I was reading through the (very interesting on all sides) thread "Wow this guy is on our side", and was interested in the views expressed about wiretapping. I thought it worth taking off into a seperate discussion.

Let me start out by saying that I am absolutely on the fence on this one, and could be swayed either way.

On one hand, I believe it is a very powerful tool for catching criminals, but on the other hand I also don't buy the "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" argument, as most of us do actually have something to hide, there is nothing illegal about having secrets. In fact many companies rely on secrecy as part of their corporate model (think Coke-Cola recipe etc.). The thought of those secrets falling into the hands of a petty minded human (there are unfortunately plenty of these types in the worlds police forces) scares the living daylights out of me.

So, in fairness I think I would be all for the government being able to tap all phone calls, as long as the data recorded could only be used if there was VERY strict controls over who gets to access the information. Which comes back to having judicial procedures to restrict the use of wiretapping....

What are your thoughts?