Posted by jacquesm 1 day ago
So the idea that you have nothing to hide is completely banal. Those who are more powerful than you won't leave you alone just because you ignore them. They will eventually come knocking to steal your wealth and your freedom.
No one really says that in an absolute sense, it is always in context, what it usually means is "I trust a particular institution with the data they collect", not "I will give my credit card number to everyone who asks".
For example, let's say you approve of installing security cameras monitored by police in your residence, if you say "I have nothing to hide" what you are actually meaning is "there is nothing these cameras can see that I would want to hide from the police". I think it is obvious that it doesn't mean you approve of having the same cameras installed in your bathroom.
The real question is one of trust and risk assessment. Are the risks of revealing a piece of information worth it? how much do you trust the other party? not the literal meaning of "nothing to hide".
You don't know who is going to get access to the data you have shared.
Often in this discussion it's about a society-wide standard. The benefit to "me" might be that e.g. the police can do their job well, hopefully protecting me from criminals, while sticking to reasonable and trusted privacy controls (e.g. intrusive data collection requires a court warrant, and I trust the courts enough to do a good job). That's very different to uploading all social media conversations logs to NSA because "nothing to hide".
Looping back to this article, it is unclear if there was ever ant good reason to record religion in Amsterdam. Nor would I exclusively blame administrative procedures on the Holocaust - though I'm sure it made matters worse.
If that's all it is, it's logically sounder than what it is raised in defense against, the multifallacious "I have nothing to hide" that implies those who oppose a policy do have something to hide and sidesteps the actual question of privacy.
But I think that in our age, information asymmetry is particularly low, at least in western countries. Each one of us has access to a tremendous amount of data, sure the powerful have access to more, but I have a feeling that the relative difference is shrinking.
I will always remember when a police investigator was interviewed, the context was a controversy about police files. The investigator said: "police files? not very useful, when we want to investigate someone, we browse Facebook". It means that the police doesn't have much as much of an information advantage compared to you and me.
Journalism, world events, etc... Most of the times, we have all sorts of first hand reports, photos, videos, news sources from enemy countries, etc... Not all of them reliable, and factchecking enough to see through that mess takes work, but it is possible in a way that wasn't before. A lot is available on open data platforms, plus all the shady stuff like Wikileaks, darknets, etc... that are not that hard to access either.
Should you want to, you can be your own Palantir, because most of what Palantir does is standard data analysis that can be done with open source tools, and most of the data sources are public, private data is just the cherry on top.
Of course it takes work, but it is possible with limited resources, mostly a computer, an internet connection, and time. No need to travel around the world to meet contacts and get access to paper archives.
Privacy is good
Crime is not necessarily bad
You don't have to even go Anne Frank to make the argument.
Not only that’s very rarely true as the article shows pretty nicely… what is legal changes, sometimes drastically and rapidly.
He was gay. Don't know how he couldn't understand this.
I might be hitting a ideological belief of mine here, because I honestly can’t think of someone who would honestly state otherwise. Or that couldn’t be brought to agree with some explanation. Am I tripping ?
The data broker eco system is notoriously intransparent and dynamic.
Of course then those very people who will right now use the founding fathers' words in a weaponized way would find different sources of authority because they usually lack the moral framework to determine intent, instead they will go by the letter. It's like watching wikipedians arguing over some contribution that they want to wipe out because it doesn't mesh with their worldview. The endless rules lawyering is really tedious and tiresome to watch.
Surely don't need to ditch the whole system then and just needs a better kill-switch.
Everyone who has been helping Google/Amazon/Meta construct their digital panopticons is culpable in at least some small way for the abuse that may follow.