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The “Nothing to Hide” Question

Over at Concurring Opinions, Daniel Solove is wondering about how to respond to the argument sometimes made in surveillance debates that “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.” Dan is a privacy nut scholar, and is interested in arguments to counter this position. He writes:

One response that I find particularly compelling is that there is a value in not having to explain and justify oneself, something that might become necessary when the government is trolling through personal data. Things that look odd might spark some speculation or negative inferences, and a person might feel the need to explain the context and background. Should people always have to be prepared to justify themselves and explain their behavior? How will one’s data trail appear to government officials judging it at a distance? What’s worse, people might never even get the opportunity to explain.

But still, the person who says “I have nothing to hide” might not be concerned about her data being misinterpreted or in having to justify herself.

Are there other good responses to the “I have nothing to hide” argument? I’m curious if anyone can articulate a compelling response that will have widespread appeal.

This is a very interesting question, and I have a few thoughts on it. The key, it seems to me, is that the “I have nothing to hide” argument is implicitly contextual. It is a claim that I have nothing to hide that the particular person doing the searching is likely to find and use against me.

Consider an example. Let’s say the debate is whether warrantless NSA wiretapping is a good idea. One participant in the debate says that it’s a great idea, and says that “he has nothing to hide.” I don’t think that is an absolute claim. Rather, it means that the participant doesn’t think the NSA is going to find anything of interest in his phone calls, and therefore that the NSA is not going to use any of the calls against him, and therefore that it doesn’t hurt him if the NSA listens to his calls. “I have nothing to hide” really means “this particular thing isn’t going to hurt me.”

If I’m right about that, then the “nothing to hide” argument is a claim about the consequences of surveillance: It is a claim that based on that person’s interests, the surveillance will do them more good than harm. If you happen to oppose that form of surveillance, then the response might be to try to articulate why you think that surveillance will do them more harm than good. Of course, that’s a big topic, and whether you can make that argument effectively depends on the context. But I think it helpfullly refocuses the discussion to the real issue of consequences.

Dan’s post asks for compelling ways to make the argument persuasively to a public audience. Hmm. Well, one colorful way to point this out would be to change the context to one in which the consequences are very different, and then to explore why the person who just claimed that he had “nothing to hide” suddenly feels that he does. You would have to be careful, as this could come off as a bit aggressive and might be considered pretty annoying, but in some contexts it might be effective. (In other words, don’t try this at home, kids. This technique is for professional privacy experts only.)

For example, suppose you’re debating Internet privacy, and you’re talking to a person who says that he doesn’t care about whether people are watching him online because he has nothing to hide. Try asking him if he would be willing to tell you his e-mail username and password. When he refuses, ask him, “What do you have to hide?” I assume he’ll then begin to talk about the bad things that may follow if he gives you his private info, and how he has nothing to gain from it. If you can ask the question in a friendly enough way, I think this can help prove your point: it will make clear that the issue is really a contextual question of consequences rather than an absolute question about whether he has “nothing to hide.”