Nothing to hide

David Matheson at "On the identity trail" does a nice job of dissecting the "nothing to hide" argument frequently trotted out by supporters of ID cards. Extract:

"Due to ignorance about the nature or consequences of protecting one's privacy -- e.g. a failure to understand how important privacy, and hence its protection, is for securing such goods as friendship, intimacy, autonomy, political excellence, etc. -- one can in fact have a reason to protect one's privacy despite having no desire to protect if. If one's ignorance were removed, one would have the desire, given that one desires these other goods; and that suffices to give one a reason for protecting one's privacy in the absence of any actual desire to do so."