HN

Comments (109)

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  blaze33
  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...
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  alan-crowe
  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.
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  BLKNSLVR
  > We must all become deviationsAlready 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.
• general1465
  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.
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  sjducb
  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
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  codethief
  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.)
• delichon
  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.
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  Wowfunhappy
  > 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?
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  NGRhodes
  "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.
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  nkrisc
  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.
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  vovavili
  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.
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  Animats
  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.
• djoldman
  "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.
• ankur3
  "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!
• sallveburrpi
  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.”
• myself248
  2013 called: https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to...
• mystraline
  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.
• xtiansimon
  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=9ZYuVSlPsfEgQyc9Of 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
• pino999
  It depends on what you fears are. You can also generate chaotic signals and learn what happens then make it public.Like a journalist.
• anon
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• clejack
  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.
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  t0bia_s
  - I have nothing to hide.- Sure, but why are you closing the door when taking sh*? Is your sh*ing somehow special?
• anon
  undefined
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  shrubby
  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"
• charlescearl
  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.
• tyrust
  I wonder if, in the libertarian worldview, privacy legislation is viewed as a force for good preserving liberty or evil stifling free enterprise.
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  NickForLiberty
  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.
• drfranks
  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.
• ndsipa_pomu
  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.
• lisbbb
  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.
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  amelius
  Them: "I have nothing to hide!"Me: "What is your salary? Can I see your medical records?"Them: "Oh wait"
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  globalnode
  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.
• like_any_other
  > 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...
• arjie
  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 results1: we sequenced every embryo and chose one unaffected by the condition we share2: from right wing non-profits to members of this forum or normal people reading the news, examples to followhttps://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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  spacecadet
  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?
• bongripper
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• draw_down
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  jokoon
  I disagreeWhat 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.