dana boyd in Apophenia, “where ‘nothing to hide’ fails as logic”:
Sadly, I’m getting to experience this right now as Massachusetts refuses to believe that I moved to New York mid-last-year. It’s mindblowing how hard it is to summon up the paperwork that “proves” to them that I”m telling the truth. When it was discovered that Verizon (and presumably other carriers) was giving metadata to government officials, my first thought was: wouldn’t it be nice if the government would use that metadata to actually confirm that I was in NYC not Massachusetts. But that’s the funny thing about how data is used by our current government. It’s used to create suspicion, not to confirm innocence.
The “nothing to hide” argument is fairly pervasive in response to the type of NSA surveillance that was recently revealed. There are really two decent arguments against it:
Anyone can go from being boring “regular Joe” to activist if they’re spurred on by outside events to become more political, and when that happens, suddenly the amount of surveillance done can be far more sinister and destructive to achieving any kind of political changes.
This argument is often unconvincing, mostly because this can still be dismissed as “well, I’ll never get political, no matter what happens”[1. Which, quite frankly, is a little sad, but still persuasive to some people.].
Even law-abiding citizens can have their data constructed in such a way as to make them appear guilty.
This is the method that should scare people, and Dana’s example of the tax audit should remind you that even if you’re not cheating on your taxes, the process of appearing 100% legit can still be taxing (pun intended).