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’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 think privacy is important for the west, but through interactions I’ve had with mostly Chinese people on this topic as well as visiting China and Taiwan, I think it’s very interesting how differently we view things.
Taiwan is much more like the west in this regard, and they pretty regularly hold protests and things like that. China is a different story, and they have mass surveillance and the people are happy to have it.
I believe that people in China are for the most part genuinely okay with mass surveillance and think it’s a good idea. One of the big ideological differences between east and west is that we value individualism over everything, and they value social harmony above everything. They would much rather give up privacy if that means that everyone in their community can feel safer. We feel strongly tied to privacy because we believe it’s necessary for true individualism.
For example, in China the crime rate is incredibly low. You can use your smartphone to hold your place on public transport or at a cafe, and people do this regularly because there is zero worry that it will be stolen. If someone does steal it, they’re very quickly caught. They’re happy to not have to worry about drug addicts wandering the streets, or even really have the possibility of encountering illicit drugs because they believe (and probably rightly so) that they destroy families and harm society. There’s many concrete benefits to mass surveillance, but they come at the cost of individualism.
Basically, we want the freedom and the means to do things that our government doesn’t necessarily approve of. For the west, I agree with this and I think it’s necessary because of how diverse we are. But, as we become more culturally homogeneous, the benefits of mass surveillance come with less and less of a cost.
It’s a tricky issue and there’s no one solution, it really depends on culture and context in my opinion. For the west in 2025,I think privacy is still very important and individualism is still highly valued, but I do wonder if our kids and their kids will share that sentiment or if we’ll see a shift as we become further homogenized.
I think a lot of young people already have the attitude of “They’re already tracking everything so I don’t care” which leads to the exact same conclusions as “I have nothing to hide so I don’t care”.
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.
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.
Might add this to the pinned posts at the top of idcaboutprivacy… Any objections?
TLDR: Take off your pants then.
I used to pitch signal’s encryption first. I got into so many pointless arguments that I stopped even mentioning encryption. What’s signal? Its an app with group chat and video calls. That’s all you need to know.
Two of my friends independently discovered the secret to converting their families to signal. Make it a premium form of communication. Tell people close to you that you check your whatsapp or facebook occasionally because of the spam volume… The best way to reach me is on signal.
Had a kid this year and we don’t post pix of him to social media. They all get sent to a signal group. You want the baby pix? You get signal! Even his 90-year-old great grandma is in it.
It must feel good to known they aren’tnusinf your child as data collection to sellnyou ads! Keep those photos off social media!
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 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.
We should all have something to hide, Moxie Marlinspike, 2013
One thing I find it odd that I don’t ever see mentioned is the most obvious: private data is money and power for companies. Do you like X (meta, google, literal moronic x, etc) company that much that you want to donate money to them and make them more powerful?
Almost no one would say yes. They don’t care about their privacy, but they certainly don’t think poor zuckeberg needs some donations and more power.
It’s by far the biggest reason I care about my data. If I liked the company I wouldn’t mind the donation. But only evil companies would try to profit from personal data, so that can’t exist. My hate for these companies and my wish to see them destroyed far outweighs my concern with my privacy.
That includes governments of course. The one with the most spying, like the US or israel are the ones I hate the most and try as much as I can to not give them more power.
private data is money and power for companies
Please someone explain to me for the thousandth time how our personal data equals money because I still don’t understand. My bank account has no money going to Google, meta, X…
I truly want to understand where they’re getting all this money.
To be honest, since I have adblock I find it hard to understand too. How can that make so much money? But all the current richest companies and people built their empire on private data right? Google, Facebook, elon musk and so on, so it’s very easy to see the proof. You give them your data, you give them money.
Now, power is easier to understand. If you want to control or kill people, the more information you have the better. It’s easy to see why evil governments have always loved spying.
They are paid by advertisers that want to sell you things and ideas. Google and Meta’s job is to keep you on their platform as long as possible so you can be served more advertisements. And to keep you dependent on their free platform to gather more data about what you like and your behavior patterns to easily influence and predict what advertisements grab your interest.
And because they have the data on you to know exactly who you are and what you may like, it’s valuable for advertisers because they know their cat litter advertisement is going to be shown to someone who very obviously has a cat through all their activities and interactions on the platform.
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…
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.
While I agree with the sentiment, let’s just go down that list:
- Where he lives: DMV and taxes cover that
- What he looks like: DMV covers that
- How many devices are on the network: The vast majority of people have no reason to care about that. Hell. I am not even sure I are about that
- How many kids he has and their ages: Taxes and social security
- What times they are home: Their internet usage patterns and likely cell towers logging their sim cards
- What types of food they have delivered and how often: Traffic cameras and asking uber eats or whatever. Although… this goes back to “how important is this data?”
- Guest info: See above regarding sim cards
I 100% agree it is important to be aware of what data a given device/vulnerability has access to. It is ALSO important to figure out if that is actually any new data being available and to think about what orgs/agencies would be a concern.
Because maybe you DO care about the principle of it (I know I do). But “It is the principle of the matter” is just as ineffective an argument as “I have nothing to hide”.
These are all things that would need to be individually tracked down or requested and in government-controlled databases. It’s not just the government that has that data now. It’s the camera manufacturer and their 800 partners. And it’s all in one place.
It’s data that individually may not be important to you specifically, but combined, that’s enough information to easily start manipulating you, whether it’s directly or through advertising.
It’s not just about what data is collected, but also who has access.
Almost all of that is just cell tower or internet traffic data combined with calling Fred at the DMV who has zero issues pulling records for money. Let alone all the megacorps that have varying levels of legitimate access to the DB themselves.
This is missing the point that in this example, you have to choose who you’re targeting, find someone at the DMV to bribe, get away with the bribe, and even then, this is limited info.
The difference here is that people are willingly handing their data to the parties that want it, bypassing our DMV buddy entirely.
It’s a case of perfect being the enemy of good. I’m not saying this information isn’t available. I’m saying we shouldn’t be in the habit of handing it out.
I’m saying we shouldn’t be in the habit of handing it out.
And I agree. But, like I said
Because maybe you DO care about the principle of it (I know I do). But “It is the principle of the matter” is just as ineffective an argument as “I have nothing to hide”.
I get your point, but the fact that the data is available elsewhere isn’t really an argument for allowing another vector to collect the data (and also cross verify it).
There’s more of an argument if there’s not really another choice, say buying a new car that doesn’t collect data isn’t really an option since they all do it on some level. You either buy a car or not.
But cameras there are options that are not cloud based. Safemo is probably the best comparable product to other WiFi cameras, and then there’s any NVR system. You can accomplish the same thing without much sacrifice or compromise.
Then there’s the its “fine” today but tomorrow things change… Like Ring now feeding images to Flock and their surveillance/facial recognition system.
So no, its not quite okay that “they already have my data from other places so it doesn’t matter”
Most of those things you mentioned are government databases, not public knowledge.
Where he lives: DMV and taxes cover that What he looks like: DMV covers that How many devices are on the network: The vast majority of people have no reason to care about that. Hell. I am not even sure I are about that How many kids he has and their ages: Taxes and social security
When people ask me ‘are you hiding from the government’ it’s almost hilarious to me. I pay local taxes on property, I send the government tax forms every year, I vote prolifically in local and national elections. I have a calling and letter writing ‘campaign’ for my representatives to know just how much they are screwing up. I go to protests. If I were a person of interest, they’d come visit.
However, there is no requirement to overshare with anyone, and that’s where I am. I am not ‘hiding’ from anyone. I’m just pretty stingy with my data. Now, I realize there are some who must hide from their government, but to date, that’s not really in my threat model.
I have plenty of things to hide BUT nobody cares about my opinion, after signing up my life to Uncle Sam.
How did your boss respond?
Like you would unfortunately expect. “I don’t care if they know that stuff.”
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.
This seems to be an advertisement for a subscription chat program.
Threema is a badass messenger that’s about $7.50 and well worth it. This letter is from the exclusive channel of people who bought it.
Dad is the type to nag nag nag until we either give in or tell him off. Lecturing doesn’t work in my family because of my dad. They know I’m willing to help if they want to change.
I feel your pain.
Thanks.
