This is the problem with the argument that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear: it ignores the issue of power. If we are not carefu… - Heather Brooke

Transparency can help citizens hold the powerful to account; but it can also be used by the powerful to control citizens by making their lives transparent through surveillance. For transparency to be just, it must always be considered in relationship to power.

By making everything secure [governments] have degraded the quality of secrecy.

Transparency helps ensure that power is not abused or used to make the powerful, or their immediate families, rich. There is also a genuine public interest in ensuring that the people who make laws and levy tax are following those laws and paying their fair share of tax.