This is in India, but coming soon to a country near you (or the one you are in already).
Until they do. What is legal today could be illegal tomorrow.
this is key to tell the folks who think the constitution matters. they’re called “amendments” for a reason lol.
Military is a good example.
First people who were gay were removed.
Then don’t ask don’t tell.
Then it was okay.
Now it’s not and they’re being removed and many outed themselves once it was okay.
One day, you’re not a terrorist. Then on Sept 22 2025 you are because you don’t support fascism.
Cool. Let me install these cameras in your house, including your bedroom and bathrooms. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear
“I have nothing to hide” is such a dumb argument.
Are you always going to have nothing to hide?
Because it’ll be too late to start caring about privacy when you do.
The problem is this: You don’t know what you need to hide or that you even needed to hide it until it is too late.
Look at what is going on in the United States right now, LGBTQ rights are taking a massive beating. While hate crime laws are still in place, that is not a guarantee. Transpeople who revealed they are trans under safer conditions can’t take that shit back when someone like Trump and his cronies are in power and abso-fucking-lutely will put transpeople in extermination camps.
I, like many people on many Lemmy platforms, have been anti-Trump for a very long time. I thought Trump was an absolute fool well before his 2015 bid for presidency and I was honest to god shocked that he was taken seriously and actually won! Now basically any criticism of Trump is being prosecuted and Trump critics can and have been violently attacked.
I made numerous posts all over the internet criticizing and mocking Trump. Many have been made using temporary email, but my OPSEC online was eased into, meaning there was a lot of stuff from the past that I used under ‘real’ emails. My facebook page, which I never wanted (my family made it for me without any concern of what I wanted many years ago) is still active even though I cannot remember the last time I logged in and posted, and it does contain anti-fascist, anti-Trump comments and posts. Deleting the FB page might make denial a little easier, but if they decide to demand any information from FB (who will comply without a warrant) they will see it.
Given that the United States WILL NOT ‘go back to normal’ once Trump kicks the bucket, there is no telling how the regime would use this data against its opponents.
I heard a lawyer argue something like this once in court, regarding the the fourth and fifth amendments:
These laws are not meant to protect the innocent, they are meant to protect criminals. The founding fathers who penned it were traitors and seditionists who fought a war against their own country. They wrote these laws so that guilty people would be able to avoid punishment if proper procedures aren’t followed, and certain rights aren’t upheld.
I’m not sure how much I agree with that, but it was definitely an interesting take.
Whoever said that is full of shit. The right to silence was born out of the religious persecution that was rife in Europe in the 16th and 17th century, where coerce confessions and forcing people to incriminate themselves, even if it was bullshit, was commonplace. Also religion played a role. Lying in some circumstances was a mortal sin, but at the same time people acknowledged that people would naturally lie in order to protect themselves. So in order to make it possible for people to not commit mortal sins and not lie to authorities, the simple right to not answer questions and not have their silence used against them was eventually mandated.
If people did not have the right to silence, all the authorities have to do is just coerce a confession out of a suspect and not investigate anything else. This happens all the time in China and Japan. Japan technically does have the right to silence in their constitution, but in practice it does not exist. If you refuse to answer questions and clam up during interrogations, they will take it as an admission of guilt and as far as I know, no judge refused that.
In China you are required to answer any ‘relevant’ question posed by police, you only have the right to deny irrelevant questions. So basically if they accuse you of robbing and murdering some shopkeeper, you have to give an account of yourself, but if they ask you what you had for lunch today, you can decline to answer that question. Stupid, but it is what it is.
The right to silence was born out of the religious persecution that was rife in Europe in the 16th and 17th century, where coerce confessions and forcing people to incriminate themselves, even if it was bullshit, was commonplace
I think that’s what he was talking about. His argument is that the Founders did things that could incriminate themselves to their old government, and there were no protections in place to shield them from, for instance, self incrimination. The ‘validity’ of the law, I think, isn’t particularly germane.
‘Don’t Talk to the Police’ is about exactly that.
Everyone should watch that lecture, but TL;DW is ANYTHING you say to the police will be used against you and NOTHING you say to the police will ever help you.
If you’re not convinced, you really need to watch that lecture.
Just wait until we develop psychic powers.
Let’s see how private your thoughts will be then.
This is just to get us accustomed to the idea that privacy will be nonexistent at some point.
The CIA already tried that. It isn’t going to work.
First attempts almost never work. Just wait until they make it better and develop more powerful psychic abilities like in Stellaris.
Not their pathetic attempts from project stargate
‘People with nothing to hide’ don’t exist. All of us have something that we’d like to keep private or even secret.
Sometimes it’s little silly things we do when nobody’s watching, like tasting our pets’ food. Other times it’s porn and what specific kind we read/watch/play. And in a tiny, miniscule minority of cases it’s crime. Even fewer of those cases are crimes that actually hurt anyone.
Depriving 99.99% of the population (the remaining 0.01% are politicians) of basic rights just to pretend you’re stopping crime that 0.001% of the population is comitting. Pretend, because we know it doesn’t even work anyway.
Nearly 25 years of mass, global surveillance by the NSA, CIA and FBI, and they failed to catch even a single terrorist or terrorist-to-be. Meanwhile there’s a public shooting almost every day.
It’s not just about basic human rights or fundamental principles of society. These programs simply don’t work. It’s a waste of resources. The only result is bulk data gathering on the citizens. I wonder what that could be used for…?
And when they did catch mass shooters or terrorists it was usually due to an informant or someone who knew the would-be criminal and reported on them.
Meaning a trick that dates literally to antiquity is still the main way they are thwarted.
Meanwhile we can’t release the voter booth footage because privacy of the voters, destroying Right to Information Act because privacy, if you have a lot of money then only do you start to need privacy after all!
The Supreme Leader’s court supports a whole justice system of redactors. So I guess there is lots to hide while hypocritically telling us that everything is okay.
People with nothing to hide have the most to lose.
Saying ‘I have nothing to fear because I have nothing to hide’ is like saying ‘I don’t care for free speech because I have nothing to say’.
Feels like editorialization to me. The author could at least have titled it “Supreme court asks”, rather than making it seem as if the court passed a judgement enabling free surveillance.
The judge posed an oral argument, and the Solicitor General provided a counter. It’s good that these comments were recorded as it takes the debate forward and shows that a respected lawyer is taking the side of privacy, even if for the sake of winning his case.
There is a lot to criticize about India (my country), but headlines like these just make people angry or assume that it’s hopeless to fight back, because “it’s the same everywhere”. Recognize the harm that it does to our collective mental health and morale. This article could have been titled “Solicitor General upholds the right to privacy in the Supreme Court”, and people would have felt more optimistic and ready to tackle related issues in their own lives. It’s all about the way you spin it.
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Article text: The Supreme Court on Friday (December 19, 2025) reasoned that people with nothing to hide need not be bothered about or afraid of surveillance, even as the State of Telangana batted for citizens’ right to privacy, emphasising that even the President of India cannot direct anyone to be put under illegal snooping.
The State reminded the court of its own nine-judge Bench judgment upholding privacy as part of the fundamental right to life under the Constitution.
The top court, the sentinel on the qui vive of fundamental rights, which includes the right to privacy, justified that citizens lived in an “open world”, indicating that those with clear hearts and minds need not be scared of snooping.
The State defended that the question involved was not about an “open or closed world”, but the basic right to be protected against illegal surveillance by the state machinery.
The debate in the court room between the Bench, headed by Justice B.V. Nagarathna, and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for Telangana along with senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, occurred during a hearing in the Telangana phone-tapping case.
“The question is can it [illegal surveillance] be done? The question here is not whether a person is ‘bothered’ or whether he has something to hide,” Mr. Mehta submitted.
The State had sought an extension of the police custody of former Telangana Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief T. Prabhakar Rao, who is an accused in the snooping phone-tapping case during the previous BRS government in the State.
“Now we live in an open world. Nobody is in a closed world. Nobody should be really bothered about surveillance. Why should anyone be bothered about surveillance unless they have something to hide?” Justice Nagarathna questioned.
Mr. Mehta asked whether the court was saying if “every government will have a free hand in putting people under surveillance”. He said illegal snooping by the government the Supreme Court was simply not permitted. It was plainly against the law.
“The Supreme Court knows the difference between an ‘open’ world and being under illegal surveillance. My personal communications with my wife… I have a right not to be under surveillance,” Mr. Mehta pointed out.
The top law officer referred to the court’s judgment in the Puttaswamy case, which had upheld privacy as integral to human dignity, liberty and autonomy, encompassing personal intimacies, family life, and sexual orientation.
Though acknowledging at one point that “ideally” surveillance should not be done, Justice Nagarathna’s oral remarks continued to focus on the logic that a person above board personally and professionally had nothing to conceal or feel guilty to fear from the state targeting them through snooping.
“Why should anyone be scared of surveillance? If you have nothing to hide, why should you be afraid?” Justice Nagarathna queried.
The prosecution case against Mr. Rao concerned an alleged conspiracy to “misuse” the resources of SIB for political purposes by putting citizens from different walks of life under surveillance. Those named as accused in the case had allegedly developed profiles of several persons without authorisation. They were accused of monitoring their subjects secretly and illegally, using the information gleaned from snooping in a partisan manner to favour a political party. The accused were also suspected of a conspiracy to destroy records and evidence of their crimes, according to police.
“This was an illegal surveillance without any authority of law under the guise that they were being monitored in connection with left-wing extremism. The information obtained through these illegal means included personal and medical records… This was profiling. It has to stop here. Thereafter they tried to destroy the data and evidence,” Mr. Mehta argued.
The court extended the police custody of Mr. Rao, who had surrendered, till December 25. The Bench directed that he should be released from custody thereafter since the case was pending in the Supreme Court.
The Bench ordered that no coercive steps should be taken against Mr. Rao till the next date of hearing in the top court, January 16, and he should cooperate with the probe when summoned.
Mr. Rao had surrendered before the investigating officer at the Jubilee Hills police station on December 12 on the directions of the top court. He had moved the top court challenging an order of the Telangana High Court which dismissed his plea seeking anticipatory bail.
Published - December 19, 2025 05:56 pm IST
Always bad when the net policy is made by old people which confuse an remote control with an smartphone.
I don’t get why they never suggest making it completely public every email, phone call and bank transaction of politicians and judges then… also, please, force them to wear a chip so we can always know their location… it’s ok to give it some hours of delay for security reasons, we just need to know where you have been to, no need to worry if you have nothing to hide.
Of all the people in the world that need or should have it mandatory to have round the clock public surveillance … it should be our political leaders
They claim to be working for the people … yet the people never really know what the fuck these leaders are doing
Blowing Bubba not good enough for you?
We still don’t know who bubba is. Is he Bill Clinton? A horse? A fictional shrimp tycoon? Who knows?
This is in India, but coming soon to a country near you
It came here first
here
Which is…?
You hear that? As long as you agree with everything that’s going on and don’t want to change any of it, then you shouldn’t be worried about surveillance.
Everyone should be bothered by surveillance, it ain’t about wrongdoing, it’s about further empowering the people who think us suffering and dying for their profits is perfectly acceptable.
