Nothing to hide : privacy and surveillance in Europe

This contribution was delivered on the occasion of the EUI State of the Union in Florence on 4 May 2017This intervention was part of the recorded SoU morning sessions that took place on 4 May 2017 available on Youtube; move to the part of the video session of your interest within the video recording.If you have nothing to hide, you should not worry about government surveillance.' We hear these arguments all the time. We live moreover in a time where our lives are transparent to others in largely unprecedented ways. Our lives -or the trails of data of our lives- are visible as never before -to other individuals, to public and to private organisations. Do we care or are we resigned to our loss of control? Courts, legislatures and data protection authorities - at all governance levels-struggle with the tradeoff between privacy and security. Is it a false tradeoff