The notion of, "Well if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide".

[9tailedflame]

Yep, it's a dumb notion. I think it's just something the NSA put out there to try and spy on people, and the amount of information companies collect is downright crazy lately. Especially since the overall idea of what is "normal" is a fucking joke compared to how people act when they're by themselves and think nobody's watching, by the overall standards of society, nobody actually fits the dumb standard, and the whole thing will collapse in on itself if they force it.

Reminds me of this old onion video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2bniFJigI0
How literally the only person who would be "electable" would be an insane hermit with no sense of the world.

 

[Leg End]

*snip*

First of all, both of the Paras must be stopped!
Second, the very sentence makes me shudder. Just argue for planting cameras in homes. If they're against their own home being bugged, laugh it off and make sure to vote against whatever they vote for.

The only time I've heard this phrase and agreed with it is when the topic is bodycams for police. They would protection ct the good cops from false accusations and help catch the bad cops in the act. And really, anyone who has worked in retail or fast food has been tapped while at work by security cameras, so I'm sure cops can take it.

Any other context is absurd.

In this context, it'd be having a public servant recording all aspects of their job for the benefit of everyone involved. We'd have a solid record of what happened, whatever it may be. Can see if a cop violated procedure, or have a solid recording of someone trying to claim sexual harassment or police brutality when it clearly didn't occur.
Shit, we need guncams as well.

 

[Parasondox]

If you haven't been fucking Satan behind my back then you won't mind consenting to these paternity tests and having it broadcasted live to the entire country on the Muary Pauvich show, right?

Nevermind that most information gathered from this sort of this is remembered for future use, its just a violation of basic human dignity.

For the last time, Satan and I are just friends. Yes, him and I had the fling back in the 80s but that was like 100 years ago. So much sins were committed yes and it was at a time I was angry with the big guy upstairs, John Stamos, but I am all good now baby.

*snip*

First of all, both of the Paras must be stopped!

Paragon Fury and I can not confirm nor deny secretly working together to take down the Escapist from the inside. I mean, what kind of villain would I be if we told you our master plan... out loud... on this website... over the internet... while thinking about Tiffany Cappotelli?

Amateurs.

 

[Leg End]

Paragon Fury and I can not confirm nor deny secretly working together to take down the Escapist from the inside. I mean, what kind of villain would I be if we told you our master plan... out loud... on this website... over the internet... while thinking about Tiffany Cappotelli?

Amateurs.

You'd be Bond villains, except you're succeeding!

 

[Frission]

/snip

I shudder at what a combination thread between you two will look like. Any ideas?

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I HATE that phrase.

Because people have things to hide that AREN'T illegal. I have a friend who is a crossdresser and would be disowned by his family if they found out. I, myself have a weird kink I'd rather not be public knowledge (although I'm fairly certain after the initial shock my family would be ok with it). Some people are gay in the middle of Deep Christian Alabama and would lose their jobs or be socially attacked (or even physically attacked) for their orientation. This is to say nothing about politicians who rub people in power the wrong way who once solicited a hooker, or once cheated on their wife, or whatever other career-busting scandal it is.

Look, if you want to monitor the public space, that's fine, go right ahead, it's public. Being ogled by a dozen cameras on the street is creepy, but it's in public so I have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

But if you want to pry into my personal life, you better have reasonable suspicion I'm up to something bad (enough to get a search warrant from a judge) before you start going into my personal stuff.

Finally, if anyone truly thinks "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear", I ask you this: "Are you fine with cameras being installed in your shower? I mean, some bad people make bombs in their tubs, so we need to make sure you're not doing it! And we swear we're TOTALLY not ever going to abuse it in order to look at your naked wife or daughter or even YOU (after all, it IS 2016)! You have nothing to hide, right?"

 

[Amir Kondori]

The people who say are typically, umm, what is the right word for this? Unsophisticated. They don't realize the myriad possible ways that idea goes wrong, they understand the philosophical implications of living a life with no privacy, and they don't know the history of the many, many, many times this has been abused.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Look all you want. Just do it while I'm not around so I don't have to see your looks of revulsion when you stumble across some of my earlier fiction or my browser history.

Still, I get your point. Even though I'm comfortable with it, I can understand why others may not feel the same way, especially if they're distrustful of their current government.

Pretty much this.

Ideally, I'd prefer the prim and proper neighbours not to know about my disgusting fetishes, or at least not to look me in the eye after finding out, but I have no qualms about being spied on for "serious" reasons.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

This phrase is often used by people who think that government is some faceless, monolithic entity. "The government doesn't care what you do in your bedroom," etc. Except they don't realize that the government is made of people- people who can be petty and cruel, who can harbor grudges and hate, and who are increasingly able to make the life of some unlucky sap who crosses their path a living hell while that person has zero recourse or even any way to know what's happening.

Not to mention that the idea that the government wouldn't willingly use information to harass or persecute "undesirables" is laughable. Look up COINTELPRO, under which Greenpeace activists got put on a terrorist watch list and even PETA members were monitored illegally. California law enforcement working under orders from the Federal government during the COINTELPRO project imprisoned Elmer Pratt for twenty-seven years for a murder he'd never committed, and Fred Hampton, the national spokesman of the Black Panther Party, was shot to death by Chicago police operating under COINTELPRO. Said J. Edgar Hoover: "Purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt the BPP and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge."

Get that? The head of the FBI wanted to destroy a political group and it did not matter to him whether or not that group was actually guilty of anything- it had to go because he thought it was a threat, and rights did not apply. Harassment, false imprisonment and even murder were used on people whose only "crime" was belonging to groups whose politics didn't "jibe" with the "powers that be". These imbeciles who think "oh, nothing bad will happen to you if you don't do anything wrong" are just one one shift of power away from being the target of something like this. It's just gonna take one guy walking in Hoover's steps to take advantage of all this data collecting and use it for his own private crusade.

 

[Nazulu]

Always saw it as a stupid cop-out phrase that is used by people who just want avoid actually putting effort into their argument/rebuttal. Everyone feels different about different things so what maybe fine to you maybe hell for others. Should be really fucking obvious by now.

 

[Parasondox]

/snip

I shudder at what a combination thread between you two will look like. Any ideas?

A beautiful sense of destruction chaos with a hint of sensibility, mayhem and sexual empowerment and genocide.

Well that's my though on the matter, I do not know what Paragon Fury thinks. He may just be a bit more sane than me.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

I HATE that phrase.

Because people have things to hide that AREN'T illegal. I have a friend who is a crossdresser and would be disowned by his family if they found out. I, myself have a weird kink I'd rather not be public knowledge (although I'm fairly certain after the initial shock my family would be ok with it). Some people are gay in the middle of Deep Christian Alabama and would lose their jobs or be socially attacked (or even physically attacked) for their orientation. This is to say nothing about politicians who rub people in power the wrong way who once solicited a hooker, or once cheated on their wife, or whatever other career-busting scandal it is.

Look, if you want to monitor the public space, that's fine, go right ahead, it's public. Being ogled by a dozen cameras on the street is creepy, but it's in public so I have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

But if you want to pry into my personal life, you better have reasonable suspicion I'm up to something bad (enough to get a search warrant from a judge) before you start going into my personal stuff.

Finally, if anyone truly thinks "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear", I ask you this: "Are you fine with cameras being installed in your shower? I mean, some bad people make bombs in their tubs, so we need to make sure you're not doing it! And we swear we're TOTALLY not ever going to abuse it in order to look at your naked wife or daughter or even YOU (after all, it IS 2016)! You have nothing to hide, right?"

I share this same sentiment.

However... I mean... the way I look at it, any privacy I have is a complete illusion and those secrets, are pretty inconsequential. Like if my browser history was made public knowledge would it really be the end of my life?

This is just specific to me, I live up north. Different values. I'm sure things wouldn't be exactly comfortable, but I dont think I'd end up killing myself over it.

I use to be pretty hardnose about this kinda thing, and if I think about it... yeah it still irks me, but were fighting bad people in non-idealistic world. Broken world, broken solutions. Theres really no way around it, just what is. And that isn't very comforting, I know.

And it's going to happen regardless of what any one of us wants it to or not, the government has made it pretty clear. So it really comes down to, would we be willing to fight it? To die for the right to privacy?

I'm not.

 

[chadachada123]

Even though I'm comfortable with it, I can understand why others may not feel the same way, especially if they're distrustful of their current government.

Whoa whoa whoa. This line of thinking is extremely dangerous. Never give any power to yourself or your 'party' that you wouldn't trust the other 'party' (or your worst enemy) with. No matter how much you honestly trust the current government, that is absolutely no excuse to give up additional liberties or privacy, since said government can be swapped out in a matter of years.

OT: Not much else to add as far as the idiocy of 'nothing wrong; nothing to hide.'

 

[Angelblaze]

If no ones posted anything about it yet, let me add my two cents for those that may or may not understand: The reason 'If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide' is critically flawed not because of the 'nothing to hide' part, but because of the 'nothing wrong' part.

'Nothing Wrong' in this instance is not referring to legal or even moral perceptions of what you may or may not be hiding, but the fact that personal aspects of your life are being brought to light to the scrutiny of public opinion in the time and age where posting certain things on facebook can get you fired, people can target you and ruin your life through the internet, people can target you based purely on a single fact of your person and focus on sheerly that, etc etc. (See: Lucy Meadows)

And though public opinion is usually right, we live in a time where people's 'collective voice' doesn't need to be plus 10k people. Now, it only has to be a dedicated ten or more.

'Nothing wrong' has the same issue the 'Nice guy' has. What it means is dependent not on the person who is being judged, but on the person doing the judging (and more often then not, the searching).

 

[CrystalShadow]

Yeah, remember your history, or you will be doomed to repeat it.

You might have 'nothing to hide' now, but there's no saying that will remain true in future.

While you might dismiss this as 'Godwin's law' or whatever other random thing, do you know how a lot of jews were found in the second world war?
Census data.

This was particularly true in the Netherlands, which had very extensive census data collected prior to the war.
Sure, the dutch government had no ill intent, and collected it for perfectly legitimate reasons, but that didn't stop that self same data being used against people in the most horrible way imaginable later on.
Not by the dutch government, but by the Germans, after they invaded.

Don't be too quick to dismiss the value of privacy, nor should you be too complacent about what is and is not something that needs hiding, because that can change in an instant...

What we know about you can and will be used against you if we feel like it.

 

[sageoftruth]

Even though I'm comfortable with it, I can understand why others may not feel the same way, especially if they're distrustful of their current government.

Whoa whoa whoa. This line of thinking is extremely dangerous. Never give any power to yourself or your 'party' that you wouldn't trust the other 'party' (or your worst enemy) with. No matter how much you honestly trust the current government, that is absolutely no excuse to give up additional liberties or privacy, since said government can be swapped out in a matter of years.

OT: Not much else to add as far as the idiocy of 'nothing wrong; nothing to hide.'

Interesting point. I can't believe that hadn't occurred to me. It would take quite a revolution for my government to end up with someone as bad as Xi Jinping or Vladmir Putin, with the balance of powers and all, but I'll run that point by my friends and see what they say.

 

[Creator002]

I hate this idea.
If you want to monitor me from when I leave my house until I get back to my house, fine. I wouldn't be comfortable with you knowing where I live, but whatever. Public space.
But, inside, there are things I do that, while completely legal, I wouldn't want anyone to know about. I'm sure some people who even say the damn phrase probably feel the same.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

To me, that notion is a bit like saying "I have no knives hidden about my person so I'm happy to walk around bollock naked". I don't, but I'm not.