I found a pretty interesting essay from D.J. Solovan an associate professor at George University Law School that analyzes the ‘nothing to hide’ argument and demonstrates it’s weaknesses.

One of the problems with the ‘nothing to hide argument’ is the underlying presumption that privacy is about hiding bad things and that privacy is merely a form of secrecy. This overlooks the other major aspects of privacy; anonymity and autonomy.

Another major problem is that by combining pieces of information we might not care to conceal, the holder of large bulks of information can infer information that we would really like to conceal.

Anyway, I think the essay is worth reading since it elaborates on some of the things that were discussed Thursday’s class.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

-- JacobusVanEssen - 06 Nov 2009

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