I have nothing to hide. Why should I care about my privacy?

Privacy isn’t about hiding

The “I have nothing to hide” argument frames privacy as something only criminals and other bad actors would demand, but nothing could be further from the truth. Privacy is about the freedom to make choices without fear: how you want to live, what you believe in, who you are friends with, and what you want to share with whom. A lack of privacy leads to uniformity and self-censorship, which pushes our opinions to the edges and erodes our ability to engage in healthy debate.

Ultimately, privacy also protects us from the unknown. Circumstances change. Something that can be harmlessly shared today may someday be worth concealing, whether it’s political beliefs or your ethnic or religious background. Privacy is the ultimate insurance against a rapidly changing corporate and political climate.

Once we lose our privacy, we won’t get it back.

Privacy is a human right

Just like other human rights, we didn’t always have the right to privacy. Several dictatorships around the world still don’t value this right. Generations before ours fought for our right to privacy. Not caring about it shows little knowledge about history and the importance of it.

Article 12 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.

It’s a human right just like the right to equality, to justice, freedom, a nationality, the right to religion, etc.

Your information is valuable

You might be okay with governments or security agencies or companies having your private information. You might trust Google and Facebook. But what if these get hacked and your information falls in the wrong hands? Let’s say, someone targeting your family, your company, your wife/husband. Would you still be okay with that? Would you be okay knowing that your photos, emails, or chats are in the hands of someone who can blackmail you? Can you imagine what it’s like to have your life torn apart because of a conversation you had 5 or 10 years ago? What would it be like to lose your job because of a conversation you had by phone with your wife?

We’ve all joked with things we consider sensitive. But, among friends, it’s something we all do. In fact, our behavior changes depending on the people we’re with. I bet I could find something offensive you said in a group chat that you have with your closest friends. Because they’re your friends and it was a joke or a sarcastic remark. But take it out of context and it is not longer a joke. What would happen if this “joke” fell in the hands of someone trying to harm you?

A company like Facebook or Google allows you to upload unlimited data to their servers, for free. What’s their business model? How do they make so much money? They sell your info to advertising companies. But they never asked you if you wanted to sell your information. If someone asked you in person 100 questions about your personal life to sell it, would you answer them? Probably not, right? But you let this happen every time you use a service that makes money by selling your info.