Quote: Originally Posted by BazookaAce Originally Posted by If you haven't done something wrong, then you don't have to worry..

This is the common " nothing to hide " argument. It suffers from four problems:* aggregation: if you bought a book on cancer, that won't raise any flags, but if you bought a wig as well, that suggests you're undergoing chemotherapy, something you might not want to be known* exclusion - people are most of the time unaware of what information is being kept or tracked about them. When they accidentally find out to what extent they are being monitored, the reaction is one of shock * guilt by associaton - since you have no idea how your information is used and aggregated, what if some of the purchases you make or places you visit happen to match a pattern observed in actions of government enemies (not terrorists, but "hostile or critical journalists, campaigning lobbyists, businessmen who are likely to sponsor rival parties, people who oppose the party leader's favourite idea of the year")? Once you get on a watch list, even due to an error, it's extremely hard to get out of it. Read Hasan Elahi's story of how he was inadvertently detained by FBI agents in 2002, and since then, he publishes everything he does online, so that he can be monitored properly ("The government monitors your movements, but it gets things wrong. You can monitor yourself much more accurately").* distortion - if you buy books on cellphone hacking, the government might think you want to thwart surveillance or avoid a roving wiretap ; while you might simply be doing security research or writing a novelMore at http://tinyurl.com/debunk-nothing-to-hide