This little line is used so often when people are ok with giving up our freedoms. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. This little sentence sickens me, but when anyone talks of ID cards, biometrics, putting everyone on a DNA database, tracking all cars or good old chipping of people, this is the excuse used if you're against it.

I'm against all of these things and yet anytime i say that someone will always ask what i have to hide. Well i have nothing ot hide, i'm not a criminal as far as i'm aware, i have no secret moey coming in and i've never left my DNA at a crime scene (because i havn't commited any crimes). However i understand what happens when a government can know everything you're up to, even legal stuff. It can eventually be abused to deal with political dissidents and other such people.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, what arguments do you all use to get around this rather ignorant statement.

This type of rational upsets me, as well. It's basically stating that the government has my best interests at heart, and my government can do no wrong. It is a fool hardy stance to take.

If we allow the government to start peeling away our liberties, where does it end? It ends in either a dictatorship or a totalitarian government.

I just wish people wouldn't treat something as precious as our basic human rights and freedoms so lightly.

Just my two-cents.

Like I stated before on this site, as long as government can't be transparant and honest why would they have any right to watch my emails?

I am all fed up with this big brother stuff and we need to get our rights back.

The speech Peter Finch gave in Network was right, just as long as people are left alone in their homes they are willing to stay obedient slaves.

Guess what, they already want to know what you do on the net so I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore.

Than I would response to that quote of nothing to hide, nothing to fear with replacing it with this one.

"Any government that hides the truth must be feared."

Of course people say they have 'nothing to hide'. But there's a difference between having 'nothing to hide' and being comfortable without the illusions of privacy or anonymity. From "The End of America", by Naomi Wolf:

We all have things we wish to keep private: a flirtation or even an affair, a struggle with alcohol, an old brush with the law. Think about all the things you have said in a phone conversation, sent to a friend in an e-mail, or discussed with your accountant that could, if available to someone who wanted to shut you up, be used or taken out of context to blackmail or smear you. Now understand that all of these things are available and can be used against you.

The USA PATRIOT Act set the stage for booksellers, librarians, and even doctors to have to turn over to the state information about Americans that had been private up until then. The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression took a stand against this and librarians spoke out as well. (National Socialists also went after the booksellers, librarians, and doctors.)

When closed societies gather information on ordinary people's lives - when people know that their book-buying and library records are open, their sexual behavior and financial decisions are no longer private, their conversations are bugged, their class lectures are taped, their protests are photographed by police, their medical records are exposed, and that all this information can be used against them - their will to challenge the regime in power falters.

throw this back at em

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."