Do you have nothing to hide?

(comments are open on this post for a few days.)

I'm set to go on vacation in the near future and a short plane trip is par for the course. I didn't hear about the British terror plot involving liquids until Michelle's mother, Pat, mentioned it in an email. I've been astounded at the reaction. It's very similar to the reaction to the Richard Reid incident (the shoe bomber). That reaction went something like: "Oh, people want to blow up shit with their shoes? Well, we'll have to start checking shoes now." Anyone who travels in or to the U.S. will be familiar with having to take ones shoes off during the security check at the airport.

Now we can't have liquids on planes because someone was going to smuggle a binary explosive (where two benign compounds are mixed to form something more deadly). And because anything with a current in it could be used to trigger an explosive, all electronic devices (laptops, ipods, cellphones, etc.) are banned from the airplane as well (this appears to be the case in the UK and at Boston's Logan airport). There are some reports that you can't even take paper onto planes in the UK... you can't even take a freakin' book on an international flight?!?!?!

I predict that it will soon approach the state where we're more comfortable with the possiblity of our plane being blown up than having to, as Lauren Weinstein has put it, be chained naked to the seats of the plane.

And the most infuriating things I've heard come from your average member of the public. NPR quoted a few people who were not put off at all by the increased security... and then it hit: one passenger waiting in an ungodly security line said, "And, if you've got nothing to hide, what's the big deal?"

I loathe that argument. It sounds so smug and uncontestable. I present, a great little anecdote that illustrates the proper response, in my opinion, to that argument. This is courtesy of Howard C. Berkowitz on Dave Farber's IP List:

I had a police officer knock on my door, after a juvenile fight a few houses down, and ask if he could "come in and look around."

"No."

"It's just routine."

"It's not routine for me, and since it's my house and you don't have a warrant, my definition of routine applies."

"What, do you have something to hide?"

"Help me understand that concept, Detective. Standing on my porch, please drop your trousers and, if any, undershorts."

"WHAAAAAT?"

"Well, if you have nothing to hide..."

If we had nothing to hide, we'd be naked (at least in places like California where it's rather nice most of the year). If we had nothing to hide, we'd speak our minds. If we had nothing to hide, we wouldn't have privacy.