Doesn't privacy sometimes shield bad behaviour?

Sometimes. So does the right to a lawyer. That's a reason to design well-scoped exceptions, not to abolish the norm.

What should I do with this framing?

Try it on the next tool that asks for broad access. 'Whose business is it?' cuts through more marketing copy than any other question.

Answers/The movement queries

'Nothing to hide' is the wrong question — the right one is 'whose business is it?'

The 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear' argument has a rhetorical trick baked in: it frames privacy as concealment, and concealment as suspicious. But we don't close the bathroom door because we're hiding anything, and we don't envelope a letter because the contents are criminal. The right question is not 'what are you hiding?' — it's 'whose business is this?'

The reframe

There are things that are yours, and things that are not — writing you're not ready to show anyone, a photo taken in a moment that was meant for one other person, a diary, a health worry, an idea half-formed. None of them are hidden in the shameful sense. All of them are none of anyone else's business unless you make them so.

What this looks like in software

Software that treats your files as its business — indexing them, sending previews, training on them — has answered 'whose business is it?' with 'ours'. Software that treats your files as yours doesn't need to make the case; it just doesn't touch them.

Elba is the second kind. One HTML file that seals a folder locally. No account, no telemetry, no upload. Nothing about your files is any of our business.

Questions people actually ask

Doesn't privacy sometimes shield bad behaviour?: Sometimes. So does the right to a lawyer. That's a reason to design well-scoped exceptions, not to abolish the norm.
What should I do with this framing?: Try it on the next tool that asks for broad access. 'Whose business is it?' cuts through more marketing copy than any other question.

Take the island

Elba is one HTML file. It runs locally in a Chromium browser, seals a folder with AES-256-GCM, never phones home, and becomes open source on 1 January 2030.

€49MMXXVI· now ·
€39MMXXVII2027
€29MMXXVIII2028
€19MMXXIX2029
FreeMMXXX2030

the price falls each year · free to all 1 jan 2030

Take the island — €49

pay once · no account · nothing leaves