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The Privacy Advocates Guidebook

Published on January 19, 2024 privacy activism freedom government spyware big-tech

🚧 THIS ARTICLE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION 🚧

This guide provides a systematic approach to convince people that privacy is indeed important. It provides (in my opinion) convincing arguments that should work on certain types of people that each prioritise certain values.

This article will pe split in two parts: Arguments and Examples. The Arguments section will contain what tactics and types of arguments you should use while conving a person, while the Examples section will list the TLDRs of privacy abuse done by governments and companies.

Arguments

By opinions on government

A person who is already sceptical or opposed to the malicious practices of the government, will be easier to convince.

Pro government

First argument

The general strategy with this kind of person is to either convince them that the government will not always be this well intentioned and governmental agents could go rogue and use this power maliciously. This tactic works well if the person completely dislikes a political figure/party that has high chances to hold public office.

Political polarisation will be your best friend in this type of argument.

You agree with the intrusion in your personal life by the current government. But governments change, next year it could be political-entity using this power against you.

People in 1930s Denmark didn’t think twice before checking their ethnicity on the demographic census form. But that piece of information proved very useful to the conquering Nazis. 1

Tip: Don’t let such discussions desolve in political banter. You don’t have to agree with the person and vilifying the political entity in question could strenghten your case.

Second argument

If this person is stubborn and really believes the government spies on its citizens for their own good, you’ll have to make the government seem incapable of protecting the data it’s collecting. Which it already is.

Start by saying that hacked governmental or police accounts have been used to get data from social media platforms2. Then, if the person mentions that police has much less access to such data and is generally more incompetent, jump straight to examples of the FBI (or NSA) getting hacked3.

The person you’re talking to may try to use these examples to justify even more control. Just remind them that if the government would not have such a great control over our lives and data, any harm inflicted on them would not necessarily affect us.

If the government would not protect data, it would not have to protect that data from hackers.

Anti government

This one is easy, he already did most of the work. Just find other things the person is opposed to (eg. Big Tech, censorship of social-media) and provide examples from the examples section.

The argument above used on the pro government person should also work here.

By opinions on abortion

Pro abortion

With some states in the US banning abortion, data collected by period tracking apps may be incriminalizing for some. Try to use this opportunity to convince them that Big Tech is bad. Tell them that search history and geolocation data may be used to prove that they had an abortion.

Tip: Use any such occasion to lead the conversation to things relating to Big Tech, because, unlike government, their actions can not be justified as being for the greater good. And Big Tech also has many examples of abusing of user data.

Anti abortion

There’s really nothing you can do here. But try not to mention the fact that period tracker apps may be used to prosecute women that had abortions because that may make them think that tracking may be used for “good” things.

By opinions on companies (Big Tech)

I’ll assume that no one likes Big Tech, they are just indifferent.

Anti Big Tech

Just like with the anti government folks, you just have to show alternative apps and services. Stronger their dislike for Big Tech with more examples of miserable things they’ve done.

Ignorant

People that are ignorant do acknowledge the wrong-doings of Big Tech but have the “how does this affect me” line of thought. These people are pragmatic, so you’ll have to come with examples where Big Techs censorship and surveillance financially, emotionally, etc impacted people or groups of people. For such examples, I recommend reading the book “Weapons of Math Destruction” by Cathy O’Neil.

By “allowing gov. to commit crimes in certain circumstances”

You may hear people justifying crimes commited “in good faith” by the government.
In this case I recommend using these examples:

Pro “government committing crimes for the greater good”

It’s hard to argue with a person that really believes in the “good faith” of the government, so you have three options:

Undermining the “good faith” of the government

Examples of the so-called “good faith” of the government:

Anti “government committing crimes for the greater good”

These people also tend to be “anti gov.”, so you might try to use those argument on them.

If their view on government is moderate, i.e “they kinda trust the government, but also don’t want to allow it to turn into a dictatorship”, try forcing the “they will use that power for harm in the future” card.

If that doesn’t work, try getting them to settle for allowing government to use more primitive types of spying like wiretapping or bugging. By getting people to settle for this position regarding surveillance, you exclude the possibility for mass surveillance, which is what we’re trying to eliminate.

Spying is here to stay and it’s not going anywhere, but mass surveillance is a thing that can, and should, be eliminated.

“I have nothing to hide”

The whole “I have nothing to hide argument” is really hard to combat because a very determined person can just “ok, and?” through all your responses. The argument doesn’t try to justify the actions of the spying entity, rather it implies that people have little interest in privacy.

The only way to combat this argument is with clever rhetoric. Try to find an example that would make their opinions seem inconsistent.

Tip: Try to not abuse the use of “gotchas”, because people can get easily annoyed by those types of arguments.

Who decides what is right or wrong?

The problem with the “I’ve got nothing to hide” argument is it’s not “you” who decides what is “right” or “wrong”. The entity doing the “spying” determines what is right or wrong. “You” might think “x” is ok, however the “spying” entity may have the opposite view. And it is the “spying” entity’s opinion that matters, not yours, because it always them that have the power and authority in determining what is “right” or “wrong”. Moreover, definitions change on what is “right” or “wrong”. 4

“Come with a warrant”

Instead of me having to defend my right. Let’s switch the persective and ask the same question: “why don’t you explain why you need to violate my rights”. Exactly, come back with a warrant. 5

Privacy isn’t about wrong or illegal.

The simplest retort I’ve heard to “I have nothing to hide” is “then send me a nude photo of yourself.” Theres nothing wrong with nude bodies, but it is definitely private. I.e. privacy has nothing to do with hiding wrong/illegal things. 6

Edward Snowden quote

Ultimately, 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

Examples

Government (& police)

FBI uses other countries to spy on you 4

The FBI ran an encrypted phone company named in Anom in 2019. They didn’t have the legal approval to process the collected data. The FBI would have had to get an order for every single phone user.

Needing a faster solution, the FBI needed a third country (the first and second being America and Australia), so it had Lithuania host the Anom interception server.

“The bottom line is that our government knew its mass surveillance program was unconstitutional so it secretly co-opted a country in Europe in an attempt to circumvent our privacy laws. The government is now refusing to reveal even the identity of the third country,” Patrick Griffin, one of the defense attorneys who has tried to learn the identity of the third country, previously told me.

Hacked governmental accounts used to get personal data from social media platforms 2

Governments, because they have the power to suppoena companies, but are incompetent to protect themselves from hackers, have seen their own accounts being hacked and used to access the data of innocent people by hackers.

Many criminals want access so they can pose as cops and make fraudulent ‘emergency data requests’ with TikTok, Facebook, Discord, and more top companies.

Tip: People may use this example to say that the government needs to do more surveillance because of such hackers/terrorists. Remember them that the fraudulent suppoena requests were treated as being serious only because of the authority of the FBI. If the government wouldn’t have such authority, there would exist no such risk.

Fake emails sent from FBI addresses 3

Hackers compromised the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s external email system on Saturday, sending spam emails to potentially thousands of people and companies with a faked warning of a cyberattack.

FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King

White House overstepped 1st amendment on Social Media 7

A federal appeals court rule don Friday that the Biden Administration most likely overstepped the First Amendment by urging the major social media platforms to remove misleading or false content about the Covid-19 pandemic, partly upholding a lower court’s preliminary injunction in a victory for the conservatives.

Big Tech

Evils of Google 8

The motto of Google once was “Don’t be Evil”. This site 8 lists some of the evils of Google.

  • Google, by default, tracks your every location (Source)
  • Google keeps records of everything you buy, even if you delete the email receipt (Source)
  • Google Home devices eavesdrops on you (Source)
  • Google also listens via your Android phone (Source)
    (…)
  • Created ReCAPTCHA, arguably the worst and most inconvenient solution to blocking “bot” abuse ever created
    • ReCAPTCHA is a privacy nightmare (Source)
    • ReCAPTCHA becomes far more difficult to solve if anti-tracking add-ons/tools are present (Source)
  • Cooperates with the NSA PRISM program to grant access to non-US citizens data without a warrant (Source)
  • Used Google Street View cars to sniff WiFi networks and harvest data (Source)

PayPal proposes to fine people for sharing disinformation 9 10

This EULA change was discountinued (from my knowledge), but PayPal keeps pushing for financial censorship.

  1. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/locating-the-victims â†Šď¸Ž

  2. https://www.404media.co/buying-and-selling-hacked-government-emails-edrs-discord-snapchat-facebook-tiktok â†Šď¸Ž

  3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/14/fbi-hack-email-cyberattack/ â†Šď¸Ž

  4. https://www.404media.co/revealed-the-country-that-secretly-wiretapped-the-world-for-the-fbi â†Šď¸Ž

  5. https://immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/CHRON_HE/C110515S.pdf â†Šď¸Ž

  6. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37114688 â†Šď¸Ž

  7. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/business/appeals-court-first-amendment-social-media.html â†Šď¸Ž

  8. https://web.archive.org/web/20230405090304/https://dont-be-evil.com/ â†Šď¸Ž

  9. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/paypal-faces-backlash-after-floating-fines-sharing-misinformation/ â†Šď¸Ž

  10. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilymason/2022/10/27/after-paypal-revokes-controversial-misinformation-policy-major-concerns-remain-over-2500-fine/?sh=2065a4b230c4 â†Šď¸Ž