The nothing to hide argument is a logical fallacy which states that individuals have no reason to fear or oppose surveillance programs unless they are afraid it will uncover their own illicit activities.
[2]The motto "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" has been used in defense of the closed-circuit television program practiced in the United Kingdom.
An ethnographic study by Ana Viseu, Andrew Clement, and Jane Aspinal revealed that individuals with higher socioeconomic status were not as concerned by surveillance as their counterparts.
Solove also wrote that a government can cause damage to an individual's personal life by making errors:[3] "When engaged directly, the nothing-to-hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy.
But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing-to-hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say."
"[10] He also stated that surveillance can disproportionately affect certain groups in society based on appearance, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion.
Cryptographer and computer security expert Bruce Schneier expressed opposition to the nothing to hide argument, citing a statement widely attributed to Cardinal Richelieu:[11] "Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I'll find enough to hang him."
This metaphor is meant to illustrate that with even a small amount of information about an individual, an entity such as a government can find a way to prosecute or blackmail them.