I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and the saying should be extended to "I've got nothing to hide, now." Things change and either you'll do something which you'll want to hide, or society/politics/community will change which you'll have something to hide.

An example in the first case is that you'll want to buy a secret gift for someone, but because of the tracking the surprise will be spoiled because they'll be seeing ads for it on their systems.

The next time someone says me "I have nothing to hide" I'm thinking of asking their salary because in my experience when people say that they actually mean they are not afraid of jail but would rather don't have a lot of details being made public like who they vote, their sexual preferences, their wealth or their personal opinion of a lot of their colleagues. Most of these details are easily inferred from their online behavior, not to mention personal chats. Part of the problem is that no one is going to say "I have something to hide". I'm not going to continue this rant because HN is not the audience that needs it but to summarize: defending privacy is an uphill battle and people are not right.

I'd hoped so! Somethings are lost in text and you know what they say about assuming

I'm going to guess the downvotes are from people who don't know the history of people like McCarthy or Hoover's FBI and why someone who was lived through that era might be sensitive to and have opinions about topics of privacy[0][1]?

[0] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/j-edgar-hoover-would-ha...

[1] https://journals.openedition.org/diacronie/4823

Not American, no idea who Joe McMarthy is, and I doubt my mother does either.

J Edger Hoover was a cross dressing homosexual who collected blackmail on political opponents while he was himself being blackmailed by organized crime.

https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=j+edgar+hoover+blackmail