Yes, You've Got Something To Hide

from the and-yes-i've-been-recording-this-conversation dept

We've tried a few times to debunk the ridiculous logic of "if you've got nothing to hide..." argument in favor of surveillance, but leave it the awesome Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal to do a much better job in the form of a simple webcomic. In case you can't view the comic, the key line:

Everyone has something to hide and usually no one cares. By surveilling everyone, you catch the benign breaches of law and taboo. If the public are all guilty, the executive part of the government can selectively enforce laws, essentially giving them both judicial and legislative power, which defeats the whole point of separation of powers.

Right. That.

Filed Under: privacy, something to hide

Everyone Has Something To Hide: Why Privacy Is Important Even If 'You've Done Nothing Wrong'

from the reality-check dept

It's really amazing that people still trot out the "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide" argument these days. The argument has been debunked so many times, there's even a scholarly paper debunking it. However, it's still quite popular, especially among law enforcement types. So it's nice to see that some are trying to focus in on disproving this troubling claim. Reporter Barton Gellman is apparently starting up a new blog (oddly, it's not at all clear where that blog is, or if it's just a sub-segment of an existing blog) to focus in on this issue. In the introductory post he summarizes the point nicely:

Everyone has something to hide. Privacy is relational. It depends on the audience. You don't want your employer to know you're job hunting. You don't spill all about your love life to your mom, or your kids. You don't tell trade secrets to your rivals. We don't expose ourselves indiscriminately, and we care enough about exposure to lie as a matter of course. Among upstanding citizens, researchers have consistently found that lying is "an everyday social interaction" (twice a day among college students, once a day in the Real World). Remember the disasters that befell Jim Carrey in that movie plot that left him magically unable to fib for even one day? Comprehensive transparency is a nightmare.

Filed Under: privacy, something to hide