PII

On Mastodon a poster asked last week, “Looking for an article or blog or text, that succinctly describes, at grade 1 level English, why ‘if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear’ is a crazy and bad argument, and perhaps also includes what some good arguments are.” We thought that is an excellent idea for a Scam Bucket post. Let’s get to the biggest argument against that philosophy.

It may not be scandalous, like a drug addiction, pornography or drug dealing, but there is personal information that everyone wants to keep from someone like passwords, account number and routing number to your bank account, and social security numbers

People who ascribe to the philosophy will readily agree to those limitations of what should be available to public knowledge. What they may not be willing to admit that they have done something in their life that they are ashamed. As Jesus Christ once proclaimed, “No one is without sin. No, not one.”

Sometimes, the error is made in ignorance. Clicking on a link in an email that connects to a porn site. Being rude to a waiter or failing to give a tip. Road rage someone recorded without knowledge or consent. Sometimes it was a mistake they made when they were younger and didn’t know any better… or knew better and did it anyway.

Then there are things that people are totally innocent of but were accused of it anyway. An average of 200–300 people are arrested every year for felonies but are exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. If the arrest was reported in the news, it is likely the exoneration was not. So the news of the arrest still exists even though they did not commit the crime.

John Gilmore, director of research at the data-scrubbing service DeleteMe, related a story of Jordan Greene, a journalist who covered neo-Nazi rally in North Carolina. Members of the group picked out his face in a photo of the rally, ran it through facial recognition, found where he lived and showed up at his house holding burning flares.

A recent scam has arisen ...