Responding to “Nothing to hide, Nothing to fear”

Photo by Carl Nenzen Loven on Unsplash

The Investigatory Powers Bill aka The Snoopers’ Charter just passed in the UK. A law that demands that Internet Service Providers keep everyone’s browsing history for 12 months, and make that accessible to 48 government branches, from the Food Standards Agency to GCHQ. We lost the fight to stop it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep challenging it nor the ideology that let it pass.

And now that the dust has settled a little and people are waking up to what they got, a petition to revoke the Bill already has 120k signatures. That’s why I’m resurrecting/updating a piece I wrote originally at Open Rights Group to take a proper look at how I believe people should respond to ‘nothing to hide nothing to fear’.

So first of all, let’s break that phrase down to its parts.

• First of all, the main impact is to encourage a complete trust in state powers. It assures you that you will never face wrongful suspicion or misuse of powers, for only the guilty are affected by mass surveillance.
• It emphasises, ‘if you have nothing to hide’, encouraging people to embrace their own innocence and look inwards. By doing so you are told not to look at how other people have been treated or targeted. And if you are a person who is protected through privilege or circumstances against wrongful suspicion, you confirm the first point through self-examination only.
• This is in response to a climate of fear. So being told that, ‘nothing to hide, means you have nothing to fear’ is reassuring because we all want nothing to fear.
• And at the same time it introduces the vague threat that maybe, if you haven’t behaved, you do have something to fear. Not something to challenge, or criticise, but to fear.
• And so it keeps us in our place.

So let’s give some answers back.

I wrote a piece about how ‘surveillance makes us less safe’ in 2015 as it is clear that surveillance affects a broad group of people, with real painful consequences for their lives, and that’s why I hate this phrase. But it’s not true for everyone.

That’s why when I was at a Thanksgiving Dinner at the weekend and a relative said “Well, I have nothing to fear” I chose my new approach. I leap on that and say “Yes!”

“Yes, you probably don’t. You are probably fine.”

But I believe we should choose to look outwards, and think about all the people who really need the protections of privacy, and all the examples of when they’ve had that right invaded.

We have laws and rights, whether everyone needs them or not. We have a right to fair trial, even if you’ll never use it.

We need to stop saying “this is about you” when we want to make people care. Because some people can truly pass through this world without feeling the pain of state oppression. They all deserve the right to privacy — but some need it more than others.

So I accept their point: “You might not worry about government spying. But we need to stop these laws for people who really really need security not surveillance”

• Victims of police misconduct. For example, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and her family were surveilled in attempts to smear them and undermine their fight for justice.
• MPs need privacy in particular for their constituency work, which involves meeting with people who share very personal stories and situations, and challenging the actions of the government. For example, recently MPs confidential calls with prison staff were recorded and monitored. (However, this was interestingly the only argument that MPs bought and the only amendment to the Snoopers’ Charter they brought in was about exempting themselves).
• Disabled people are often scared of speaking out about mistreatment because they are can be put under direct surveillance by both government bodies and neighbours, to try and ‘catch them out’ as ‘not really disabled’, cutting off support and harming their survival.
• Environmental campaigners have been under direct surveillance for decades, particularly women who were deceived into having relationships with police officers.
• Journalists are frequently at risk of big business and government surveillance tracking their leaks, their stories, their whistleblowers, and their criticism of the government and the police.
• Whistle-blowers cannot expose wrong-doing, whether by the state or powerful businesses, in a world that always watches, but are meant to have special protections.
• Lawyers rely on client confidentiality, a principle which is key for a fair trial, and a working justice system.
• People of minority sexualities and identities can lose their families or jobs or security when robbed of the control over who they share their identity with.
• Doctors, hospital workers and their patients expect to have confidentiality when discussing personal health.
• Encryption advocates and researchers are monitored for what they know in case they discover existing secrets, or new knowledge of security and software, which the government can use.
• Muslims face racial profiling and Islamophobia in the use of surveillance techniques and tools, particularly in the UK. When people ask for ‘targeted’ surveillance instead of mass surveillance, this often turns out as ‘racist surveillance’. This is not an acceptable compromise.
• Women harassed online (and off) need the safety of anonymity and privacy, to defend against abuse in their online spaces and violent acts like swatting in their homes.
• Women stalked or tracked by abusive partners need online security, The use of online tools by abusers has become a problem so common that Women’s Aid has a clear and prominent guide to hiding your tracks online on its website.

These are all people for whom surveillance turns into real, felt harms. And to be frank, with Donald Trump as President of the United States, and given the list of nazis and white nationalists he is surrounding himself with, that list is going to keep growing. The Investigatory Powers Bill is a UK law, but we share our data with the National Security Agency, and Donald Trump will have influence over GCHQ decisions.

Even if the threats and enemies these people face are not always state actors — the vulnerability created by an all-watching surveillance state, and a national acceptance that we have no right to privacy affects everyone who needs their security.

When they are listed out like this, you can see how so many people fall into one of these categories. Perhaps you find yourself in this list, or know people who are.

Even if a service is something that you are not using in your day to day life, whether that is a hospital, a library, or the local bus service, we understand that those things should still exist for those who rely on them.

In the same way, if one person does not feel that they actively need the right to privacy, we should campaign and fight for all those for whom privacy, and the security it provides, is vital.

If you found this helpful, check out The Intersection of Things podcast for friendly conversations on how technology is changing our lives, from Health to Cities. One topic at a time.

Originally posted on Open Rights Group, December 2015. Work licensed Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.