Episode: 123
Title: HPR0123: Misunderstanding Privacy Part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0123/hpr0123.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:46:39

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This show is a loose adaptation of the paper entitled, I've got nothing to hide and other
misunderstandings of privacy written by Daniel J. Salove and linked to this and other
information is available in the show notes all right so I am Drake and he was
and we are going to be talking about privacy in a multi-part series that I've
been titled misunderstandings of privacy based largely on Daniel J. Salove's
paper so why is privacy important okay great question well like you know in
2005 the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration authorized the
NSA to engage in warrantless wiretapping and even actually had a paper with
these on them oh there you go okay in 2002 the media revealed that the
Department of Defense was constructing a data mining project called total
information awareness for Tia under the leadership of Admiral John Pointexter
you can't make this stuff up the vision of Tia was to gather a variety of
information about people you know financial education health other data
like that the information would be analyzed for suspicious patterns and a
coin in Mr. Pointexter the only way to detect to detect terrorists the sense
does not make sense the only way to detect terrorists is to look for patterns of
activity that are based on observations from the past as well as estimates
about how terrorists will adapt to avoid future measures of detection okay
however you know when this program came to a light there was you know public
outcry in the Senate that voted to deny the program any funding in May 2006
USA today broke the story that the NSA had obtained customer records from
several major phone companies and was analyzing them for patterns
and this was quoted as being the largest database ever assembled ever
that's a fairly large database I suppose in June 2006 the New York Times
data the government had been accessing oh this is actually my favorite
that the government had been accessing bank records from the Society of World
Wide Interbank Financial Transactions or Swift
which handles five transactions for like thousands of banks and stuff
all right so many people were outraged at these announcements it does kind of
point but others weren't they didn't see a problem and the reason I didn't see
a problem as they explained was because I've got nothing to hide wow what a
brilliant argument no privacy problem exists if the person has nothing to hide
super absolutely super and that is the point of this particular show and
actually this self-mini series of shows is why did nothing to hide argument is
has some issues so you know looking at the nothing to hide argument when the
government engages in surveillance there is no threat to privacy unless the
government recovers unlawful activity in which case the person really has
no legitimate claim to justify why the unlawful activity should remain
private thus if an individual engages only in legal
activity they have nothing to worry about a common example right is
suppose the government examines telephone records and finds out that the
person you know made calls to you know their parents a friend in
Canada a bank a pizza place you know so what the person might say
I'm not embarrassed or familiar by this information if anybody asks me I will
gladly tell them where I shop I had nothing to hide
the nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent in
popular discourse about privacy security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the
most common retort against privacy advocates nothing to hide argument is
possibly the primary argument made when balancing privacy against security
sometimes nothing to hide argument is posed as a question like um
if you have nothing to hide then what do you have to fear or uh
if you are doing anything wrong then what do you have to hide?
well here I'm going to take you on a journey of exploring the land that
is nothing to hide argument and the various issues that it raises and don't
kid yourself grappling with the nothing to hide argument is very important
because the argument reflects the sentiments of like you know a why
percentage of the population unlike with most people then nothing to hide
arguments superficial incantations can like readily be refuted but when the
argument is actually made in its strongest form it's extremely formidable
like um in order to respond and nothing to hide argument it's
imperative that we have a theory about what privacy is and why it's valuable
because really at its core and nothing to hide argument emerges from the
conception of privacy and its value you know what is privacy you know how do
we assess its value how do we weigh it against other values like national
security and these are actually questions that have long played
people who have you know philosophized okay philosophize not work
but people you know philosophers about privacy and those trying to develop
theory and justifications for privacy's legal protection
like in Britain for example and the government has you know millions of CCTV
cameras and the slogan for this program which is actually it's a fine
if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to fear in the
United States there was this one anonymous individual from the department of
justice i think it was who commented that if the government needs to read my
emails so be it i had nothing to hide do you
and if you look online you'll find you know people on blogs you say things
such as i don't mind people wanting to find out things about me i've got
nothing to hide which is why i support president pushes efforts to find
errors by monitoring our phone calls great fantastic statement
variations of nothing to hide argument frequently appear in like blogs
letters to the editor of television interviews you know anytime that people can
express their opinion to a mass audience you tend to find variation of the
argument some examples include
some examples include i don't have anything to hide from the government i
don't think i had much hidden from the government in the first place i don't
think they care if i talk about my annoying co-worker or do i care if the FBI
monitors my phone calls i had nothing to hide either does 99.99% of the
population if wiretapping stops just one of these
September 11th incidents thousands of lies are saved
like i said i had nothing to hide the majority of them the american people
had nothing to hide and those that has something to hide should be found out
and get what they have come into them
right now this is nothing new you know i mean there's a
character in this novel by Henry James and that was written in 1888 it was called
the reverberator and the character goes 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 but if you actually do look on these blogs you see
from where the paper comes but there are some fantastic comebacks to some
of these like um so do you have curtains can i see your credit card bill is
for the last year i don't need to justify my position you need to justify
yours come back with a warrant i don't have anything to hide i don't have
anything i feel like showing you either if you have nothing to hide then you
have no life show me yours i'll show you mine
it's not about having anything to hide it's about things not being anyone
else's business oh it's a month's kind of paper bottom line
jostle would have loved it what more should anyone have to say
okay so looking at those comebacks it's on the surface it's kind of
dismissed and nothing to hide argument
is this thing not a curtain breaker all right
well they're saying oh yeah on the surface it's easy to dismiss the
argument right because everybody has something they want to hide from
somebody it's actually this novella by this guy Frederick
what's the last time during math i think it is called traps it's kind of an
old novella but if you're into novella it's a priori classic
and it involves a seemingly innocent use put on trial by its group of like
retired lawyers because mock trial game and the man inquires you know what
his crime shall be for the trial game and the prosecutor responds
in all together minor matter a crime can always be found
one can usually think of something compelling that even the most open person
would want to hide like um if you have nothing to hide then um
you know that quite literally means that you will let me photograph your naked
and then i get full rights to the photo so i can show it to your friends and
neighbors co-workers etc you know most people would kind of have a problem
with that
Canadian privacy expert David
the latter you know i'm just murdering his name express as a similar idea
when he argues that there is no sentient human being in the
western world who has little or no regard for his or her own personal
privacy those who would attempt such claims cannot
understand even a few minutes questioning about intimate aspects of their lives
without caving to the intrusiveness of certain subject matters
however these responses kind of only attack enough in the hide argument and
like it's most extreme form which is not particularly strong
um as a simple one-liner about a person's preference you know i personally
have nothing to hide but that argument is not very compelling because
you can't exactly attack a person's you know a personal preference
however if you kind of go so far instead of nothing to hide argument
kind of means that's okay for the government to infringe on the rights of
potentially millions of like innocent people
possibly ruining their lives in the process that's kind of like saying
that um i have nothing to hide basically equates to
i don't care what happens so long it doesn't happen to me
which is you know kind of an interesting take on it
but uh it's actually really more compelling to make the argument in general
so let's say that um if you said that only people all of the people who
desire to conceal unlawful activities should be concerned
you can argue that people engaged in legal conduct have no legitimate claim
to maintaining you know the privacy of such activities
anyway but the argument is actually really more compelling if you make it
like more generally so if you say that people who um at the only people that
actually you know desire privacy of those who are trying to conceal unlawful
activity and you can argue that people engage in legal
conduct you know you have no rights to conceal that type of activity
anyway um there's actually a related comment by judge richer
Posner who contends when people today decree lack of privacy what they
really want i think is mainly something quite different from seclusion they
want more power to conceal information about themselves
that others might usually visit to their disadvantage
okay so if you consider that then privacy is likely to be in vote when there
is information that is discreditable or that's negative that for
someone who wants to conceal and the judge uh
Richard Posner actually asserts that the law should not protect people
considering this credible information and he considers people like um
you know child molesters okay okay let's say you're convicted child molester
right and you spent like time in jail you generally shouldn't be able to
conceal this from like you know a daycare if you're trying to apply a daycare
or um sellers who are trying to sell defective products
generally should not have the privacy rights to conceal that the product is
needed defective and of course we could say that you know
there is non discreditable information that someone wants to conceal
purely because it's embarrassing they just don't want others to know
and in a less extreme form than nothing the high argument is not actually even
referred to personal information at all but it's only a subset of personal
information that is likely to be involved in government surveillance
what i mean exactly is that governments don't necessarily care about
every aspect of your fight like if you're
you know if you have some kind of strange hobby like you cry during some
movie or you know something also embarrassing about you that that's not what
the government cares about when people say that they have nothing to hide
from data mining or surveillance the more sophisticated way of
understanding their argument is that they don't have a problem with this
closing those particular piece of information that the government is
interested in you know most people don't have a problem with giving up their
phone records because you know a phone
how was this all right when people say they don't have a problem with this
closing the more sophisticated way of understanding what they're trying to say
is that they don't have a problem with this closing those little pieces of
information that the government happens to be interested in
like um when you know when the government wants phone numbers or even what is
said in the conversation is not likely to be that that is
particularly embarrassing or discreditable to the average while
fighting the citizen um so the the witty retorts to the nothing to hide
argument about you know oh so if you if you have nothing to hide then I
suppose I can have naked photos of you and put them all over the
internet you know you're feeling your deepest darkest secrets to all of your
friends that's not the of the best argument because
it's really only relevant if the government was actually going to be engaging
in some type of surveillance that might result into the disclosure of
that type of personal information
okay and an even more devil's advocate right so the government is collecting
you know thousands of naked photos or everyone for whatever reason
many people can rationally assume that the government well
exposes information only to a few trained law enforcement officials
or okay maybe not from people at all right it could just be computers that are
you know storing and analyzing the data for patterns or
and really you can argue that the electronic collection of vast amounts of
personal data is not really an invasion of privacy at all a
computer looking for obvious patterns uh keeps most private data from being
read by any intelligent person anyway
there is actually one more compelling version of the nothing to hide argument
and that is a comparison of the value of privacy versus the uh
value of promoting security you can't talk about how people feel about the
potential loss of privacy in any meaningful way with that recognizing that
most people who don't mind the NSA programs
see that as a potential exchange of a small amount of privacy
very large personal gain so in other words nothing to hide argument being
made by comparing the value of privacy versus security
so and in the situation privacy is relatively low because the information is
not particularly sensitive you know phone calls you know uh
product purchases though things like that they're not extremely sensitive
piece of information unless of course you're engaged in some kind of legal
conduct in which case you don't really have any as the argument argues
you don't really have any right to protect that illegal activity anyway
and on the government side the security interest is very high compared to the
low privacy problem because having a computer analyzed fellow members that
one person dials is not likely to expose anyone's deepest or
darkest secrets to the you know vast public the machine is simply
you know looking for any obvious patterns and will move on oblivious if you're
not doing anything that seems suspicious
so in other words the argument goes if you're not doing anything wrong
you do not have anything to hide so you have nothing to fear
okay air go and it's most compelling form that nothing to hide argument is as
follows and where is this brilliantly drafted argument
the NSA surveillance data mining and other government information
gathering programs will result in the disclosure of
particular pieces of information to a few government officials
or perhaps only the government computers this very limited disclosure of
the particular information involved is not
likely to be threatening to the privacy of law-abiding citizens
only those who are engaged in illegal activities have reason to hide
this information although there may be some cases in which the
information may be sensitive or embarrassing to law-abiding citizens
the limited disclosure of lessons of threat to privacy
moreover the security interest in detecting investigating and preventing
terrorist attacks is very high in outweighs whatever minimal moderate privacy
interests law-abiding citizens may have and these particular
pieces of information okay so put that way the argument is actually extremely
formidable because it balances the you know person's right to privacy it gets
national security issues and it's extremely hard to argue for privacy in this
particular situation
and for quite some time you know lost scholars and like you know philosophizers
I like that word I'm a I'm a coin philosophizer as being an actual word
so scholars and philosophizers have proclaimed their privacy is such a
muddled concept anyway that's of little used to anybody
and there is this one quote by this guy human Ross who declares the concept of
privacy is infected with pernicious ambiguities
Colin Bennett similarly notes that attempts to define the concept of privacy
have generally been have generally not been met with any success
and Robert Post declares that I love this quote
privacy is a value so complex so entangled in competing and contrary
dimensions so in gorging with various and distinct meanings
that sometimes I despair whether it can usefully be addressed to anybody at all
you get a lot of like you know jurors politicians scholars philosophizers
who simply analyze the issues without articulating any conception of what
privacy actually means however conceptualizing privacy is actually essential
to analyzing these issues and in many cases privacy never actually gets
balanced out against conflicting interests because courts legislators and
and so on often feel to recognize that privacy is even being implicated
air bill it's a paramount importance that we devote more time to developing
a conception of privacy what it is and what its value is
but how why have existing attempts been so unsatisfying
well in the next part of my little mini-series we are going to
take a look at the various methods of conceptualizing privacy and
looking at how over time the conception of privacy has changed
with certain societal means super and until then if you perform more
information that is not basically me just rambling on about privacy you
like nice concise arguments and the form of a nice white paper
the nice suggestion with the paper entitled
I've got nothing to hide and other misunderstandings of privacy written by
Daniel J. Swell, a link that is available in the show notes
if you have any questions or comments from me personally you can email me at
tracandibusatgemo.com or I have a fantastic blog to put with wonders
information that dazzles that's definitely but um
dracandibus.com if you have some time to kill
and all right let's go ahead and leave out
all right and we're out we're good okay
did you notice that on the I could have sworn that I was watching on the scope
right thing was hanging like the buffer sizes too
high did you notice that was dropping anything during reporting
no I maybe it was just like because the array of mics freaking out
because all the noise from these pieces of paper I don't know what I was thinking
right putting the uh
on the back of the office the paper
it's the levels are jumping all the boys
well no dude I would buy a decent microphone excuse to you
he's more I mean it's like I was just a nice mic setup from like you guys
gonna be like what 80 bucks or something like that you know
that kind of like a mic because you know I would cheat that cell phone
jam with my charger agent and that's way more entertaining
well I don't know right because I do radio shows so often
that it I don't have enough I barely have time for this
and it's been nice