Ive Got Nothing to Hide and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy by Daniel Solove :: SSRN

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

An argument I’ve seen used against opponents of ID cards, Phorm and numerous other privacy issues is “If you’ve got nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear”. This is a frustrating argument that seems hard to combat. This paper analyses the argument. The general conclusion is that the questions makes a false assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things, whereas in fact it is a much wider issue encompassing such things as aggregation of data, exclusion of access to data causing an uneven distribution of power, etc. Now the challenge is to make this into an easily conveyable response! See also digg comments on the link such as “The nothing to hide argument sounds somewhat Utopian—as if governments were perfect and would never do anything wrong.” This is a good point. There is a lot of implicit trust in the question – that the truth will prevail, nothing can be misinterpreted, no bad judgements are ever made, no innocent people are ever convicted.