Introduction

Privacy for the non-expert

This guide is made for people who want the benefits of privacy without necessarily wanting to understand all the ins-and-outs of it. Frankly speaking, if you’re a techie or a wonk, you can figure this stuff out yourself.

Why this guide

Too many articles give a cornucopia of options and alternatives. Some people just want to know which tool to use, not a big list of pros and cons that require them to make a decision between 3 similar providers—that’s the kind of thing that gets people to close their browser in frustration and move on using nothing.

Likewise, sometimes the “best” option is so difficult to implement that even a 20-year veteran programmer just rolls their eyes and gives up. When the choice is “this basically works, and is the easiest to use” or “nothing”, “basically works” is better.

Sometimes even the best privacy tools are often cumbersome and clunky, and not something most people have the time and patience for. By giving folks a simple, opinionated guide that says “this is the best tool right now, that combined ease-of-use with functionality,” they can at least make an informed decision on whether it’s worth the time and usability investment. Sometimes people want privacy but the tools border on user-hostile. We need better, easier-to-use privacy tools.

Difference between anonymous alter-ego vs “I don’t want people showing up at my house”

It’s not just as simple as “oh I’ll start using spider oak” because the whole thing falls apart as soon as someone sends you a dropbox link of something you need quickly or want badly, and that’s the kind of thing people have to consider.

“I have nothing to hide.”

Some might say “I don’t care if they violate my privacy; I’ve got nothing to hide.” Help them understand that they are misunderstanding the fundamental nature of human rights. Nobody needs to justify why they “need” a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can’t give away the rights of others because they’re not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority.

But even if they could, help them think for a moment about what they’re saying. 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.

— Edward Snowden, Just days left to kill mass surveillance under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. We are Edward Snowden and the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer. AUA. (reddit, May 21 2015).

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as “security versus privacy.” The real choice is liberty versus control. — Bruce Schneier, The Eternal Value of Privacy (Wired, May 28 2006).

The debate between privacy and security has been framed incorrectly as a zero-sum game in which we are forced to choose between one value and the other. But protecting privacy isn’t fatal to security measures; it merely involves adequate oversight and regulation. — Daniel J. Solove, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security (Yale University Press, 2011). Buy on Amazon

https://youtu.be/pcSlowAhvUk

https://www.aclu.org/blog/you-may-have-nothing-hide-you-still-have-something-fear There are well over 300 million people in this country. Even if my phone conversations were being listened to and those conversations were completely innocent but were, for example, phone sex, who would care? If the goal is to find suspected or known terrorists, or even pick up on someone who might be, why would anyone care about… and do you think there are enough people listening in to all of our phone calls to be the least bit concerned that someone won $200 playing poker? Or that someone else’s kid broke a tooth at school? That one person prefers one brand of laundry detergent over another? That someone’s school teacher aunt is pregnant by the principal?

I seriously cannot think of a single thing that I would be interested in about anyone else’s life, or that anyone else – especially when charged with the task of trying to keep the country safe - would care the least about anything in my conversations. I’ve got plenty of other things to be pissed off at the government about… the excess of corruption, for starters.

I’m not the least bit interested in the boring details of celebrities lives, and I think those so-called “reality” TV shows are the bottom of the barrel because they’ve got nothing else to put on that will hold people’s attention for more than one segment between commercial breaks.

I think there’s just a wee bit of paranoia… and, perhaps, guilty conscience, too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3hynvp/how_do_you_counter_the_i_have_nothing_to_hide/ It makes a lot more sense on that context, but I doubt the last quote would have much of an impact on the “nothing to hide people” since most of them view it as a trade off. They agree that solitude and privacy is a nice thing to have, but that on balance they prefer to feel secure even if it means sacrificing some privacy - and since they make a large portion of the population they feel as though it’s in line with democracy. To convince someone that they’re wrong you need to argue on terms that they agree with otherwise they’ll simply dismiss you.