Privacy is freedom: on personal data

The most common argument against caring about privacy goes: “I have nothing to hide.” It sounds reasonable — and that is exactly why it is dangerous.

Privacy is not about hiding something. It is about who decides what is known about you, and to whom. You close the bathroom door not because you commit a crime there, but because the line between the private and the shared is dignity itself. Data is a new form of that line.

The danger is not that someone learns one fact about you. The danger is that from thousands of small things — where you went, what you bought, what you read — a profile is assembled that can be steered: showing one thing and hiding another, nudging you toward decisions you believe you made yourself. Whoever knows everything about you holds power over you, even if for now they do nothing bad.

My opinion: privacy is not secrecy but freedom. The freedom to think, to be wrong, and to change your mind without every step being recorded and one day used against you. It is worth defending not when it is too late, but while the choice is still yours.