Nothing to Hide? Speak for Yourself.

“Don’t worry; you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.”

Ah, the well-worn mantra of the Nazi or the movie villain (or both). At least, it used to be.
Snowden gave us real proof that digital dragnets are happening constantly. Everywhere. “Nothing to hide” should be retired from life. Except now the people using it are ordinary citizens, weary of media outrage and armed with nothing but the desire to shrug. “Who cares if the NSA reads our emails? I have nothing to fear because I have nothing to hide.”

Well, you should care. And here’s why.

“Ignorance is bliss” means nothing

When I lived in New Delhi, I often wondered whether constantly worrying about air quality did more damage to my mental health than the invisible pollution particles did to my lungs, and whether I might live longer if I ignored them entirely. Maybe if I did the same with the invisible eyes and ears of the US government, I’d sleep better, be more productive, happier.

This is what I call the “ignorance is bliss” argument. The world is a barbecue, America is a big juicy hot dog, and Edward Snowden is your neighbor’s annoying kid who runs up to tell you it’s actually made of pig snouts. Shut up, Edward! This hot dog is made of freedom, and nobody likes you anyway.

It sucks, but it’s worth it

A slightly less ignorant moment would be admitting that pig snouts, however disgusting they may be, are what make our hot dogs so tasty, and we should all be grateful for that. This is what I call the “it sucks, but it’s worth it” argument. Nobody likes being spied on, but as NSA director Keith Alexander noted right after the Snowden revelations, the secret collection of phone metadata and other communications stopped no fewer than 54 terrorist plots worldwide. Never mind the fact that this statistic completely fell apart under scrutiny. Even if spy programs like PRISM and XKeyscore saved only one human life, that’s surely more important than a bunch of nerds on the internet complaining about the right to privacy. Right?

Sacrificing privacy for convenience is not just a first-world problem: projects like Google Loon and Facebook’s Internet.org are already striving to provide free internet access to the least developed corners of the globe. These big companies can afford to launch balloons and fly solar-powered drones across Africa and India because more data means more money. And getting a few billion more people to sign up for Google and Facebook accounts means a whole lot of data, and a whole lot of money.

But if you’re a poor Sri Lankan farmer whose child just got a university scholarship thanks to free online education, you probably don’t care whether your browsing history is sold to advertisers or handed to the government. After all, you have nothing to hide.

Come look at our kittens. We have free candy…

“You can trust the NSA”

Other people with “nothing to hide” must find my privacy death-knell extreme and apocalyptic. Of course, the definition of “something to hide” depends on whom you’re hiding it from. When I send a snarky text about a colleague’s tap-dancing recital, confiding in my friend that I think the recital is a blatant waste of time, of course I’d like to keep that text secret from that colleague. But do I care that some intern in a government bunker in Utah read the text? Not so much, because I trust that person has little interest in tattling on me. I call this the “just trust us” argument.

Life is full of trusted authorities who could violate our beloved privacy. The teller at my bank could ruin me financially. My doctor could tell my friends what my genitals look like. A TSA agent, if he or she wished, could publish on the internet a complete list of items found in my suitcase before and after a Vegas bachelor party. I don’t lose sleep over these things because I believe in layered confidentiality agreements and hiring methods that ensure these authorities are trustworthy enough to hold their jobs in the first place. Why should NSA employees be any different?

Privacy is a two-way street

And why should public servants be held to a different standard of privacy than the rest of us? Twitter was forced to answer this question in August 2015, when it shut down Politwoops, a popular website that automatically published any tweet a politician tried to delete — an algorithmic enforcement of the Streisand effect. While journalists mourned the sudden loss of a powerful government-transparency tool, Twitter argued in its defense for a universal standard of privacy…

“Imagine how nerve-racking — terrifying, even — tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable? No one user deserves this capability more than another. Indeed, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user’s voice.”

I call this the “two-way street” argument: that both people and governments have a right to secrecy. If we care so much about the right to privacy, then why do we complain when the government itself is censored?

Utopia is a glass house and a camera crew

Or, conversely, if we don’t want the government hiding things from us, shouldn’t we start by setting a good example? A poster child for this argument would be Noah Dyer, an anti-privacy activist. In his Kickstarter campaign, Noah asked the world to help him hire a camera crew to turn his life into The Truman Show, during which he would film every tiny detail of his life and stream it on the internet to prove that life under constant surveillance isn’t just livable — it’s better. It’s an extreme viewpoint, but Noah seems sincere in his pitch video, where he confronts the hypocrisy of privacy advocates:

“The same logic that allows you to burp, fart, dump, deal, or whatever in the privacy of your own home allows your government representatives to hold secret meetings where they can buy and sell votes and political favors.”

Dyer’s accusation is radical but strangely compelling. Picture the overweight kid at the local pool, clutching his shirt out of shame. Don’t we rejoice when he finally learns to defeat that shame and cannonballs into the water shirtless? Shouldn’t we all live like that? Steve Jobs hinted at this ideal in his Stanford commencement speech to the class of 2005: “You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Maybe the nudists were right all along. Ergo, the last one to strip loses!

I wish I could watch US Netflix.

Your life. Your rules. Your right to be ignored.

Wait! No! No no no no! Everyone keep your clothes on. Or don’t! Whatever you wish; that’s the point.

The fact that one person is bold enough to be naked in front of a camera (literally or figuratively) does not mean we all should. But that’s what Noah’s project demands. Not only his own shamelessness, but the shamelessness of everyone around him. If his “Year Without Privacy” had succeeded, how many family members would have wanted to share something meaningful with him that year? How many social gatherings would he have been invited to? How many dates would he have had? The turnout for his tragically underfunded Kickstarter campaign suggests Noah’s year would have been a lonely one.

While I don’t deny that government transparency would benefit greatly if everyone had their own 24/7 TV channel broadcasting to the world, something tells me the “corrupt government meetings” channel wouldn’t get as much attention as the “ordinary people’s bedroom” channel. In fact, I think the constant distraction would allow politicians to get away with murder and bribe their way to power with ease, because they could do it in plain sight. As long as they do it with their clothes on, they’ll always be less interesting than the neighbors.

A utopian anti-privacy supersociety like the one Noah described may well be the future of the human race, but if it happens, let’s get there gradually, when we’re all on board, and not before. In the meantime, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys broadcasting your life, go nuts; there’s already an app for that.

Nothing to hide? Your future begs to differ.

Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.

That’s part of the US Miranda rights, and it applies to everything you say after you’re arrested. As this video explains in some detail, even the innocent have been found guilty on the strength of their own kindly testimony. But in the not-so-distant world of the future, where the government can turn your smartphone into a microphone, law enforcement will already have access to everything you say before you’re arrested. Formerly private confessions, however trivial, friendly, or even joking they may be, could be used as evidence to convict you of a real crime — even future ones.

Everyone was happy. Until they realized the mouth of the Earth was an erupting supervolcano.

This is for everyone

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”

Every time a law changes, it’s because a critical mass of people dared to break that law, and we came to believe breaking it was more beneficial than following it. Homosexuality was something hidden across America, and in many places it is still punishable as a crime. We should count ourselves lucky that gay rights evolved a little faster than modern surveillance technology, otherwise it’s unlikely any American would dare even admit to being gay anywhere within reach of a smartphone microphone, let alone publicly lobby for the right to marry.

Mass surveillance threatens us all by accelerating the exposure of crimes to dangerous algorithmic speeds. We want justice to be swift, but not so swift that it bypasses critical thought. Having “something to hide” from the authorities sometimes leads to great outcomes for humanity.

Featured image: Nomad_Soul / Dollar Photo Club
Trust us image: mnovelo / Dollar Photo Club
Netflix Dreaming image: aerogondo / Dollar Photo Club
For everyone image: Dollar Photo Club