« I’ve got nothing to hide » — and why that argument is wrong 🔐

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Here we are, fifth episode of this series. We’ve mapped out the companies collecting and reselling your data, the states surveilling you, the criminals preying on you. At each episode, the same response surfaces, in different forms but always the same structure: « All of this might be true, but I’ve got nothing to hide — so why should I worry? »

It’s the most common argument in the debate about digital privacy. It’s also the most dangerous. Not because it’s malicious, but because it seems reasonable — and it isn’t.

This episode is different from the previous ones. No statistics to unpack, no criminal network to describe. Just one argument to examine seriously, because it deserves better than being brushed aside.

What the argument actually claims 🔍

« I’ve got nothing to hide » sounds simple. In reality, it rests on several assumptions worth making explicit.

The first: privacy only has value if it protects something illicit. If you haven’t done anything wrong, surveillance doesn’t affect you. Privacy is therefore a shield for the guilty, useless for the innocent.

The second: you are capable of assessing for yourself what constitutes a risk to you. You know the rules, you know what’s problematic and what isn’t, and you can conclude you’re safe.

The third, implicit: the entity collecting your data — whether a company or a state — is benevolent, competent, and will never make a mistake or commit an abuse.

Each of these assumptions is contestable. Together, they form an argument that collapses under scrutiny.

Who decides what you have to hide? ⚖️

The first problem with the argument is the most fundamental: it assumes that the definition of « something to hide » is stable, objective, and shared.

It isn’t.

What is legal today may not be tomorrow. What is acceptable in one country may be criminal in another. What is tolerated under one government may be repressed under the next. The protective value of privacy isn’t measured only in the present — it’s measured against the future, and against the institutions that hold the data.

American legal scholar Daniel Solove, professor at George Washington University and author of the landmark book Nothing to Hide (Yale University Press, 2011), frames the problem precisely: without privacy rights, governments can harm individuals by leaking sensitive information about them, by using that information to deny them services — even if they’ve committed no crime — or simply through error.

That last dimension is often overlooked. Surveillance systems are not infallible. Data can be misattributed, misinterpreted, or wrongly associated. An error in a database can turn an innocent person into a suspect. Location data can place you at the scene of a crime when you were simply in the neighborhood. The « nothing to hide » argument assumes a flawless system. No human system is.

Surveillance changes your behavior — even when you’ve done nothing wrong 👁️

There is a phenomenon that social science researchers call the chilling effect: the mere awareness of being watched changes people’s behavior, even when they’ve done nothing wrong.

It’s empirically documented. After Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations about mass NSA surveillance, Oxford researcher Jon Penney observed an immediate and significant drop in Wikipedia searches for sensitive terms. People looking for legitimate information — for an article, a thesis, out of plain curiosity — stopped searching. Not because they had anything to hide. Because surveillance had made the simple act of looking feel suspect in their own eyes.

The effect doesn’t stop at the isolated individual. A 2024 study in the Journal of Human Rights Practice, based on interviews with activists in Uganda and Zimbabwe, documents how surveillance erodes trust within groups — making collective organization difficult or impossible, even among people who had committed no crime. Surveillance doesn’t only change what you do. It changes what you dare to do with others.

Privacy is not secrecy 🔐

The « nothing to hide » argument conflates two distinct concepts: privacy and secrecy.

Secrecy is what you conceal because you’re ashamed, because it’s illicit, or because you want to deceive. Privacy is what you choose not to share — not out of shame or concealment, but because all sharing should be a choice.

You close the bathroom door. You’re not hiding anything illicit. You’re simply exercising an elementary form of control over your space and your body. You choose who you tell about your financial anxieties, your health, your beliefs. Not because that information is compromising — but because you decide to whom you reveal yourself, and to what degree.

Digital privacy is no different in nature. It differs in scale, because what you haven’t chosen to share can now be collected, aggregated, and used without your awareness.

Edward Snowden — whose status as hero or traitor one may debate, but whose formulation remains analytically precise — summarized the problem this way: « 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. »

Privacy, like freedom of expression, is a right that protects everyone — including those who think they don’t need it. And like all rights, it weakens when we stop exercising it, defending it, and understanding its value.

Why this argument is particularly dangerous in Africa 🌍

The deconstruction of the « nothing to hide » argument takes on a particular dimension on the African continent for a simple reason: what you have « to hide » depends on the legal and political context in which you live. In many African countries, membership in certain religious, ethnic, or political groups  can expose people to real legal or physical risk. We documented in Episode 3 how surveillance infrastructures across Africa have been used to target journalists, opposition figures, and activists who had committed no crime in the legal sense, but who had something to « hide » in the political one.

The « nothing to hide » argument presupposes a stable rule-of-law state, with constant legislation and reliable institutions. That’s already a demanding assumption anywhere. In contexts where rules can change, institutions are sometimes fragile, and surveillance infrastructure is sometimes operated by foreign actors with divergent interests, it becomes a particularly costly abdication.

The right question 💡

The « nothing to hide » argument asks the wrong question. It asks: have I done anything wrong? The right question is different: do I want someone — a company, a government, a criminal — to have access to a precise portrait of my life, my habits, my relationships, and my vulnerabilities, without my ever having chosen to share it?

This isn’t a question of guilt or innocence. It’s a question of power: who controls access to who you are.

If the answer is no, then you have something to protect. And in the final episode of this series, we’ll show you how.

💬 Join the conversation: Has the « nothing to hide » argument ever convinced you — or been used against you? What, across the episodes of this series, has most changed your understanding? Share your thoughts in the comments.

This article is part of What You’re Worth, TechGriot’s series on the personal data economy.