The biggest reason why privacy matters is because there are <i>always</i> going to be crimes committed so there will <i>always</i> be people that have nothing to do with the crime caught in the dragnet around the crime scene. Coincidences do happen and if you happen to be around the area of two murders you'll have a very hard time to explain that away, whereas in a society with good privacy you would never even appear on the radar.<p>So even if you haven't broken the law or done something that could be misconstrued as such you are still at risk.<p>All this lack of privacy does is increase the size of the haystack while keeping the number of needles constant.<p>But hay looks a lot like needles and plenty of 'hay' will end up being prosecuted for stuff the needles get away with.<p>Less privacy means more solved crimes, but it also means many more false positives.<p>The 'if you've got nothing to hide why do you want privacy' crowd seems to be completely oblivious to this, until they end up being hauled in to the station for something they had nothing to do with themselves. That's when reality kicks in and suddenly they switch sides (but by then it's obviously too late).<p>We live in a society that is predicated on fear, fear of crime, of terror and so on. And most of us are willing to trade their freedom for security all too easily.<p>If you want absolute security, you should realize that that is only possible in a society that has more in common with a prison than with a park.<p>Robert Heinlein wrote a whole bunch of books around this theme, if you like SF and you haven't read those book yet I suggest you do so, there is some really good stuff in there.