Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'

[markpkessinger]

Note: This article appeared a couple of years ago in <i>The Chronicle of Higher Education</i>, but is quite relevant to the news of the last few days. It's a long article, and thus it is difficult to do it any justice within the copyright limit of 4 paragraphs, so by all means, read the full article.

[font size=1 color="gray"]May 15, 2011[/font]
[font size=4]Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'[/font]
By Daniel J. Solove

< . . . >

The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security.

< . . . >

To describe the problems created by the collection and use of personal data, many commentators use a metaphor based on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell depicted a harrowing totalitarian society ruled by a government called Big Brother that watches its citizens obsessively and demands strict discipline. The Orwell metaphor, which focuses on the harms of surveillance (such as inhibition and social control), might be apt to describe government monitoring of citizens. But much of the data gathered in computer databases, such as one's race, birth date, gender, address, or marital status, isn't particularly sensitive. Many people don't care about concealing the hotels they stay at, the cars they own, or the kind of beverages they drink. Frequently, though not always, people wouldn't be inhibited or embarrassed if others knew this information.

Another metaphor better captures the problems: Franz Kafka's The Trial. Kafka's novel centers around a man who is arrested but not informed why. He desperately tries to find out what triggered his arrest and what's in store for him. He finds out that a mysterious court system has a dossier on him and is investigating him, but he's unable to learn much more. The Trial depicts a bureaucracy with inscrutable purposes that uses people's information to make important decisions about them, yet denies the people the ability to participate in how their information is used.

The problems portrayed by the Kafkaesque metaphor are of a different sort than the problems caused by surveillance. They often do not result in inhibition. Instead they are problems of information processing—the storage, use, or analysis of data—rather than of information collection. They affect the power relationships between people and the institutions of the modern state. They not only frustrate the individual by creating a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, but also affect social structure by altering the kind of relationships people have with the institutions that make important decisions about their lives.

< . . . >

[font color="gray"]Daniel J. Solove is a professor of law at George Washington University. This essay is an excerpt from his new book, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security, published this month by Yale University Press.[/font]

[orpupilofnature57]

1. It's like that behavior test in the 60's , when the people giving the test were...

observed, it was scary to see how quick we will dispense pain, when given authority to do so .

[Babel_17]

2. Ask a lawyer about standing in a lineup

Why would anyone innocent object to being in a lineup?

Or to "go downtown and help clear some things up"?

All of our protections are there for a reason. They aren't based on ancient rituals that may no longer apply.

Has everyone noticed what it costs a person proven innocent in court to do so?

Have we already forgotten how, at parties, Hoover would play surveillance tapes of MLK?

[PDittie]

9. +1

[Th1onein]

26. Has everyone noticed what it costs a person proven innocent in court to do so?

It bankrupts all but the very richest.

[treestar]

3. There is so much data that privacy is not a real issue

And people then have to quit blaming the government when bad things occur. After 911, some supermajority wanted the government to be able to head off terrorist attacks. People have to decide - when the media quits blabbing on blaming some secondary party, then maybe people will get the concept. If we don't want the government to have the data about who called who, the we don't claim they didn't connect the dots or dropped the ball when a terrorist attack occurs.

The same for all the TSA blathering on here. Accept terrorist attacks fatalistically then.

[Myrina]

13. Yes, the phone taps on the Tsarnaev brothers were so successful in stopping the Marathon attack ...

... oh, that's right - we IGNORED them even though Russia was jumping up and down about the guy.

[treestar]

19. To me, you don't get the luxury of blaming the government

only the Tsarnaevs - at least, not if you are going to complain that the government shouldn't be able to get records of phone calls or tap people's phones.

[Th1onein]

27. You do realize that they are STORING the data, right?

Geez.

[randome]

4. This is projection. I am neither frustrated nor helpless.

If you choose to feel that way, it's your choice.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[theaocp]

6. Pray tell

where do YOU draw the line, since you have nothing to hide?

[randome]

7. There are few expectations of privacy in the Internet Age. That's how the world works.

The younger generations, I expect, will collectively shrug over this Verizon/NSA stuff.

But I would draw the line if, as Bush did, this was done without warrants and review. As it is, there are legal warrants and Congress has reviewed and approved this every 90 days since 2006.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[morningfog]

18. A warrant seeking all data of all users everyday is not a warrant. The double-think is

strong on this one.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

5. The government knowing something about me ...

... that I'm not willing to share, reduces me to nothing but subservience; as an instrument in whatever nefarious scheme they are plotting.

[1StrongBlackMan]

29. Easy solution …

Unplug and stay in your house … otherwise, your mere existence in public space (and the air-waves/internet is public space) subjects you to observation.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

30. Perhaps, you should read my post again.

Look up the definition for "willing" while you're at it.

[1StrongBlackMan]

32. What do you think I missed ...

the only way to prevent all your shit from being known is to unplug; because anyone with a little time and/or sufficient interest can find it ... whether you are willing or not.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

31. Perhaps, you should read my post again.

Look up the definition for "willing" while you're at it.

[marions ghost]

8. The Dangers of Surveillance

Here is another good essay from the Washington University School of Law in 2012. This one talks about the "chill" on discussion of political and social issues--ie. the way that societies censor themselves when there is too much surveillance.

I read this whole essay in a short time--it is so well written and clear. I urge everyone to click on the link to the PDF and read this now, and send it to others. It will give you an overview of the issues in a very readable format:

http://www.harvardlawreview.org/symposium/papers2012/richards.pdf


"The Dangers of Surveillance" by Neil Richards

Excerpt:

"Existing attempts to define the dangers of surveillance are often unconvincing, and they have generally failed to speak in terms that are likely to influence the law. In this essay, I try to explain the harms of government surveillance. Drawing on law, history, literature, and the work of scholars in the emerging interdisciplinary field of “surveillance studies,” I offer an account of what those harms are and why they matter. I will move beyond the vagueness of current theories of surveillance to articulate a more coherent understanding and a more workable approach.

At the level of theory, I will explain when surveillance is particularly dangerous, and when it is not. Surveillance is harmful because it can chill the exercise of our civil liberties, and because it gives the watcher power over the watched. In terms of civil liberties, consider surveillance of people when they are thinking, reading, and communicating with others in order to make up their minds about their political and social beliefs. Such intellectual surveillance is particularly dangerous because it can cause people not to experiment with new, controversial, or deviant ideas. To protect our intellectual freedom to think without state oversight or interference, we need what I have elsewhere called “intellectual privacy.”

The second special harm that surveillance poses is that it affects the power dynamic between the watcher and the watched. This creates the risk of a variety of harms, such discrimination, coercion, or the threat of selective enforcement, where critics of the government can be prosecuted or blackmailed for wrongdoing unrelated to the purpose of the surveillance.

At a practical level, I propose a set of principles that should guide the future development of surveillance law, allowing for an appropriate balance between the costs and benefits of government surveillance. First, we must recognize that surveillance transcends the public private divide. Public and private surveillance are simply related parts of the same problem, rather than being wholly discrete. Even if we are ultimately more concerned with government surveillance, any solution must grapple with the complex relationships between government and corporate watchers.

Second, we must recognize that secret surveillance is illegitimate and prohibit the creation of any
domestic surveillance programs whose existence is secret.

Third, we should recognize that total surveillance is illegitimate and reject the idea that it is acceptable for the government to record all internet activity without authorization. Government surveillance of the internet is a power with the potential for massive abuse. Like its precursor of telephone wiretapping, it must be subjected to meaningful judicial process before it is authorized. we should carefully scrutinize any surveillance that threatens our intellectual privacy.

Fourth, we must recognize that surveillance is harmful. Surveillance menaces intellectual privacy and threatens the harms of blackmail, coercion, and discrimination; accordingly, we must recognize surveillance as a harm in standing doctrine. Reducing the harms of surveillance to doctrine in this way is
essential if we want to avoid sacrificing our vital civil liberties.
-------------

I develop this argument in four steps. In Part I, I show the scope of the problem of modern “surveillance societies,” in which individuals are increasingly monitored by an overlapping and entangled assemblage of government and corporate watchers. I then develop an account of why this kind of watching is problematic.

Part II shows how surveillance menaces our intellectual privacy and threatens the development of
individual beliefs in ways that are inconsistent with the basic commitments of democratic societies.

Part III explores how surveillance distorts the power relationships between watcher and watched, giving the watcher an increased ability to blackmail, coerce, and discriminate against those under its scrutiny.

Part IV identifies and explores the four principles that I argue should guide the development of surveillance law in the future, to protect us from the substantial harms of surveillance.

[Heidi]

10. Kick!

:kick:

[historylovr]

11. K & R.

[Sam1]

12. K & R

Kick

[Myrina]

14. The comments on the article are interesting ...

Realizing they're 2 years old in most cases, it's sadly comical to see the 'well if you're not a terrorist it shouldn't bother you' and 'they're not reading your emails' and 'how else are we going to stop terrorism' folks. Wonder what they'd think if we could ask them in light of this week's data-harvesting revelations?

Sad to think so many people are really that naive, especially in a country that's supposed to be so smart.

[Randomthought]

15. take the time to read all of the essay

If you still think having nothing to hide protects you

[ramapo]

16. Privacy is long dead

Forget the government spying on you. In reality, the government could care less about you. Sure they mine staggering volumes of data for suspicious keywords in hopes of averting the next terrorist attack but that is as far as it goes.

My privacy and your privacy has long been ceded to the marketeers. Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple are probably the primary 'villains'. They collect, save, and analyze virtually every keystroke. We give up much data voluntarily. Gmail and all of Google's other 'services' are free for a reason. How many frequent shopper programs do you belong too with the little keychain barcode that so helpfully lets the marketeers track everything you buy. ALL this data gets aggregated. You have no secrets. Your entire life is an open book to just about anybody who wants to invest a very little time and money in assembling a dossier on you. What you buy, what you watch, where you go, when you go, and on and on, it is all there for those who want (not need) to know.

Unless you work very, very hard at it, it is close to impossible to remain anonymous in today's society.

Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint are primarily just data collectors. They save all the data about your every phone call. And since they own this data, there is really no privacy constraint in turning it over to the government. But I am not aware that their use of data goes beyond this.

Anybody who has an expectation of privacy and is at all connected to the myriad of data collectors is naive. Privacy died quite a few years ago and it ain't coming back.

On edit: I didn't even mention the explosion of video monitoring that has taken place. Cameras, cameras everywhere.

[cascadiance]

17. Ask yourself that the next time a company you interview for demands a facebook password from you...

... before they'll consider hiring you...

Or maybe, if you wanted your friend to get hired there, someone asks them for their facebook password, and it has certain private conversations with them that you wouldn't want others in your company to see (nothing bad directed towards your company, just things that are private between you and your friend).

Or maybe you're interviewing with Google, and the hiring manager has access to your surfing habits...

Or maybe you're interviewing with Amazon, and the hiring manager has access to your purchase, shopping browsing history...

Or maybe you're interviewing with Yahoo, and the hiring manager has access to your email...

Or maybe you're interviewing with Verizon, and the hiring manager has access to your texting data...

Don't you want some ground rules in these areas? The same for government access to your online information as well, when it might have all of this data consolidated somewhere as well when you need something from it.

One company (or the state government) made a mistake in how it logged the times of my employment and how it coincided or didn't coincide with my unemployment checks. They mistakenly came to the conclusion that I was "gaming" the system, and was falsely claiming unemployment benefits). They sent inquiries to my older address from then that I'd long moved away from. They then kept back my tax refund. And forced me to go to court with data that fortunately I had kept that proved their errors, but forced me to take time off from my present job, and explain to them why I got caught in that mess through no fault of my own.

These are the kind of things that are going to be on steroids if you allow this sort of invasion of privacy and compilation of data that is being talked about here.

People will have no rights to have any kind of conversation or expression of thoughts that they wouldn't be willing to have the whole world around them see. Is that good? In earlier times, with those restrictions, we would have had NO real Boston Tea Party, and likely NO Revolution, and NO subsequent system of government that gave the world the concept of democratic rule. Is that what we want? Those kind of restrictions to peoples' lives moving forward? It is a move towards fascism unless it is shut down soon.

[ramapo]

21. I don't condone the loss of privacy

I'm just saying that it is dead and not coming back.

I think the tactic of requesting passwords to review Facebook profiles is akin to a strip search. Never, ever would I accede to such a request (unless I really really needed that job, then who knows?). Even the policy of surfing an applicant's name makes me sick.

Legislating some protection for those seeking employment is definitely warranted but even that is a battle.

Nothing changes the fact that immense amounts of data about you and me has been aggregated and is for sale. I absolutely think that sale of data should be strictly controlled. But data is an immense money maker which equals lots of lobbyists.

Idealist me says sure, people might wake up and demand legislation. Realist me thinks, not a chance. Most people think that the biggest issue is somebody grabbing you credit card number and running up some charges. That is the most trivial of the issues.

[cascadiance]

22. I think that's like saying corporations will always be persons from now forward as well...

... and don't bother to fight that as the PTB benefit too much from that being the case to let that change as well. But it is getting visibility now since Citizen's United, and as long a battle as it might be, we need to continue to fight that battle as well. I also feel that we shouldn't be allowing the privacy battles to be "given up" as well. Maybe a lot of privacy is already damaged and perhaps for some not recoverable, but doesn't stop the need to stop it in a reasonable way moving forward, so that people can carve future lives where they have some degree of freedom of independence from being lead in to forced herd mentalities, etc. that will result if we give up now.

For starters is to start getting legislation done at the state level. I helped fight a lot locally here to get legislation passed recently to protect facebook password intrusion from happening here in Oregon. But I noted to others at the time even before this week's news, that this is only a small first step in the battle to protect people's privacy in a fundamental way that is needed and needs to be done in the same way that Move to Amend is working to overturn corporate personhood.

[PsychoBunny]

23. I think privacy may be mostly dead because

it is so much work now to maintain it. Emails, twitter, Facebook, on-line bill paying, banking, ordering from Amazon and many other things are services and conveniences we want. Each one throws a little bit more of our privacy away. If you want to maintain your privacy you have to give up a lot of things and live like a hermit. Most people won't do that. Especially young people. They will just go "Oh well."

[MineralMan]

20. We seem so surprised that our privacy can be compromised.

I don't understand that at all. A thoughtful person would understand that if they post their personal information on the Internet, it will not remain private. From providing your credit card number to online retailers and companies like Paypal to posting photos of yourself in a compromising situation on Facebook, we constantly expose our private information to view.

We do the same with our political beliefs and ideas. DU, for example, is completely transparent to public view, and that means that anyone who wants can see what you wrote here. "But I use an anonymous screen name!" Yes, but it's not easy to keep that screen name anonymous. It takes a lot of effort. Most people use the same screen name on multiple sites, and inadvertently disclose their location, interests, and other details in things like profiles and messages they post.

Some people maintain a certain amount of privacy, but many don't even try. In most cases, about an hour of Googling can usually turn up the actual identity of most screen names. Twitter, Facebook, and other public places are even more transparent. We complain when our private information is discovered, but we continue to post it everywhere, with only the thinnest veneer of anonymity.

Google, for example, indexes DU constantly. Make a post here, and the title of the post will appear at the top of Google searches that use the exact wording of that title in minutes. Post a photo of yourself on DU, and it will be quickly available to people searching for your screen name on Google. Use that image to search Google Images, and a list of everywhere that exact image is posted on the Internet will pop right up. People who know that still post their photos here, but don't care. They know that Internet anonymity is largely a myth.

Privacy is important, but it's also important that we protect our own privacy to whatever extent we feel is justified. It's not just the government that is interested in us. In fact the government isn't much interested in us, anyhow. It already has plenty of data about its citizens. Worry more about corporations who are looking for information about consumers. They're the ones who are really using the transparency of the Internet to assemble data about individuals. They're the ones to worry about. The government has many ways to find out about us, if they feel that there's a reason to do so. Mostly, the government doesn't give a damn about your private information. They already have it, and have been collecting it since before the Internet and cell phones existed.

Protect your privacy as best you can, and to the degree you feel appropriate. But realize that privacy is pretty much a myth for anyone who uses today's technology. That loss of privacy is part of the technology. It's built into it, and we eagerly adopt that technology. That's reality. That's the world we inhabit.

[unblock]

24. why do these people think the 4th amendment exists at all?

do they seriously think our founders just wanted to make life easier for criminals?

they wanted the government to have the power to enforce the laws they created, but they thought privacy was sufficiently important that they decided to deny the government to violate privacy, at least in certain respects, knowing full well that this would hamper law enforcement.

obviously, our founders did not consider privacy to be a minor matter, or else the fourth amendment wouldn't exist.

[bhikkhu]

25. There's a clear difference between "public" and "private"

What you do in a public place isn't private. Of course what we do and say on the internet isn't private, it doesn't belong to people and its continually surveilled by governments and companies. I grew up thinking of phone conversations about the same way; talking on publicly or corporate owned hardware and airwaves, none of its mine, all of its been used to gather information since at least WWII...

Yet I have zero feelings of helplessness or powerlessness. The OP makes no sense.

[1StrongBlackMan]

28. To all DUers …

I would like to point out that, both, Orwell and Kafka are works of fiction … just like the writings of Aynn Rand and Alex Jones, and the beck rants. I, for one, refuse to react to/tremble in fear of the framing of a “media”, that we alternate between trusting and distrusting, especially when that framing is based on works of fiction

[woo me with science]

33. K&R