“I’m not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide.” That tends to be the go to response from people when they don’t want to think about protecting their privacy. The thing about that argument is that it seems to hold true as long as you aren’t breaking any laws right? Well, it might hold true in the present. Think about this, how many celebrities or other public figures have caught heat for things they tweeted or said year, even decades, earlier? We’ve likely all heard an example of this. When they said it, it wasn’t that big of deal, but now it is career ending level stuff. So, while the “nothing wrong” was true when they did it, it wasn’t true in the future. That’s a bit of what I want to talk about today.
So, the difficult thing to see if you’re part of the popular party, with the popular opinion, and follow today’s norms and beliefs, is that it might change. There’s plenty of people that may regret what they post or say online today, because in 10 years it’ll come back up and negatively effect their lives. Look at Afghanistan for example. There’s a whole generation of adults born after 9/11 there, that knew nothing other than democracy and freedom of religion. In a weeks time, they all panicked because of their social media posts and content due to a government/power change. So, not only can popular opinion change with time, so can government and laws. Ideally, when a law changes it doesn’t make every act retroactively also illegal, but that can happen depending on the government in power.
If you believe that you have nothing to hide, because you have done nothing wrong… Then I congratulate you on fitting perfectly into what society deems normal, and wish you luck maintaining within those bounds. We know many Afghans believed the same thing, and have come to regret that due to a power change they didn’t see coming. The fact of the matter is, you are betting on luck being on your side for the rest of your life, if you choose to avoid protecting your own privacy today. I know I’m not lucky enough to make that wager, but to each their own.
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