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People with nothing to hide need not be bothered about surveillance, Supreme Court says
(www.thehindu.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
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Privacy
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Until they do. What is legal today could be illegal tomorrow.
Military is a good example.
First people who were gay were removed.
Then don't ask don't tell.
Then it was okay.
Now it's not and they're being removed and many outed themselves once it was okay.
One day, you're not a terrorist. Then on Sept 22 2025 you are because you don't support fascism.
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Supreme Court of India was sold out to the ruling party long ago.
As is a lot of other countries. It’s a growing trend that should alarm everyone.
And countries like Russia, North Korea, and China should all serve as examples of what happens when ruling parties get their way.
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"I have nothing to hide" is such a dumb argument.
Are you always going to have nothing to hide?
Because it'll be too late to start caring about privacy when you do.
The problem is this: You don't know what you need to hide or that you even needed to hide it until it is too late.
Look at what is going on in the United States right now, LGBTQ rights are taking a massive beating. While hate crime laws are still in place, that is not a guarantee. Transpeople who revealed they are trans under safer conditions can't take that shit back when someone like Trump and his cronies are in power and abso-fucking-lutely will put transpeople in extermination camps.
I, like many people on many Lemmy platforms, have been anti-Trump for a very long time. I thought Trump was an absolute fool well before his 2015 bid for presidency and I was honest to god shocked that he was taken seriously and actually won! Now basically any criticism of Trump is being prosecuted and Trump critics can and have been violently attacked.
I made numerous posts all over the internet criticizing and mocking Trump. Many have been made using temporary email, but my OPSEC online was eased into, meaning there was a lot of stuff from the past that I used under 'real' emails. My facebook page, which I never wanted (my family made it for me without any concern of what I wanted many years ago) is still active even though I cannot remember the last time I logged in and posted, and it does contain anti-fascist, anti-Trump comments and posts. Deleting the FB page might make denial a little easier, but if they decide to demand any information from FB (who will comply without a warrant) they will see it.
Given that the United States WILL NOT 'go back to normal' once Trump kicks the bucket, there is no telling how the regime would use this data against its opponents.
I heard a lawyer argue something like this once in court, regarding the the fourth and fifth amendments:
These laws are not meant to protect the innocent, they are meant to protect criminals. The founding fathers who penned it were traitors and seditionists who fought a war against their own country. They wrote these laws so that guilty people would be able to avoid punishment if proper procedures aren't followed, and certain rights aren't upheld.
I'm not sure how much I agree with that, but it was definitely an interesting take.
Whoever said that is full of shit. The right to silence was born out of the religious persecution that was rife in Europe in the 16th and 17th century, where coerce confessions and forcing people to incriminate themselves, even if it was bullshit, was commonplace. Also religion played a role. Lying in some circumstances was a mortal sin, but at the same time people acknowledged that people would naturally lie in order to protect themselves. So in order to make it possible for people to not commit mortal sins and not lie to authorities, the simple right to not answer questions and not have their silence used against them was eventually mandated.
If people did not have the right to silence, all the authorities have to do is just coerce a confession out of a suspect and not investigate anything else. This happens all the time in China and Japan. Japan technically does have the right to silence in their constitution, but in practice it does not exist. If you refuse to answer questions and clam up during interrogations, they will take it as an admission of guilt and as far as I know, no judge refused that.
In China you are required to answer any 'relevant' question posed by police, you only have the right to deny irrelevant questions. So basically if they accuse you of robbing and murdering some shopkeeper, you have to give an account of yourself, but if they ask you what you had for lunch today, you can decline to answer that question. Stupid, but it is what it is.
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"Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'." ― Terry Pratchett, Snuff
Cool. Let me install these cameras in your house, including your bedroom and bathrooms. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear
I presume they're okay with the first surveillance cameras being in their bedrooms then.
I feel like the best way to combat this is to dig up info on politicians and release it all publicly. Nothing illegal about that. If I knew how, I would.
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You have nothing to hide?
I used to work in advertising.
I was just doing my job, and striving to do it well, to the very best of my abilities, to serve my client, by maximally getting into your mind, manipulating you, manipulating your perceptions, your preferences, your purchases, by insidiously shaping your associations and implanting suggestions you would not realise happening.
This was over 20 years ago, before Bill Hicks saved me by telling me to kill myself, and I left advertising for good, promising to never do it again.
The things I would have done to you, without your ken, had I then had access to the data-mining available today... ... just the same as those who are still in advertising are doing to you now. [And the resources my team of 2 had, were miniscule, compared to those with millions and billions to invest, and we still managed to shape the culture and prevailing perceptions, so think what kind of influence they have...]
Nothing to hide?
Sure, let advertisers know everything about you, to ease their way playing you like a puppet without you realising.
Nothing to hide?
Why are you not walking around naked then? Just thermal regulation? Or to preserve your dignity? By preserving your privacy? Are you sure you have nothing to hide? If still sure, by all means, invite every perverted voyeur into your bathroom and bedroom and beyond.
You surely have at least two things to hide.
Not hiding them does not just harm you and cause you loss, it harms everybody else too. Your duty to poke big brother (or big baron or big bot or big blight or big bully or big bank) in the eye, is not just to yourself. It's to everybody, each and all.
You have much to hide.
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That is a very rapey mentality
That's India in a nutshell, unfortunately.
This was posted in another thread yesterday, and I found it particularly persuasive: https://thompson2026.com/blog/deviancy-signal/
There's a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, "I have nothing to hide." It's not the gentle pity you'd have for the naive. It's the cold, hard anger you hold for a collaborator. Because these people aren't just surrendering their own liberty. They're instead actively forging the chains for the rest of us. They are a threat, and I think it's time they were told so.
...
On a societal scale, this inaction becomes a collective betrayal. The power of the Deviancy Signal is directly proportional to the number of people who live transparently. Every person who refuses to practice privacy adds another gallon of clean, clear water to the state's pool, making any ripple of dissent ... any deviation ... starkly visible. This is not a passive choice. By refusing to help create a chaotic, noisy baseline of universal privacy, you are actively making the system more effective. You are failing to do your part to make the baseline all deviant, and in doing so, you make us all more vulnerable.
When powerful people (government or not) have a record of every little thing a person does for decades retrospectively, just watch inconvenient people you like suddenly start disappearing from public discourse.
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I had this conversation about privacy a week ago with a colleague. Not sure if it matters but she’s 21. She’s addicted to TikTok and was wondering why I did not use it.
I told her, I don’t trust the makers of it and don’t trust the country the app comes from (China, CCP). I half explained it was because of privacy issues. She looked me dead in the eyes and said “I don’t have anything to hide”.
So I simply said something along lines of;
“of course you don’t. The messages you sent to your boyfriend are not of intimacy things right? Certain pictures you send. Political conversations, your behavior patterns, religion. None of that matters right? Until it can be all used against you. If you care enough, I recommend to just research a couple of things up. Like for example Facebooks Cambridge scandal and Meta’s meddling with politics. Now imagine that from your own government”.
But of course, she shrugged it off and said she did not care.
But of course, she shrugged it off and said she did not care.
Getting people to care is strangely hard. I think it's because accepting some of the things we want people to care about means grappling with how the world is unfair and fucked up, and people are emotionally just not ready for that. People are stupid cowards.
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Oh dear god, I thought this was the US Supreme Court, which is bound by the 4th Amendment. Turns out this is the Supreme Court from the State of Telangana in India.
It's the Supreme Court of India not Telangana which is a state in India.
Everyone should be bothered by surveillance, it ain't about wrongdoing, it's about further empowering the people who think us suffering and dying for their profits is perfectly acceptable.
Then why are the Epstein files being heavily redacted? Does the government have something to hide?
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But there are no such people with nothing to hide.
Being private as obidient protects being private as disobidient.
Posts like this are a great test for whether people read the article (or even the first paragraph) before commenting.
The first paragraph:
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To them I'd say, Define "nothing", and then tell me that's a constant.
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Ugh, so tired of this old argument. Nothing to hide doesn't mean everything to show. There, now let's get on with our lives.
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This is in India, but coming soon to a country near you
It came here first
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Hmmm. Wonder how much they have to hide
Fuck that. RFK wants me to work on his plantations for daring to be born with autism.
One of many countries who have recently decided that basic liberty is more trouble than it's worth. Our governments all just need to admit that we are engaged in informational WW3.
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Nothing to hide = nothing to show.
I’d like to go to one of their houses and tell them I want to search the place. After all, they shouldn’t mind if they have nothing to hide, right?
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The Stasi said the same thing, and similar levels of surveillance are significantly cheaper now.
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That's the thing though...
...everyone has something to hide.
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