Culture

Why "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?" is wrong

by Rob Walker | August 21, 2008 at 06:32 am

245 views | 2 Recommendations | 1 comment

I saw this while I was strolling through reddit, this is a great article for the next time someone says: "If you've got nothing to hide, why do you care if someone is watching?"

Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

The right to keep things to yourself is paramount to who we are. We were discussing this in the NP 'office' (the chat room we all operate from) and Jordan made a good point:

"Whenever someone trots out the "nothing to hide" argument, just ask them how much money they make, or what their favorite sexual position is.

Then they'll understand the fallacies of that argument."