The Deviancy Signal: Having 'Nothing to Hide' Is a Threat to Us All

Source: Hacker News

The Problem with “Nothing to Hide”

There’s a special kind of contempt I reserve for the person who says, “I have nothing to hide.” It’s not gentle pity for the naive; it’s cold, hard anger for a collaborator. These people aren’t just surrendering their own liberty—they are actively forging chains for the rest of us. Their argument reflects a “pathology of the present tense,” a failure of imagination so profound it borders on a moral crime.

By living as an open book, they create the most dangerous weapon imaginable: a baseline of “normalcy.” Every unencrypted text, every thoughtless search, every location‑tagged post is another brick in the wall of their own cage, teaching state algorithms what a “good, transparent citizen” looks like.

The Deviancy Signal

When the political winds shift—when a previously acceptable belief becomes subversive, a donated group is re‑classified as extremist, or a joke is deemed evidence of a thoughtcrime—those who once had “nothing to hide” suddenly have something to hide. They reach for privacy tools: encrypted messengers, VPNs, track‑covering practices.

That single act triggers the Deviancy Signal. Their first attempt at privacy, set against a self‑created history of total transparency, becomes a screaming alarm to the surveillance machine. It’s the poker player with a perfect tell, or the nocturnal animal suddenly walking in daylight. Their attempt to become private is the most public and suspicious act they could commit. By the time they need privacy, their own history makes seeking it an admission of guilt.

Impact on Others

The damage radiates outward, undoing the careful work of everyone around them. Consider a friend who has practiced perfect operational security, building a private life with no baseline for the state to analyze—a ghost in the machine. When they talk to you, your unshielded phone becomes a listening device they never consented to. Your lack of privacy ties their identity to yours in a permanent, searchable log. You don’t just contrast with their diligence; you actively dismantle it.

Societal Consequences

On a societal scale, this inaction becomes a collective betrayal. The power of the Deviancy Signal is directly proportional to the number of people who live transparently. Every person who refuses to practice privacy adds another gallon of clean, clear water to the state’s pool, making any ripple of dissent—or deviation—starkly visible. By refusing to create a chaotic, noisy baseline of universal privacy, you are actively making the system more effective. You fail to make the baseline deviant, and in doing so, you make us all more vulnerable.

A Path Forward

There is only one way to disarm this weapon: we must destroy its premise. We must obliterate the baseline. The task is not merely to hide, but to make privacy the default, encryption a reflex, and anonymity a universal right. We must create so much noise that a signal is impossible to find. Our collective goal must be to make a “normal” profile so rare that watchers have nothing to compare us to.

We must all become deviations.