"i don't have anything to hide" can have more than one meaning. It may mean, that person is not doing anything they are ashamed of. But it also can mean that they do not care what others think of anything that they do. These two different meanings can have a very different take on the topic.
I do not believe that "wanting privacy" means that you must have something to hide. The meaning of privacy often means 'being left alone or left to yourself', not 'being allowed to perform things you do not want others to know about.'
A lack of privacy in banking means a lack of financial security, not a lack of protection for money laundering. The fallacy is in that "nothing to hide" can apply to no one.
I do use PayPal on occasion - by putting the amount I need into it, then using it, leaving the balance zero -or a few pennies. Other than that, I do zero banking online.
I may also say, "I have nothing to hide." It carries both meanings. My cell phone does not have a Lockscreen on it. If you want access - just swipe. Everyone in the house knows my root password. But my son accessing my computer and looking up Bionicle and the Government accessing my emails and assessing emails with my sister are two very different things. I have nothing to hide in either - but one party has permission to know and the other takes without permission.
I'm not saying the government does this... I am suggesting that hypothetically, if they did, that would be my take on it.
I think a lot of people do not separate what they have to hide (That weeks bathroom exploits) from "Trust and Permission."
I do not have anything to hide on my person, but I do not want strangers touching me. Or even really talking to me much... But when I choose to on my own, I can yak your ear off here. What is innocent but personal can be exploited as easily as what is not-so-innocent and personal.
Thank you Aravisian for some very finely crafted thoughts. The maxim of "nothing to hide" is indeed a useful starting point for a whole range of associated concepts. Perhaps in my naivety and perhaps due to being a decent person ( I thank my Parents) it has never been my idea that the phrase was about nefarious or illegal activity but merely about a principal- namely that of MY own individual sovereignty and, as you so rightly state, Permission- namely my sole right to judge who has permission to the details of who I am.
That's why my concern with the whole new era of a person having data (especially behavioural data)- ie a massive dossier, aggregated by ever more powerful AI, is not really about my bank balance or who I hang out with- its actually on a higher level- if a machine and its handlers eventually have more knowledge of me than I myself do then there becomes the metaphysical question of who is owning whom.
Does my Bank look after my interests or am I working for them in their agenda? Does my Government work for me or do I do what they want me to do for their reasons? Does Google exist to aggregate information I want in an amazingly fast and helpful way or do I exist to help propagate the information that Google has decided should be out there - again, for their agenda whatever it may be.
PS- I refute with all my will anyone who makes ad hominem attacks mentioning Tin foil hats. I am an upstanding, hard working, tax-paying and principled member of my community.
Like the TOR Project people state- their service gives privacy to some people who are actually fighting real battles- usually in places where many of the things the West takes for granted are lacking- free speech without the fear of imprisonment, property without the fear of confiscation, memberships without the fear of interference.
I am deleting Google and Windows in exchange for the inherently more private open sourced platforms because I will not stand by and see the Liberal Western Democracy I live in regress in this regard.
I am grateful to be Australian and there is a reason we commemorate our fallen so passionately every April 25. We must all do our bit.
Sorry for being a downer on a platform for the Zorin community but maybe this sort of discussion has a place because maybe it can at least help put some sort of philosophical backing behind our reasons for choosing this particular technology.
Thank You.
Well said.
I am posting a YoutTube link, however, I am posting the title for others to look it up on another video streaming platform if they choose. It's a very good watch on how A.I. replaces employment and the long term consequences of it.
"The Rise of the Machines – Why Automation is Different this Time"
Whenever the agenda is in question, look for the Money trail.
On the topic of Control: They don't really care. I mean, throughout history, no national or world leader has cared one bit about your privacy, your choices or your control: Except for the Finances of it. Resouces; iron or coal... Or money; it's the same thing. Land (real Estate), mining and trade - it's the Money. It's the only thing people really care about.
Money is power. Money is control.
Google has always been an Advertising company. That is their agenda. They do not care what you search for or what you buy. They only care about whether that information provides them with profit.
This particular topic- while off-topic in this thread; is very worthy of discussion on this forum. Because it ties into an interesting phenomenon and fallacy that affects Zorin OS and Linux itself.
In fact, let's split this topic off into a "Chat about Zorin" categorized thread if you don't mind.
Great animated film- I'm sure its already becoming one of the tools in this corner of the information wars. I'll share with friends.
Brought to mind a conversation i had many years ago with a great older guy- a client of mine- wealthy but progressive and not a rabid socialist- anyway he made the observation that when he was starting his working life in the seventies computers were coming out and the word was spreading that we would all soon be working 3 day weeks for twice the money. HA!
The concepts in the video have been understood for quite a while really.
I'm a different generation- the cultural references I think of are Terminator and Skynet. Another one is more recent Blade Runner 2049 (a rare sequel better than the original)- the film eludes to an historic 'black-out' which is probably meant to be understood as an EMP event that destroyed most of the data. Just thinking....
Lets split the topic off as you suggested. I'm literally a forum newbie so I'm not quite sure what this means in practice but I find the discussion worth continuing if you and perhaps others feel the same.
This thread had me thinking about the fact the Zorin OS offers a paid for product: Zorin OS Pro (formerly Zorin OS Ultimate).
Developers should be and must be paid for their hard work.
I am sure that Linus Torvalds had the best of intentions. He wanted Linux to be freely available to all so that all could benefit from it.
Yet, what we see from Google, Firefox, Canonical and a myriad of others is that when a product is "free", they will resort to some interesting measures to get paid.
What if (It's too late to do anything about this now; the damage is done) your Internet Search provider (Duck, Google, Bing) was an add on service on your monthly internet bill? Instead of it being "free" and collecting money through target market advertising, but was a Subscription service you opted into and paid for each month. Just like your trash bill, water bill... If it was, Google might not have swollen into the greedy corporation that Alphabet Inc. became.
Over 14 years ago, I bought a Used black leather Wallet at a garage sale. It looked like-new, though. And I paid fifty cents for it. A few weeks back, I emptied it out in order to clean lint and stuff out, normal maintenance. It still looks like new. I sit on the thing and carry it everywhere I go. I looked closely and noticed that stamped into the leather on the inside was the maker name. Georgio Armani. I could not help but laugh. I got an Armani wallet.
Man... Those things Cost Money. Yet... Here it is, maybe over fifteen years old, and still like-new. I have noticed this with Tools, Kitchen Appliances, etc. When you are not willing to Pay - You Spend More Money. Cheap Blenders break down more often that higher cost quality ones and over time, you spend more replacing the broken ones than you would ever have paid on One expensive but Quality one.
Our free products are costing us the most of all. Our collective lack of willingness to pay means we pay much more. A person that gets Free Service pays more due to the advertising they are subjected to, pays more in privacy lost, data lost and identity lost.
So true!
I'm a building contractor- I own probably twenty grands worth of tools and equipment- drills, saws nailguns etc etc.
I still have my first saw. Makita. Made in Japan. Simple, Robust, Fixable.
I also have the new-fad stuff, in fact its almost taking over on the building sites- these are Lithium battery Powered tools.
They are everything my older Makitas are not- they have a designed obsolescence life of about 2-3 years and reducing. They have batteries which are expensive and dubious to the environment, they are unnecessarily complicated (part of the obsolescence strategy I suppose), they are constructed in a way which make repairability unviable and the clincher- my latest new drill ran fine for a few days then I put what might have been a very very convincing boot-leg battery into it and it died- the electronics have apparently decided to cancel might right to use this $300 new drill. Some brands now sell a feature with Bluetooth. What!! Connectivity for a wood drill !! The younger crew love it. The Bluetooth is of course so it can talk to its real owner the multinational brand owner private equity crime syndicate which took our money, made us think we had ownership of an item of personal property to go out and use for making our living when really they had only given us some sort of de-facto usage right- one they reserve the right to revoke at their pleasure.
Bring on the open sourced power tools- No fancy connectivity needed, just robust electrics like a switch and a motor either of which can be swapped out by the end user/owner. And an adapter to take any manufacturer's batteries including the generic ones which have a price around 50% less than branded ones.
Also on the other theme you mentioned- (The AI chap) Jaron Lanier does a TED talk where he offers some interesting ideas on the paradox of monetising content when its whole founding principal was not to be monetised. I don't want to paraphrase him here but well worth a watch if you haven't already.
My only issue with this is, these companies still gather information from "free" resources, like you or me who may be providing information to our website visitors at no charge. Yet, they get to profit from the information that we provide freely. If there was a way for us, the little people who contribute information to these search engines via our web pages and blogs, to get a portion of what paid-for-service search engines made, then I'd be okay with that.
Recently, I took down all of my YouTube videos because Google told me that my channel wasn't large enough to be part of their royalties program. Yet, they were still going to put ads on my videos for their own gain. I don't mind providing information for free, but not for a company like Google to gain from my work and refuse me my fair share.
Now, if Google (or who ever) want to do their own research, pay their own employees to write content and then charge us for that, then that's great. In fact, this is how it used to work back in the 80s and early 90s. I used to subscribe to dial up content providers, like The Source (owned by Reader's Digest) and Compuserve. They charged for their content but they were also the publishers behind it, too. So, charging for their service was fair, in my mind. But then the "free" Internet arrived and shut them down. Whether for good or bad, you'll have to decide that for yourself. 
I still pay for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post.