NO2ID

Just a thought with all those people saying they have nothing to hide, and saying that anyone taking over would never mis-use our information.

Start up a political party with a short single purpose manifesto.

1. To make all declarations of "nothing to hide" illegal, punishable by six months house arrest under full public webcam coverage, followed by six months of meticulous recording of all events, phone calls, journeys, walks, purchases. Also a voluntary contribution of at least three years wages to assist with the costs of dismantling the surveillance systems that have built up over the years.

Would it be enough to make people think?
I know it would not make sense for NO2ID to start a political party but would there be any mileage at all here, even if just someone's publicity stunt? I wonder how many votes they might get, simply for being a "none of the above" party.

The other face of the annoying "nothing to hide" catchphrase is that, if somebody really is completely open about everything, then they cannot be trusted with a personal confidence or trade secret. In reality, everybody knows things that they are obliged not to reveal to others. Everybody has something to hide. Especially government officials, who are bound by the Official Secrets Act!

Now, if we could only capture this kind of sentiment in a punchy catchphrase...

How about

David Shayler had nothing to hide.

Not bad, O Baron. But "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is a formidable adversary.

Another ingredient is: hide from whom? The government? Or your nosey neighbour who works in the public sector and is mates with the person who can access your mobile phone tracking records etc?

Sounds a bit like a toned-down version of one of those "come the revolution..." remarks.

Interesting idea but sounds a bit too much like a direct threat. Perhaps re-word it as not being illegal but "indicating the need for an intensive course in the art of critical thinking". And maybe not "punishable" but "to be rewarded with"


Aided and abetted by the unthinking, of which there are far too many...

Erm... critical thinking? ...is that part of the National Curriculum?

Yes .Thats what I usually throw back to them. Its a mantra thats used to kill debate since a debate is usually something these people fear.

Also, what they should be sasking themselves is if youve got nothing to hide why should you be treated by the state as if you have.

Yes, it is an aggravating and ignorant catchphrase. But we still hear it over and over and over. It was used repeatedly in the Panorama programme, and the DNA debate on You and Yours, to take but two examples. We may yet throw our hands up in despair. But in the meantime it is surely worth trying harder to come up with a catchphrase of our own that is just as positive, broad, and appealing as NTH/NTF. So far we have collectively produced some good jokes, some defensive-sounding replies, and some long explanations. None of them will catch on. A single good phrase can swing a whole argument, and at the moment the nothing-to-hiders have the advantage.

Thought this letter about voting in the upcoming General Election is of interest:

http://ybfblog.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/letter-of-the-day-from-the-daily-telegraph/

'If you've nothing to hide, then you've nothing to fear' seems like a perfectly reasonably statement if it is directed AT the government and its institutions by its citizen(s). By doing so, the citizen does not compromise a government's civil liberties (it doesn't really have any) but holds it to account. The government is after all, or should be, the servant of the people.

However, it is not a perfectly reasonable statement if it is directed by the government at its citizens because it sets the government up as master and does compromise the civil liberties which people, not governments, do have.

Not sure if the above makes sense by I've had a long day and my brain's shutting down.

Critical thinking is not part of the National Curriculum but it should be.

It can be studied at 'A' level although I dread to think what the students are given to 'Think critically' about.

Any thinking at all can only be a good thing, even at school

I think the 'nothing to hide' brigade should be reminded that our own dear westminster MPs have gone to great lengths to try to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Act evne when requests are made for information that could not reasonably be considered of national security, eg travel expenses!

Very true. Perhaps "well, the government always have plenty to hide" should go on our long-list?

Yes but all of this stuff is often associated with people who have lost the argument. It's like advertising when there are two competing and totally bland products. There is no distinction between product A and product B except the style, so the marketers jazz it up with catch phrases and in a way it all ends up as trivia. This is fine when you are trying to hide and/or trivialise something but we are the opposite, we are the ones shouting fire. No time for games when there is a fire.

I know the counter argument to this is that a lot of people respond to this trivia and would otherwise switch off. This is true as well but this kind of PR does not actually switch them on, they are still in their dozy and unreal life and still don't comprehend the threat ahead of them. So rather than enter a field where we will loose because New Labour have billions of our taxes to spend on this kind of thing I think we should primarily try and keep and expand the ground we already own and that is we hold the rational argument. Labour doesn't, despite their size being far greater than our organisation and all the power they have as members of the ruling party.

That BBC though, it really does get up my nose. With any luck we can take them on at their own game and establish ourselves as the authority on ID cards. Let them play the word games and let the people come to NO2ID for the important stuff.

The serious and principled arguments have their place (i.e. most of the time), but I fear that the massed ranks of nothing-to-hiders simply aren't listening. We need a retort that immediately shakes confidence in the slogan, and preferably makes it look foolish. Then they will be able to learn about all the dangers and lies. Until we can shake NTH/NTF out of their ears, they can't hear what we have to say.

Yes, the search for a catchy retort may turn out to be a wild goose chase. We may just need to keep plugging away, hoping that enough of our message drips into the nothing-to-hiders' heads that eventually it corrodes their confidence. But if we can find a catchy retort then it might shortcut the whole process.

Or put it another way. If we did come up with the brilliant retort that blows NTH/NTF away, would you advocate not using it?

Well as you can see I'm pretty much in two minds about it like yourself. I suppose what one would advocate for an organisation is similar to what one does themselves. Some people will put together their mini list of points and go about arguing with people using these. For example someone mentions cost and they have a stock reply that has been honed to a point of being effective in these circumstances. Now this is an easy thing for an organisation to do and if you look at a lot of the big ones they repeatedly parrot the mantra of the organisation at large. It is often used when the brains at the top far exceed the ones running around handing out leaflets in the high street. I have had a bit of experience with these people who do it around here.

I suppose I personally don't like to repeat myself. I often think of Miles Davis as an example of someone who never performed the same piece of music twice (except for his very last concert). This tends to work for me in that I like to generate original ideas and put them out and see if they catch on, like an experimenter will try various concoctions in a lab. This has the effect of generating memes that either get passed on or they die according to whether they strike a chord with enough people. A kind of free market of ideas that gets passed on modified and adapted an so on. For the organisation that is trying to counter this method it is virtually impossible since they have nothing they can pin it down with. If they stamp on one meme another 10 appear. It's using the dynamics of the system and the fact small is fast and adaptable and large is slow and ridged.

As for catchy phrases, well I'm always adapting everything to the person I'm speaking to. They do work with some people and not others. I do use them and the ones I like are the ones that stimulate thought. I suppose really they are a highly compacted way of communicating something and always English is at its best when it is compact and has a bit of a punch to it. This is often in contrast to the government and their 10 000 page reports that say absolutely nothing. So to sum it up it is better to exploit than to copy and it's better to be original than to say something someone has heard a million times before. Maybe something that exploits their stupid saying and turns it on its head will do nicely, but a single and uniform phrase to associate with NO2ID would be exposing ourselves to ridicule.

Yes Baron, like you I prefer to be off the cuff. In normal conversation it's better that way, because it shows the other person that you are actually listening to them.

I've only alighted on this particular issue because we keep hearing the exact same slogan over and over again, from lots of different mouths, and we are collectively very frustrated by it because we haven't yet got a reply that works. Sometimes a particular form of words can develop a curious power.

I'm certainly not trying to come with a new NO2ID slogan or anything, just groping for something to say when I hear NTH/NTF. Something that's better than a longwinded analysis of the underlying issues. It might be a question, a statement, or a put-down. I don't know.

Perhaps that might be another way of going about this. Shall we do a poll of NO20ID-ers: what's the first thing that comes out of your mouth when somebody says "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" to you?

Yes I had that nothing to hide remark from a policeman a while back. My reaction was more of astonishment and his words were faltering before he had completed the end of his sentence. He knew I wasn't buying it, he knew he was repeating someone else's mantra and this was all down to the kind of look I was giving him. Some things are too idiotic to even deserve a reply and I suppose he felt an embarrassment that he had swallowed it. In that particular case a reply of that kind would not have had as much of an impact as simply the natural reaction I had.

Above all we must keep it real and if I were to give a reply I'd probably interject a little observation about their own unthinking persona to put them on the defensive while giving me the advantage of a bit of time to get an assessment of where they are coming from. If you say something that they have not heard before it confuses these kinds of people because you are effectively challenging them to switch off the autopilot and use their head. This very act of them needing and being forced to use their head is often the best way to get them to start reasoning. I did end up with him being quite apologetic in the end.

"Then you've no need to be identified, keep that for the criminals."
or
"Good god, even the government have stopped using that spin"
or
"precicely, that's why I object to ID Cards."

I think the problem with the 'Nothing to Hide' brigade is that they are genuinely afraid of people thinking they have something to hide if the disagree with ID Cards.

Thank you Black Cloud! I've started making a collection, with your three heading the list so far. More contributions please...

You may well be right that they're responding out of fear, wanting to look as open as possible whilst actually feeling vulnerable. Could be a promising line to chase with a response. The "everybody has something to hide" response does this in quite a challenging way. "Everyone has the right to a private life" does it more obliquely.

Incidentally, why "Black Cloud"? Nothing to do with the Fred Hoyle novel?

I have a tendancy towards pesimissm.
So, inside every silver linning is a dirty great 'Black Cloud'
Had forgotten about Fred Hoyle, must read it again.

A reply I find pretty effective is:

"So you wouldn't mind the police installing surveillance cameras in every room of your house?"

A variant to a parent might be:

"So you wouldn't mind someone from the council routinely coming to inspect your children's rooms and their personal belongings?"

Thanks John - added to the list.

(Mark my words: they'll get us through our children.)

Then why do you have curtains, and why do you not send all of your personal mail correspondence on the back of postcards?

Those are my two favourites.

There's no doubt about it, it really is the most common phrase I've heard on any discussion on ID cards or databases. Depending on who I'm talking to at the time very much depends on how I respond. However, in general I find that it helps to reframe the issue along the lines of, "It's not about whether you have something to hide, it's about how much you value privacy' and taking it from there (please note that I use the word 'you' which turns it back on the person and I think helps to make it more personal). Let's face it, this isn't about being clever with words, it's just about getting to the nub of the issue, cutting to the chase, or to put it more crudely, not talking bollocks.