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Comment by diafygi | Hacker News Reader

I've always liked using the social good argument from the same author's previous work[1].

"I don't mind giving up some privacy for safety. I've got nothing to hide."

"Well privacy isn't something you can just give up. It's a right given to society by our framers, not individuals. A smoothly functioning democracy depends on dissent, which requires privacy to allow alternate points of view to gain traction. So privacy is a social good, not a personal right, and if we reduce privacy, we are reducing our democracy. The Soviets didn't have privacy. Free countries must."

That last part is usually what does the trick.

[1]: http://tehlug.org/files/solove.pdf

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Dissent is much more effect when it's done out in the open. Right now anyone can stand on a street corner and state whatever views they hold, start a website, hand out flyers or express any idea using any number of methods. That's the key to democracy, not whispers from secret sources who refuse to name themselves. We reduce democracy when we force dissenters to use privacy as a shield instead of allowing them to use the first amendment as a weapon.

It doesn't matter what the soviets or any other country did. Democracy is and has always been about the right to open expression. If we lose our right to publicly discuss unpopular ideas then privacy is the least of our concerns. Private communication matters in a state that is already telling people what to say and what not to say. We should all be willing to make great sacrifices to make sure that never happens where we live, not planning for what happens when it does.

Common Sense, the pamphlet that inspired many to fight in the early years of the American Revolution, was published anonymously. Don't discount the power of anonymous dissent; the US owes its existence to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense_%28pamphlet%29

I don't think the matter at hand here is using privacy as a shield, but rather having the ability to voice dissenting opinions because of privacy. Privacy is a means of preventing oppression/coercion against those holding dissenting views. It ensures that those in power do not have the ability to suppress dissenting views, rather than forcing dissenters to use it as a shield. We still have the first amendment, but privacy helps protect it and mitigates the social pressures related to the first amendment.

There's a difference between privacy and anonymity. Privacy keeps people from seeing the stuff that you don't want others to see. It has little to do with freedom of speech. Anonymity is putting stuff out in the public without them knowing who said it. Yes, it's freedom of speech, but it's also freedom from accountability.

In a fully functioning democracy, you should be free to say whatever you want openly without being threatened. If you can't make an argument openly, I would immediately question why: is it because society is unjust, or because you can't stand behind the argument?

I would argue that you would still need privacy, in so far as to allow an amount of time in which you could form your dissenting thoughts in private, write them down, iterate them before you go to the street corner and announce them to the world.

If everything was in the public space or monitored then people with dissenting ideas may not have the will or motivation to iterate on them as is necessary to create a well reasoned thesis, and hence they would fall flat or be cast out as just another nut job.

Oh, no - I'm not trying to downplay the need for privacy. I'm saying that privacy and anonymity are two separate things and people too often mistake one for the other. Privacy is everyone's right, but it has nothing to do with dissent. Blasting your opinions out into public while shielding yourself with a pseudonym isn't privacy.

I consider that anonymity and pseudonymity are aspects of privacy. What's private there are the associations between activity and identity. We need "privacy for the weak and transparency for the powerful" (see Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet by Julian Assange et alia).

I can speak from experience that the surveillance revealed by Snowden is already impacting the severity and tone of my political discussions with friends and colleagues. We are (mostly) pretty keenly aware of the fact that our conversations are going into a database somewhere, and will likely be processed by some algorithm later.

In my experience, it was almost the opposite. The Snowden revelations illustrated how imperfect the NSA's coverage actually was compared to our prior speculation, and that they had some semblance of decency with regards to handling data.

Of course, I have my doubts that said decency holds at higher levels, and I'm sure it greatly depends on how important you are.

So unless you're a legitimate surveillance target such as a terrorist, politician, investigative journalist, or EFF attorney, you likely have nothing to fear.

The NSA is essentially unaccountable for whatever it does; there's no decency in this.

I hope that the assumption that investigate journalists and EFF attorneys are "legitimate" targets is highly ironic.

I figured the sarcasm was self-evident having put terrorist as the first item on the list. In retrospect, perhaps I should have not edited out the /s tag.

"I'm sure it greatly depends on how important you are."

And who you've dated...

You assume that dissent needs privacy to grow. In a free society, I don't see why that is necessary (or even desired.)

The financial crisis was driven in part by "private" takes on "publicly available" investments - cheating that was enabled through strong privacy. This is a societal "bad."

Dissidents need the ability to conduct private conversations to reduce the ability of the government to silence them.

Take the example of the Black Panther Party marching into the California State Capitol with shotguns. Under the laws of the day, it was perfectly legal. There was no intent to break any law. Yet, had the authorities been able to determine that they were planning this, they would have been stopped.

Private communication is essential to the planning of public discourse.

The government silencing protest is the problem there, not a lack of privacy. Dissidents don't have that need if society and government allow free expression.

If the government were perfect, then privacy might not be that much of an issue. Until then, privacy is often a useful stopgap measure.

Some governments today would view a protest like this as a possible terrorist action.

For what it's worth this example more than any other, that I've heard, explains why privacy is important.

Government silencing protest is a problem, it is not THE problem.

We should do whatever necessary to make it as difficult as possible for governments to silence protests.

There is less need for dissidents if the society and government allow the free airing of grievances.

Dissent is indeed important - and so is the right to compose your thoughts and make non-public comments which are not perfectly formed. Time and again we've all argued with others over something which was a not-well-thought-out comment imperfectly formed & delivered. So long as there is a line delineating "something to hide" and "dissent" and "libel" and etc, we need a right to form & craft our words through imperfect expressions thereof until we form something we can take public with confidence. Sometimes ideas just sound bad at first glance, and require polishing & presentation before the positive value therein can be present and not inspire visceral reprisal.

The argument I generally use is "it's nobody's business". For example:

Person I'm talking to: "I don't mind giving up some privacy for safety. I've got nothing to hide."

Me: "That's great, but what I do, so long as I'm not hurting anybody, is nobody's business but my own."

"None of my fucking business": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WikPtKdffJ0

Person I'm talking to: "How do we check that you're not hurting anyone? We need to invade your privacy to keep other people safe."

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