Nothing to Hide

[Neost]

/. linked to a paper about the fallacies of the "nothing to hide" argument as it relates to government data mining and surveillance, a la the NSA/Justice Dept's various surveillance programs. It's kind of long, but given that the stance is pretty much anti-government snooping it does bring up some interesting ideas.

One of my favorite paragraphs so far:

Therefore, the problem with the “nothing to hide” argument is that it focuses on just one or two particular kinds of privacy problems – the disclosure of personal information or surveillance – and not others. It assumes a particular view about what privacy entails, and it sets the terms for debate in a manner that is often unproductive.

Since there was quite a bit of activity on the threads concerning the Patriot Act I thought this might interest some here and I would particularly ask that those supporting the Patriot Act (or at least at that time supporting the patriot act ) give this a once over and tell me what you think about this. I believe I remember "nothing to hide" being offered as support of increased government surveillance.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... _id=998565

[Braxter]

exceptional read. he put the argument in a way that does justice to the complexity of the issue. the problem of course is that such arguments don't have an audience because the average american's attention span is too short to really understand the issue. he needs to wrap it up in a soundbite for it to carry any weight in political discourse. something like this: if you don't think privacy is important, you deserve to have a plane crashed into you.

[Neost]

The last line of the /. article:

At the base of the fallacy, as Bruce Schneier has noted, is the "faulty premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong."

[Al]

The last line of the /. article:

At the base of the fallacy, as Bruce Schneier has noted, is the "faulty premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong."

QFT. I don't need to be breaking laws to value my privacy.

[Aabidano]

Great read, thanks Neost.

Unfortunately it will be lost on most people. I don't think it's so much of a short attention span for most people as an inability to think for themselves and reason out a point. Critical thinking is a dying ability.