Had that conversation at a bar with a smart wise friend. Basically went like this :

• Bob : privacy is important
• Alice : sure, but I have nothing to hide
• Bob : OK, so what’s your salary
• Alice : I don’t mind telling you
• Bob : cool, do you mind if I tell that random stranger?
• Alice : hmmm OK, no problem
• Bob : now do you mind if I sell that information to a stranger?
• Alice : well…
• Bob : and how about I sell it to them but I do not share any of that with you?
• Alice : no, that’s not fair.

TL;DR: privacy, or lack of, isn’t really what triggers people, what does is the abuse of it.

Then why do they have a lock on their phone? Their house? Why do they wear pants? They already won’t give their phone number or email address to anyone who asks. They already practice privacy.

It’s not about having something to hide, it’s about protecting what you share against misuse. Think identity theft.

I close the door when I poop.

It’s no secret, and I’m not doing anything wrong, but it’s MY business and nobody else’s.

My spouse didn’t get it until she watched Meredith Whittaker’s SXSW talk. I just wasn’t eloquent enough. She admitted I had made the same points, but not as well. Show people that video. https://www.youtube.com/live/AyH7zoP-JOg

"Your wife has nothing to hide in the shower if she’s a law abiding citizen, which is why I’ll be livestreaming her showers.

Unless…she’s a terrorist?"

Ask them if they will give you a copy of their taxpayer identification number, medical records, and all their account passwords.

When they inevitably say no, say, well, I thought you had nothing to hide.

More likely than not, though, what’s going to happen is that they are going to be too thick-headed to get it, and there’s nothing you will be able to say to convince them otherwise. And so you just have to cut off contact with that person if they don’t want to respect your privacy.

I have parted ways with old friends and made new friends because my old friends refused to understand my need for privacy and stop trying to send me unencrypted text messages, etc.

Edit: Do not compromise for family members either.

What’s not worth hiding today may very well change tomorrow. You never know what moronic laws may come to pass. US example, the war on pregnant women.

I simply qoute Edward snowden. “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”

That phrase was also propaganda used by the Nazi’s in ww2 aswell as media

Saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like not caring about free speech because you have nothing to say.

As a retired psychotherapist I can tell you, that every single person on this planet has something to hide.

Obviously, psychotherapy offers a safe, private and confidential space to speak about those things. Society does not offer this safe space. So Humans hide things.

Sometimes these hidden things are even hidden from the person.

we have all broken our own, and societies, moral codes, the things we do not share with other people.

Our own sexual preferences are the most hidden of all subjects. Even in this so called Enlightened age. Sexuality still reigns supreme as the most hidden of all subjects.

I always say to people spouting the “I have nothing to hide” argument.

If you have nothing to hide!

Why do you continue to wear clothes when you go out.

Clearly it has nothing to do with the fact that: a CCTV camera on the corner of your street, a camera in a passing car, a RING doorbell facing towards the street, school kids filming with their phones, will film you and intrude upon your private life.

It is because you have something to hide.

For instance: Examples of the things that people hide.

As we see this quite regularly with our politicians and those generally in powerful positions:

The Pro family values political evangelists who espouses that homosexuality is a sin, and then gets caught with a male prostitute.

In psychoanalysis this this called “Splitting”. Its where the politician projects all his hidden, unacceptable parts of himself, in this case his homosexual preferences, and projects them onto other people in society. Those bad bad people who are homosexuals.

Or the pro child protection evangelist politician, who gets caught with gigabytes of child abuse images on their laptop. Same thing.

Its the same with the recent rise in the Right Wing anti-everything brigade;

anti-immigrant, who most likely had a foreign girlfriend when they were young, and are now ashamed of it because their mates are anti-immigrant. Group think.

anti-abortion, probably got a girl pregnant, wasnt man enough to support her, and left her no choice to get an abortion. Misogyny

anti-homosexual, probably a repressed homosexual who fantasises about sex with same sex partners. Far too ashamed to come out.

anti-this anti-that; Oh the shame!

This always speaks more about the hidden belief systems that those people carry. It is not about the people onto whom they are trying to project there own personal stuff.

To be human is to have a private life, and to keep it secret.

Saying ‘I don’t care about privacy because I have nothing to hide’ is the same as saying ‘I don’t care about free speech because I have nothing to say’

I’ve had this discussion with friends because I’m the crazy “privacy” person in my peer group. I always have trouble putting it into words, so this might not make the most sense, but I’ll try.

The most fundamental right that we have as humans is the right to present to the world the person that we want to present to the world.

Everybody has something about themselves that, if it were known, would change the way other people look at them. Maybe it’s something silly and stupid like you’re afraid of spiders. Maybe you’re into some really freaky porn. But whatever it is, if you don’t want people to know about it, that’s your right and it’s sacrosanct.

People will say, “who cares if people know that you’re afraid of spiders, it’s a small price to pay if it means that we also catch the people with something illegal to hide, like CSAM or other stuff.”

But what about the battered wife who has been secretly searching for support and planning her escape from the situation on the internet. But she shares a computer with her abusive husband and google, knowing her search history, starts showing him ads about furniture and moving companies?

What about the scared teenager who has realized that he is gay and have parents who would disown him if they found out. When he’s searching for support and fellowship online, the only place where he can feel like he belongs, he can be as careful as he wants, but his search history will eventually betray him before he’s ready to come out himself.

Maybe what you don’t want people to know about is just that you’re afraid of spiders, sure. But what if it’s something far more important.

My HR told me that: “but I have nothing to hide”, so I asked her to log into her bank account and to show me how much she has in each account, how much she is paid and what she bought in the last 6 months.

She refused, and I reply “but why not?”

That was the end of it.

There is no ‘good’ argument to persuade anyone (of anything) the moment they don’t want to change their mind. But, depending who your talking to, asking a question maybe? More often than not the ‘nothing to hide’ is just an excuse to not change their habits (which is their right), exactly like the ‘I don’t have time to read books’ so, so many people use today to explain why they never read.

What questions? Well, first, I would not do that. to be clear. But if I really wanted to force them to realize they have things to hide, like we all have, I would go for the most intimate/unsettling… depending who I am discussing with:

Did you poop today? And was it easy? (this one should be both easy to answer while being considered so intimate, at least to most people, that they should have a hard time answering it without feeling disturbed).
How much do you earn?
How much do you pay in taxes? (or how do you manage to not pay taxes?)
How often do you have sex? What is your favorite position? or How reacted your spouse when you told them about that little affair you had with someone else? (here again, it all depends the person you’re talking to)

And so on.

I insist, it is not something I would do but I also have little doubts most people would instantly feel like they too can value some privacy and intimacy ;)

You won’t get anywhere if you use the “leave your bathroom door open” or “unlock your phone and give it to me” arguments, because to them that is a different thing and they pretty much know what it means to have privacy on those aspects. What they don’t care about are the things they don’t see (i.e. social media tracking, location data access, etc.) and that’s what they consider nothing-to-hide-nothing-to-fear.

So the best examples I could think of to counter those arguments are:

• Surveillance pricing
• Abysmal security of home security cameras

If they DO care that prices on the stuff they buy is influenced based on their habits and the data companies collect on them, or if they DO care that anyone can potentially tap into their home cameras to watch even just their outdoor cameras (let alone indoor ones), then they DO care about privacy and just don’t realize it.