[ioneja]

Originally Posted by communicant

It is depressing to see the tired old "I have nothing to hide" argument crop up again. There are so many good counter-arguments and illustrative and persuasive examples that it should hardly be necessary to trot them out again, but at every new blow against even the principle of basic privacy, someone is sure to pipe up and say "Why should I worry? Nobody who has nothing to hide should worry about this."

My usual tack with such thoughtless declarations is to ask people if they talk differently to family members or close friends when they know they will be overheard, as in a lift (elevator) or small restaurant, as opposed to how they would speak to the same people when alone and unheard by others. Most people would say yes, of course they do.

If you knew that all of your email was presumptively available to strangers to read, to your boss or to the govenment, wouldn't you write some things differently and omit writing other things completely, even if they were reasonably innocent and not obviously "something to hide"? Of course, unfortunately, as a practical matter that is technically already the case, considering the ubiquity of hackers, your ISP's abilities, the inexorably feckless Facebook's latest outrage, and government surveillance capabilities. Some measure of vulnerability must be assumed, but unless you are specifically targeted for some reason, it is unlikely that your messages will be read. They might be scanned by a computer for commercial purposes, but while that is certainly not desirable, neither does it conjure up memories of East Germany and the Stasi the way the Australian law does.

Just because your body lacks overtly hideous blemishes or other deficiencies that trouble or embarrass you and make you feel like the Elephant Man, would you strip naked and submit to being seen by strangers who have no clear need or entitlement to see you in that state? Unless we were clinical exhibitionists, most of us would not, even if we thought fairly well of our naked selves.

Here's a summary by the people at DuckDuckGo that summarizes the situation fairly well:

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Three Reasons Why the "Nothing to Hide" Argument is Flawed
FILED UNDER OPINION ON 27 JUN 2018
Over the years, we at DuckDuckGo have often heard a flawed counter-argument to online privacy: “Why should I care? I have nothing to hide.”
As Internet privacy has become more mainstream, this argument is rightfully fading away. However, it’s still floating around and so we wanted to take a moment to explain three key reasons why it's flawed.
1) Privacy isn’t about hiding information; privacy is about protecting information, and surely you have information that you’d like to protect.
Do you close the door when you go to the bathroom? Would you give your bank account information to anyone? Do you want all your search and browsing history made public? Of course not.

Simply put, everyone wants to keep certain things private and you can easily illustrate that by asking people to let you make all their emails, texts, searches, financial information, medical information, etc. public. Very few people will say yes.

2) Privacy is a fundamental right and you don't need to prove the necessity of fundamental rights to anyone.

You should have the right to free speech even if you feel you have nothing important to say right now. You should have the right to assemble even if you feel you have nothing to protest right now. These should be fundamental rights just like the right to privacy.

And for good reason. Think of commonplace scenarios in which privacy is crucial and desirable like intimate conversations, medical procedures, and voting. We change our behavior when we're being watched, which is made obvious when voting; hence, an argument can be made that privacy in voting underpins democracy.

3) Lack of privacy creates significant harms that everyone wants to avoid.
You need privacy to avoid unfortunately common threats like identity theft, manipulation through ads, discrimination based on your personal information, harassment, the filter bubble, and many other real harms that arise from invasions of privacy.

In addition, what many people don’t realize is that several small pieces of your personal data can be put together to reveal much more about you than you would think is possible. For example, an analysis conducted by MIT researchers found that “just four fairly vague pieces of information — the dates and locations of four purchases — are enough to identify 90 percent of the people in a data set recording three months of credit-card transactions by 1.1 million users.”

It’s critical to remember that privacy isn't just about protecting a single and seemingly insignificant piece of personal data, which is often what people think about when they say, “I have nothing to hide.” For example, some may say they don't mind if a company knows their email address while others might say they don't care if a company knows where they shop online.

However, these small pieces of personal data are increasingly aggregated by advertising platforms like Google and Facebook to form a more complete picture of who you are, what you do, where you go, and with whom you spend time. And those large data profiles can then lead much more easily to significant privacy harms. If that feels creepy, it’s because it is.

We can't stress enough that your privacy shouldn’t be taken for granted. The ‘I have nothing to hide’ response does just that, implying that government and corporate surveillance should be acceptable as the default.

Privacy should be the default.
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Right on. Thank you, communicant.

The arguments in favor of invasive laws such those passed in Australia completely miss the point, and it's honestly exhausting to have to explain over and over again the fundamental principles of privacy and freedom of speech. Such laws harm the average, innocent user far more than they help, and they enable the potential for incredible abuse. The unintended (and often unpredictable) consequences are far more troubling than the so-called benefits, and unfortunately, we are witnessing the creation of precedent and infrastructure that will have enormous potential for negative impact on society.

I also think this is a generational issue to some degree, and these idiotic laws are buoyed up by lousy reasoning and apathy, plus the younger generation is clueless as to what can happen when such power is truly abused. And those "bad actors" who are supposed to be targeted by the new laws can quickly adapt and find ways to circumvent them, thus encouraging even more invasive laws. It is a giant unfolding tragedy that will cause immense problems in the future.

One of the worst and most predictable outcomes of these kinds of laws, is that infrastructure to comply with such regulations will be increasingly forced on services we rely upon every day for personal, private communications, eroding the security of a number of our services. This will creep slowly but surely across the Five Eyes countries, and even if one or more of them don't duplicate the regulations, their global application platforms will duplicate the vulnerabilities. It is very sad to see such stupidity continue to reign in government mandates, and the consequences will be felt far and wide, well beyond Australia.

I for one am now reconsidering my usage of FastMail. I'm not satisfied by FM's response, and definitely not satisfied by the justifications and protections related to the current law. Not to mention the ineptitude of the people running any oversight of such powerful invasive regulations, and where they might go next.

At the minimum, I feel I will have to look to change my habits and usage of email and related tools. Like I mentioned, I feel like we're fighting a losing battle, and certain fundamental rights will continue to be eroded. For me, anything sensitive or personal will most likely not flow through Fastmail anymore, for example... not sure if that means I cancel my accounts, or if I reduce/change usage patterns over time. We'll see.

EDIT: annoying typo -- "untended" should have been "unintended"