Does anyone ever actually use that line? Most people will argue that the trade off in privacy is worth it for security.

That is, if you frame your argument such that you believe people don’t understand the trade off it allows you to not engage with the fact they just disagree with your conclusion.

▲

Zigurd 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Have you ever sat on a jury in a criminal case? A frighteningly high percentage of people will swallow every lie a cop tells, even when thoroughly discredited in cross-examination. There's no shortage of people to guard the concentration camps.

	▲	jrockway an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I've been on a grand jury... the cops lied through their teeth, couldn't keep their stories straight through a prepared monologues reading from notes and ... everyone in the room picked up on it and didn't indict the suspects. Our grand jury was so cynical the DAs stopped giving us cases and made the other two grand juries stay late to make up for the lost capacity. It was great. We did something good. And it was just a bunch of random people from Brooklyn. The establishment likes to pat the establishment on the back but ordinary people seem to know what's up. In my minimal experience, anyway. (One thing to keep in mind... grand juries really are a cross-section of the population, whereas lawyers get to select jurors after talking to them, so there is some selection bias on ordinary juries that grand juries don't have.)

▲

arealaccount 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes all the time and it’s not worth debating them as they are not about to say anything interesting.

Usually just make a quip about having curtains then move onto discussing just how moist the turkey is this year

▲

wat10000 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Constantly. Most people have a hard time dealing with tradeoffs and think in absolutes. It goes along with "if you're not a criminal, you have nothing to fear from police," another disturbingly common sentiment.

Some prominent examples:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22832263

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSVJmOajGDe/

https://thestandard.nz/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-...

▲

rootusrootus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Does anyone ever actually use that line?

Not that exact phrase, it is too elaborate. Most people grunt "eh, don't care" and "it's free, right?"

The average person really is that apathetic.

▲

fragmede 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The mistake would be reading Hacker News and walking away with the conclusion that because people don't post that reasoning here that it doesn't exist (and even then, you do find that does come up here on occasion). People with "nothing to hide" do actually believe that, and while they may not post it to HN for vigorous debate. The easy counterexample from history is the list of Jews kept by the Netherlands which was later used against them after they were conquered by Nazi Germany, but you'd have to interested in history to buy that reason. Some people simply shrug at the "if you don't have anything to hide then you won't mind me filming your bedroom" scenario as you being the creep in the equation. Some people just don't want the trouble and are fine with being surveiled because the powers that be are doing it.