Essay Topic:

Do you agree or disagree with the argument that if a person has nothing to
hide, then he/she should not be bothered by the fact that the government
collects, tracks and analyzes our personal, private information? Give reasons
and examples to support your position.

Privacy |prvsi, pr-|

noun [ mass noun ]
the state of being alone
the right to keep one's personal matters and relationships secret
- definition from Cambridge Dictionary

In this Digital Age, it is quite common that people store and share their
information in cyberspace, such as computer, cell phone or social media network.
However, it gives the government an easy access to track, monitor and analyze
our personal information. Some people feel concerned of being monitored and
consider that as a violation of privacy; while the others, who lie on the other end
of spectrum, insist that there is not need to fear if you have nothing to hide.
Seemingly, those partisans of Nothing-to-hide argument make a righteous
conclusion, which implies that only the guilty villain should be concerned about
being monitored, as well as the notion that the loss of privacy does not cost us
much. In fact, this argument is quite flawed and superficial. In order to

demonstrate its flaws, I will make a few of counterarguments to Nothing-tohide argument by explaining the cost of losing privacy,
First of all, why does privacy matter to us, and why should we be concerned
about being monitored by government? Bruce Schneier, a famous computer
security and privacy specialist and writer, perhaps could give us some clues to
answer those questions. In his article The Value of Privacy, Bruce suggests that
Privacy prevents people from being abused by those in power, even if they are
doing nothing guilty at the time of surveillance (Schneier.com). He illustrate the
abuses via quoting Cardinal Richelieu's word. Cardinal knows the danger of
surveillance and famously says he can find something to have someone arrested
by reading his words, even if it is written by the most honest man(qtd. In Bruce).
Clearly suggesting, government can accuse us of any kinds of crime just out of
those innocuous personal information from us the government have gathered.
Surveillance creates an unfair situation in which we can't stop the government
from the abuse of power, while privacy guards us and prevents this situation from
happening.
Not only creating an unfair situation, surveillance also inhibits our autonomy
and take away the freedoms. As Daniel J. Solove depicts in his article 10 Reasons
Why Privacy Matters: A watchful eye over everything we read or watch can chill
us from exploring ideas outside the mainstream The watchful eye can disrupt
and unduly influence [social and political] activities(Linkedin.com). Moreover,

surveillance might discourage our growth and improvement over life, as it takes
away the opportunities to change and improve from us. People are dynamic, they
occasionally make mistakes yet they eventually will change and grow. Privacy, in
this case, provide them space to grow and improve without being shackled with
all the mistakes they might have done before (Solove).
From the other perspective on viewing the Nothing-to-hide argument, we
have to at first recognize that privacy is a fundamental right of all citizen. We are
all entitled to have our own privacy as per the Bill of Rights. There are certain
information that the government need to collect from us like gender, age, health
etc., yet it does not suggest that we should feel comfortable to give all our private
information to the government. Several amendments to the U.S. Constitution Bill
of Rights explicitly interprets the rights to personal autonomy, which includes the
privacy of beliefs, privacy against unreasonable searches and privilege against
self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal
information(Amendment I,VI,V). Beside these, Online privacy is an important
topic as well. California government have been working further than other state in
U.S on protecting our online privacy. California Online Privacy Protection
Act(CalOPPA) is the first law in the U.S to impose disclosure requirement on
website operators who track consumer's online behavior. The Act requires the
operator of a commercial website or online service that collects personal
information :

...
(5) Disclose how the operator responds to Web browser "do not track" signals or other
mechanisms that provide consumers the ability to exercise choice regarding the
collection of personally identifiable information about an individual consumer's online
activities over time and across third-party Web sites or online services, if the operator
engages in that collection.
(6) Disclose whether other parties may collect personally identifiable information about
an individual consumer's online activities over time and across different Web sites when
a consumer uses the operator's Web site or service. (CalOPPA)

This Act allows us to make our choice on whether disclosing our personal
information to the website or not, instead of not knowing if our information were
collected at all. Most importantly, These privacy laws signify the government care
about protecting privacy, as well as considering privacy as an irreplaceable rights
of all citizens.
To summarize, Nothing-to-hide argument is not particularly strong since it
does not cover the topic of how losing privacy influence us. Besides, it also ignore
the fact that privacy is a basic rights of all citizen