Privacy Is Not Secrecy
The most common argument against privacy — "I have nothing to hide" — confuses two very different things.
A category error
"Nothing to hide" treats privacy as a property of guilty people. But privacy is the property of *anyone with a self*. You close the bathroom door not because you are committing a crime but because some acts belong to you.
Secrecy hides a specific fact. Privacy preserves the possibility of an inner life.
Why the distinction matters
A society that demands transparency from individuals while granting opacity to institutions has inverted the moral order. The citizen is legible; the state and the platform are not.
A working definition
Privacy is the right to be **partially unknown** — to your employer, your government, your neighbors, and the model trained on your messages. Lose it and you lose the conditions under which honesty, dissent, and even friendship are possible.