A tragicomedic irony of course is that most &quot;nothing to hide&quot; advocates demand secrecy and legal cover for their own actions.  This sort of doublethink leads to things like a &quot;Freedom of Information Act&quot; in the US that provides a legal framework for concealing information that should otherwise be out in the open.<p>If you apply the &quot;nothing to hide&quot; principle to states&#x27; own actions, I can think of two possible conclusions:<p>1) It is not true that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide (i.e., there is a legitimate right to privacy)<p>2) State actors have something to hide, so they must be doing something wrong.