Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear

How hard is it to maintain your privacy in the information age?

As movie critic and reporter Mike Scott exemplifies, "‘Erasing David’ is a thought-provoking, and at-times creepy, bit of hands-on reportage. It also is hard to resist, playing to the paranoia in each of us and asking a vital question: Are we too quick to give our personal information away?”

Peter Singer

We don’t exactly make it hard for others to track our every move. Peter Singer, philosopher, Bioethics professor, and author of “Invisible Man,” comments, “[We have been] voluntarily giving up troves of personal in-formation. We blog, tweet, and post what we are doing, thinking, and feeling. We allow friends and contacts, and even strangers, to know where we are at any time. We sign away our privacy in exchange for the conveniences of modern living, giving corporations access to information about our financial circumstances and our spending habits, which will then be used to target us for ads or to analyze our consumer habits.” Through Terms of Use agreements that we never read, we give hundreds of companies the right to tons of information on us. Information that we might not even realize they track. Amazon, Facebook, the government, private companies, and telemarketers. You name it, they’ve got your information. As the movie “Erasing David” says, “All of us are on hundreds of databases.” And, there is no way to completely erase that gathered information.

But, is this exposure to companies and the government really that big of deal?

People in America have been crying out about the NSA lately. Many see this government agency as a threat to individual privacy. Singer claims, “Every day, the National Security Agency intercepts 1.7 billion emails, phone calls, instant messages, bulletin-board postings, and other communications. This system houses information on thousands of U.S. citizens, many of them not accused of any wrongdoing.” However, others feel that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. The NSA is only looking out for citizens, right?

If people believe this is not true, and they start to act against the agency, maybe the government has subsequently created a sense of paranoia among these American citizens. Like in the movie, some people fear that the mounds of information held on them will result in negative outcomes.

Well, maybe this fear is not such a far stretch. Gathered information can indeed have negative effects. In the movie, “Erasing David,” a lady told her story about having a similar name and same date of birth as someone who was convicted for shoplifting. This similarity was perceived by company databases as a conviction on her own account. This ruined her chance of employment. Another person shared his story of someone else putting his name on a child pornography website, which resulted in his arrest. Even though he was not part of the website, his name was attached to it. He was not alone in this. Apparently, others were wrongly accused and convicted over the same ordeal. And, 39 people committed suicide because of the corrupt database of Operation OR for child pornography.

As “Erasing David” quotes, “[These databases] are government products that make us more anxious without proving to solve crimes.” This is the case many Americans hold against the NSA. What good are they doing? Well, maybe the NSA hasn’t solved any crimes, but what does it hurt in trying to do so? If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. 

The government is not out to get you. Don’t let paranoia run your life.