And if you’re not content with living in a world where all of that data is public then you’d better stop repeating that silly mantra ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide then you’ve got nothing to fear’...
Serious question: Who's making this argument? I don't hear it articulated by anyone, frankly. I'm sure there are people who hold this position and have argued for it, but are any of them in a position to make policy? Have any of our dozen+ presidential candidates made this claim?
Schmidt wasn't making a strong argument against privacy, he was discussing the relationship between using an online search engine and privacy. He was asked People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?
And responded with your quote, and a bit more. The context is harder to ridicule:
I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities.
The context is easier to ridicule. He says it in explicit terms: Don't search for something you wouldn't want authorities to know about because we just may hand it over to them.
I see it frequently in these discussions. And it affects public opinion & the crawl of culture. So in a perhaps roundabout and very-hard-to-measure way, the people unthinkingly repeating that sound byte (not so much putting that forth as the spearhead of their argument on this topic) are making the world a worse place.
It's what's implied when a gigantic portion of the population says, "Sure, no problem!" when things like the Patriot Act are created because it "helps them stop terrorists".
I'm too lazy at the moment to grab the data for what support was for the Patriot Act when it was first created, but in 2005, support to extend it was at 59%.
As an exercise. Talk to non-tech people. Listen to politicians on the matter (not those advocating for privacy, of course, those who talk about stopping terrorism and the war on drugs, hackers, etc).
Serious question: Who's making this argument? I don't hear it articulated by anyone, frankly. I'm sure there are people who hold this position and have argued for it, but are any of them in a position to make policy? Have any of our dozen+ presidential candidates made this claim?