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If you have nothing to hide... (Thoughts on Privacy)

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rickh
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If you have nothing to hide... (Thoughts on Privacy)

#1 Post by rickh »

Picked up this link from Biella Coleman on Debian Planet recently. Just got around to skimming thru the article, and I think it's important enough to share.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... _id=998565
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#2 Post by perlhacker14 »

I agree: very interesting and important. A bit long though. Do you think the feds will have a reply?
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#3 Post by llivv »

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Chapter 6
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#4 Post by Chapter 6 »

What's good for the gander is good for the goose, as I always say. One bad turn deserves another. Do unto others as they have done unto you.

I think you're right. They're in for a rude awakening.
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#5 Post by Velvet Elvis »

My rude awakening was when all the illegal wiretapping and such was exposed and there was little outrage and no move in congress to do anything about it. What doe Bush have to do to get impeached? Bite the heads off kittens in front of the Whitehouse press corps?

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#6 Post by BioTube »

Maybe they fear Cheney. I'm pretty sure the reason Clinton's husband wasn't thrown out of office is because Gore was worse.
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#7 Post by mzilikazi »

Velvet Elvis wrote: What doe Bush have to do to get impeached? Bite the heads off kittens in front of the Whitehouse press corps?
Nah the White House press corps eat kittens for breakfast too. ;)
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#8 Post by Chapter 6 »

BioTube wrote:Maybe they fear Cheney. I'm pretty sure the reason Clinton's husband wasn't thrown out of office is because Gore was worse.
Nah, they could impeach Cheney too. Then who's next? A Democrat?
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#9 Post by Velvet Elvis »

Chapter 6 wrote:
BioTube wrote:Maybe they fear Cheney. I'm pretty sure the reason Clinton's husband wasn't thrown out of office is because Gore was worse.
Nah, they could impeach Cheney too. Then who's next? A Democrat?
Speaker of the house. Nancy Pelosi. They wouldn't be able to get the required votes in the senate if it meant putting her in power. The only way to do it would be to impeach cheny first, confirm a new republican VP, then impeach Bush.

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#10 Post by rickh »

The only way to do it would be to impeach cheny first, confirm a new republican VP, then impeach Bush.
That's what they did with Spiro Agnew, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon ... but all the Bush bashing has nothing to do with the original post which is a thoughtful presentation of how the, "If you have nothing to hide...," argument should properly be addressed.
As the author Alexander Solzenitsyn declared: “Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.”
No politically powerful person or party can avoid the temptation to desire information about others which will provide him with a political advantage. The process of turning the issue into an attack on one such person displays the lack of intelligence and reasoning capacity in the general populace that has allowed privacy infringements to become such a problem in today's world.
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#11 Post by llivv »

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#12 Post by Telemachus »

@ Livv - the author is not Solzenitsyn; the author quotes Solzenitsyn and then RIck quoted the author quoting Solzenitsyn. You can get the article from that page as a pdf.

@ Rickh - I can't quite follow your argument here:
Rickh wrote:No politically powerful person or party can avoid the temptation to desire information about others which will provide him with a political advantage. The process of turning the issue into an attack on one such person displays the lack of intelligence and reasoning capacity in the general populace that has allowed privacy infringements to become such a problem in today's world.
It's all well and good to say that anyone would be tempted by power, but not everyone gives in and abuses power to the same degree. I can't see how it shows "lack of intelligence and reasoning capacity" to point out that Bush & company have abused their power to an outrageous degree. It's not even off-topic to this post, since they so frequently use the "if you have nothing to hide" argument to coerce people into submission.

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#13 Post by rickh »

The article is not about the Bush administration's privacy infringements. He is barely mentioned, as an example of the problem, not at it's root. The "nothing to hide" argument has been around as long as there have been governments with a vested interest in prying.

The article, rather, makes an effort to define exactly what privacy is, and why it is important. The problem in today's western civilization is not that governments wish to spy on their citizens. That has always been true. The problem is that populations have lost the concept of privacy and limited it to the concept of a right to hide something embarrasing, or to justify abortions.

Data mining is the use of information about ourselves which at some point we have freely relinquished, whether via financial disclosures, answered surveys, or the use of a store "loyalty card." Since the information has been surrendered voluntarily, the US Supreme court has ruled that we have no reasonable expectation that it will remain uncirculated; and we have no protection against it being used in ways which we have not authorized. We have no right even to access the information ourselves to evaluate its contents or its accuracy.

Quick and witty rejoinders blaming Republicans or Democrats for the problem are similar to treating a broken bone with pain pills. The root problem lies not in President Bush trying to tap my phone, but in my willingness (even eagerness) to assist him in doing so.

This article, linked on these forums recently, and treated largely as a joke, is much more frightening to me than the likelihood of Hilary Clinton peeping into my windows.
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#14 Post by perlhacker14 »

Looking at the "Nothing to hide arguement" and its use in coersion, the real issue is the use of the arguement as incriminating evidence and wild assumptions: If you are confronted with "If you have nothing to hide, why not...", and you refuse, it is automatically assumed that you do in fact have items to hide. Or, if you are indeed willing, you submit to tyranny and un-democratic procedures as a way of life. In yet another case, where you are not willing but agree to share out of fear of reprisals, an obnoxious abuse of power is displayed. The real issue is the use of "Nothing to hide" at all.
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#15 Post by BioTube »

Yes, the use of "nothing to hide" can make someone who doesn't wish to share look suspicious, but aren't you forgetting the response the author threw in? "I've got nothing to show you".
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#16 Post by perlhacker14 »

BioTube wrote:Yes, the use of "nothing to hide" can make someone who doesn't wish to share look suspicious, but aren't you forgetting the response the author threw in? "I've got nothing to show you".
Could that not trigger a set of:
"I have nothing to show you."
"Then why will you not let us have a look?"
"Do you not trust me?"
"We do, its just that it if you have 'nothing to show' you have nothing to hide, so you can not lose anything by agreeing."
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#17 Post by frice »

perlhacker14 wrote:I agree: very interesting and important. A bit long though. Do you think the feds will have a reply?
Generally this Federal administration's response to violating people's civil rights and our Constitutional rights is to do MORE of it and glibly proclaim destroying our rights, liberties, and freedoms is "fighting terrorism." Breaking the law is usually the Federal government's response to getting exposed breaking the law.

One question: PGP's encryption suit is probably real-timeable crackable by a number of governmental and consulting agencies within the United States though I have yet to see any court documentation describing real-time cracking capabilities that led to the gathering of evidence which led to indictments.

Has anyone ever seen any indication that PGP is real-time crackable? I suppose it's only a matter of time.

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#18 Post by BioTube »

I'm sure that if the government has the ability to crack a popular encryption scheme, they won't let anybody know unless they have to. Getting your enemy to use an encryption scheme you've already broke is probably the holy grail of the intelligence biz, moreso if they think it's impossible to break.
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#19 Post by Plato »

For philosophically minded I would recommend this paper by Tom Nagel on the problems about conventions of privacy. Its quite long reading but I am sure it is rewarding and worth of the effort.
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/facu ... osure.html
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#20 Post by perlhacker14 »

Plato wrote:For philosophically minded I would recommend this paper by Tom Nagel on the problems about conventions of privacy. Its quite long reading but I am sure it is rewarding and worth of the effort.
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/facu ... osure.html
Bloody hell thats long... but still interesting; especially the focus on public scenarios.
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