"I am innocent and I have nothing to hide" is only a reasonable argument if the authorities are both perfectly trustworthy and agree with your definition of "innocent". There is a long, long history of authorities in America, the UK, and basically everywhere else abusing any private information they can get their hands on: for blackmail, to suppress political enemies, to punish perceived moral failings, or just because they enjoy exercising power.

Just for example, there have been and still are many places where being outed as gay can be anything from a major embarrassment to a firing offense to a death sentence. A perfectly innocent person who should not have anything to hide must conceal where they go and who they meet for their own safety. Governments should not be trusted any further than necessary.

> If I am innocent, and have nothing to hide, I don't really see what the issue is in this.

Turing was similarly naive - in admitting to a homosexual relationship - and the government chemically castrated him and effectively hounded him to suicide. What's decent isn't always the same as what's legal.

And even if you think it is, and somehow know all the laws - which I'm convinced is impossible - and you think you've nothing to hide, can you really say the same about all the people with power over you? Politicians, police, doctors etc? Who will be open to coercion via whoever controls the surveillance apparatus. - Can you really say that no law will ever be put in place curtailing your freedoms in a way that you'd find unacceptable?

Information is like a weapon. Altering the balance of surveillance contributes to strategic political instability. Got to think very carefully about how you do it; when, why, what the costs are.

I guess that boils down to something of a cultural thing. Among the things they shove down the throats of young impressionable minds in school, chief among them is the fact that the Founding Fathers of the US fought for freedom from the British because of the evils of a government having too much control over the citizenry. How surveillance and data acquisition can turn into too much control is another conversation entirely, but it can be used for rather horrific purposes.

The fact is we currently are not living in a brutal dictatorship where our freedoms are limited or none. However we do see some fairly regular evidence of authorities abusing their power, and again this issue is also another conversation entirely... Circling back to the my first point, we're taught that the country was founded on the principal of a limited government and many freedoms and guarantees, in fact founded with a supposed guarantee of it. Then you see things (ab)used for personal/political/whatever gain at the expense of those things promised to you. Now I don't know about you, but I don't like having things that I appreciate forcefully taken from me.

Would you wear a lapel camera that recorded your entire day and uploaded it in real time to the police? Why not? Something to hide? More seriously, my objection would be that assuming everyone is guilty or needs to be monitored is a weird state of governance. Crime exists, it always will regardless of level of monitoring. So the discussion is about what are the reasonable tradeoffs between privacy and crime prevention/solving. I think 24 hour surveillance is too far for the gain it may bring. As others have pointed out, the government also can have...interesting interpretations of who "the criminals" are (see infiltration of civil rights groups in the 60's by the FBI for example), and has shown, even recently, that their idea of oversight is really "theory only" and they don't appreciate actual oversight. Giving broad powers to such groups is a very bad idea.

The law is complex enough that you are certainly not innocent. Piss off the wrong person, and they can search through your recorded history to find SOMETHING to threaten you with.

For instance, did you know that absent-mindedly walking towards an officer while you are pacing back-and-forth during a police interview can be charged as a count of assault on the officer? Really.

You're innocent and lucky. You don't have anything to hide; you also don't have anything to fear. Whistleblowers, equal rights activists, etc are nominally innocent, but the cops sure don't behave that way

The biggest problem is that the law is often quite moralistic and frequently influenced by people with hidden agendas. Almost everyone violates the law at some point or other, and the biggest concern is that with unfettered surveillance the only thing stopping the book being thrown at you is a lack of will. Don't assume just because you believe that you're innocent you actually are in the eyes of the law.

Saying that, I think the process they used here is a good one. If there was some sort of guarantee that the data collected for this search would be deleted (and not left, free for any bored policeman to delve into at any point in the future) then I'd have no issue with this type of investigation. The people they caught were committing potentially violent crimes. A little bit of privacy violation is definitely worth stopping them before they actually hurt someone.

Looking through the responses to your comment, I would bet that most commentators in this thread are unaware that London is the most intensely surveilled city in the world. And the system of surveillance was set up to stop a very real threat - IRA bombings.

For a list of failures of this system, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_.... Most successes didn't get reported. However this history does leave people in the UK with a rather different perspective on universal surveillance than Americans.

>It's a pretty interesting article, but as a Brit I just don't get why American's are so concerned about privacy. In England, there is basically no 'right to privacy' in law.

It's because they value invividual freedom and had a revolution. A population saluting their monarchs in street parades wouldn't necessarily understand.

>If I am innocent, and have nothing to hide, I don't really see what the issue is in this.

That's total BS.

For one, a lot of stuff that moves society forward, is done by people that have a lot to hide (from the backwards regime that is). From reporting on government wrongdoing, to breaking DVD encryption to investigating drug lords, etc. Especially since current governments are so aggresive to penalize even tame and civil protests and activism.

Some examples: you think Veronica Guerin had nothing to hide? How would you like if the names of her sources were made known, and they were killed to?

Did Alan Turing had something to hide? Don't think of such a case as something that only belongs in the past, and it's a solved problem now. How much of BS stuff that's now concidered illegal would be OK in the future?

Second, that's not even true for the ordinary boring citizen. How many people have done stuff like going to a brothel, driving while drunk sometimes, taking e in clubs when they are young, fighting with their spouse, etc? Would you want your browsing history to be made public to potential employees?

Thank you!

It's quite frustrating to watch people completely ignore the fact that if a power and capability exists, it will be abused (accidentally or knowingly) for dubious ends. And those with power and capability seldom relinquish it willingly.

It's quite something for an individual who has never experienced the discomfort of being watched because that's the way it's always have been. Once you taste time away from an unblinking eye, you never quite feel the same under its gaze... whether that gaze is obvious and plain to see or not.

There was a case of the woman in the UK that used the parole DB as her personal dating site / stalking ground. The more data is held on you by the government (and more likely here, 3rd party contractors) the easier it is to stalk or blackmail you.

I personally don't like the idea of G4S, Serco, A4E, etc. having that much power over me.