Your thoughts on, "Well if you have nothing to hide..."

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

So, what do you think of this quote? Pro and Cons welcomes and let a hear both sides. Or is the main question Privacy vs Safety?

I don't think there is safety without privacy. If anybody government can snoop on anybody, then the supposed "bad guys" can do, too. If the government is not only not helping privacy, but actively discouraging it, they are helping the "bad guys". It's a really big contradiction to claim the opposite. That's my thoughts on the matter, in short.

This... This is one of the best points you could make, and it really is that simple. Hackers especially malicious ones can use those government monitoring tools for their own ill-intentioned ends.

Also remember that if the Government is removing your privacy, they're also infringing on your liberty.

I'll paraphrase good ole Ben Franklin: Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety, will neither receive, or deserve either.

 

[newfoundsky]

I think I have a rather unique experience with this. I once was parking with an ex girlfriend at the time a couple of years ago and wound up getting caught by the fuzz.

Me and the ex got dressed and I rolled the window down for Mr Fuzz and was very polite throughout the whole incident. He was polite right back. He asked what we were doing, and I explained that we had come out to where we were for a bit of privacy. He laughed and said he could see that (the ex was red as a strawberry by this point).

Then he asked if he could search my vehicle. I told him no. So he arrested me after previously indicating I was about to receive a written warning.

He visited me in holding and said the following sentence: "I tore your truck apart but couldn't find a damn thing. Why would you say no if you had nothing to hide?"

So even if you have nothing to hide, if you try and hide it, you could probably still get in trouble for nothing.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah...being innocent and having nothing to hide isn't the same thing. Don't put your spy cameras in my bathroom, even if I'm not committing any crimes in there.

 

[Mutant1988]

He visited me in holding and said the following sentence: "I tore your truck apart but couldn't find a damn thing. Why would you say no if you had nothing to hide?"

So even if you have nothing to hide, if you try and hide it, you could probably still get in trouble for nothing.

Catch 22:

If you have nothing to hide, you say no.
If you say no, that means you have something to hide.

If you say yes, even though you have nothing to hide, you give blanket permission to have your privacy and property invaded at any time, or any reason.

It is, literally, impossible for you to refuse to have your privacy compromised.

That is ****ed up.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

He visited me in holding and said the following sentence: "I tore your truck apart but couldn't find a damn thing. Why would you say no if you had nothing to hide?"

So even if you have nothing to hide, if you try and hide it, you could probably still get in trouble for nothing.

Catch 22:

If you have nothing to hide, you say no.
If you say no, that means you have something to hide.

If you say yes, even though you have nothing to hide, you give blanket permission to have your privacy and property invaded at any time, or any reason.

It is, literally, impossible for you to refuse to have your privacy compromised.

That is ****ed up.

That's because it's become quite a thing for police departments, at least here in the USA, to search and if they find any suspiciously large sum of money they confiscate it. That money is then funnelled into the police department once it's released from evidence, it's almost impossible for the individual it was taken from to get it back. Also that officer had better have had really really good probable cause to do what he did. Other wise one could in foreseeable fashion sue the police department for the invasion of privacy, which more people in this situation need to do. Once it becomes too risky to search vehicles in these cases because of how flimsy the probable cause can be, they'll stop doing it. Especially when it starts costing officers their jobs, and police departments money.

 

[Pinkamena]

then you watch some MLP, due to the existence of the "clopping" community they've pegged you as a deviant with childish fixations

Damn those bronies

 

[Zhukov]

I used to say that.

Then I ended up getting saddled with something that, despite not being remotely illegal or sinister, I would still generally prefer to hide.

So yeah.

 

[Mutant1988]

It's actually an example of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton%27s_fork

Catch 22 is more of a concept than an actual rule, to refer to circular reasoning and no-win situations like the above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_%28logic%29

One sentence in particular is important:

"One connotation of the term is that the creators of the "catch-22" have created arbitrary rules in order to justify and conceal their own abuse of power."

If you agree to be searched, you are searched.
If you refuse to be searched, there is reason to search you and you get searched.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

It's actually an example of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton%27s_fork

Catch 22 is more of a concept than an actual rule, to refer to circular reasoning and no-win situations like the above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_%28logic%29

One sentence in particular is important:

"One connotation of the term is that the creators of the "catch-22" have created arbitrary rules in order to justify and conceal their own abuse of power."

If you agree to be searched, you are searched.
If you refuse to be searched, there is reason to search you and you get searched.

Well the arbitrary rules fall flat in court. Because once again at least in the USA police need substantial probable cause. Refusal of a search is not probable cause, due in part to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

 

[jklinders]

I rather like the rules we have concerning prohibition of search and seizure without cause. If the police or government feel they have a reason to believe that I am involved in something, they can get a judge to sign a court order then they can do whatever. Seems to me, if they can't get enough evidence together to get that order signed then they are likely barking up the wrong tree.

The US and Canada both are pioneering new and improved ways to catalog and store every snatch of data we sniff through remotely and utterly quietly. Canada has quite quietly and sneakily been at the forefront of tech in sniffing at people's personal lives. So much of our lives have quietly been going more and more online people who believe that there is no harm in governments or police doing this without a warrant have no idea how much they are giving up. Surveillance on this scale could quickly turn a democracy into a dictatorship as we would have no way to communicate without being sniffed out. Maybe an extreme example but I would not go so far as to call it paranoid.

Privacy is very close to if not completely gone I'm afraid.

 

[Mutant1988]

Privacy is very close to if not completely gone I'm afraid.

There's always darknets.

But then the same issue applies. Do you want your data to not be monitored? Then you must be a criminal and should have your data monitored.

Doesn't help that the public perception of darknets are negative, believing that only criminals would use them. A notion that governments are more than happy to promote.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

I don't want every bit of porn I've searched or downloaded to be recorded. And if I or others decide to stand up in a political arena to fight corruption, I don't want those already in power to a have file of every little piece of dirt available on me or the other person at their grubby little finger tips.

 

[jklinders]

Privacy is very close to if not completely gone I'm afraid.

There's always darknets.

But then the same issue applies. Do you want your data to not be monitored? Then you must be a criminal and should have your data monitored.

Doesn't help that the public perception of darknets are negative, believing that only criminals would use them. A notion that governments are more than happy to promote.

To be fair, they would start with "the internet" where the overwhelming majority of traffic is. Once they have that locked down they would infiltrate the darknets. More effort and resources needed but once the infrastructure to spy on the regular internet is in place they could simply creep in a little more each year on the unofficial channels. I would think that the darknets need servers too and they can sooner or later be traced. It just isn't worth it at the moment. It all depends on how totalitarian they all want to be.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Encrypt encrypt encrypt. It's fairly easy to find encryption resources that even the government's can't break. One lucky thing about all the data they snatch up on the internet. The volume is so god awful massive that you'd need the population of every country just to sift through it all. Looking for specific key words helps find "threats" but since the threat filters are so sensitive, almost everyone qualifies, so the watch lists are actually useless.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I don't know , it's hard for me to say. Like there's an 'ick' factor in the idea of my privacy being invaded but on the other hand is my discomfort worth losing a life that could have been saved? If the cops hands aren't tied they might be able to arrest a serial killer soon or stop a terrorist or whatever, is that worth my being uncomfortable with some stranger who doesn't give a fuck about me going through my stuff and not giving me a second thought at the end of the day because he's seen the same every day?

The whole concept of society is that we've exchanged freedom for security, and that's good. I've lost the freedom to deal with my annoying neighbour by jumping the fence and bashing him, which is not be what I want but it is lost freedom. In exchange I get to walk down the street relatively secure I'm the knowledge I probably won't be robbed.

 

[Mutant1988]

Encrypt encrypt encrypt. It's fairly easy to find encryption resources that even the government's can't break. One lucky thing about all the data they snatch up on the internet. The volume is so god awful massive that you'd need the population of every country just to sift through it all. Looking for specific key words helps find "threats" but since the threat filters are so sensitive, almost everyone qualifies, so the watch lists are actually useless.

Didn't Kim Dotcom introduce an email service with supposedly government proof encryption (It's really just a matter of time though)? That's a good start.

But then again, putting your information into the hands of private companies isn't that great of a idea either.

My point though is that we are made a target of surveillance (And public condemnation) for even discussing these services and for using them. No one more so than whoever facilitates the service.

Because when key words fail, they will target anyone that could even possibly evade their scrutiny.

It's just an unwinnable scenario where big brother always, ALWAYS win.

The only way to "win" is not to play at all. Be quiet and not do anything whatsoever.

 

[CrystalShadow]

It's absolute garbage.

To begin with, everyone has something they don't want the whole world seeing.

More importantly, what you have that needs hiding can change overnight.

While bringing up ww2 is bad form I guess, have you ever looked into how the Nazis found all the jews living in the Netherlands?

The dutch government kept some of the most detailed and accurate census data of that era.
And while the dutch government could certainly be trusted with it, and wasn't doing anything suspicious, guess what? Germany invaded and took all the records, and used them for horrific purposes.

Ask yourself, next time you get a census form... If you had stated you were jewish in the 1920's, that would have been completely innocent. Yet having said so in the 20's or 30's would likely have gotten you killed in the 1940's...

People that say 'I have nothing to hide' are probably lying anyway, even in the immediate sense, but they are also being incredibly short-sighted.

Hopefully it won't but events like what happened in the second world war could certainly repeat themselves. Misuse of confidential information by a group you didn't even give it to in the first place...
It probably won't be jews this time though. You never can be quite sure what would get you in trouble...

Besides which, if some organisation collects massive amounts of data on you, they may start putting things together out of context, and come to dangerous conclusions.

2 + 2 + 2 = 28

Can happen really easily.

Let's say I did an internet search for household cleaning products, read a wikipedia article about gunpowder (for historical curiosity), am registered with a flying club, and have searched some stuff related to islamic extremists (just because it's been in the news a lot), and maybe a few sites talking about the evils of capitalism...

What do you think someone might infer from that? How likely do you think it is they'd reach some problematic conclusions?

Even though there's no pattern there, and in reality it's a series of random things, it's easy to assume it's all related, and means something that would make a person look suspicious, even though they are not...

That's to say nothing of other inferences...

Oh wait, this person is an adult, and they like anime... They must be a peadophile... >_>

You know. What seems innocent from one perspective can look suspicious from another.
And you really can't predict it that easily...

 

[Mutant1988]

I don't want people to find out that I'm actually incredibly racist.

Spoiler

I'm not. But who's not to say that anything I have said or done wouldn't support such a claim? Or that anyone that can go into my files would never ever consider putting that there, to discredit me. There's a whole lot of things that can go wrong when you let people go through your stuff with no limitations whatsoever. We know for a fact that planting evidence HAS happened and CAN happen.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Encrypt encrypt encrypt. It's fairly easy to find encryption resources that even the government's can't break. One lucky thing about all the data they snatch up on the internet. The volume is so god awful massive that you'd need the population of every country just to sift through it all. Looking for specific key words helps find "threats" but since the threat filters are so sensitive, almost everyone qualifies, so the watch lists are actually useless.

Didn't Kim Dotcom introduce an email service with supposedly government proof encryption (It's really just a matter of time though)? That's a good start.

But then again, putting your information into the hands of private companies isn't that great of a idea either.

My point though is that we are made a target of surveillance (And public condemnation) for even discussing these services and for using them. No one more so than whoever facilitates the service.

Because when key words fail, they will target anyone that could even possibly evade their scrutiny.

It's just an unwinnable scenario where big brother always, ALWAYS win.

The only way to "win" is not to play at all. Be quiet and not do anything whatsoever.

Remember that a big part of why this huge surveillance program is failing is because the net is cast too wide. They capture and download three days of global internet traffic at a time, and at any given time there are millions of discussions like this going on. Even if they catch our data and sift it, they'll find basically nothing interesting. It's all based on the fact there's just way too much data really to handle. Even if they flag us for further inspection, they'll find in most cases rather uninteresting stuff, with maybe some porn searches, and possibly unusual things we find interesting in Google searches like what kind of spiders fascinate us to read a whole Wikipedia article on, or that someone likes to gross them self out by watching videos of people popping zits. They're basically trying to dam what is essentially a black hole of data.

 

[ghostrider9876]

*obligatory Benjamin Franklin liberty/security quote*

I don't care whether or not I have anything to "hide." I don't feel like the government should have carte blanche to snoop on anything and everything I do. Due to reading a LOT of Cracked articles and at times wanting more information on a subject, I expect my search history makes me look at best a bit shady and at worst mentally ill. I'm also not that keen on Big Brother knowing what kinks get my motor running.