Why 'I Have Nothing to Hide' Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance

The programs of the past can be characterized as “proximate surveillance,” in which the government attempted to use technology to directly monitor communication themselves. The programs of this decade mark the transition to “oblique surveillance,” in which the government more often just goes to the places where information has been accumulating on its own, such as email providers, search engines, social networks, and telecoms. Apologists will always frame our use of information-gathering services like a mobile phone plan or Gmail as a choice. Both then and now, privacy advocates have typically come into conflict with a persistent tension, in which many individuals don’t understand why they should be concerned about surveillance if they have nothing to hide. It’s even less clear in the world of “oblique” surveillance, given that apologists will always frame our use of information-gathering services like a mobile phone plan or Gmail as a choice. As Supreme Court Justice Breyer elaborates:

Big Brother is Definitely Tracking Your Cell Phone The government can track your cell phone GPS without a warrant. In a frightening new decision, a federal appeals court says that you have no expectation of privacy when the police want to track your location using your cell phone. U.S. v. Skinner, Case No. 09-6497. The court said that the police don’t need to bother getting a warrant if they want to track you by using the GPS signal in your cell phone to track you. In a ruling that is right out of the pages of George Orwell’s “1984,” the Sixth U.S. The case in question involved a marijuana bust, but the ruling applies to the 85 percent of adults who own a cell phone, a dashboard navigation device and many iPads. Cell phones continue sending a signal several times a minute even when they are turned off. The U.S. In the view of the Sixth Circuit, it is just too much of a hassle for the police to get a warrant to catalog your every movement with your phone’s GPS signal. In a dissent, Sixth Circuit Judge Bernice B.