JollyPieFedsnowden on "nothing to hide, nothing to fear"
https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/8fe49f25-11ca-44af-9c9c-af2b9d9775b9.webp
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The nazi loved the "nothing to hide". What better than all your information, like religion, nicely written down in official records if you want to suddenly round up one specific group of people. Or DEI wanting to deport a certain group, and DOGE doing their best to suck up all information on everybody. You may have nothing to fear right now, but you never know who's going to be in office soon.
You may have nothing to fear right now, but you never know who’s going to be in office soon.
The way I always explain it to people - take any additional government power or access to information you either don't care about or actively support. Now imagine whoever you oppose/hate the most taking office and trying to use that against your interests. Are you still OK with them having that power? Same principle applies regardless of what power or who's pushing for it.
It's like due process - you don't want any category of alleged violation not to be subject to due process, and if you don't understand why then it's time to wrongfully accuse you of doing that so you understand the problem.
Like those people that signed up for DNA sequencing for heritage research. Now that info is going to be sold.
The problem is it could be used to discriminate for health insurance or other nefarious reasons
I still think DOGE is just feeding all that information to Palantir, and everything else is a pretext to that goal. They want an AI embedded directly into the government, making a large dependency on it, and bypassing checks and balances quickly has allowed that to happen.
☂️-ok ill be the one to say it then: the NSA are fascists. the NSA is evil.
FriendBestoWhat is your definition of Fascist, here?
It seems to get tossed around at everything, these days.
Not a fan if the NSA either, nor the Patriot Act, either.
fascism is capitalism showing its teeth, like what trump is doing more overtly now. one part of it involves enforcing a bolder and more baldfaced surveillance/police state.
the NSA is literally one of the intelligence arms of said surveillance state. they help manipulate people, find and disappear dissidents, suppress resistance and such. not unlike a few other 3 letter agencies.
they've been quacking like fascists way before trump, they have feathers like fascists and swim like fascists. hence why i call it fascist.
INeedManafascism is capitalism showing its teeth, like what trump is doing more overtly now
AFAIK that is not the definition of fascism
But I've seen a TikTok of someone who is studying politcal doctrines (IDR if their level was Major or PHD) and what is currently going on was ticking off all the boxes
there are many, sometimes conflicting definitions. this one sums it up.
i focus on the police state and militarism part of it because thats what the NSA is for.
and if it ticks all the damn boxes, thats wtf it is. your phd person on tiktok is probably referring to the 12 early signs. its been ticking them for decades now.
but please don't rely on tiktok to get informed and read up on it, regardless of what qualifications tiktokers claim to have. its slop that barely clears the basics at best.
One of the things I warn people about privacy is that it's not about what they might find, it's about what they might pretend to find.
Plenty of dirty cops plant evidence. Who's to say they don't like someone and keep a flash drive full of Cheese Pizza to plant on their computer. Usually that kind of logic gets people on board more easily.
khannieMy response to this is usually "Do you have curtains?"
Very late edit: I have found it very effective. It causes pause for thought because everyone values privacy, they just find it hard to picture themselves needing it. Curtains.
My response is similar, usually the good old 'Do you shut the door when you shit?'.
When we start getting specific, I'll often try and frame data harvesting in a much more visceral way. If they say they don't care that xyz keeps track of everyone they talk to, I ask them to imagine an actual person standing behind them, making notes on a clipboard about every interaction they have with someone, and how that would make them feel.
Termight"The early Internet’s dissociative opportunities actually encouraged me and those of my generation to change our most deeply held opinions, instead of just digging in and defending them when challenged. This ability to reinvent ourselves meant that we never had to close our minds by picking sides, or close ranks out of fear of doing irreparable harm to our reputations. Mistakes that were swiftly punished but swiftly rectified allowed both the community and the “offender” to move on. To me, and to many, this felt like freedom." ~ Permanent Record, Snowden.
He misattributes that quote
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1558
You will find the quote in this book that predates Nazi Germany
Not merely was my own mail opened, but the mail of all my relatives and friends—people residing in places as far apart as California and Florida. I recall the bland smile of a government official to whom I complained about this matter: "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear."
RedSnt 👓♂️🖥️Here’s a scientific dissertation on how and why that phrase sucks: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
It’s so easy to use but very hard to fights against. Worst case of bullshit.
We desperately need a constitutional right to privacy, but I doubt that will happen in my or our country's lifetime.
DessalinesWhich country? Plenty of countries have at least a nominal right to privacy, but it doesn't end up meaning much when US companies own your country's communications platforms.
comma
MattFuck me, the last part hit me HARD. I won't get into the details why because it is painful for me to talk about it.
Let me check your Attic why not, you're not hiding any jews are you?
I have "nothing to hide" but I STILL like privacy tyvm. Hence I'll shit in public with the stall door closed, and not disclose my wank schedule on Facebook
Weird how Edward Snowden is basically a Boddhisatwa and Julian Assange
Could you explain what you mean by that please?
Weird how Edward Snowden is basically a Boddhisatwa and Julian Assange
Defining someone a Bodhisattva is complex. Snowden & Assange acted with potential benefit & harm. True Bodhisattvas act from pure compassion & wisdom, embodying equanimity. Their actions offer reflection on truth & consequences.
KamiWhere is the harm?
Lyra_LycanExposing truth can often get people killed, especially if the liars are in the government, want to kill witnesses or rats, or at least make their lives hell for betraying the state. Depending on the severity, livelihoods are often at stake. That's why very few people engage in whistleblowing. They're aware that it will not get better for them.
Where is the harm?
Snowden's disclosures, while aiming for transparency, risked national security, compromised sources, strained relations, & potentially enabled misuse of info. Buddhist principles emphasize avoiding harm & maintaining order, aspects potentially impacted by his actions. A balanced view acknowledges both benefit & risk.
Maintaining order in this context would mean letting some people harm other people's privacy though.
Maintaining order in this context would mean letting some people harm other people’s privacy though.
You're right to question "order" at the expense of privacy. Buddhist principles highlight interdependence & ethical action. Security shouldn't erode fundamental rights. Privacy & security are interconnected, not opposing forces.
termights replies to you make me agree with your original statement. any harm was to things that are themselves overall harmful. Now that I look at it, it feels like between what we saw with snowden and schwartz it was 2013 when I really realized things are really really messed up.
jagged_circleThe fediverse condemns free speech. The fediverse bans unapproved opinions and wrong think, proving that the fediverse is an enemy to the principals of Edward Snowden. But it's fun to be on here one in awhile knowing fhe right thing to say that forces people to come undone and expose their true personality. When you through a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that helps is the one you hit, so it makes for a fun time to say the right thing for setting off everybody and watxh in the insults come in, it means that I hit my mark
Arthur BesseDeleted by author
Find one single instance where users are free to reject or critcize religion, reject trans people, criticize conservatives, and criticize leftists, all on a single instance.
People just don't want to be around a bigot. Simple as. Social harms that might come to you for espousing views that aren't acceptable to the surrounding community isn't censorship, it's just social rejection on legitimate grounds. Fix your heart or GTFO.
If that were true, speaking with strangers in public places would not contradict fediverse postings. It seems that being outside talking with strangers face to face closers aligns, but not identical, to what's on Twitter than every single fediverse service. If you can't be friends with someone who doesn't accept what you believe but has other interests away from the internet, not being online, that is lack of intellectual curiosity. Someone, I'm not suggesting you, who can't spend an afternoon with people without checking phone for new messages lives in misery 10 out of 10 times.
If you don't like the way communities are being moderated, maybe you should find/start a server that more aligns with your values.
The fediverse imposes censorship through de-federation, as opposed to being decentralized that only requires protocol configuration with any software designed to communicate through said protocols. Fediverse requires approval before accepting messages from other servers
The fediverse is a bunch of websites that talk to each other with the same protocol. If you've been banned from one, you can still talk on all the others. If you are banned on your home instance I am pretty sure you can still post on all the others.
"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."
That's very quotable.
The Reddit topic in the screenshot is just as quotable and directly points at the root of the problem:
"I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgement and intentions are."
I'm not worried about the people who choose to close their window shades, I'm worried about the people who apparently need to peek through them.
Wish it was shorter though.
Deleted by author
If someone says you have nothing to hide, ask them for their social.
Vime's thoughts are some of the finest in the Discworld books. Who here hasn't read the economic theory of boots.
This is one of my favorites:
"There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate. Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers—say, three per citizen.
Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.
Some citizens took the not-unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers. The average copper, when he’s been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don’t much care, has an understandable tendency to prefer to arrest those people who won’t instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he personally can afford.
The rate of arrests shot right up, and Swing had been very pleased about that. Admittedly, most of the arrests had been for possessing weaponry after dark, but quite a few had been for assaults on the Watch by irate citizens. That was Assault On A City Official, a very important and despicable crime, and, as such, far more important than all these thefts that were going on everywhere. It wasn’t that the city was lawless. It had plenty of laws. It just didn’t offer many opportunities not to break them. Swing didn’t seem to have grasped the idea that the system was supposed to take criminals and, in some rough-and-ready fashion, force them into becoming honest men. Instead, he’d taken honest men and turned them into criminals. And the Watch, by and large, into just another gang."
My response is: "OK, then you won't mind going to work naked to morrow."
Wanting to hide part of yourself is normal. Human nature. It doesn't mean you have something nefarious to hide.
And the reason you don't mind it is only because you don't realize how intimate the data is they get from you.
In the end it's like with some Trump voters: "Oh, I didn't vote for that!" == "Oh, they collected all this? And this is what they do with it? No, I'm not OK with that." - we've been telling you for years!