Ik heb helemaal niets te verbergen, maar dat gaat niemand wat aan (Loesje). Het argument je-hebt-niets-te-vrezen-als-je-niets-te-verbergen-hebt is een sterk argument dat maar lastig is te counteren. Daniel J. Solove doet het wel, in een prachtig (en leesbaar) essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Zijn analyse?
Legal and policy solutions focus too much on the problems under the Orwellian metaphor—those of surveillance—and aren’t adequately addressing the Kafkaesque problems—those of information processing. The difficulty is that commentators are trying to conceive of the problems caused by databases in terms of surveillance when, in fact, those problems are different.
Het gaat in het argument niet om het ‘verbergen’ van iets dat ‘verkeerd’ is – het gaat óók om het verwerken van informatie en registreren van normaal gedraag. Of, zoals Solove zo helder verwoord:
… the problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. By accepting this assumption, we concede far too much ground and invite an unproductive discussion about information that people would very likely want to hide. As the computer-security specialist Schneier aptly notes, the nothing-to-hide argument stems from a faulty “premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong.” Surveillance, for example, can inhibit such lawful activities as free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.