Refuting the "nothing to hide" argument
The "nothing to hide" argument says, essentially, that surveillance - even total and pervasive surveillance - is acceptable because "honest people have nothing to hide" or "only criminals want strong privacy and anonymity". I think this argument is wrong. I'd like to list reasons why pretty much everybody needs strong privacy and anonymity in today's world.
1. Privacy prevents businesses from overpowering our purchasing behavior, and prevents your peers from judging you based on your purchasing behavior.
Today, Google and Apple and Facebook and some other companies have created a total customer surveillance system which records all your Internet behavior (emails, forums, chats, bookmarks, searches, your reactions to advertising, etc.). Additionally, they record your locations (via your cell phone/internet data) and a portion of your purchases. This creates a comprehensive package of information about the totality of your consumer behavior. Ordinarily, a business collects data about its immediate clients so that its business strategy can be optimized towards meeting the needs of these clients. However, a total customer surveillance system provides businesses with enough information to find a buyer for almost anything, and also gives them ways to manipulate the customers into buying their products. For example, Facebook runs psychological experiments on millions of its customers; the collected data will eventually reveal the detailed features and methods of advertising to which each given person is particularly susceptible. Rather than improve the products to suit the needs of the customers (as would be the normal and useful behavior of a business), it will become easier to manipulate the customer's choice so that any given products are purchased. A person's willpower will be pitted against a machine learning system informed by millions of data points about that person. The machine will, of course, win.
Another reason to keep your purchasing behavior private is the fact that other people - including your employer, your colleagues, your business associates, or your clients - will judge you if they know what you are purchasing. There are many products that are completely legal and sold over-the-counter in some places - but are strongly disapproved of by some people. For example, anything that has to do with sex, from contraceptives to sex-related literature, is going to be controversial with at least some of your immediate contacts. After purchasing something on the Internet, you are likely to receive advertising from the same place - and the mere fact that you received emails from a certain address may already discredit you in the eyes of some people. Interactions between people are based on psychological and cultural customs and cannot be mandated by law; the omission of personal details (even completely uncontroversial from the legal point of view) is important for the smooth functioning of the society.
Your purchasing behavior, your donations, the telephone numbers you call, and the web sites you bookmark - all this may be completely legally uncontroversial; and still there are good reasons to keep this information private.
2. Anonymity prevents a peer-pressure-driven censorship of opinions and ideas.
You cannot openly speak up against somebody or confront another person's interest unless you feel protected from harm that will result from a confrontation. Especially, a confrontation of an individual with a large corporation or a government organization is skewed against the individual. For this reason, anonymous reports are solicited by many organizations.
Also, you want to be able to tell other people about harmful business practices of a certain company, or about the ways that government organizations operate so that other people can optimize their behavior. If you cannot remain reasonably anonymous, you will not speak up in many of these situations. Important information will not be widely spread, and the society will suffer.
The same concerns the free exchange of political ideas. People will not speak up against the prevalent dogma if they fear that their employer will fire them on the spot. A recent story shows how this works: the CEO of the Mozilla foundation was fired for a small political contribution made several years ago. For the same reason, most academic sociology today is bound to the left-wing/feminist dogma: academics cannot remain anonymous when they publish their research, and so the academic community effectively censors divergent views.
3. Privacy and anonymity facilitates the adaptation of laws to the needs of the people.
"If I do nothing illegal, why do I have to hide?" Because what you have done today may become illegal tomorrow!
Laws are not written in stone; they need to be revised all the time, to suit the changing needs of the particular society. So we have lawmakers whose task is to revise the laws and to preserve the balance the opposing interests of different groups and individuals. But lawmakers also have their own interests, not necessarily in line with the ideal concept of lawmaking. So there are always some laws that have been passed to favor a particular interest against everyone else's interest. In such cases, many individuals will be strongly driven to violate these laws. Very often, these violations of the law will not harm anyone, and people will not feel particularly bad about their actions. Nevertheless, an individual has all reasons to hide this kind of behavior, because it is actually illegal.
Changing the law is often not an option, even if you are willing to sacrifice your life. Changing your past behavior is, of course, impossible - and you will be judged by your past actions, if they are on public record.
There are many situations when the individual is driven to violate the existing law while clearly no one is being harmed by the act. The law might be too rigidly formulated ("you may cross the street only on green light", so according to the law you have to wait even if you are alone on the road). The law might be obsolete but still in force (e.g. prohibition on oral sex). The law might be obviously incongruous (a terminal patient is not allowed to obtain pain-killer medicine; a person is not allowed to grow and consume a mild drug). The law might be obviously skewed towards particular commercial interests (a person is not allowed to plant "non-approved" seeds, and the only "approved" ones are sold by a couple of big companies). The law might put a person in a morally intolerable situation (you are held responsible if your child misbehaves, but you are not allowed to effectively control the child's behavior, e.g. by punishing or reproaching the child in any way).
In these cases, the people's moral feelings are strongly against the letter of the law, and no harm is caused to others. The society will benefit if individuals are effectively allowed to act against the law in such cases. Eventually, laws that are obviously useless or counterproductive will be ignored by most people, including lawmakers themselves. At that point, such laws will be repealed.
The society will suffer if all law-breaking behavior is made public by a system of pervasive, total surveillance.
4. Surveillance will be abused by the current political powers for their own ends (usually, to remain in power at all costs).
Usually, total surveillance is portrayed as justified because it is supposed to target only very specific and dangerous crimes (e.g. terrorism, murder, large-scale financial fraud, etc.). However, once a total database of all human behavior is assembled, nothing prevents specific individuals from taking advantage of that database for their own purposes. Politically motivated persecution will follow, as is illustrated by the recent scandals with the IRS who has a total database of people's taxes and then was directed by the current Democrat government to exert financial pressure specifically on the opposition organizations.
If you have a complete file on everyone's minute actions, it is easy to misrepresent that information in order to cast any individual person in a negative light. In today's media, facts are irrelevant but "newsworthiness" is paramount; events are routinely distorted to increase their "newsworthiness". This is used by journalists to misinform the public and by politicians to defuse the political impact of the opposition.
If you never plan on running for any public office, you may think that this does not threaten you personally; nobody will take the trouble of digging up any "newsworthy" information about you that could disrupt your life. This is probably correct. However, this also means nobody will ever run for a public office without an approval from the current political body.
1. Privacy prevents businesses from overpowering our purchasing behavior, and prevents your peers from judging you based on your purchasing behavior.
Today, Google and Apple and Facebook and some other companies have created a total customer surveillance system which records all your Internet behavior (emails, forums, chats, bookmarks, searches, your reactions to advertising, etc.). Additionally, they record your locations (via your cell phone/internet data) and a portion of your purchases. This creates a comprehensive package of information about the totality of your consumer behavior. Ordinarily, a business collects data about its immediate clients so that its business strategy can be optimized towards meeting the needs of these clients. However, a total customer surveillance system provides businesses with enough information to find a buyer for almost anything, and also gives them ways to manipulate the customers into buying their products. For example, Facebook runs psychological experiments on millions of its customers; the collected data will eventually reveal the detailed features and methods of advertising to which each given person is particularly susceptible. Rather than improve the products to suit the needs of the customers (as would be the normal and useful behavior of a business), it will become easier to manipulate the customer's choice so that any given products are purchased. A person's willpower will be pitted against a machine learning system informed by millions of data points about that person. The machine will, of course, win.
Another reason to keep your purchasing behavior private is the fact that other people - including your employer, your colleagues, your business associates, or your clients - will judge you if they know what you are purchasing. There are many products that are completely legal and sold over-the-counter in some places - but are strongly disapproved of by some people. For example, anything that has to do with sex, from contraceptives to sex-related literature, is going to be controversial with at least some of your immediate contacts. After purchasing something on the Internet, you are likely to receive advertising from the same place - and the mere fact that you received emails from a certain address may already discredit you in the eyes of some people. Interactions between people are based on psychological and cultural customs and cannot be mandated by law; the omission of personal details (even completely uncontroversial from the legal point of view) is important for the smooth functioning of the society.
Your purchasing behavior, your donations, the telephone numbers you call, and the web sites you bookmark - all this may be completely legally uncontroversial; and still there are good reasons to keep this information private.
2. Anonymity prevents a peer-pressure-driven censorship of opinions and ideas.
You cannot openly speak up against somebody or confront another person's interest unless you feel protected from harm that will result from a confrontation. Especially, a confrontation of an individual with a large corporation or a government organization is skewed against the individual. For this reason, anonymous reports are solicited by many organizations.
Also, you want to be able to tell other people about harmful business practices of a certain company, or about the ways that government organizations operate so that other people can optimize their behavior. If you cannot remain reasonably anonymous, you will not speak up in many of these situations. Important information will not be widely spread, and the society will suffer.
The same concerns the free exchange of political ideas. People will not speak up against the prevalent dogma if they fear that their employer will fire them on the spot. A recent story shows how this works: the CEO of the Mozilla foundation was fired for a small political contribution made several years ago. For the same reason, most academic sociology today is bound to the left-wing/feminist dogma: academics cannot remain anonymous when they publish their research, and so the academic community effectively censors divergent views.
3. Privacy and anonymity facilitates the adaptation of laws to the needs of the people.
"If I do nothing illegal, why do I have to hide?" Because what you have done today may become illegal tomorrow!
Laws are not written in stone; they need to be revised all the time, to suit the changing needs of the particular society. So we have lawmakers whose task is to revise the laws and to preserve the balance the opposing interests of different groups and individuals. But lawmakers also have their own interests, not necessarily in line with the ideal concept of lawmaking. So there are always some laws that have been passed to favor a particular interest against everyone else's interest. In such cases, many individuals will be strongly driven to violate these laws. Very often, these violations of the law will not harm anyone, and people will not feel particularly bad about their actions. Nevertheless, an individual has all reasons to hide this kind of behavior, because it is actually illegal.
Changing the law is often not an option, even if you are willing to sacrifice your life. Changing your past behavior is, of course, impossible - and you will be judged by your past actions, if they are on public record.
There are many situations when the individual is driven to violate the existing law while clearly no one is being harmed by the act. The law might be too rigidly formulated ("you may cross the street only on green light", so according to the law you have to wait even if you are alone on the road). The law might be obsolete but still in force (e.g. prohibition on oral sex). The law might be obviously incongruous (a terminal patient is not allowed to obtain pain-killer medicine; a person is not allowed to grow and consume a mild drug). The law might be obviously skewed towards particular commercial interests (a person is not allowed to plant "non-approved" seeds, and the only "approved" ones are sold by a couple of big companies). The law might put a person in a morally intolerable situation (you are held responsible if your child misbehaves, but you are not allowed to effectively control the child's behavior, e.g. by punishing or reproaching the child in any way).
In these cases, the people's moral feelings are strongly against the letter of the law, and no harm is caused to others. The society will benefit if individuals are effectively allowed to act against the law in such cases. Eventually, laws that are obviously useless or counterproductive will be ignored by most people, including lawmakers themselves. At that point, such laws will be repealed.
The society will suffer if all law-breaking behavior is made public by a system of pervasive, total surveillance.
4. Surveillance will be abused by the current political powers for their own ends (usually, to remain in power at all costs).
Usually, total surveillance is portrayed as justified because it is supposed to target only very specific and dangerous crimes (e.g. terrorism, murder, large-scale financial fraud, etc.). However, once a total database of all human behavior is assembled, nothing prevents specific individuals from taking advantage of that database for their own purposes. Politically motivated persecution will follow, as is illustrated by the recent scandals with the IRS who has a total database of people's taxes and then was directed by the current Democrat government to exert financial pressure specifically on the opposition organizations.
If you have a complete file on everyone's minute actions, it is easy to misrepresent that information in order to cast any individual person in a negative light. In today's media, facts are irrelevant but "newsworthiness" is paramount; events are routinely distorted to increase their "newsworthiness". This is used by journalists to misinform the public and by politicians to defuse the political impact of the opposition.
If you never plan on running for any public office, you may think that this does not threaten you personally; nobody will take the trouble of digging up any "newsworthy" information about you that could disrupt your life. This is probably correct. However, this also means nobody will ever run for a public office without an approval from the current political body.