"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" - this is what they say when they got caught spying on you.
There is no straightforward answer to this (apart from the obvious "piss off"), because it sets specific context in which there are seemingly valid reasons to spy on people. This is implicit layer of justification involving bad guys and good guys, and you are either with them (go directly to Jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200) or us (well done, good boy, here, have a snack), and it's similar to questions like 'have you stop beating your wife?" - it requires a step back and looking from perspective. And some effort to disclose evilness.
1. "Something to hide" is implicitly equaled with something illegal. This is a trick, because of course we usually do have something we'd prefer to keep between us and whomever we decided to share it with - witty remarks about aunt Tessie, rant about our boss, comments about political situation, etc. Nothing illegal, but also nothing to share with anyone but specific recipient who shares not only the information itself, but also specific context in which the information is embedded.
Without that context there might be information that could be considered very illegal indeed. How many times have you uttered something like "I'm going to shoot him"? I know I have, more once. And it is usually obvious that I'm merely expressing my feelings, not planning a murder. However, it could be taken out of context and used against me, easily.
Then, how about sense of humor? Especially dark humor? Apparatus of justice is devoid of any humor, takes things literally and again, a joke out of context can be a lethal legal weapon against, basically, anyone.
Another thing. We have so many laws these days that there is a good chance we break some right know without even knowing it. Some stupid law hardly anyone heard about, but law nonetheless.
Then, laws change. What was illegal 50 years ago is now innocent. What was ok 50 years ago could now be prohibited. What you say today can be regarded as criminal tomorrow.
2. Hide from whom exactly? There is no transparency... oh, quite opposite, there is almost absolute darkness regarding who, how, what, when... We do know we are being spied on. We don't know who does it, who has access, how, where and for how long that data is stored, we don't know how much of it is kept (safe assumption: everything), who has access now, who will have access in the future... Government and its agencies cannot be trusted. That's obvious. And even worse, even if I wanted to believe that only good and honest people spy on me (good and honest spies? :) there is always the risk of security breach, of my very private data laboriously collected by good, honest, hardworking spies simply leaking to the wild. Or some sort of computer failure. Or anything. No computer system is 100% safe.
3. I did not ask for protection. I wasn't asked if I want to share my phone calls, mails or any communication. I wasn't told that any of it takes place. Instead I was volunteered to share my life with someone who says it's for my protection. And even when I learned about spying I cannot opt-out. And even if, for a moment, we pretend that we do have democracy (we don't), no one actually voted for all this. It just... came to be. What else is going on without us knowing? And one more thing, no one was able to give a one, single example of all that data ever protecting my (or anyone) from any threat. Is it unreasonable to expect or hope for that there was some method in this madness?
Privacy is simply ability to choose with whom I share my mind. Myself. It is no different to ability to chose what I spend my money on. Where I walk. What I read. It is very basic freedom, and spying is breaching that freedom. It is no different than theft. Is it, in fact, theft. Anything taken from me without my consent is theft, is it not? And does it matter if it is done by an individual, a group of people called mafia, or a group of people called government? End result is exactly, precisely the same. No matter what justification is presented after the fact.
No.
Image taken from http://www.godlikeproductions.com/
