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by padobson 4679 days ago
Sounds like we need a campaign against the "Nothing to hide" line. You could probably point out to them that there are so many laws now, they probably broke 10 of them before they left for work in the morning.
5 comments

The path that seems to have worked best for me is to start with the argument that you can't have a democracy if the incumbent can spy on the opposing candidates to help dig dirt and that this data can and will be used for non-terrorist uses. The typical response is that they trust that they wont use it for non terrorist uses, to which I reply with the sharing of data between NSA and the DEA to arrest people as well as now the Miranda case.
That could work in a full conversation, but it needs to be packaged up more for our sound-byte/online-comments/tweet culture. You could circulate a hashtag on twitter like #things2hide to get popular conversation about it going.
We need more "leaks", especially of the kind that shows the politicians who repeat the "nothing to hide" line, that they themselves have plenty of things to hide ... So perhaps it's time to start digging through the private lives of some politicians.
One technique would be attaching typical "Nothing to hide" rhetoric to images/stories of people suffering as a result of surveillance?

In addition to simply exposing these events, it also associates their own rhetoric with abuses.

I propose the last verse of Martin Niemoller's poem: "Then they came after me..."

It is as powerful a phrase as we can get!

Start the "Nothing to see" campaign!