Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'


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Image from the BBC

An article written by Daniel Solve http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/ is about Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'

to which he asks questions such as  "So do you have curtains?"  or  "Can I see your credit-card bills for the last year?"

His response to the "If you have nothing to hide ... " argument is simply, "I don't need to justify my position. You need to justify yours. Come back with a warrant."

  • I don't have anything to hide. But I don't have anything I feel like showing you, either.
  • If you have nothing to hide, then you don't have a life.
  • Show me yours and I'll show you mine.
  • It's not about having anything to hide, it's about things not being anyone else's business.

The long article is worth a read and you quickly see that Andrew is on a different side of the coin to say Jeff Jarvis - worth listening to their BBC interview

It is clear that there are two side of the debate about what Privacy means and is so many ways I think Andrew is defending all data privacy based on some specific fears and cultural attitudes.  However, he assumes that we do keep data and may be should start from the view point we don't keep data.....