So how do you protect yourself in a world of relentless surveillance? This seems like a good time to go back to the basics and understand what privacy is and why we seek it. Privacy matters because privacy is about human information. We’ve known for a long time that information is power. We know now that human information confers power over human beings. People think privacy is about hiding dark secrets, and that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. This nothing to hide fallacy is dangerous because it promotes a kind of privacy fatalism and a sense that people who demand privacy must be deviant or criminal or wrong.
A themarkup.org newsletter by Julia Angwin published on July 9, 2022: https://themarkup.org/newsletter/hello-world/why-privacy-matters