We’re in dangerous times if objecting to ID cards is seen as suspicious

is increasingly suspicious to be against them.

Do you prefer to pay in physical cash? Beware being labelled a potential tax avoider by some green Corbynite nephew. You don’t want to tell all your work colleagues your salary? It’s probably because you unfairly earn more than them. You’ve elected to come off social media, or rarely post anything on it? That’s quite odd: I do hope you’re not unhappy?

This is just a handful of examples, but they illustrate a narrowing of the definition of privacy that is driven as much by social pressure as by overweening governments or corporations.

We could rewrite data protection laws to be more like Germany, or extend property rights to our information so it cannot be used without our consent, but that will do nothing to fix a tell-all culture in which the greatest virtue is to be an open book (often embarrassingly so).

In areas like pay or the use of cash, this is a predictable consequence of a shift towards a belief that what matters is not individual agency but group identity. More widely, people have bought the lie, piecemeal, that you are not giving up privacy by, for example, being issued with a national insurance number or having your biometric data stored by the Passport Office.

Perhaps in each individual instance, the trade-off is worth it: proof that you are paying your due in tax; or faster progress through border control. But we are in dangerous straits indeed when, if you object, it is not treated as a reflection of your right to live as you please, but as suspicious.

What do you have to hide?