Data retention laws passed the Austrian government a few weeks back. Its advocates, like everywhere else, like to stress that data retention isn’t a bad thing, because, well, if you’ve got nothing to hide, why should you care? The Chronicle has a thorough and insightful piece up that discusses exactly that faulty logic, why it’s such a fallacy and what we can do about it:
The deeper problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is that it myopically views privacy as a form of secrecy. In contrast, understanding privacy as a plurality of related issues demonstrates that the disclosure of bad things is just one among many difficulties caused by government security measures.