Porn Sunday

If you really want to hide stuff you still can. Otherwise, it makes bugger all difference, cos the police don't care if I'm chatting about bikes or looking at "hot naked babes".

Your entire argument, but especially this bit, sound sinisterly close to the statement "I've nothing to hide, so why should I fear this at all", from which the questions "Do you have something to hide?" and "Those who have will get what's coming to them" are implicit.

I'd contend that EVERYONE has something to hide, people need only look hard enough for long enough and have some notion of what the person fears (such as shame, humiliation, etc).

Have you ever read the essay by Solove on this very point? You can download it from here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 Mirror 5 always works if the SSRN link doesn't.

For me personally the "I've nothing to hide so I've nothing to fear" line echoes a police arrest mantra, "Anything you say or do, can and will be used against you". Sounds OK, I've nothing to hide so why should I fear... but note that the statement doesn't say it can and will be used FOR you, or to HELP you, it only says that anything you say or do can and will be used AGAINST you. Is anyone so sure that nothing that they ever say or do isn't possible to be used against you?

The defence of the "nothing to hide" argument is based on the assumption that privacy is merely a vehicle to hide "bad things", and that people who don't have "bad things" don't require privacy. Which when phrased like that is laughable as it re-defines privacy as concealment... the right to privacy becomes the right to concealment. It's a fundamentally incorrect conclusion to draw, you do have the right to privacy, and this is not in conflict with not having the right to murder, rape, etc.

You should not be conceding the right to privacy, as once given up you will never be able to get it back.