This Man Has Nothing to Hide—Not Even His Email Password
What had never occurred to me, until I sat in front of his open email account, is how objectionable I find that attitude. Every one of us is entrusted with information that our family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances would rather that we kept private, and while there is no absolute obligation for us to comply with their wishes—there are, indeed, times when we have a moral obligation to speak out in order to defend other goods—assigning the privacy of others a value of zero is callous.
.. Dyer is an honest man committing to an ethical code he believes to be righteous. He is trying to make the world better. He doesn’t believe people should have a right to privacy, so he is ceding his own. These traits and impulses are worthy of some respect.
.. But I will also understand more fully that if someone truly has “nothing to hide,” it means that they also have insufficient regard for the comfort, preferences, and desires of people who feel differently. With funding, Dyer will go forward with his project, and his camera crew will inevitably make people uncomfortable every time that he enters a public bathroom or a medical clinic, or when his child wants to share a traumatic experience with his or her father. The world he wants to create is one where there would be no option to refrain from revealing to colleagues that you’ll have hemorrhoids surgery while on vacation; where girls going through puberty could only talk to their mothers about getting their periods in public; and where every time a potential romantic partner rejects you, it happens for all to see. Think of everyone who has ever kept a confidence you bestowed in a moment of need or vulnerability. All of them had this in common: They had something to hide.