To those of you with nothing to hide: One day you might have. Because you don’t make the rules.

I have nothing to hide

Ok, pull down your pants and hand me your unlocked phone.

Pornstars show us their assholes but I'm pretty sure they don't want everybody to know where they live. Just like normal people aren't comfortable shitting in a public toilet with the door open.

It's not that I have something to hide, it's that I don't trust your judgment

This applies to so many things. Someone's lifestyle might come under attack, someone's religion might be persecuted, someone has sensitive information to share, and so on and so forth.

We Americans commit (more or less) three felonies a day. It used to be at least three felonies a day when violation of a website's TOS was a violation of the CFAA (which can land you 25 years). If you're a little girl, the DA is probably not going to prosecute, even if you were naughty and downloaded a song illegally.

But here's the thing: Officials (especially sheriffs lately, and their deputies) are big in coveting your land and your wife and your other liquidatable assets. Heck, if you have some loose cash lying around, all of US law enforcement is already looking to find it, locate it and confiscate it via asset forfeiture and if you get in the way of their prize, well they're sheepdogs, and you're now a designated wolf.

And so anything you do that might be even slightly illegal is useful to make a case before a judge why you should spend the next 10 / 25 / 75 years locked up in Rikers or Sing Sing. Even if it's a petty violation of the CFAA, or is so vague they have to invoke conspiracy or espionage laws, which are so intentionally broad and vague that everyone is already guilty of them.

Typically, these kinds of laws are used when a company or industry wants to disappear someone into the justice system. The go to example is the Kim Dotcom raid, which happened January 18, 2012, conspicuously on the same day as the Wikipedia Blackout protesting against SOPA / PIPA (PS: They're still wanting to lock down the internet, which is why they want to kill Section 230).

Kim Dotcom was hanging in his stately manor in New Zealand when US ICE agents raided his home with representatives of the MPAA and RIAA standing by. He was accused of a shotgun of US law violations, including conspiracy and CFAA violations. The gist of the volley of accusations was that he was enabling mass piracy of assets by big media companies, hence the dudes in suits from the trade orgs. His company MEGAupload hosted a lot of copyrighted content.

Curiously -- and this informs why Dotcom is still in New Zealand -- MEGAupload had been cooperating with US law enforcement in their own efforts to stop pirates, and piracy rates actually climbed after the shutdown. Similarly, when Backpage was shut down for human trafficking charges (resulting in acquittal, later), human trafficking rates would climb as the victims were forced back to the streets.

(But Then -- and this does get into speculation because we don't have docs, just a lot of evidence -- Dotcom had just secured a bunch of deals with hip hop artists and was going to use MEGAupload as a music distribution service that would get singles out for free and promote tours, and the RIAA really did not like this one bit which may be the actual cause of the Dotcom raid, but we can't absolutely say. The media industry really hates pirates even though they know they're not that much of a threat, but legitimate competition might be actual cause to send mercenaries in the color of US law enforcement to a foreign nation to raid the home of a rich dude.)

What we can say is US law enforcement will make shit up to lock you away if someone with power thinks you have something it wants, and you might object to them taking it, and they have a long history of just searching people's histories (online and off) to find something for which to disappear them into the federal and state penal systems. After all, the US has more people (per capita or total) in prison than any other nation in the world, and so it's easy to get lost in there.

So yeah, you absolutely have secrets to hide.

I tried arguing against this, but it's no use. I tried pointing out how something can be branded illegal retroactively, like 20 years down the line, I tried the "give me your credit card info" approach, nothing took. 90% of the time the counter-argument is usually something to the effect of "big companies know everything about me anyway", which is just guessing on their part.

I'm just going to take care of my own privacy, because I'm clearly in the minority (present company excluded, of course). Almost everyone I know disregards online privacy completely, so I'm done trying to get a dialogue going with these people; it's every man for himself. The only way online privacy will become a hot topic among laymen is when something nasty happens and at that point, it will have been too late.

Saying you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you don't have anything to say.

99% of people have some private keys they need to hide

Easy: "You, the government, want me to show you all my data? Right after you show me (and everyone else) all your documents, including the "top secret" ones. Because you haven't done anything wrong, right?"

Guys, stop falling for the obvious bait in the comments.

"i have nothing to hide"

no, you are wrong, you just do not understand what other people know about you.

Also: never give your government the authority over something you wouldn't give the worst possible government.

• Women hide thier skin, lips, and age
• Men hide thier jawline with beards and their insecurities are buried so well, they forget it themselves as a defense mechanism hoping the mental/emotional weakness will "heal" by next confrontation
• Humans hide thier weakness,
• Thier competitive business plans
• Patents until they are published
• Who are you falling in love with at the start
• Exactly how much you are attracted to a person
• Who you have a crush on
• Your answer to a $10,000 competition
• Your lottery ticket
• The location of your gold and gun
• The location of your child when allowed online
• Whether someone is away from home for extended periods of time, you leave the lights and TV on.
• Inventions until it's marketed
• Science Fair Project until it's unvieled
• Presents until they are opened
• Your private parts
• Your private thoughts on your marriage

Have you ever grabbed a childs private parts? NO of course not, because you INNATELY UNDERSTAND even though you are not a parent and don't remember being one yourself. In fact you understand it so well that if you were to do so publcally, you're putting your life at risk.

CONCLUSION: Privacy is natural and helps give confidence and security to an individual but they want access to your weaknesses and privates anyway.

EVIDENCE: Privacy Violation is a specific tactic meant to break people ...IN PRISON..since they begining of time, Gulags.

P.S. Stop showing nude baby pictures at reunions to those that did not raise or grow up with the child in the family who already saw them naked, and only while they are still a child and not a teenager, otherwise that is a serious privacy violation. In fact, just don't take the picture, where did you even get that you lazy lubricated louse.

There is so many good responses to this. Here is one I just came up with:

Legal and not embarrassing are not the same thing.

This is why you don't rig a fair system... Because your 'rig' may one day be used against you.

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There is a inversion of sorts here that is also important. If some people have access to the information hidden to everyone else they have power and control. Allowing just a few to read everything everyone else does gives them undo power. The access law enforcement has can and it abused, it is also sold or stolen.

I have nothing to hide, but I will hide it anyway.

I don't know where I read it but the best defence to "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is "I don't have anything to hide but I don't trust your judgment or intentions"

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I'm all for privacy, but I'm not all for using the comment section to talk about abortion rights. Sure there is some overlap, but the comment section here seems to show the ease of which the human psyche can get distracted, these tangential bickerings are the reason big data is so effortlessly steam rolling us.

There are a surprising number of grammatical errors in that blog post. Did anyone proof read it, I wonder?

Ok but you don’t need to pay a vpn to have a reasonable amount of online privacy. Even more because most of the things today work online and you need to provide an identity por example for government services. So is not bad to have a a standard profile but take precautions that don’t need to use a vpn. Even if true, this is propaganda to have fear and buy it.

Abortion should be illegal because it violates the UDHR. The UDHR was edited in 2018 to include the right of abortion. Other than that true.

EDIT: sorry for turning this into an off topic political discussion. Didn't mean to do it here. Delete this comment if you want.