Argument nothing to hide and internet privacy

This Bachelor thesis is a reaction to the “nothing to hide” argument, whose supporters prefer fighting crime to people’s privacy. They argue that if they do not engage in anything illegal, they have no reason to be afraid of governmental surveillance. The goal of this thesis is to point out the invaluable nature of privacy and to disprove the hypothesis contained in this argument. For this to be possible, there is a need to define the concept of privacy, which might seem at first to be clear, however it is a concept dependent on context and the personal view of every individual. After that, there is an analysis of causes which lead in the past and lead now to the need for individuals to protect their privacy. From this need stem protective measures, among them the right to privacy, to which a considerable portion of this thesis is dedicated. Further, there is a list of the most common threats caused by a breach of privacy on the internet and their characteristic. The list aims to point out the danger of such breaches and to describe how protecting one’s privacy can help to avoid them. After introducing the reader to the concept of privacy, the argument “nothing to hide” itself is explained, its evolution, occurrence, and real-life cases, which illustrate the stance of both the critics and propagators of this argument. The final part is devoted to a survey which aims to disprove the main hypothesis contained in the argument, that those who do not engage in anything illegal have nothing to hide and prove that protecting the privacy of an individual is more important than the prevention of criminal activity using surveillance. To this end other secondary hypothesises were determined, whose objective was to prove the oftentimes underappreciated value of privacy.