…you’ve got nothing to fear.
For those of you who are as sick as I am of hearing that bit of tendentious nonsense floated by those who want to stick their noses into every aspect of your affairs, Jacques Mattheij has a nice summary post on the past, present, and future of if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.
Even a moment’s thought exposes it for the absurdity it is. As Mattheij points out, privacy is not the same thing as secrecy. Cory Doctorow notes that what goes on in the toilet is not secret but it sure is private. But Mattheij goes well beyond that obvious fact.
He revisits the example of the Amsterdam Census collecting information about residents’ religion for completely benign reasons and then having it used by the Nazis to hunt down and kill Jews during WWII. Closer to home, we have the example of a huge number (at latest count 21.5 million—7%) of Americans’ most private information being lost by the Office of Personnel Management. Again, data collected for benign reasons end up being used in harmful ways.
It’s time to stop being polite about this. The next time someone tells you you have nothing to fear as long as you’re innocent, laugh in their face and walk away. Nothing else they have to say is likely to be worth listening to either. If that reaction is too strong for you, point them to Mattheij’s post and tell them to come back after they’ve read it.