In my post on why mass surveillance is not normal, I referenced how the Wikipedia page for the Nothing to hide argument labels the argument as a “logical fallacy.” On October 19th, user Gratecznik edited the Wikipedia page to remove the “logical fallacy” text. I am here to prove that the “Nothing to hide” argument is indeed a logical fallacy and go through some arguments against it.
The “Nothing to hide” argument is an intuitive but misleading argument, stating that if a person has done nothing unethical, unlawful, immoral, etc., then there is no reason to hide any of their actions or information. However, this argument has been well covered already and debunked many times (here is one example).
Besides the cost of what it takes for someone to never hide anything, there are many reasons why a person may not want to share information about themselves, even if no misconduct has taken place. The “Nothing to hide” argument intuitively (but not explicitly) assumes that those whom you share your information with will handle it with care and not falsely use it against you. Unfortunately, that is not how it currently works in the real world.
You don’t get to make the rules on what is and is not deemed unlawful. Something you do may be ethical or moral, but unlawful and could cost you if you aren’t able to hide those actions. For example, whistleblowers try to expose government misconduct. That is an ethical and moral goal, but it does not align with government interests. Therefor, if the whistleblower is not able to hide their actions, they will have reason to fear the government or other parties. The whistleblower has something to hide, even though it is not unethical or immoral.
You are likely not a whistleblower, so you have nothing to hide, right? As stated before, you don’t get to make the rules on what is and is not deemed unlawful. Anything you say or do could be used against you. Having a certain religion or viewpoint may be legal now, but if one day those become outlawed, you will have wished you hid it.
Just because you have nothing to hide doesn’t mean it is justified to share everything. Privacy is a basic human right (at least until someone edits Wikipedia to say otherwise), so you shouldn’t be forced to trust whoever just because you have nothing to hide.
For completeness, here is a proof that the “Nothing to hide” argument is a logical fallacy by using propositional calculus:
Let p be the proposition “I have nothing to hide”
Let q be the proposition “I should not be concerned about surveillance”
You can represent the “Nothing to hide” argument as follows:
p → q
I will be providing a proof by counterexample. Suppose p is true, but q is false (i.e. “I have nothing to hide” and “I am concerned about surveillance”):
p ∧ ¬q
Someone may have nothing to hide, but still be concerned about the state of surveillance. Since that is a viable scenario, we can conclude that the “Nothing to hide” argument is invalid (a logical fallacy).
I know someone is going to try to rip that proof apart. If anyone is an editor on Wikipedia, please revert the edit that removed the “logical fallacy” text, as it provides a very easy and direct way for people to cite that the “Nothing to hide” argument is false.
Thanks for reading!
- The 8232 Project
In my opinion, this looks more like an informal fallacy, the problem is in the context and the intent that is given to the statement, not so much in the logic of it.
The postulate has some ambiguity… because in between lines it seems to want to imply that having something to hide must be something rare or perhaps wrong… as if it were not possible to want to hide things that are good for society to keep hidden.
This isn’t a formal, logical fallacy, but an informal one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_fallacy
From a perspective free of presuppositions and biases, I don’t think the logic of the argument on itself is wrong, because of course I wouldn’t be worried about my privacy if I had no interest in keeping my private information hidden… but that premise isn’t true here! the context in which the argument is used is the problem… not the logic of it.
It’s not incorrect to say: “nothing to hide” -> “No worry for showing it” …what’s incorrect is assuming that the “nothing to hide” antecedent is true for all law abiding citizens …as if people didn’t have an interest in keeping perfectly legal and legitimate things hidden. So it’s not that the statement isn’t logically sound, the fallacy is in the way that it’s used, they are pretending that this means people shouldn’t be worried, when in fact it means the opposite, since everyone does, in fact, have information that should remain hidden. For our own safety and the safety of our society!
I do agree with you point and opinion, but that “logical proof” is one of the worst I’ve read.
The “Nothing to Hide” argument could be restated that way:
Axioms:
A1: Surveillance reveals hidden thingsA2: If I have something to hide, I would be concerned if it’s revealedPropositions
p: I have something to hideq: I should be concerned about surveillanceWe deduce from the axioms that
p => q: “if I have something to hide I must be concerned about surveillance”.The logical fallacy of the nothing to hide is to deduce
!p => !q: “If I have nothing to hide I should not fear surveillance”. Which is a case of Denying the antecedent fallacy.Another fallacy of the argument is that they suppose
!pis true, which is a debunked fact.What was wrong with your proof was that you used another human to disprove a fact about the first one. The I may not be switchable because the other human may not have the same axioms. Moreover, you statement was about “should” but if someone doesn’t do something they only should do, it’s not a contradiction
Not that I disagree, but Wikipedia requires specific criteria for sources. I am not sure that a book about it being a logical fallacy meets that criteria any more than a book about parenting could be used to prove how to parent a child.
Are there other Wikipedia pages that claim things to be logical fallacies that could be used to see what the burden of proof is for this claim?
Here’s a little experiment: next time you hear someone defends surveillance because they have nothing to hide ask them if you can have a look through their chat and browser history. Most likely they’ll reply “that’s private” and maybe after some time they will understand.
That’s of course by far not the only argument for privacy but it has a certain effect with most people
The issue that arises from this approach, as I’ve found, is that people have something to hide from you, but not the government/large corporations. When they feel as if they are in a pool, they feel less important compared to being singled out by you.
You could instead do something similar: “Why does the FBI need to know what color of underwear you wear?” etc. to help them realize that surveillance goes much deeper than they realize, and not everything is relevant information.
yep. I use that argument sometimes , but it really depends on the person whether the “then give me your email/chat history/etc.” argumeng will work.
and just like you said, people don’t you reading it. They wouldn’t want to see you looking through their phone. But in the context of technology, it’s very abstract. Like, when Instagram’s chats weren’t encrypted, telling someone “Instagram can read them” may sound vague. They don’t imagine how like, Meta employees maybe could have access to it, or the softwares behind it that could analyze their chats. that could all be happening, but “out of sight, out of mind!” really helps people tolerate those possibilities. Thhe frontend, the chat interface, looks OK, so yeah.
I don’t think I could explain it very well, so my bad (not a native speaker), but yeah, I feel like because we are not encoruaged to think about how the software works behind the curtains, it’s easy to assume that “well, I’m not a target, so why should I worry about doing this [privacy thing]?”
