"If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about"

"If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him." - Cardinal Richelieu

"If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me."

"Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition."

"Because you might do something wrong with my information."

"So it doesn't bother you that within the last few years the US has held a few hundred people without charge or access to the courts, and then released them when it decided they'd done nothing wrong?"

"So it doesn't cause you concern that people are released from death row all the time after it's found they've done nothing wrong?"

"Other people who have done nothing wrong have spent years in maximum security prisons. Perhaps *more* oversight is need, rather than less?"

In the Maltese Falcon the district attorney tells Sam Spade, "If you have nothing to hide, why are you concerned?", and Sam answers back, "Everyone has something to hide."

I like to drop my pants and shout, "You're absolutely right! I have NOTHING to hide!
How about YOU?!"

Hoover had Martin Luther King placed under extensive surveillance. The FBI sent recordings revealing King's extramarital affairs to King and his wife, along with a letter suggesting that King commit suicide or else his "filthy, abnormal fraudlent self [would be] bared to the nation."

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin

Mefi