Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'
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.
The nothing-to-hide argument is everywhere. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public-surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed-circuit television. In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear." Variations of nothing-to-hide arguments frequently appear in blogs, letters to the editor, television news interviews, and other forums. One blogger in the United States, in reference to profiling people for national-security purposes, declares: "I don't mind people wanting to find out things about me, I've got nothing to hide! Which is why I support [the government's] efforts to find terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!"
The argument is not of recent vintage. One of the characters in Henry James's 1888 novel, The Reverberator, muses: "If these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn't pity them, and if they hadn't done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people knowing."
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/
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Happyhippychick
(8,379 posts)
alc
(1,151 posts)The government isn't simply looking for someone saying "i'm going to kill the president" or people cheating on their taxes where the numbers don't add up and it's obvious. If there is a conspiracy, the participants may be using code words or encryption so the government doesn't even know specifics. The government is looking for patterns and outliers. If you don't fit into the norm the data mining algorithms will red-flag you for further scrutiny. And once that happens the FBI or IRS can cause a lot of trouble for you even though you did nothing wrong. They waste your time and they waste their time where they could be using specific facts rather than correlations and patterns. The patterns are just a way for them to determine where to look for specific facts.
To avoid extra scrutiny we need to "be normal". Don't use cash or credit cards differently that "normal". Don't spend your money differently than normal (too bad if you like expensive cars and will give up other things in life. "normal people" making $X/year don't buy that car). Don't make calls to friends in certain countries. Don't buy gas near home depots in multiple states in a short period of time (you may be collecting fertilizer) or near drug stores (you may be running a meth lab). etc. As people do this, it tightens the definition of "normal" and creates new outliers who were previously normal. Uniqueness becomes something to avoid rather than to be proud of.
I have done LOTs of data mining for market research. I assure you I can find anything you want if I have enough data, and I can make a reasonably argument why my algorithm is valid. I can find correlations that can make anyone on DU look suspicious if you give me enough data (phone records, purchases, travel/dining/entertainment locations). More data actually can make conclusions worse not better unless you are REALLY careful and REALLY understand the data and validate all of your assumptions and algorithms. The NSA is pretty good at doing those things when they can but also flags a lot of false positives which is a waste of everyone's time. (They do share data mining techniques with companies and participate in conferences so they can learn what companies do and much of what they do is known)
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts).