If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear

This article is available in French

🔗My privacy is important, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgment and your intentions are.

The phrase “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” is often used in debates about surveillance or privacy; for example, the charismatic and charming Klaus Schwab used it in this now famous interview, which will not surprise those who know this fine man.

On the surface, the phrase seems logical: if your actions are legal and honest, why worry about being watched? But in reality, it is misleading and dangerous in several ways:

1. It assumes that only guilty people need privacy
   Yet everyone has things to protect: personal conversations, medical data, financial information, political opinions… Even if they are not illegal, they can be misinterpreted or used against you.
2. It ignores the problem of power and abuse
   Giving unlimited access to your data means trusting 100% those who hold it— today and in the future. A political change or authoritarian drift can turn harmless data into “incriminating” evidence.
3. It shifts the burden of proof
   In a state of law, it is up to the authority to justify why it is investigating, not to the individual to prove their innocence.
4. It denies freedom of thought and expression
   Knowing that one is being watched changes our behavior (it is the “panopticon effect”), and reduces our real freedom even if we have “nothing to hide”.

This phrase is therefore a simplistic slogan that serves to justify mass surveillance to the detriment of individual freedoms.

🔗Quotes

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. (Ref.)
– Edward Snowden

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Give me two lines written by the hand of the most honest man, and I will find enough to condemn him.
– Richelieu