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
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
😅 I’m not very experienced in proofs like these yet, as you can tell. Thank you for submitting your own proof, I greatly appreciate it!
You’re welcome :) to be honest it’s my first for this as well 😂, but I do have experience with math.
The one thing that ticked me with your proof, was about your phrasing. You were trying to prove
!(p=>q)i.e.p^!qby a counter example, but your wrote “suppose we havep^!q”, which is already the thesis of the proof. So what you wrote is essentially “We will proof A is false. Suppose !A, then !A.” which is not proving !A. What you should have done is to remove the “suppose” part and say ifp=>qthen if I nothing to hide I should not be concerned, but I can have nothing to hide and be concerned, which is a contradiction. Then your proof would be somewhat correct but my last two arguments still hold. The issue could be solved woth some modals or quantifiers to express the different people.