“I have nothing to hide.”
It’s the most common response when people learn about pattern of life data collection.
I feel there is some misunderstanding between Secrecy and Privacy – Lets explore:
Secrecy vs. Privacy:
Secrecy is actively keeping specific information from being known. You keep your surprise party plans secret. You keep business negotiations confidential. You keep your gift purchases hidden until the right moment. Secrecy serves many legitimate purposes—protecting others, maintaining competitive advantage, preserving the magic of a surprise, or simply choosing the right time to share news.
Privacy is different. Privacy is your default right to control access to information about yourself and to exist without constant observation. You close the bathroom door not because what you’re doing is secret, but because you deserve personal space. You don’t want cameras in your bedroom not because you’re hiding anything wrong, but because intimacy requires privacy. You have curtains on your windows not to conceal secrets, but to create a boundary between public and private life.
Why Privacy Matters
Consider this: Your pattern of life data reveals:
- When you’re home alone (and when you’re not)
- Your medical conditions inferred from searches, GP records and pharmacy visits
- Whether you’re job hunting (valuable to your current employer)
- Your political beliefs, religious practices, sexual orientation
- Financial stress that could be used by those you’re in negotiations with
- Your daily routines, vulnerabilities, and points you may be most easily influenced
None of this requires you to be keeping secrets. You might openly discuss your health with friends, but that doesn’t mean private companies should use this data to increase their chances of selling you something.
You could be involved in activism, a protected democratic right under UK law, but more authoritarian regimes could track your associations with political activist groups. You might have nothing to hide, but could have quite a lot to lose.
In the US, Target famously identified a pregnant teenager through her shopping patterns before her father knew. She wasn’t keeping a secret—she simply hadn’t found the right moment to share her news. That privacy violation happened regardless of her intent to conceal.
Surveillance as default
When every moment is tracked, catalogued, and analysed, you lose more than secrecy—you lose the freedom to be yourself.
Psychologists call this the Panopticon effect: when people know they’re being watched, they change their behaviour. They self-censor. They conform. They become less authentic, less creative, less willing to explore ideas or make mistakes.
Privacy isn’t about hiding who you are. Privacy is the right to keep your personal life, information, and decisions free from unnecessary intrusion, surveillance, or exposure.
Your pattern of your life data is yours to do what you will with, which includes having the option to trade the privacy of some data for convenience but it should not be something to be collected, analysed, and sold without your meaningful consent.
StuC.blog 