of power by the authorities. There is nothing more arbitrary than assigning a person an official identity and then treating them as nothing more than a number, or piece of data to be matched. The assertion that "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is no different from saying "if you're not with us, you're a supporter of the terrorists". How best to put this across? Would a simple statement to that effect be enough? It splits everybody into either "innocent" or "guilty" (by which jury?) with no consideration for "not under suspicion" or "never even accused". The difficulty is with constructing a similar enough (and short!) false dichotomy which whilst potentially plausible at an extreme, shows unequivocally that the argument of 'nth-ntf' holds no value. The argument is a particular species of false dichotomy. You are presented with a simple either/or choice. Either you're guilty, and so should be exposed; or you are innocent, in which case nothing will be exposed, and so you have nothing to worry about. Either way, you have no legitimate reason to be concerned. Like all false dichotomies, the problem is that there is at least one more option than the two offered in the either/or choice. The most common retort against privacy advocates - by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures - is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?" Well the answer,