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

[dreng3]

The problem with the Benjamin Frankling quote, which three or so people have posted, is that trading som liberty for some security is not a bad idea. Truth is that very few people would appreciate total liberty, since most aren't interested in bying nuclear weapons or completely unrestricted access to firearms.
In the end the discussion isn't whether we are willing to trade liberty for safety, because I guarantee that someone will trade at least part of their liberty for some safty, but rather what liberty we are willing to trade for what safety.

 

[small]

it feels weird to say it but its definitely a belief and saying of younger people who are used to sharing everything in their lives. anyone who is around my age of 40, tends to have a really negative gut reaction to government snooping along with corporate snooping as well.

its amazing what you can condition people to accept including pervasive surveillance of all their activities

as for having nothing to hide. EVERYONE does something privately that will effect them negatively if it ever got out. surf some niche porn sites as teenager? congratulations you now have something that could destroy your career as a politician or doctor. not to mention people do slightly illegal things all the time.

privacy is a right not a privileged

 

[Thaluikhain]

The problem with the Benjamin Frankling quote, which three or so people have posted, is that trading som liberty for some security is not a bad idea. Truth is that very few people would appreciate total liberty, since most aren't interested in bying nuclear weapons or completely unrestricted access to firearms.
In the end the discussion isn't whether we are willing to trade liberty for safety, because I guarantee that someone will trade at least part of their liberty for some safty, but rather what liberty we are willing to trade for what safety.

Well, the quote say "essential liberties", but does not specify them. You have to leave yourself some wiggle room there.

 

[Mutant1988]

it feels weird to say it but its definitely a belief and saying of younger people who are used to sharing everything in their lives. anyone who is around my age of 40, tends to have a really negative gut reaction to government snooping along with corporate snooping as well.

its amazing what you can condition people to accept including pervasive surveillance of all their activities

as for having nothing to hide. EVERYONE does something privately that will effect them negatively if it ever got out. surf some niche porn sites as teenager? congratulations you now have something that could destroy your career as a politician or doctor. not to mention people do slightly illegal things all the time.

privacy is a right not a privileged

You would think that kids would buy a clue and be able to figure out how to put two and two together when their social medias get flooded with reports of bloggers and activists against certain current governments are being incarcerated or murdered.

That could just as well be your government. And if your government has claimed a right to see everything you do, then you are ****ed.

I like the idea of the second amendment in that it gives normal people a chance (If not right) to fight back against unlawful violence, if they are subjected to it.

Wish my country had something like it.

 

[Queen Michael]

This kind of thinking is ridiculous. The fact that I've nothing immoral to hide gives you less of an excuse to watch me, not more.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

Sure. I honestly wouldn't care.
It would just be hard to draw a line of what's acceptable and stuff.

Though they should be restricted to only what they are investigating. Or it will turn into an excuse to arrest people for piracy and such.

 

[Pseudonym]

"I don't mind if the government checks my emails and records my phone calls. I have nothing to hide"

Yeah, in a way, you are correct. You haven't done anything illegal and have proof that you haven't, then you are safe. But are you really 100% safe?

Ehm, no. It happens to work like that in a majority of cases in the present day in some parts of the world. However, Guantanamo bay and it's often innocent victims are a thing. The red scare was a thing not alltogether that long ago. The great purge and the holocaust happened to entirely innocent people not a century ago. These things happen, not just in the bad parts in the world. Anyone who doesn't pretend to themselves that the world is a happy place of rainbow and chocolate rivers knows that if you are innocent you still have something to fear. Even if you aren't harmed by it, spying on people because you view them as potential terrorists is a bad thing to do regardless. You shouldn't threat people like threaths until you have good reason to believe they are indeed threathening to you.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Here's the funny thing, a lot of people have stuff they want to hide, but that isn't actually illegal or harmful.

Like, I have a friend who is currently living with family members, and is a cross dresser. If that gets out to his family, he's fairly certain that they will treat him like a freak and maybe kick him out. It's something harmless, but something he also has to keep hidden.

Another example. I have two friends who are into BDSM. If that gets out, they might lose their jobs because their bosses find it "creepy", they might run into other trouble, their families might be shocked and treat them like freaks, etc. And yet, again, it's not something harmful or even illegal, but they need to hide it.

So yeah, privacy is important.

On another note, I don't trust government officials with my information on that level. They're people too. What guarantee do I have that someone in power won't try to blackmail me, coerce me, or slander me (should I ever run for office) with that information?

Finally, one last point. If you have nothing to hide, then SURELY you don't mind the government installing a camera in your SHOWER, right? After all, you have nothing to hide, right?

 

[Erttheking]

When people say "if you have nothing to hide" they usually think about OTHER people. They completely change their tune when it's them being searched.

Frankly if anyone says "I have nothing to hide" I'm gonna ask them for a record of every e-mail they've had in the last five years, just to see their reaction.

 

[DoPo]

Frankly if anyone says "I have nothing to hide" I'm gonna ask them for a record of every e-mail they've had in the last five years, just to see their reaction.

Just ask them for their credit/debit card details. To be posted on a public place, of course - if they just give them to you that stinks of "hiding", doesn't it?

 

[A_Parked_Car]

I always find it amusing that people honestly think:

1. That the US was/is recording the content of everyone's emails or phone calls. Not true, they were collecting metadata. What email accounts were corresponding to what other email accounts. Times phone calls were being made, stuff like that. Not the content of the emails and phone calls themselves. It allowed them to identify people who were regularly corresponding with known terrorist or criminal-linked email addresses or phone numbers, etc.

and more importantly:

2. That they would have the manpower and resources to systematically look through every Joe Blow American's personal email and phone records even if they had been gathering such information. There is a massive difference between intelligence collection and intelligence analysis. One of the biggest problems throughout intelligence history concerns a lack of analysis capabilities, not collection. In other words, being overwhelmed with so much stuff that the intelligence effectively becomes useless. After all, information is only useful if you have the resources to see it, interpret it and then act on it in a timely fashion.

What it means is that not only does the NSA/FBI or whoever not care about your love affair, foot fetish, amount of downloaded Japanese lesbian porn or number of times you have called in sick for work when you really weren't. They didn't record that information in the first place, again metadata, not recordings. Even if they did, they don't have the capability to sift through all that crap. There would just be too much. The only time they would be really looking into the content of your emails is if you were regularly corresponding with a known-terrorist or criminal.

The "nothing to hide" argument consequently holds a lot of water. It is more of a morale issue than a practical one as the means to truly spy on everyone all the time simply don't exist outside of what was East Germany, which used an extensive system of informants. It turned regular people against each other rather than only relying on a small group of intelligence officers in the Stasi, who would have been overwhelmed. Now if you disagree with a government gathering information on you on a morale level, which I don't necessarily agree with, then that is entirely understandable. I personally feel more apprehensive about the information private corporations and the like know about me. Google and Facebook know far more about me than the government does. To quote Dr. John Ferris, one of the world's leading experts on the study of intelligence:

"It isn't 'big brother' [the government] that worries me. It is the dozens of 'little brothers' [private corporations, individual hackers, etc.] that keep me up at night."

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

[George Carlin mode ACTIVATE]

Anytime I meet someone that says something like that, you know what I'd do?

I'd stand on their vehicle, unzip my pants and drop a loaf right on their windshield. And if they go to complain, I'd say, "Well, I had nothing to hide."

[George Carlin mode DEACTIVATE]

OT: You know, I think there was a song about this topic. It may not fully encapsulate the conditions of the OP...

Spoiler: But I think it gets the point across

 

[Johnny Impact]

[conspiracy]While they may not have the right to listen to your private conversations, check your browsing history, etc, the fact is they are already doing this. The government has the right to question you about anything. Whether or not they have the right to disappear you is somewhat moot because they certainly have the ability. Google the wrong thing and you can spend the rest of your life being waterboarded in some nameless concrete shithole while your family believes you're a missing person. Due process gets chucked out the window if they decide you're a threat.[/conspiracy]

OT: I'd like to see full disclosure from the people who say that. The instant they speak the words, there's a post on their Facebook wall (or wherever) providing total revelation of every dirty little secret they've ever tried to keep. "Well, if you have nothing to hide...." **Bam!** 'In addition to having a full-blown extramarital affair, this man also screwed his son's babysitter twice. He doesn't love his wife, hasn't for years, though he lies to her every day about it. He's also responsible for damage to two of his coworkers' cars, for which he blamed someone else at the company, ultimately getting that person fired. He poisoned his neighbor's dog simply because it barked a little too often. He secretly jerked off on the office chair of the pretty secretary at work who wouldn't have a (second) affair with him, and called in favors with upper management to have her sexual harassment complaint against him dropped. He's secretly a massive racist who thinks anyone whose skin isn't pink is a natural-born criminal the world would be better off without.' And so on, as if he were standing before the throne of god.

Not that everyone has a rap sheet like that, but I think people would shut the fuck up pretty quick if they spent a moment thinking what full disclosure actually means.

 

[angryscotsman93]

Take for example my internet search history. Lets not even discuss the pornography, but rather another subject. I majored in criminal justice in college, and had to read a lot of case studies. My search history is filled with articles about murder, rape, child molestation, and all sorts of creepy shit. I also studied forensics, so my search history is full of searches about which chemical compounds dissolve bodies best, and various forensic tools that criminologists use to find evidence at crime scenes. Add to that the fact that I am a shooting enthusiast and enjoy learning about firearms, when you put it all together it sounds like I'm learning how to commit the perfect murder.

No offense, bro, but you now utterly terrify me. The good news is, this means I'm going to be very nice to you, on the off-chance that you ARE a sociopathic murderer who's just messing with peoples's heads.

 

[Saulkar]

To those who say they have done nothing wrong I tell them that they are not the ones deciding what is right and what is wrong.

 

[Mutant1988]

To those who say they have done nothing wrong I tell them that they are not the ones deciding what is right and what is wrong.

That is very well put and certainly a sentence worth remembering.

It is extremely unwise to assume that others will judge you by the same morals you judge yourself and others.