A very, very helpful article to help get people we fight with to understand why this is important for anyone and everyone. Send this to friends and family.
I explained this to my boss the other day about the cameras he picked up for his house. He was like, “I don’t have anything that I care about them collecting.” To which I mentioned the fact that they now know:
- Where he lives
- What he looks like
- How many devices are on the network
- How many/how old his kids are
- What times they are home
- What types of food they have delivered and how often
- Who they have as guests and how often
The list goes on. There are so many things people can find out about you when you don’t make it easy. Putting a 3rd party camera in your house, though? Now you’re just handing it over.
I wonder how they’d react if you started a profile on them of them of the plates of the car they drive, eating habits, personality, their address, and whatever other observations and public records you can find then posted them around the office for everyone to see.
It’s a company of less than 10. I’d just be fired.
True haha. Is funny though that lot of those “I have nothing to hide” types react when privacy is actually invaded and publicized as opposed to being theoretical. Even that they wear clothes and don’t keep bathroom stalls wide open shows they want privacy.
At it’s basis, ‘nothing to hide’ is yet another shinning example of the American propaganda machine. When it comes to propaganda, America has no equals. In a lot of ‘closed’ countries, their citizens are usually aware that their government is full of shit and oppressive. They just duck their heads and try not to raise suspicion. The American public eats it up and regurgitates ad nauseam.
However, when you start relating their everyday actions to privacy, anonymity, they do realize that yes, they do demand privacy in their daily lives. It’s just that there is a disconnect between real life and digital life, in people’s minds and it takes a total rethink for them to realize, in this time line we are in, there really isn’t/shouldn’t be a difference between the two.
Your marklar are wise.
“I have nothing to hide” is as only as good as what the government thinks is illegal. And that may be far from reasonable and can change very quickly, just look at US or UK.
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The more time I live on this earth, the more I see so many aspects of it is that “different strokes for different folks” apply to. So much conflict has been started because people wanting to force some ideal/correct/only way of doing things on another.
For example, in China the crime rate is incredibly low.
I think a correction is in order: petty crime such as what you have described is indeed low, but organized crime is through the roof. Far higher than in countries considered ‘the west’. Scammers mainly. So much so they’ve had to expand to neighbouring countries in the south/southeast to expand their ‘market reach’.
I agree about the difference in China with how they feel about privacy and surveillance. I’ve long respected they’re completely different. They’re motivations and reasonings, their history. Its just really different. But I do disagree with using China as a reason we should accept it and approach it the same. Our Governments are fucking WILDLY different. Entirely different motivations. As such we have to defend ourselves differently.
When it was Obama listening in on their phones, westeners agree.
When it was Biden or Trump listening in on their phones, westeners went quiet.
When it’s Xi selling phones unbugged, westeners grab your phone throw it on the ground, pour gasoline over it, light a fire, scold you and threaten your life.Right???
It’s been my experience throughout the years.
I haven’t personally heard “I have nothing to hide”
since Huawei phones started to become banned in my country.The moment they became popular they went from
“I’ve got nothing to hide” to “I’ve got nothing to hide, but this is different. Huawei is subject to the Chinese State.
Those other phones are made by our allies. We may have found time after time again that all phones of all our politicians have been tapped by the US and it’s true that no matter how hard our best security experts searched for listening bugs in these devices, they found diddly squat, but if you own one of those Chinese phones and think you’re not being listened to, than you’re being naive. Naive naive, !be scared!, naive national security naive.”.
I’ve always reduced the argument to something like
“I have nothing to hide” … “well, you don’t get a choice”
at the end of the day removing privacy strips autonomy
I bring up Cambridge analytica since it was well known for Brexit. I’m like “It’s not about what you have to hide. Its about stopping automated unconsenting data collection that’s sold to the highest bidder to effect election results that will impact generations like Brexit. That data came straight from META.”
When will this dumb question end ?
When someone talks about online privacy, every single corner of the site i can see this qn! Seriously, someone has nothing to hide? So maybe they living in graveyard instead in the woods!
Am saying nothing wrong about this post but that specific qn everyone asks…
The difference in this article and how it frames simple rebuttals for people to actually use easily and is an easy quick read.
Might add this to the pinned posts at the top of idcaboutprivacy… Any objections?
Yeah it really breaks it down to simple rebuttals people can actually use to help get through to people.
Added.
