# Privacy ist mir Wurst. I Got Nothing to Hide.

- Channel: [ETHBerlin](https://streameth.org/ethberlin)
- Date: 2025-06-16
- Duration: 25:46
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/6851386b4ac43bf73d1c53bc

## Description

This is a talk about "having nothing to hide." A talk about oversharing in the age of TikTok and Instagram, about doxing in the era of public blockchains, and about data sovereignty in a world dominated by centralized repositories. Why is privacy so often dismissed, and what does it really mean to give it up?

## Transcript

So, in the next talk, another one on privacy. My friend, Lev Teres, will be following up a little bit on the previous talk about having nothing to hide and oversharing and what that basically gets you. And there might even be some mentions, and hopefully not pictures, of his wurst. So, yeah, here's Lev Teres to talk about privacy is my, it's me at worst, and I got nothing to hide. Hey, can everybody hear me? All right, great. So, good morning, or just good afternoon. I'll be talking about privacy. There will be, this is the most of the sausages you will see, I'm afraid. The title of the talk is called Privacy is me at worst, which roughly translates in German that I don't care about privacy. The talk will be divided into three main parts. The first one, we will try to see about privacy and about this fallacy of not caring. So, we've seen this phrase a lot, right? Like, I have nothing to hide. What does that mean? It's five words that are based on very, very wrong foundations. That if you want to hide, that's what privacy is for. So, it means that you have something that you're doing wrong, and so you want to hide it. That's why you need privacy. Or that surveillance is only a problem for criminals, not for the real people. If you're a normal person, you shouldn't mind that the state or whoever wants to put surveillance on you. And the most insidious of these fallacies is that your personal data has no value. So, you should really just not care. You can overshare, or you can just not care about what you put in Twitter, what you put in social media, on the blog, and et cetera. We will see why all of those three are dangerously wrong. But one very nice quote about the nothing to hide fallacy comes from Snowden, right? Arguing that you do not care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you do not care about free speech because you have nothing to say. So, then, if privacy is also for the individual, if it's not about hiding, what exactly is privacy? Privacy should be divided into these three points that are very positive for the individual. It gives you freedom. So, the freedom to operate without the chilling effect of being watched. More importantly, it empowers the individual. It gives him control. So, it lets you know who you share your data with. It gives you the choice to share the data or not. And you decide who knows what about you. Most importantly, it gives you security. Because maybe now you do not care about it, but yourself in the future will at some point come to regret not having cared about privacy at some point in your life. So, you protect your future self from misuse of your data in the future. So, all this sounds good, right? Then why do we have this, I don't care about privacy, I have nothing to hide fallacy? A very good way to explain why is the classical boiling frog problem. It's not that, oh, suddenly you don't have privacy, so you feel bad and you know that you should actually have cared about it. Every day we make some actions. We get a new app. We press another. I agree. Worst of all, we have to KYC again for another application. So, every one of these is an imperceptible increase in the temperature. It's not that we don't feel any pressure, because it happens slowly and gradually day by day. There is this imperceptible increase of the temperature, until at some point we are boiling. So, it's not as if all this happened for nothing, though. For privacy, when you sacrifice it by using all this social media, you connect with your friends, especially in this phase of loneliness, we all feel like we need it, because it connects you to people around the world. Maybe your friends back in your hometown or home country, maybe you live in another country. It also gives you a lot of entertainment, like TikTok, Instagram, all of that. It's a nice fix. And it's all free, or so we think. What we actually pay for it, it's a cliche by now, but we are the product. We pay for all of this with our data. And, worst of all, the pictures that you share or the social media posts that you make are not as important as the metadata. The things that you don't even know you are sharing, the things that... Basically, the data about the data. So, there is a lot of metadata when you use any application. There will be the location metadata, so where you've been, how long you stayed there. Your attention metadata, so many apps actually check where in the page did you scroll, how fast did you scroll over something, where did your attention stop. Many apps actually check your contacts, so they see who you talk to, for how long. All of this paints a very, very, very nice picture about you. And it's many times called the data exhaust. So, it's data that most people don't care, but there is whole businesses or even, in this case, agencies like the NSA and the CIA that operate on this. So, this is an actual quote from a former NSA and CIA director that they basically kill people based on metadata. I think he gave this quote to the Guardian at some point, and this is not new. This has been going on for, I think the quote is, maybe 10 years ago or even more. So, when the stakes are that high, when it's about people's lives, it's extremely naive to just say, oh, I don't care about privacy. We grew up with the idea of the big brother, so that there is this big eye watching us. Unfortunately, reality is a lot worse than this. The panopticon has many eyes. So, there is the big brother in the sense of corporates. So, corporates will try to use your data in order to milk you for profit. But it's not just them. There is the state eye. The state eye wants to watch you and understand what you do so that they can control you. But the most scary one, it's the imperceptible public eye. That is the mob that at some point may just decide that for some reason they want to dox you, they want to enact, I think would be the right verb, vigilante justice, or just really do you harm. And doing harm and violence has been pretty common in the field of cryptography. This year, something happened in practice. I have no idea what the heck, but we've seen really graphic violence and success. This is just from the beginning of the year. The ledger co-founder being adopted, abducted. And having his finger cut off, then the daughter of someone in crypto being abducted, also in plain daylight, and thankfully someone stopped it. Then another, the father of some other crypto business in France had his finger cut and the police just saved him when they were about to drill into his knee. Pretty graphic stuff. So I'm putting this here to make you understand that there are real life consequences for loss of privacy. I would like to now change the part of the talk to look in the mirror, to look at ourselves as privacy advocates, as cypherpunks, as people who work in the privacy sector. I think that we've made many mistakes. So many of us are idealists. So we wanted to fix the old world, you know, the corruptible, the fallible systems of the old world. So we thought of doing everything on the blockchain. This unforgettable ledger, every transaction, every action, every donation to every single cause, every vote is there and will be there forever. And I guess we haven't fully considered the consequences of what that means. We have enabled a pipeline of weaponization of public data. A very simple example is, you know, you overshare. You overshare by posting something on social media, you have your DNS handle also. So you leak a connection to the permanent ledger, to the blockchain. Someone can look at that address and see, oh, hey, this guy is loaded. Or, hey, this guy donated to a cause that I'm actually very much against. So I don't like this guy. And then this guy can be doxxed, if that guy is you. They can combine public data to harass, threaten, or enact violence as we saw in the previous slide. More importantly, okay, there we can say that we were naive. But more importantly, we continue to fail in the message that we are sending to people. We have completely failed in trying to make the average Joe care about privacy. We are continuously selling fear. We are telling, most of us sound like the government is watching you, the corporations are programming you, your toaster is a spy. So it sounds like we are paranoid. Many of these things may not be totally wrong, but it sounds like we're in digital tinfoil hats. So this kind of approach doesn't empower people. They think that privacy is a chore. If you have kids, it's like privacy is broccoli. And it's privacy is homework. Nobody likes to do homework, right? We can't make people think about privacy like this because then they just give up. They say, it's not for me. I'm just not going to do it. Even worse, many of us, and this is something I have been fighting against for a very long time, we are elitist. So you've all had things like, oh, you use Gmail, you're part of the problem. Or, hey, don't run your own mail server on Graphene OS and pass everything through Tor. You're an amateur. So people hear this and they're like, okay, so it's either I have to be a paranoid privacy freak or I just don't care. So it really sounds sometimes like privacy is all or nothing. Well, that will end up with people doing nothing. And we really lose everybody. And in the end, we'll just have a few people in a room, you know, netbeards, talk about privacy and say,  those kids, they don't care about privacy. Because this is what will happen. If we sound like, you know, if you don't do exactly as I say, you're not pro-privacy or you're an amateur. Really, sometimes I've heard things that make it sound to me like we are insanely stupid in how our methods to the common people about privacy is. And as I said, we just end up losing everybody. So, okay, these are problems. What are some potential solutions? Let's change the narrative a bit. Let's have like, you know, the current manifesto. Let's, instead of selling the sticks, where we are telling them privacy is about fear and sacrifice. You have to just be afraid all your life and also sacrifice a lot to get privacy. Maybe let's switch more to positive stuff. How we can have apps that, or experience that empowers the user. So let's start selling the carrot board. What are some examples of good carrots? Digital sovereignty is one that I really like.  Protocols and applications that make sure that your data belongs to you. For example, for social protocols, like I think Macedon and Lens, they make you, they enable you. Take your followers with you whenever you, wherever you go. Apps like Rotki that are local, give you your data and you always hold them. They are not in the cloud where a corporation can just say, okay, I don't like you. Cut you off. You no longer have access to your data. So you own your data, you own your identity. This is not a sacrifice. It's really an upgrade in how people use and interact with technology. Another pretty nice idea is to, you know, flip the narrative for how data is handled. Right now, I mean, we all know it's a cliche by now. We are the product. All the big corporations basically just give us free apps and take our data and sell it and make a lot more money. So another approach here would be to have apps that instead of milking you for profit and your data, to just make you a shareholder in your own data. I don't particularly love the example, but Brave is nice in the sense that it's an example for this approach where instead of having ads thrown at you, it's giving you the option and it also pays you for your attention. So this is a small example of applications that would go towards that way, where we become a shareholder of our data and we decide,  we want, we don't want, and we also get some profit out of our data. Something that I really like is,  cryptography, right? And using cryptographic magic, we can improve stuff. For example, zero knowledge proofs, for those that may not know, a completely non-technical, non-mathematical example would be like, where is Waldo here? The screenshot may not be the best, but imagine that, okay, there is Waldo and you want to prove that he's there without actually showing his location. So imagine that you take a different sized, black piece of paper with a hole, you saw it, you match the hole with where Waldo is, and then you show it to them, to the person that you want to prove it to. They see that you have seen where Waldo is, but when you take it off, they no longer have the context, so they can't actually find his location. They just know that you know where he is. Okay, this is fun, but what about practical applications? There's many. If you just, for example, I don't know, yeah, go to buy alcohol, you need to prove that you're over 18 or over 21, depending on where you are. You go to the merchant, his POS connects with your phone, and your phone just sends a ZK proof that you're over 21. What that means is that, what's the difference between just showing the ID? It's that you don't leak anything. You don't leak your address if it's in your ID, you don't leak your name, and maybe you're sensitive about your age, I don't know, maybe you're over 80, and you don't want to say,  I want to appear younger, so you don't also leak that. My favorite and the most ultimate, I would say, is good UX. Nothing matters. Absolutely nothing matters. Everything that I said does not matter, if it's a shitty app, if it's a shitty experience for the user. A good comparison here would be PGP encrypted email. Many of us probably have used it.  if you actually have used it ever in the past, you are one of the very few. I know that some people still really embrace it, and love it, and are even advertising a lot for it, but this won't be something that my mom will use, or my daughter, she won't even understand or touch this. Contrast that to something like Signal, like mobile first, nice, slick UX.  they can also now sync with desktop nicely, and it's encrypted communication. The whole point of this, is that we should have apps, where the privacy benefits, they're not like the main point of the app, but a very good side effect. Because if we have apps, and experience in general, that are feeling like it's a chore and a sacrifice, we will never have people maintain their privacy. And there is a lot more, because there is a lot of research coming out, that will create primitives, which will allow us to create even cooler stuff. A very simple example would be fully homomorphic encryption, which is essentially, you can operate on data, without actually decrypting it, while they're still in the encrypted state. Imagine some cloud service, processing your really sensitive data, without actually having access to this data. So the carrots are only going to get bigger and better. The future is bright. We have to have a positive message, otherwise nobody will actually care about this stuff. So in closing, what I would like everybody to remember, so if you remember anything out of this talk, especially the builders, especially the people who are privacy advocates, stop selling fear. This is like a very, very, very wrong message. We should not do this. We should start building value, and sell the carrots, not the sticks. That's all. Any questions? Yes. We do have questions. First one. Do you think that missing privacy is a blocker for mass adoption of a blockchain, seeing that too many people also don't care? Should we invest more into it, or should we solve scaling first? You know what, Bim? Why not both? These are different things. We should not try to just focus on one thing at a time, and I think that both scaling and privacy are really important. All right. So where would you say is a good place to start if you want to improve your personal privacy? Any low-hanging bush? Yeah, use Signal, for sure. Other stuff. Minimize Googling. I know that's impossible to stop it. De-Google yourself as much as possible. There is a lot more, I guess. Use local apps. Make sure that you know what any app that you're using is doing with your data. I think that we actually, with the Wave 3 Privacy Initiative, we actually have lists there. Take those lists. There is a lot more that probably I can't think of in this small amount of time. All right. Okay, why do you think that most people are happy to pay for products with their data instead of paying actual money and get privacy in return? Hmm. I mean, this is maybe a little bit... You know a little bit about this, I guess, with Vodka, right? Yeah, yeah. Convenience.  It's like people will go for the easy solution always. And this is why a good UX and making privacy be a seamless part. So basically, anything that we build that should also have privacy should try to strive to be at least as good as the surveillance-based alternatives. Otherwise, we are going to lose... We are basically going to lose the people because they will... Okay, there will be like maybe 10% that will choose the privacy-aligned app, but you also want the other 90%. And without having a convenient and nice UX, you will not be able to get them. Do we truly own any data? Isn't this a folly because increased IoT and digital twins will make us all just a model somewhere? I don't know what digital twins and that is, but yes, of course, we truly own your data. It's a very good example. Cloud apps where they just cut you off and it has happened. I'm in some... Like with Rocky, we deal with accounting data, et cetera. We have had people tell us that... What was it? I don't remember the name of the app right now, but a few years ago, it happened two times even. They just closed down shop and they did give no way to export any data. And there was another app that gave way to export data and the data was absolutely wrong. And then because you have no way to access the app anymore, it was on the cloud, you just lost everything. Whereas if you have an open source app and the data is local in your system, if, God forbid, I get hit by a bus today, your data is still with you. If Rocky dies, your data is still with you. You have open source code that can extract it, operate on it, give it to your accountant, give it to your finance and so on and so forth. All right. Would you agree that women care more about privacy than men, like for obvious security reasons? Could diversity help us push this culture forward? Good question. I don't really know if women care more about privacy than men. It's the first time that I actually hear this. I don't know. Yeah, I guess. But it's the first time that I hear this. All right. Then let's do the last one. Can you name two to three privacy-preserving apps? Which ones would you recommend to make privacy more usable or approachable, I guess? Yeah. Rocky? For accounting and for tracking, portfolio management, et cetera. Signal, definitely. What else? The Fileverse guys, they actually, I know that they are working on replacing slowly the Google Stack. I like that because you don't have basically Google Docs, Google Sheets, but you would have something like Fileverse that is more privacy-preserving. Or at least gives you ownership over the data. And again, the Web3 Privacy Initiative has a very good list about that. So there is a lot more than just three apps that you can find there as suggestions. Great. Thank you very much. Letheris?