searching through leaked IDs, looking for potential trafficking victims.
- how these laws could lead to stalking, harassment, and get people murdered or raped.
- how these laws could escalate political violence in a society already divided and rife with polarization. Having access to someone’s address, searching their address on Google Maps, seeing a political sign in the yard is political violence waiting to happen.
- how these laws could very well lead to someone committing suicide after their ID is leaked and posted, which led to them being stalked or harassed.
When people doubt you or accuse you of paranoia, concern trolling, or fear mongering:
- Remind them about the Tea app incident (in which 13,000 IDs were leaked and posted online) and ask what if Facebook, Instagram, or Reddit is next?
- Tell them: Don’t underestimate hackers and don’t trust these companies to delete your information.
- Tell them: Don’t underestimate what people are actually capable of and the kinds of ideas that go through people’s heads (there are some really bad people and really unhinged people in the world).
- Even accuse your politicians and lawmakers of backing or being behind human trafficking rings if you have to to let them know how serious these risks are.
Also remind them that wanting surveillance to make sure everyone is following the law is bad because not all laws are good! Civil disobedience is a powerful tool against tyranny and we must protect it. I don’t want a society where no one breaks the law.
Nothing to hide
This word ‘hide’ is quite problematic, however, it is a testament to the power of propaganda. Using the word ‘hide’ gives the connotation of doing something nefarious. ‘What are you hiding? It must be bad else you wouldn’t be hiding it.’ Keys and locks prevent unauthorized access, full stop. They do not portend nor foreshadow guilt in any way. If they did, everyone with a key chain in their pocket would go directly to jail.
We generate data everyday in our digital lives. Whom does it belong to? Me!! This is my data. I generated it with my labor. I secure it. I archive it. I mother hen it. I reserve the right to share it or not. My labor may just be in the form of clickety click click, but it’s still my property. As much my property as any worldly possessions I may own. It is certainly not to property of corporate business who are involved with surveillance capitalism. When a corporation’s website checks cookies to see where I’ve been previously, and use that data to bolster the company’s profit margins, without giving me due compensation, that is THEFT. It is as much theft as if I walked into the self same company’s CFO’s office, picked up a paperweight off his desk, and walked out with it. It’s theft. One of the biggest thieves on the planet that readily comes to mind is Google. Ever wonder how Google got it’s fingers into everyone’s pie? They build their multi billion dollar company on the data of it’s users. They stole it.
It also doesn’t belong to the government either. One of the questions I get asked a lot is, ‘Are you hiding from the government’ which I think is hilarious. I send them tax forms every year. Every four years I vote, and in local elections. Long time ago, Social Security used to send me letters telling me how much they weren’t going to give me of my money. What a crock of shit that is. While I am not ‘hiding’ from the government, there is absolute no reason to overshare either.
The same mechanisms that provide security, protection, and privacy in the home, be they locks on the front door, surveillance cams, window blinds, alarm systems, are the same mechanisms that keep your data safe, secure, and private on your network. Just because I have black out curtains on my windows doesn’t mean I am hiding a damn thing. It means I wish to keep whatever it is that I am doing, private. Same with data my data.
Encrypting something does not mean being guilty of hiding something nefarious. It is a key and a lock that prevents unauthorized access.
Sorry for the rant. You make great points. It just makes me cringe when people say ‘hide’. It’s like little fingernails on the chalkboard of my mind.
Saying ‘I don’t care about privacy because I have nothing to hide’ is the same as saying ‘I don’t care about free speech because I have nothing to say’
I simply qoute Edward snowden. “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.”
That phrase was also propaganda used by the Nazi’s in ww2 aswell as media
You won’t get anywhere if you use the “leave your bathroom door open” or “unlock your phone and give it to me” arguments, because to them that is a different thing and they pretty much know what it means to have privacy on those aspects. What they don’t care about are the things they don’t see (i.e. social media tracking, location data access, etc.) and that’s what they consider nothing-to-hide-nothing-to-fear.
So the best examples I could think of to counter those arguments are:
- Surveillance pricing
- Abysmal security of home security cameras
If they DO care that prices on the stuff they buy is influenced based on their habits and the data companies collect on them, or if they DO care that anyone can potentially tap into their home cameras to watch even just their outdoor cameras (let alone indoor ones), then they DO care about privacy and just don’t realize it.
