If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument.
Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming.
We still don't "have anything to hide". We're just having a conversation. But the conversation used to be private--that's normal. Now it's not private, which is not normal.
Whether or not you feel like you have to "hide" anything during a bar conversation is not the point. It's whether you think we should make changes to our society where having a private conversation is never allowed.
This kind of analogy, in my experience, helps people understand that the "nothing to hide" argument assumes that privacy is only for evil people, when in reality it's the very normal default of daily life. The parable posted in another top-level comment is also great.
Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming.
We still don't "have anything to hide". We're just having a conversation. But the conversation used to be private--that's normal. Now it's not private, which is not normal.
Whether or not you feel like you have to "hide" anything during a bar conversation is not the point. It's whether you think we should make changes to our society where having a private conversation is never allowed.
This kind of analogy, in my experience, helps people understand that the "nothing to hide" argument assumes that privacy is only for evil people, when in reality it's the very normal default of daily life. The parable posted in another top-level comment is also great.