Nothing to hide : privacy and surveillance in Europe

Abstract

If you have nothing to hide, you should not worry about government surveillance.' We hear these arguments all the time. We live moreover in a time where our lives are transparent to others in largely unprecedented ways. Our lives -or the trails of data of our lives- are visible as never before -to other individuals, to public and to private organisations. Do we care or are we resigned to our loss of control? Courts, legislatures and data protection authorities - at all governance levels-struggle with the tradeoff between privacy and security. Is it a false tradeoff?